United Kingdom Ballet Nights 011 – Convergence: Jamiel Devernay-Laurence (compère). Cadogan Hall, London, 29.4.2026. (JO’D)
The eleventh Ballet Nights offered its Cadogan Hall audience a characteristically wide-ranging and informative assortment of dance, introduced by compère Jamiel Devernay-Laurence with his usual humour and aplomb.
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre made its London debut in Ben Stevenson’s 1st Movement from Three Preludes (a recording of Rachmaninoff). Dancers Hannah Carter and Lucius Kirst kept close to opposite sides of a centre-stage barre in a piece that focused on their extended arms and legs, their good lines, and on lifts across the barrier between them. Choreographed and performed by Germain Zambi, Frame brought Krump dance from Los Angeles via Paris, where this dancer lives, to Chelsea. Barefoot, dressed in a dark suit and white T-shirt, Zambi began by moving only his hands and arms then occupied the whole stage in wide circles of carefully executed leaps and barrel turns.
Etudes on a Theme of Satie, choreographed for second-year students of English National Ballet School by Artistic Director, Lynne Charles, and Ballet Tutor, Juan Eymar, contrasts dancers in blue going smoothly through exercises at the barre and in a pas de deux (to Satie played on stage by the school’s Lead Pianist, Mark Webster) with a single dancer in red whose relationship with the barre is complex, even agonising. The acrobatic Floating Flowers, by the Taiwanese company B. Dance showed a female dancer on the shoulders of a male partner, invisible except for his legs, beneath her hooped white skirt.
Before the interval, Alina Cojocaru and Denys Cherevychko, former Principals of English National Ballet and Vienna State Opera Ballet respectively, performed the Pas de Deux from Diamonds from Balanchine’s Jewels. To music (recorded) from Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony, in a tutu of white and gold, Alina Cojocaru moved with expert calm and poise through references to pas de deux from Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.
Denys Cherevychko was more of a signifying presence in the solo that began the evening’s second half. Choreographed by Ben Van Cauwenbergh, to the recording of a song by Jacques Brel, Les Bourgeois presented Cherevychko in black trousers, white shirt and black tie. A rebellious figure, loose-limbed (as if intoxicated), sometimes with a cigarette in his mouth, he slouched, he stumbled, he also performed exuberant pirouettes, tours and, like Germain Zambi before him, barrel turns.
In 1980 Peter Darrell, the founder of what is now Scottish Ballet, choreographed Chéri, based on the novel by Colette, to music by David Earl. In a pas de deux from the ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet dancers Samara Downs and Ixan Llorca Ferrer took the roles of older woman and younger man she loves. It culminates with his abrupt departure from the stage after she has circled him three times on pointe in an ultimate, balletic display of her desperation.
The contrast of age and youth was also the subject of the more straightforward, more sentimental Bloom, Then Fade, choreographed by English National Ballet First Soloist Rentaro Nakaaki and given added poignancy by on-stage pianist, Julia Richter, playing Liszt. Fabian Reimair interacts with what seems to be his younger self (Martinho Santos) and a lover (Emily Suzuki) who died.
The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre dancers returned to end the evening on a high note, literally, with The Nutcracker Adagio 2027. An excerpt from a version of the ballet currently being choreographed for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre by Trey McIntyre (whose striking solo for male dancer, Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem, was performed by San Francisco Ballet at Sadler’s Wells in 2019). After being brought on to the stage in a lift by her partner, Hannah Carter continued to be lifted to different heights until, at the climax of Tchaikovsky’s music, she rose in an equally climactic ‘bum lift’. A narrative-stopping ‘bum lift’, from which she beamed at the applauding audience with undisguised delight.
John O’Dwyer
Featured Image: Alina Cojocaru and Denys Cherevychko in Balanchine’s Diamonds © Deborah Jaffe
String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op.59 No.3 (‘Razumovsky’)
Performed by Quartet Concrète
Composer – Beethoven
1st Movement from ‘Three Preludes’
Performed by Hannah Carter and Lucius Kirst
Choreography, Set and Costume by Ben Stevenson OBE
Music – Rachmaninoff
(The London debut of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre)
Frame
Created and Performed by Germain Zambi
Music – Balmorhea
Costume – Germain Zambi
Etudes on a Theme of Satie
Performed by Second Year Students of The English National Ballet School
Choreographed by Lynne Charles & Juan Eymar
Pianist – Mark Webster
Floating Flowers
Performed by Shu-Han Yeh and Hsin-Chien Chou
Choreographed by Po-Cheng Tsai
(With thanks to B. DANCE Company, Taiwan and supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government, and the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan)
Pas de Deux from Diamonds (from the ballet Jewels)
Choreographed by George Balanchine
Music – Tchaikovsky
Performed by Alina Cojocaru and Denys Cherevychko
(With thanks to The George Balanchine Trust)
Widmung
Performed by Viktor Erik Emanuel
Composer – Robert Schumann (arranged by Franz Liszt)
Les Bourgeois
Danced by Denys Cherevychko
Choreographed by Ben Van Cauwenbergh
Music – Jacques Brel
Pas De Deux from ‘Chéri’
Performed by Ixan Llorca Ferrer and Samara Downs
Choreographed by Peter Darrell CBE
Music – David Earl
Designer – Philip Prowse
(Taught from the Benesh Movement Notation by Kristin Johnson with thanks to the Peter Darrell Trust and Birmingham Royal Ballet)
Bloom, Then Fade
Choreographed by Rentaro Nakaaki
Danced by Fabian Reimair, Emily Suzuki, Martinho Santos Piano Julia Richter
Music – Franz Liszt
Pianist – Julia Richter
Costume – Rentaro Nakaaki
(With thanks to English National Ballet)
The Nutcracker Adagio 2027
Performed by Hannah Carter and Lucius Kirst
Choreographed by Trey McIntyre
Music – Tchaikovsky
Costume – Kristin McLain
(With thanks to Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre)