United Kingdom Ballet Nights 010: DecaDance: Jamiel Devernay-Laurence (compère). Cadogan Hall, London, 4.2.2026. (JO’D)
For the tenth Ballet Nights in little more than two years Founder, Artistic Director and Compère Jamiel Devernay-Laurence put together a further impressive programme of dance. DecaDance featured ten pieces of choreography from different periods and in different styles (performed mostly to recorded music), each one costumed and lit for maximum effect on the Cadogan Hall stage.
The evening began, as usual, with ‘house pianist’ Viktor Erik Emanuel, on this occasion playing Debussy’s calming Clair de Lune. Sae Maeda and Harris Bell, from The Royal Ballet, then performed Soviet choreographer Vasily Vainonen’s daring, and for the female dancer almost aerial, Moszkowski Waltz. Alessandra Bramante and Joseph Taylor, current and former dancers of Northern Ballet respectively, were lyrical in Out of Breath, the more ‘grounded’ pas de deux that followed, choreographed by Northern Ballet coryphée, George Liang, to music by Ólafur Arnalds.
Isabelle Evans and Travis Clausen-Knight brought a questioning intensity to AE How Can You Prove You Are Human?, choreographed by Pett Clausen-Knight to music by Sean Pett. Third-year students of the Central School of Ballet (the professional dancers of the future) then filled the stage with their energy, enthusiasm and eagerness in Ashley Page’s colourful, period-costumed Times Square Ballet, an excerpt from Leonard Bernstein’s On The Town.
Part One of the programme closed with Jean Christophe Maillot’s Dov’è la Luna. Wearing unitards so close-fitting that they seemed to show the human body in a stripped-down essence, Lou Beyne and Jaat Benoot, from Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, moved with anguished angularity through music for piano by Alexander Scriabin.
After a ‘wild’ sonata for viola by Paul Hindemith, performed live by Dominic Stokes, Yorke Dance Project opened Part Two with a work by Sir Robert Cohan. Although choreographed for that company in 2015, through its silent start, its measured, thoughtful movement, its barefoot, black-clad dancers (Amy Thake and Edd Minton), its references to Christ and his mother, Lacrymosa (to music by Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky) seems to reach back to the 1970s, the 1950s, to an era, now lost, in which people had ‘world enough and time’.
324a, choreographed by The Royal Ballet’s Joshua Junker (to Bach, played onstage by Viktor Erik Emanuel), was a return to the present day. A solo created during one of the Covid lockdowns, it was danced at the third Ballet Nights by Felicity Chadwick. Performed at this Ballet Nights by the choreographer himself, it was a piece of (much applauded) male introspection that came to be about the dancer’s naked torso. The contemporary note, once struck, continued with the edgy, pulsating Atlas, a work choreographed and performed by third-year Rambert School students Chrysanthi Nikolaou and Django Bates-Blower. The music, also pulsating, was by Ori Lichtik. If Cohan’s Lacrymosa is ‘the way we were’, Atlas is the way we are now.
In The Measure of Things, a piece he choreographed himself for a Ballet Nights Evening with… in 2025, The Royal Ballet Principal, Matthew Ball, manipulated a metal pole with elegance and dexterity, while Viktor Erik Emanuel played a Beethoven sonata. The evening ended with Diana & Acteon Pas de Deux (choreography by Agrippina Vaganova, after Marius Petipa; music by Riccardo Drigo), performed with freshness and charm (her port de bras; his backbend and lifts) by Laura Rodríguez Quesada and Gael Ventura from Mexico’s Ballet de Monterrey.
John O’Dwyer
Featured Image: Laura Rodríguez Quesada and Gael Ventura in Diana & Acteon Pas de Deux © Deborah Jaffe
Clair de Lune
Performed by Viktor Erik Emanuel
Composer – Debussy
Moszkowski Waltz
Performed by Sae Maeda and Harris Bell
Choreographed by Vasily Vainonen
Music – Moritz Moszkowski
Out of Breath
Performed by Alessandra Bramante and Joseph Taylor
Choreographed by George Liang
Music – Ólafur Arnalds
AE
Performed by Isabelle Evans and Travis Clausen-Knight
Music – Sean Pett
Designed by Pett Clausen-Knight
Times Square Ballet
Performed by Students of Central School of Ballet
Choreography by Ashley Page
Music – Leonard Bernstein
Dov’è la Luna
Performed by Lou Beyne and Jaat Benoot
Choreographed by Jean Christophe Maillot
Music – Alexander Scriabin
Costumes – Jérôme Kaplan
Viola Sonata No.1, Op.25
Viola – Dominic Stokes
Music – Paul Hindemith
Lacrymosa
Performed by Amy Thake and Edd Mitton
Choreographed by Sir Robert Cohan
Music – Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky
324a
Performed by Joshua Junker
Choreographed by Joshua Junker
Music – J.S. Bach
Piano – Viktor Erik Emanuel
Atlas (New Rambert Platform Creation)
Choreographed and performed by Chrysanthi Nikolaou and Django Bates-Blower
Music – Ori Lichtik
The Measure of Things
Choreographed and performed by Matthew Ball
Piano – Viktor Erik Emanuel
Music – Beethoven Piano Sonata No.31
Diana & Acteon Pas de Deux
Performed by Laura Rodríguez Quesada and Gael Ventura
Choreographed by Agrippina Vaganova after Marius Petipa
Music – Riccardo Drigo