THOSE choreographers and dancers involved in juke box musicals who believe that tremendous energy, masses of lighting effects, flashy costumes and over-amplified music constitutes top class dancing should be frog marched to see this superb, elegant production.
The ten strong ensemble of The City of London Ballet, former residents of Sadler’s Wells, follow up last years’ highly successful inaugural world tour with four short ballets that with minimal sets, lighting and costumes and piano-dominated accompaniment, take their audiences through a full range of emotions – love, hate, joy, tragedy, laced with wonderful streaks of humour.
The more subdued first act, visually and emotionally, is more an exercise in controlled story telling than something to excite and have the audience sitting on the edges of their seats. Using Russian born, American based George Balanchine’s choreography, Deborah Wingert elegantly staged an exploration of Alexei Haieff’s 1947 composition Divertimento.
The mood changed to romantic with Liam Scarlett’s chography and Laura Morera’s staging of Franz Liszt’s Consolations & Liebestraum. In just 14 minuets using the music of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, String Quartet No 7, former principal danseur at the Paris Opera Ballet Florent Melac choreographed a much bigger, more sweeping picture in Soft Shore to bring the first half of the programme to an end.
Enjoyable as that trio had been, they served as a mere appetiser for the Alexi Ratmansky choreographed, Amar Ramasar staging of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. With just the addition of colourful motifs on the plain back wall, the set seemed to take on a new dimension, as did the dancers’ simple free-flowing costumes that now appeared to change in shape and texture as they went through a full range of emotions and personal relationships. The few moments of hesitancy that could be seen in Act 1 disappeared as the dancers as soloists, in groups and one pas de deux that encapsulated the whole evenings work, full of romance, drama and humour, showed why the company has already established a strong fan base in Asia, America, Europe and the UK, and why West Country ballet fans will be disappointed that their the nearest their world wide 2025 tour will bring them back into our area is a visit to Oxford’s New Theatre on 11th November 11th.
GRP
Photograph of Josue Gomez in Pictures at an Exhibition by ASH