United Kingdom English National Ballet’s Our Voices: Dancers of English National Ballet, English National Ballet Philharmonic / Gavin Sutherland (conductor). Sadler’s Wells, London, 21.9.2023. (JO’D)
Theme and Variations
Choreography – George Balanchine
Music – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Design – Roberta Guidi di Bagno
Lighting design – Marco Filibeck
Les Noces, Ascent to Days
Choreography – Andrea Miller
Music – Igor Stravinsky
Orchestration – Steven Stucky
Original Electronic Music – Will Epstein
Artwork concept – Phyllida Barlow
Chorus – Opera Holland Park
Solo voicalists – Siân Griffiths, Jack Roberts, Frazer Scott, Janice Watson
Four Last Songs
Choreography – David Dawson
Music – Richard Strauss
Design – Eno Henze
Soprano – Madeleine Pierard
Lead Principals, Principals, First Soloists, Soloists, Junior Soloists, First Artists and Artists of the Company of English National Ballet
In a triple-bill that acts as a mission statement, English National Ballet’s new Artistic Director, Aaron S. Watkin, demonstrates his belief that the company should ‘embrace a broad spectrum of dance’. The curtain goes up on the tutus and tiaras of George Balanchine’s ‘classical’ Theme and Variations (1947). The work that follows is a world premiere, Andrea Miller’s Les Noces, Ascent to Days (2023), which keeps its dancers close to the floor. The programme ends with David Dawson’s neo-classical, frequently airborne, Four Last Songs (2023). Consummately accompanied by the English National Ballet Philharmonic under Gavin Sutherland, their Music Director, in all three works the English National Ballet dancers perform with what looks like a new, or renewed, energy.
The drums at the start of the final movement to Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No.3, before the curtain rises, sound portentous. But on seeing the static dancers in their jewels, their costumes of gold, silver and copper colour, the audience applauds with delight. When the dancers begin to move, further delight is to be found in the limpid port de bras of Emma Hawes and Aitor Arrieta, who dance the principal couple with all the care they brought to the roles of Odette/Odile and Siegfried at the London Coliseum in January. The applause at the end of this happy ballet was the most heartfelt of the evening.
In contrast to the sparkle of the Balanchine, Les Noces, Ascent to Days begins in a ‘darkness visible’. In the programme notes Andrea Miller explains that the starting point for this reworking of Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1923), to music by Igor Stravinsky, comes after the sacrifice in The Rite of Spring, ‘Stravinsky’s other iconic piece’. The concern is with the individual, the family and the group (made larger by the presence of the singers of Opera Holland Park’s chorus on the stage).
Andrea Miller trained at Doris Humphrey Silo. Her choreography bears a relation to the ‘Fall and Recovery’ technique developed by Humphrey in America in the 1930s. The dancers of English National Ballet perform it with the underlying lightness of ballet dancers, even as they fall. Around the figure of the Mother (Alice Bellini), the work is at its most intense. Elsewhere it can seem burdened by its own complexity and by Stravinsky’s punishing score, in a reorchestration by Steven Stucky. But it ends, poignantly, as the late Phyllida Barlow, who provided the ‘artwork concept’, describes Les Noces as a whole: a place ‘where joy meets grief’.
Another singer stands at the side of the stage for David Dawson’s Four Last Songs. A solo soprano, this time, who makes a dramatic entrance before any dancers appear. She will perform the Richard Strauss songs that give the piece its name. The dancers, costumed to look naked, combine the steps of classical ballet with movement in the body, runs that are alarmingly fast, moments of stillness and, to music that is for the choreographer ‘a kind of ascendency’, lifts. Against a rather cold background of concrete and black and white clouds, the piece is given warmth and life through the performances of Emma Hawes, Aitor Arrieta, Sangeun Lee and the powerful, expressive Francesco Gabriele Frola.
John O’Dwyer