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Darcey Bussell, The Royal Ballet DB: ‘In the middle, somewhat elevated’, RB: May 2007 London, Sadler's Wells London, Covent Gaden © Jeffery Taylor Former dancer, Dance Critic and an Arts feature writer for the |
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We Brits are notoriously buttoned up when it comes to tributes. But last week’s Farewell to Darcey Bussell at Sadler’s Wells verged on the reluctant. Bussell, 38, is the Royal Ballet’s best known ballerina since Margot Fonteyn, and inherited the role of company ambassadress when promoted the RB’s youngest Principal dancer aged 21. For the past two decades she has devoted herself to the RB on and off the stage but it was an ill lit, glamour stripped celebration we saw last week. Luckily Bussell was in great form, rattling off Forsythe’s duet, In the middle, somewhat elevated, with Roberto Bolle. Many younger dancers gnashed their teeth at her relish of Ashton’s unique choreography in the Act III duet from Sylvia while her interpretation of Masha in MacMillan’s Winter Dreams anchored an otherwise lacklustre performance. But we must try harder to say thank you.
Meanwhile at Bussell’s alma mater in Covent Garden, Marianela Nunez picked up and ran with the ballerina baton in Swan Lake. Her formidable technique has an exquisite softness, ideal for Odette, the betrayed Swan Queen. Unfortunately it also hides the horror of being controlled by darker forces beyond her control and reduces the work’s dramatic impact. As Odile, the temptress who twists Siegfried (a rather excitable Thiago Soares) round her little finger, Nunez is as abandoned and luscious as we have come to expect.
 © John Ross
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