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Checkmate has a particular place in my memory and affections. This may have been the first ballet I ever saw as a child, a televised version in the1960s which I recall in black and white. It made a distinct impression: I grasped then that this was a narrative of sorts, with strongly characterised individuals, one that was straightforward to follow. But clearly it wasn’t at all naturalistic but highly stylised, and it was about more than chess pieces. I felt I should like to see more of this ballet stuff. It took many years before that seed sprouted fully. Meanwhile, Checkmate still has these virtues of clarity of presentation and the ability to suggest complex ideas about conflict and power.

Checkmate proposes a game of chess, orchestrated by Love versus Death, the red pieces against the black. The old, frail Red King is supported by a gentle, loving Red Queen, and protected by the red knights. Their principal opponent is the Black Queen. De Valois assembles all the red piece by piece facing the audience in their proper chess positions. But though some of the black are assembled facing the red, we never seem to see all of them. Perhaps we the audience, might be on the back side. (That’s a disturbing thought as de Valois so clearly wants us to sympathise with the red). Love looses to Death as the first Red Knight cannot bring himself to kill the Black Queen, undone by her previous flirting: she kills him and ultimately the Red King.

The ballet was created in 1937 and the sense of foreboding about forthcoming conflict is clearly present and the uneasiness about the outcome. Checkmate was being performed on the company’s tour of Holland in 1940s when the Nazi invasion took place and the sets were lost as the company fled. The designs are a real pleasure, the costumes in particular.
 

I had always thought that ideally a Black Queen should be a little taller than Nunez, but if she doesn’t have killer legs she certainly has a killer attitude, glamorously malevolent and deliberate from head to perfectly placed toe. You can clearly hear the swish of the swords through the air as she taunts the helpless king. Stepanek (another debut) takes on the tricky solos of the First Red Knight. Jonathan Howells has the difficult task of sustaining the king’s long death scene. It’s a good beginning but there is more to be got from this character.

Symphonic Variations, Ashton’s exquisitely honed masterpiece from 1946, also featured a new mix of performers. This is an unforgiving work for the six dancers who never leave the stage. Rupert Pennefather appeared in the central male role (another debut, I think). He had danced Siegfried the night before – not the ideal preparation, one would assume. However, what had seemed like a certain blandness and lack of projection in his Siegfried served him better here. He presented the choreography very simply, with no attempt to draw attention to himself.

He partnered Sarah Lamb (a new combination, I think). This wasn’t the best ever performance of Symphonic. There were moments when I longed to align the set of the women’s’ arms rather more precisely in angles in harmony with each other. The text of the ballet itself demands perfect coordination, and sympathy and an evident connection among its performers. The cast at this performance looked still a little too new to the work to project that level of understanding and assurance. Nevertheless, the work’s apparent simplicity and sudden shifts of mood and deep connection to the music still give great pleasure. That great glorious green background aptly suggests spring and the renewal of promise.

MacMillan’s Song of the Earth is set to Mahler songs, translations of Chinese poems, sung here by Jean Rigby and David Rendall. It’s a long (over an hour), intense work, which is difficult to summarise as it seems to have many different moods and themes shifting within it. The setting is rigorously plain, with black and grey costumes against a dark background. There’s still a narrative here, but by the 1960s MacMillan was asking the audience to work much harder than de Valois had in the 1930s in terms of analysing what the characters represent.

The earlier songs are shorter and lighter in mood: Ricardo Cervera (dancing with characteristic poise) confidently leads a group of men towards a group of girls picking lotus blossom – a moment where the action picks up on the text of the poem. In the third song, Mara Galeazzi is lifted and manipulated turning over and over in the air between four men. These early scenes are haunted by the masked figure of the Messenger of Death, whose effect is to cut short any lightness of mood.

The lead characters of the man and woman are introduced to us in the first song, but the woman does not reappear until the last, longest song. MacMillan does not name the characters or give us any clue about them, but there is a relationship there, one that the Messenger must inevitably interrupt. It’s very much down to the dancers themselves to suggest the nuances of meaning and feeling – of despair or resignation. Leanne Benjamin suggests frailty but also an urgent intensity in a strongly focussed performance.

Unfortunately I didn’t think that Hristov was as responsive or able to project so powerfully. Edward Watson’s Messenger was very strongly danced. It looks as if those Mayerlings have really done a lot for his confidence and power to dominate a stage. However his startling flexibility left Hristov looking somewhat stiff at times. The corps looked in very fine precise form throughout, though perhaps it’s wrong to refer to the corps when so many of them are soloist level.

This is an evening that ends not the typical set of big rousing closing numbers that you might expect at the end of a season, but on a sombre, reflective note. It’s a farewell, and yet the Messenger of Death may in the end not be unwelcome.