'La Fete Etrange' reviews RB 'Pierrot Lunaire' reviews all 'Pierrot Lunaire' reviews 'Marguerite' reviews Rojo in reviews Putrov in reviews recent RB reviews 'Coming to See Me Tonight' reviews 'All Fours' reviews 'Grand Duo' reviews recent Mark Morris reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

All the sins of classical ballet that modern dance pioneers are supposed to shatter were neatly encapsulated in US choreographer, Mark Morris’s opening night in Islington. Bang up to date clichés include society’s oppressed struggling to reach enlightenment in All Fours, and primitive society emerging into the light in Grand Duo. With a basic vocabulary of four steps and rejecting boring notions like structure, not only is there nowhere to go but nothing to get there with. The opening piece, however, Somebody’s Coming to See Me Tonight, is as cosily mumsy as Thanksgiving and apple pie. Set to Victorian ballads the values of love and romance are stickily traditional. Spiced with a dash of mockery, perhaps?

The Royal Ballet seems anxious to under whelm us this celebratory season, why else open a mixed bill with Andree Howard’s 1940 La Fete etrange, between the wars upper class whimsy about a posh wedding party that goes terribly wrong? Zenaida Yanowsky’s Bride may have impeccable manners and good hands riding to hounds but does nothing to dispel the overpowering snobbery.

As one of the company’s finest dancers, award winning Ivan Putrov trails clouds of glory like Albrecht, James, Prodigal Son and Spectre de la Rose. Painting his face white and sticking him on scaffolding as a heroic simpleton in Glen Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire does him, and us, a great disservice.

On the other hand waiting for Tamara Rojo’s debut in Ashton’s expanded duet, Margeurite and Armand, created in 1963 as a Fonteyn/Nureyev showcase, had tongues hanging out. And well they might be. Only a handful of actor/dancers come alive on stage, like her, above the waist. Rojo hypnotises with her face and heart while her body frees her from the laws of gravity. We are lucky indeed to have her in our midst.