Ballet Icons Gala 2023 was an indubitably glittering event on stage and off

United Kingdom Ballet Icons Gala: Dancers, English National Ballet Philharmonic / Maria Seletskaja (conductor). London Coliseum, 19.2.2023 (JO’D)

Comprising eleven male-female pas de deux and four male solos, this year’s Ballet Icons Gala was an indubitably glittering event on stage and off. The names on the programme represented a ‘something for everyone’ in the London Coliseum’s Sunday night gala audience: Marianela Núñez and William Bracewell, Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko, Margarita Fernandes and António Casalinho (to list but six of the twenty-five dancers taking part). Among the choreographers, not only Marius Petipa, Kenneth MacMillan, Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine, but also Vassily Vainonen and the modern-day Edwaard Laing and Akram Khan.

To musical accompaniment, for the most part, by English National Ballet Philharmonic (conducted by Maria Seletskaja) and for one of the solos onstage pianist Jacek Mysinski; with lighting by Andrew Ellis and set design by Nina Kobiashvili; in costumes that were often sumptuous or sparkling: each dance piece was presented with as much sensitivity as is possible when fifteen varied excerpts or short, complete works are to be performed in quick succession.

Highlights of the evening will differ according to taste. The first for this reviewer was Katja Khaniukova (her bourrée above all, as always) and Aitor Arrieta in a piece by Liam Scarlett set to Chopin. Then Marianela Núñez and William Bracewell, ‘playing with the music’ in the Grand Pas de Deux from Coppélia. Then Giuseppe Picone giving the UK premiere of a solo, choreographed by the dancer himself, that seemed to examine the capability and vulnerability of the performer.

Iana Salenko and Dmitry Zagrebin showed supreme technical skill in Don Quixote. Evelina Godunova and Julian MacKay impressed in what The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet (Second Edition) refers to as the ‘acrobatic daring’ of Vassily Vainonen’s Flames of Paris. The audience as a whole expressed appreciation of Lucía Lacarra, and her partner Matthew Golding, for the emotional quality they brought to the intricate Borealis, another UK premiere (to the music of Max Richter), by Edwaard Liang.

Timofej Andrijashenko and Nicoletta Manni, who made her appearance smoking a cigarette, dazzled in Roland Petit’s ironic and sometimes sexually explicit Carmen; Jeffrey Cirio was warmly applauded for his demonstration of hunched, bare-chested agony in Akram Khan’s Creature. If Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell did not dazzle, surprisingly, in Ashton’s The Dream Pas de Deux, the presence of this work on a programme with Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (Maia Makhateli and Danil Simkin) threw light on dance writer Laura Jacobs’s definition of Ashton’s choreography as essentially croisée and Balanchine’s as essentially effacé.

It was at the very end, when the evening might have had its dance all danced, that António Casalinho ran on to the stage to begin the pas de deux that was originally a pas de trois from Le Corsaire. A piece that has been performed in previous Ballet Icons Galas (by Iana Salenko and Daniil Simkin in 2020), its couple do not represent lovers. They are a woman and her lover’s slave. The woman, this time, was Margarita Fernandes. The expertise, expressiveness and youthful vigour of the two dancers made this final piece as fresh and glittering as if it were being danced at the evening’s start.

John O’Dwyer

Manon
Yasmine Naghdi and Reece Clarke
Music – Jules Massenet
Choreography – Sir Kenneth MacMillan

Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux
Maia Makhateli and Daniil Simkin
Music – Piotr Tchaikovsky
Choreography – George Balanchine

Chopin Romance
Katja Khaniukova and Aitor Arrieta
Music – Frederic Chopin
Choreography – Liam Scarlett

Temperament
Sergio Bernal
Music – Joaquín Turina
Choreography – Sergio Bernal

Cinderella
Dorothée Gilbert and Audric Bezard
Music – Sergei Prokofiev
Choreography – Rudolf Nureyev

Borealis
Lucía Lacarra and Matthew Golding
Music – Max Richter
Choreography – Edwaard Liang

Coppélia Grand Pas de Deux
Marianela Núñez and William Bracewell
Music – Leo Delibes
Choreography – Marius Petipa

Don Quixote
Iana Salenko and Dmitry Zagrebin
Music – Ludwig Minkus
Choreography – Alexander Gorsky after Marius Petipa

Moonlight
Calvin Royal III
Music – Claude Debussy
Piano – Jacek Mysinski
Choreography – Calvin Royal III

Flames of Paris
Evelina Godunova and Julian MacKay
Music – Boris Asafiev
Choreography – Vassily Vainonen

Elevarsi
Giuseppe Picone
Music – Max Richter
Choreography – Giuseppe Picone

Carmen
Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko
Music – George Bizet
Choreography – Roland Petit

The Dream Pas de Deux
Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell
Music – Felix Mendelssohn
Choreography – Sir Frederick Ashton

Creature
Jeffrey Cirio
Music – Vincenzo Lamagna
Choreography – Akram Khan

Le Corsaire
Margarita Fernandes and António Casalinho
Music – Adolphe Adam/Riccardo Drigo/Ludwig Minkus
Choreography – Marius Petipa/Joseph Mazilier