United States Ballet Nights – Spring into Summer: Cadogan Hall, London, 5.6.2025. (JO’D)
Ballet Nights, the ‘international taster platform’, returned to Chelsea’s Cadogan Hall for a Spring into Summer programme. Artistic Director, Jamiel Davernay-Laurence skillfully brought together nine dance pieces of different styles and from different periods and presented them in cabaret format with himself as a drily witty compère. If one or two of the contemporary pieces went on too long, the evening succeeded for the opportunities it offered to choreographers, musicians, dancers and audience.
Introductory Chopin (Ballade No.4 in F minor), played live by pianist Viktor Erik Emanuel, gave way to a bare-legged Harris Beattie who confidently executed the Martha Graham-influenced balances of Richard Alston’s solo, Dutiful Ducks (1986), to its repetitive, spoken soundtrack. Jordan James Bridge’s new and much-applauded String Theory, which followed, put composer-and-violinist Dominic Stokes in onstage juxtaposition with Leila Wright, the pointe-shoed dancer whose liquid, often floor-based movements he accompanied.
Peter Darrell’s ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (1978) was sensitively interpreted by dancer Eve Mutso and soprano Hannah Diennes Williams (singing Mahler), though it was the grittier contemporary work that came after, Nemesis, which brought loud cheers from the audience. Choreographed by the Rambert-trained Ihsan Rustem, to music by Benjamin Clementine, this was performed by two dancers from Ballet Staatstheater Augsburg: Martina Piacento and Alfonso López González.
English National Ballet’s Sangeun Lee and Gareth Haw appeared as almost otherworldly beings in William Forsythe’s Slingerland Duet (the UK premiere of a work from 2000): her tutu and his bodysuit the same indefinable shade of cream or ivory or buff; the skirt of the tutu a stiff, oval flap; the top of the bodysuit resembling the tabard that a male dancer in Balanchine might wear. The dancers moved, for the most part, with one hand linked to a hand of their partner. They moved in close proximity, their impossibly long limbs extending even further, like the stretched-out notes of Gavin Bryars String Quartet No.1 on the soundtrack, before darkness swallowed them up.
Part II opened with music (Intermezzo and Shine No More) by Frederick Sjölin and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, performed live by Quartet Concrète. Denys Cherevycho then gave the world premiere of Joaquin De Luz’s La Oración. In contrast to Richard Alston’s abstract solo of Part I, this dressed the dancer to resemble a bullfighter, with a bullfighter’s cape as a prop. Set to music by Joaquin Turina, it presented the bullfight as a metaphor for life. Cherevycho convinced from beginning to end.
Next came Ekleido’s Splice, the evening’s shock of the new in that lighting and costume and choreography contrived to make the bodies of its two ultra-flexible dancers (Hannah Ekholm and Faye Stoesser) a single puzzle of limbs that interlock and intertwine to an electronic score by Floating Points. A piece that won an award in its filmed version, it ends with the dancers losing their human forms altogether.
Christopher Wheeldon choreographed I Married Myself (music by Sparks) for the finale of the Prime Video series, Étoile. Constance Devernay-Laurence, who dances it in the series, performed a stage adaptation, live, for Ballet Nights. As is often the case, Wheeldon crams a myriad of steps, some of them on pointe, into the time the music lasts. But among the steps are surprisingly poignant references to at least two of his own previous works: DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse (2006) and Aeternum (2014).
The evening ended with The Royal Ballet’s Reece Clarke and Anna Rose O’Sullivan in the Balcony Pas de Deux from Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, to music by Prokofiev. He a passionate Romeo, she a degree or two less passionate, for whatever reason, as Juliet.
John O’Dwyer
Dutiful Ducks
Performed by Harris Beattie
Choreography – Richard Alston
Poem by Charles Amirkhanian
String Theory
Performed by Leila Wright and Dominic Stokes
Choreography – Jordan James Bridge
Music – Dominic Stokes
‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’
Performed by Eve Mutso and Hannah Diennes Williams (soprano)
Piano – Viktor Erik Emanuel
Choreography – Peter Darrell CBE
Music – Gustav Mahler
Nemesis
Performed by Martina Piacento and Alfonso López González
Choreography – Ihsan Rustem
Music – Benjamin Clementine
Slingerland Duet
Performed by Sangeun Lee and Gareth Haw
Choreography, Lighting and Costume design – William Forsythe
Music – Gavin Bryars: String Quartet No.1
La Oración
Performed by Denys Cherevychko
Choreography – Joaquin De Luz
Music – Joaquin Turina
SPLICE
Choreographed and Performed by Ekleido (Hannah Ekholm and Faye Stoesser)
Music – Floating Points
I Married Myself
Performed by Constance Devernay-Laurence
Choreography – Christopher Wheeldon
Music – Sparks
Balcony Pas de Deux from Romeo and Juliet
Performed by – Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Reece Clarke
Choreography – Kenneth MacMillan
Music – Prokofiev