The end of the year approaches, Nutcrackers break out all around us. It’s time for the end of year round up again. So here are my personal thoughts on memorable dance in 2007. This isn’t necessarily a “best of” – these are things that have stuck in the mind for good reasons or bad.
January
One of my memorable performances was one of the earliest in the year. ENB revived Mary Skeaping’s very traditional production of Giselle at the Coliseum. Though I’ve seen many performances and many versions, some details as presented by Thomas Edur as Albrecht came across with such clarity it was if I’d never seen it before. It’s as much about the presence as the dancing: he knows how to stand, how to walk, how to use a cloak. In Act 2 there’s moment where he sees Giselle and moves towards her, tries to touch her, but she eludes his grasp. Sometimes this can look very obvious and hammy as she’s obviously miles out of the way, but Agnes Oaks seemed made of air and just drifted by and I thought he might have put his hand through her waist. Magic.
February
This brought a visit to Sadler’s Wells by American Ballet Theater, This was by no means as memorable as it should have been from a company of its stature and reputation, and what has really stuck in my mind, sadly, are the huge ticket prices for some rather cheap looking stagings.
I caught up with Marianella Nunez as Odette this month. Every time I see her, I want to see her in the something else, she seems to be unfolding gloriously from one role to the next. The actual moment of transformation back into a swan at the end of Act 2 sent shivers down my spine.
March
March seems to be one of those months that suffers from a strange pile up and oversupply of dance, rather like October. Out of a packed month, one definitely memorable item was the Sasha Waltz and friends version of Dido and Aeneas at Sadler’s. This featured a lengthy section for the dancers floating and turning in a giant swimming bath suspended above the stage. There were any amount of fascinating stage pictures in this production which mixed dancers and singers on stage. It was just a pity so few of them actually connected with or enhanced the subject matter. Even “When I am laid in earth” left me unmoved. What a pity. It must have cost a fortune.
Sasha Waltz and friends Dido and Aeneas
© Sebastian Bolesch
March also brought us a new work (Children of Adam) by Alistair Marriott for the Royal, which was fairly harshly treated by the critics. It had its faults but the opening pas de deux was interesting and I did very much appreciate Leanne Benjamin’s performance in this. She is enjoying a remarkable stage in her career right now. Sometimes it seems proof the elixir of like exists. In a year of retirements, I hope she keeps dancing for some time yet.
April
Edward Watson’s debut as Rudolf in Mayerling at Covent Garden was as good as I dared hope it would be, and that was very good indeed. In his very first entry onto the stage you could see what a damaged person his Rudolf was. It was a terrific achievement, and it seems to me that his dancing since then had gained in confidence and security now that particular mountain has been climbed. There were lots of good things among the other casts too. Out of many striking moments, I recall Roberta Marquez holding Bratfisch’s hat with her fingertips at arms length as if he had given her a dead rat.
Edward Watson as Crown Prince Rudolf of Austro-Hungary and Mara Galeazzi as Mary Vetsera in MacMillan's Mayerling
© Johan Persson
May
This month saw the beginning of Darcey Bussell’s series of farewell performances, this one a production by the Ballet Boyz (Nunn and Trevitt) at Sadler’s Wells. This was notable for a wonderful cast, with Jonathan Cope being coaxed out of retirement to partner Darcey one more time in Wheeldon’s Tryst. There was also a remarkable ensemble assembled for Winter Dreams, including Rojo, Nunn, Trevitt, Watson, Cope (as the husband) and Nicola Tranah also coming out of retirement to return to her created role as one of the sisters. This was the earliest works made on Bussell and ends with the “farewell” pas de deux as the lovers part forever, an seemed an entirely apposite choice. Shame that the handsome Roberto Bolle couldn’t offer much by way of emotional engagement as a partner, but Darcey was beginning to show signs of a passion in her dancing which had seldom been in evidence before.
June
The Royal Ballet triple bill of Checkmate, Symphonic Variations and Song of the earth mixed bill would have been a memorable one anyway, just for the choreography, without the retirements it marked. Belinda Hatley retired after serving the company for many years – an Ashton dancer of distinction.
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan provided a curiously compelling mix of dance, t’ai chi and martial arts at Sadler’s. Coolness, calmness and restraint were mixed with sudden flurries of violent gesture. You wouldn’t dare mess with any of those fierce women.
Pei-hua in Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Wild Cursive
© LIN Ching-yuan
July
There was one remarkably busy weekend in July. On the same day we had the annual matinee performance of the Royal Ballet School at Covent Garden and also a gala curated by George Piper Dances to celebrate the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall. This is fairly bizarre for July, generally the thinnest month in the dance calendar. There were performances to note at the RBS including Sergiy Polunin giving an extraordinarily accomplished performance of Corsaire (subsequently he joined the company and danced the Bronze Idol in Bayadere this autumn). He also appeared in new work by Christopher Hampson which looked like it deserved a wider showing than just one performance.
The RFH gala featured a generous amount of new commissions, and included a performance by Christopher Wheeldon in a Nunn/ Trevitt work. Wheeldon had given up performing – but retirement and returning from it are something of a theme this year. Wheeldon seemed to be everywhere this year (RFH, Bolshoi, Sadler’s), though he always seemed to promise more than actually deliver. The recently retired (yes, again) Belinda Hatley did a stunning version of Ashton’s Brahms Waltzes in the manner of Isadora Duncan, clutching at the very last petals to fall from her fingertips.
Running (L-R): Michelle Yard, Laurel Lynch; Lying down: Julie Worden in Mark Morris’s Mozart Dances
© Stephanie Berger
July also brought us Mark Morris’s Mozart Dances at the Barbican, which was a delightful musical experience. I’d like to see this again, as there was a lot to absorb. I was particularly struck in the second, mainly male, section by the sudden and brief entry of the women in long gauzy skirts as if they might be modern descendents of the Wilis.
August
August brought the juggernaut of the Bolshoi rolling into town and crushing all competition, These were big, big productions, barely squeezing into the Coliseum stage (Corsaire looked particularly congested in the Jardin Animé scene) and regrettably big prices to match. Still it proved necessary to pay up and go to give yourself a real treat. The company seems to be in remarkable form at present. Acosta was Spartacus: you had to be there. What is so ultimately impressive about him is not the fabulous technical ability but how he conveys a total belief with all his heart and soul in what he is doing – in ballet itself.
Natalia Osipova as Kitri and Ivan Vasiliev as Basil in the Bolshoi's Don Quioxte
© John Ross
And of course there were Osipova and Vasiliev in Don Q – so young and so very happy – doing the ridiculously difficult with grinning ease and gleefulness.
September
There was a fascinating contrast this month. The truly memorable performance for me this month was Uprising / In Your Rooms from Hofesh Schetcher. There was an incredible buzz about this performance at Sadler’s. The work brimmed with energy and inventiveness. The place was packed with a young audience, though there hadn’t been a massive amount of publicity. By contrast the debut of the Wheeldon dance company Morphoses, which had been the subject of a publicity onslaught, was much more subdued and the audiences just didn’t turn out in any numbers, despite Wheeldon’s wonderful dancers.
Wendy Wheelan and Craig Hall in Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain
© John Ross
October
Every year, there’s always something you really wish you had managed to get to seen. Mine is the duet for man and mechanical digger (transports exceptionelles) as part of Dance Umbrella. It sounded really intriguing. There was such a pile up of dance events at the time that I missed it.
However I did catch Steven McRae’s unscheduled debut as Romeo at Covent Garden. For someone with not much preparation this was an impressively thought through and detailed characterisation, with a lot more life to it than some of the rather pallid Romeos that followed. It probably helps to have a wonderfully responsive Alina Cojocaru as your Juliet though.
BRB came to Sadler’s. Chi Cao managed an impressive shift in stage persona in one evening between his classical purity in Paquita to the gum chewing lead in Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs.
At the Barbican there were the concluding performances of Michael Clark’s Stravinsky project, which brought together his versions of Apollo, Rite of Spring and Les Noces. I’ve been watching these unfold over the last three years and have been at times puzzled, irritated, beguiled and astonished. I want to see Les Noces again, if only because this was the best musical performance at any dance event this year. Clark has his own vision of the future of classical ballet, and if you don’t get distracted by the sometimes silly costumes or the toilet seat on his head, then you can find something distinctive and beautiful in his language. It’s another way forward, one quite distinct from the followers of Forsythe that dominate the choreographic landscape.
Kate Coyne and Andrea Santato in I Do from Michael Clark’s Stravinsky Project
© Hugo Glendinning
November
Jewels is a work so beautifully architected that it seems impossible to take a bad picture of it. (I record here some thanks to John Ross for another year of delightful pictures for ballet.co). It was lovely to see it, and there were some wonderful performances. But there is something very odd when you think that in 2007 the Royal Ballet has so far done more works by Balanchine (Apollo, Theme and Variations, the three parts of Jewels ) than it has by its founder choreographer Ashton (Rhapsody, Symphonic Variations). This balance doesn’t seem right to me.
There’s been an usual (and very uncharacteristic) silence on the part of Wayne McGregor this year. After all the fuss and publicity about him being appointed as The Royal’s resident choreographer, with some wondering if this was The End of Classical Ballet As We Know It, McGregor was not scheduled to produce any new work for the Royal this season. His only new piece was a short item which (rather damagingly for his street cred, I’d say) appeared at an expensive gala to raise funds for the ROH. It wasn’t the sort of material a gala audience was quite prepared for but it looked interesting and a definite cousin to the successful Chroma.
December
Nutcrackers are upon us. And yes, there are new things to go wrong. I had never seen the Mouse King’s tail get stuck in the trapdoor before and will add it to my collection of great Nutcracker glitches of our time. I know, I know – sometimes things are memorable for all the wrong reasons aren’t they ?
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