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Dutch National BalletNovember 2006 London, Sadler's Wells by Jane Simpson |
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One of the odd things about London's ballet scene in the last twenty years or so is how rarely we see the major companies from some of our nearest neighbours. People with the time and money to travel can get to Hamburg, Stuttgart, or Copenhagen easily enough of course, but that's far from everyone; and in any case it's always interesting to see how a company presents itself here - it's often an insight into what it would like to be known for. So the Dutch National Ballet's choice from its huge and eclectic repertory for its brief visit to Sadler's Wells was very interesting. Of the four pieces on show, three were made for the company, two of them within the last year. The company's resident choreographers are Hans van Manen and Krzystof Pastor, and each of them was represented in the programme. (Fascinating coincidence for those who like this sort of thing: the DNB was founded in 1961, exactly 30 years later than the Royal Ballet, and these two were born around 30 years later than Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan respectively - so the company is more or less where the RB was in 1976.) Pastor's Suite for Two, made specially for this visit, is a slight piece for two of the company's principals - Ruta Jezerskyte and Cedric Ygnace - set to one of Bach's Cello Suites, played on stage by Quirine Viersen. The dancers' solos are attractive enough, but when they dance together the stage seemed cluttered by comparison with the pure clarity of the music. Van Manen's contribution, premičred last season, is the latest of many ballets set to Benjamin Britten's Frank Bridge Variations, a brilliant and rather mysterious piece which seems to have meant something entirely different to each of the choreographers who has tried it. Unfortunately it means something different to each one of the audience, too, and it's not easy to tune in to a new interpretation instantly. Van Manen doesn't try to impose any sort of narrative or theme on to the episodic score, treating each section separately: to my eye, his invention didn't match Britten's.
Rudi van Dantzig was the artistic director of the DNB for twenty years, and the works he made for the company played a major part in shaping its destiny. It's difficult now to imagine the impact of Vier Letzte Lieder when it was new in 1977 - both its look, with Toer van Schayk's fine backcloth, and its theme of love and loss have become such cliches that you can easily catch yourself thinking 'Oh no, not the angel of death again'. But even after making the effort to see it with fresh eyes, I found myself out of sympathy with the way he uses the music. The choreography consists basically of four pas de deux, and the first three were made up of beautifully lyrical phrases, succeeding each other smoothly but not building up to a strong enough emotional effect to add anything to to what we were hearing. Richard Strauss, like him or not, saturates his music with feeling, and it's only in the last song (powerfully done by Natalia Hoffmann and Tamas Nagy) that van Dantzig rises to a comparable level. I kept finding myself thinking of how Dark Elegies says a lot more with a lot less effort.
 © John Ross
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