SFB 'Quartette' reviews SFB 'Sea Pictures' reviews 'Bugaku' reviews 'Glass Pieces' reviews Tan in reviews Vilanoba in reviews recent SFB reviews

Night two of the SFB week at the Opera House and there were another group of four ballets to see...

Quartette
A sunny flowing piece for four principal ballerinas by the company’s Artistic Director, Helgi Tomasson, to Dvorák piano pieces. This is ballet pleasant, ballet amicable and even the dancers on stage acknowledge and beam pleasantries at one another.

The meat is a solo for each of the girls accentuating different facets of dance - elongated line, precise and quick footwork etc. But this has evolved and the ballerinas and their costumes add dramatic colour to the work and red becomes a vamp, others being more languid or regal. When dancing altogether they looked a little uncoordinated and Under-rehearsed but the costume and design by Jens-Jacob Worsaae deserve very special mention - the most lovely rich and sumptuous graduated tints on long flowing dresses. Amicable dance, lovely design.

Sea Pictures
Our own Chris Wheeldon has been doing rather well in the US with commissions from many of the companies and recently was made Resident Choreographer at NYCB. The great thing about the US is that Balanchine (and others I'm sure) established a firm tradition for short works that the major companies continue to run with... and of course it's a great way of growing new talent. Over here mixed bills feature less and I guess if there was one thing that many UK dance fans would really like is to see mixed bills becoming more popular and hence more numerous.

Wheeldon's work to date, as seen in the UK, is usually pure dance whereas Sea Pictures has a pronounced dramatic plot. The music is courtesy of 5 songs, by Elgar, with lyrics by others including Barrett Browning. I often hate music like this, but Elgar is not too heavy and the English words made it easier.

Wheeldon gently steers us through the plot of a fishing community, men going to sea and the drowning of one. Its neither idyllic or incredibly hard-hitting in the telling and the costumes and sepia picture backcloths create a drab, sombre - rather north sea grey day - look.

Wheeldon is a dab hand at pas de deux - very MacMillanesque I thought and I wish he had perhaps given himself time to develop relationships some more. There was also some lovely imaginative work for groups of dancers: I particularly liked his images of waves and sailing for example. Ones reminded of Christopher Bruce's Sergeant Early's Dream - recently revived, which has a similar feel about the sea and leaving, but perhaps with more contrasts - not surprising given Bruce's experience. Sea Pictures started strongly but lost its way a little in the middle and felt about one song too long to me. But that sounds way too hard because this is most accomplished work and SFB have secured a piece that should endure. I look forward to seeing Wheeldon get to do a full-blown dramatic piece at some time but this is good to be going on with!

Bugaku
... or Balanchine goes to Japan for 30 minutes.

A striking set creates a walled courtyard of a performance space into which the dancers ceremonially file down some steps - the action is constrained and concentrated. In fact everything is moderated and ritualised and out of this repression springs the most incredibly sexual pdd. There is no western abandon here, all is measured and yet what goes on in the mind spills out discretely with knowing innocence.

However I'm not sure ballet technique is really so good or appropriate even at showing a culture so different. The highlight in this piece was Yuan Yuan Tan whose limbs are human and yet eerily perfect in the way they move - robots could learn from her!

MacMillan created a Japanese piece - Rituals - some 12 years later (in 1975) and this was recently brought back by RB. The MacMillan is the more captivating I suspect because it doesn't try to use ballet technique to achieve its ends. While I think I'd rapidly tire of the Balanchine, Tan and Karinska costumes were just fine by me for the 30 minutes on Tuesday.

Glass Pieces
A breathtaking piece by Jerome Robbins to the music of Philip Glass. I've long has a CD called something like "The Essential Philip Glass" and it was strange to see music I've come to know so well (on the M11, M4 and M1!) brought to life with such pacy brilliance.

Robbins always seems to have a very human touch to his work and the contrast with the minimalism of Glass made for riveting viewing. The set is urban white with a squared backcloth and much of the choreography is vital, fast, purposeful but not case-hardened. But the middle section to Façades - which is almost lullaby smooth music at first and yet with an insistent if quite threatening backing beat - gave me one of my very best experiences of the last year. While Muriel Maffre and Pierre-François dance a striking (anything with Maffre is striking) duet out front the corps girls, in silhouette, move across the back of the stage in a long straight line - almost like a line of Christmas trimmings. They enter one at a time - Bayadère like almost and extend slowly across the back of the stage, their routine of small movements so simple, repetitive and utterly mesmerising. Marvellous inventive choreography and design ideas fused with fascinating music. Certainly the best Robbins I've ever seen.

The SFB dancers remain a delight and it’s truly great of the company to bring so much work for us to cast our eager, if critical eyes over. There is Programme 3 to look forward to, but SFB's bringing of Class Pieces alone has cheered me very much, not to mention all the others.