SWAN LAKE at the Opera House Covent Garden - Swansong...

The Royal Ballet's big Spring presntation was scheduled to be the first revival of Liam Scarlett's SWAN LAKE; we saw it in 2018 and wanted to see it again as our favourite dancer Steven McRae was finally due to dance the lead role of Prince Siegfried.  Back in 2018 he was recovering from an injury so we saw William Bracewell instead.  But last October, we were in the audience when, while dancing des Grieux in MANON, Steven snapped his tendon onstage and he is still recovering, so again we saw a replacement, this time Federico Bonelli.

Devil Works: 1

This revival, while being well-reviewed and successful at the box office - hey it's SWAN LAKE!! - has yet appeared under a cloud as Liam Scarlett, instead of reaping the benefits of this revival of the Tchaikovsky classic, was suspended in January by the Royal Ballet for allegations of sexual misconduct which are still ongoing.

Devil Works: 2

This is all a shame as Scarlett's production - here staged by the Royal Ballet's Director Kevin O'Hare - is a wonderful, sweeping version of the 1895 Imperial Ballet, his choreography building on the legendary work of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov as well as the Neopolitan dance by Sir Frederick Ashton.  Unlike the museum piece that the Bolshoi Ballet presented a few years back, Scarlett's version seems vivid and new.  There are even overtones of Matthew Bourne's version when at the end Siegfried carries Odette's body towards us while behind him she appears floating illuminated behind the backdrop.

With the romantic design by John Macfarlane and moody lighting by David Finn still proving a triumph, we again had Akane Takada dancing Odette / Odile and, while I still feel her to be a bit antiseptic, she still dances with a fluidity of movement, like the ripples on her swan's lake.  It would be good to see one of the other female soloists do it such as Sarah Lamb or Natalia Osipova.

There was exquisite support from the ever-whirling James Hay as Benno, Kristen McNally as the Queen who realises too late the error of her ways, and the always hissable Thomas Whitehead as the nasty Von Rothbart.

Of course one must also praise the wonderful corps de ballet for the always dazzling work they do as Odette's swans - shaping and re-shaping themselves into dazzling groups, they are always an arresting sight.  We were lucky to have in the cast Itziar Mendizabal as one of the pairing of lead swans and a special shout-out to Gina Storm-Jensen for her dazzling Spanish dancer.

The Royal Opera House Orchestra as usual got the biggest ovation under the baton of Koen Kessels.  The night we saw it danced marked the 1,032nd performance of SWAN LAKE at Covent Garden and I am so glad we saw it again - I even had an icy tear trickle down my cheek at the end which has never happened before, unlike the Bourne version which has me full of sobs. 

But now what?  I cannot recommend you see it as thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, Covent Garden as well as all other theatres has closed for an indefinite period.  Who knows how many months I will be robbed of that unique experience of alchemy between performer and audience.

Devil Works: 3

Somehow The Bard - as usual - sums up the moment best:



The rest is silence...

ASPHODEL MEADOWS / THE TWO PIGEONS at Covent Garden

Second theatre trip - second Royal Ballet!  What can I say - I like their ice-cream.

We saw another of their mixed programmes which, as I have said before, certainly allows the company to show their versatility in contrasting productions: this time it was Liam Scarlett's 2010 debut ballet for the company ASPHODEL MEADOWS paired with Sir Frederick Ashton's lyrical 1961 production of La Fontaine's THE TWO PIGEONS.

ASPHODEL MEADOWS was Liam Scarlett's first ballet choreographed for the Royal Ballet in 2010, the company that he trained with as a teenager.  The ballet is only 25 minutes but it's concentrated energy is quite hypnotic added to the tension in the score by early 20th century French composer Francis Poulenc.  Within a company of 20 dancers, the main focus is three sets of couples who all have a moment to shine in differing pas de deux.

In Greek mythology the Asphodel Meadow was where the souls of ordinary citizens went after death and there certainly was an endless tension in Liam Scarlett's choreography of couples locked in an endless dance.  It's a production I would be very interested to see again. 

It was paired with Ashton's charming but slight THE TWO PIGEONS which we first saw in 2015.  A painter is losing his patience with his young girlfriend's unwillingness to stay still while he tries to paint her in his Parisian roof-top garret.  Things aren't helped when her friends appear, closely followed by a troupe of passing gypsies.  The painter is captivated by a fiery gypsy dancer and he follows her to their encampment, leaving his girlfriend alone.  However the gypsy leader turns on the painter and humiliates him, finally chasing him out of the camp.  The two lovers are reunited in the attic, their love personified by two pigeons who settle near them.

Based on an original ballet from 1912, Frederick Ashton choreographed a shorter version which premiered, appropriately, on Valentine's Day 1961.  It's all a bit generic - inconstant lover, spirited girl, flashy but hard-hearted gypsies - but oddly enough, when the two sad lovers are reunited and the audience's attention is riveted to the two live pigeons on stage, the piece wins you over.

Restaged again by Christopher Carr, the thin characters were vibrantly danced by Vadim Muntagirov and Lauren Cuthbertson as the lovers and Laura Morera as the passionate but fickle gypsy girl.  The late Jacques Dupont's original scenic design still charms.

It was a very enjoyable evening of two uplifting ballets, I am sure there will be more mixed programmes in the coming months...

SWAN LAKE at Covent Garden - Scarlett's swans take off...

This December I will see my fifth production of Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE at Sadler's Wells and I am sure I will blub again at the last scene, it gets me every time.  But three years ago, after we had our Paulean conversion to the Royal Ballet, we decided it was time to see a 'classic' production of Tchaikovsky's masterpiece.

In 2016 we saw the visiting Bolshoi production, and what a disappointment that was!  Technically proficient yes, but danced with no sense of emotion or connection to the audience - it felt like they turned up for work and did their job, no more no less.  So the news that the Royal Ballet were going to stage a new production by Liam Scarlett set us off... finally a chance to see it done properly.

The night we went marked the 1,026th performance of SWAN LAKE at Covent Garden and Scarlett's version has replaced Anthony Dowell's production which had lasted in the repertoire for thirty years!  As I have frequently mentioned, it is jaw-dropping how long productions run in the ballet and opera houses of London - can you imagine the idea of the National Theatre only ever staging revivals of productions from the 1980s and 1990s?

But SWAN LAKE goes even further back, because - as is the case with practically all productions - it is based on the version staged by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov for the Imperial Ballet in 1895.  The main body of the ballet is theirs: Petipa's choreography is used for the palace scenes, the famous lake side scene is Ivanov's while Scarlett has devised a new final scene as well as the featured dances for the visiting princesses - apart from the Neapolitan princesses dance which is by Sir Frederick Ashton!  With all these choreographic strands to be woven together, Scarlett has said that his biggest challenge is to make it flow together as if from a single vision - and he succeeded; it was a thrilling production.

With the romantic design by John Macfarlane and moody lighting by David Finn, Scarlett's production swept you up in the swirling drama of Tchaikovsky's monumental score and the oft-told tale of Prince Siegfried who, when ordered to marry by his imperious mother The Queen, falls in love with the beautiful Odette who is under the spell of the wicked magician Von Rothbart who has disguised himself as The Queen's chief courtier.

Odette is transformed from a swan into a woman only at night but Siegfried is tricked at a sumptuous palace ball by the sorcerer into proposing to the mysterious Odile who resembles Odette.  As soon as he does, Odette is doomed to remain a swan forever but can Siegfried save Odette in time?  Of course it ends unhappily but this only makes Tchaikovsky's score all the more powerful and all-encompassing.

The biggest ovation of the evening was for the orchestra, under the baton of Valery Ovsyanikov, which filled the auditorium with the full grandeur of Tchaikovsky's score

Originally we had booked on this particular night to see Steven McRae dance the role of Siegfried but a recent leg injury put paid to that so instead we saw William Bracewell who performed the role well enough but it did not stop me thinking how much more thrilling McRae would have danced the love-lorn prince.  Akane Takada danced the dual role of Odette / Odile, but while her Odette was a graceful, captivating presence I felt she missed out on the seductive danger of Odile.  I will long remember though her slowly rippling arms showing the exact moment that Odette transforms back into the Swan.

Thomas Whitehead added yet another villain to his collection as the hissable Von Rothbart, Kristen McNally was an imposing presence as The Queen while Marcelino Sambé hit all the right notes as Benno, Siegfried's friend, in particular with his dazzling leaps.  SWAN LAKE of course allows the ballerinas of the company to shine and they were glorious as the elegant, ever-watchful swans.

A special mention to the tripping cygnets danced by Isabella Gasparini, Elizabeth Harrod, Meaghan Grace Hinkis and Romany Pajdak, while Itziar Mendizabal was on eye-catching form as the Spanish princess and a special mention to the whirling excitement of Olivia Cowley as the Spanish dancer attended by Reece Clarke, Téo Dubreuil, Fernando Montano and Giacomo Rovero.

I suspect this production will be visited again in years to come; I now look forward to seeing the Matthew Bourne version with new eyes in December at Sadler's Wells.

Bernstein Triple Bill: YUGEN, THE AGE OF ANXIETY, CORYBANTIC GAMES at Covent Garden

Sometimes the Royal Ballet triple-bills can be a curate's egg but, every so often, all the pieces fall together and, while the individual one-acts dazzle, together they form a cohesive whole.  The Royal Ballet's recent celebration of Leonard Bernstein's centenary did just that.

Bernstein was such a giant of American music that it has taken three RB-favourite choreographers to stage this tribute: in tandem with Liam Scarlett's existing THE AGE OF ANXIETY, Wayne McGregor devised YUGEN and Christopher Wheeldon was given the final ballet CORYBANTIC GAMES.  All in their own way were exciting and Bernstein's soaring music sounded wonderful thanks to the Royal Opera House Orchestra.

Moving effortlessly between the classical and Broadway stages, Leonard Bernstein never forgot either as essential outlets for his creativity - indeed when a musical adaptation of THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH was abandoned because of creative differences, Bernstein reworked parts of the score to become a 1965 symphonic work which had been requested by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral two years earlier, waste not want not...  THE CHICHESTER PSALMS have been used by McGregor for his ballet YUGEN.

Utilizing his signature moves, McGregor had his dancers moving with vigour and astonishing physicality but also complementing the singing of the psalms in Hebrew.  The stark but intriguing design by Edmund De Waal of tall moving white light-boxes concentrated you on the remarkable dancers, as fluid as the red and purple costumes they wore.

I am sure it was just because it is the Bernstein score I know the most but I occasionally picked up the odd phrase that sounded straight out of WEST SIDE STORY in all three pieces.  I also saw a possible Matthew Bourne moment when a dancer did very noticeable swan-like swooping movements over three other crouching dancers.  McGregor can sometimes be all cerebral movement and little emotional involvement but here the lush musicality of Bernstein brought out the best in him, very much like Max Richter's music for WOOLF WORKS.

The second was a revival of Liam Scarlett's 2014 ballet THE AGE OF ANXIETY, written by Bernstein in 1949 and based on WH Auden's epic poem.  Bernstein's symphony throbs with the post-war feeling in New York of possible new beginnings under an air of lonely city living, Scarlett vividly moves his four lonely drinkers from a corner bar - an excellent design by John MacFarlane - to an apartment where they continue their drinking in the hope of making a connection.

They pal around, they flirt, they come together then break up leaving one of them, Malin, staring at the New York skyline at sunrise, eventually rushing towards it, ready to take up the challenge of another day, another possibility...  Sadly injury meant the wonderful Steven McRae had to pull out of the production and was replaced by fellow Aussie Alexander Campbell, but the lead quartet of Campbell, Sarah Lamb, Edward Gartside and Tristan Dyer were excellent, and Kevin Emerton was equally fine as the bartender.

After that blast of narrative, it was back to abstract for the last piece which was choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon.  He has set his ballet to Bernstein's Serenade after Plato's 'Symposium' - excuse me people - and the theme was carried through in Erdem Moralioglu's Hellenic-style costumes.  Through the five movements the constant theme seemed to be harking back to athletic running and leaping movement. 

I would love to see this again; Wheeldon's choreography was wonderfully alive, especially the 4th movement where a man and a woman, two men and two women danced variations to the same movements, perfectly embodying Bernstein's flowing music, before the whole ensemble at the end came together in kinetic, perfect fluidity.

As I said, the Royal Ballet triple bills may sometimes be unbalanced but in their tribute to Bernstein they triumphed.

THE VERTIGINOUS THRILL OF EXACTITUDE / TARANTELLA / STRAPLESS / SYMPHONIC DANCES at Covent Garden

It's just over 2 years since we discovered through Wayne McGregor's wonderful WOOLF WORKS how the Royal Ballet are adept at contemporary as well as classical ballet and this has been demonstrated a few times by their scheduling of memorable triple bills based on choreographers or themes.  So, Constant Reader, what can be better than a triple bill?  A quadruple bill of course!

Last Saturday we took our amphitheatre seats for an evening of four one-act ballets, only one of which we had seen before.  The first of the four was choreographer William Forsythe's THE VERTIGINOUS THRILL OF EXACTITUDE - the title is almost as long as the ballet itself being only 15 minutes!

Forsythe's choreography uses the majestic finale of Shubert's 9th Symphony and it's constant flurry of movement - using classic moves but with wonky angles and straggly arms and legs - must be a trial for the three female and two male dancers, all vividly colourful against a black background, the men in bright purple and the women in bright lime-green.

The dancers mix and merge, coming and going, dancing in groups, trios, duets and solos all at a frenetic pace - a bit too frenetic for Itziar Mendizabel who came racing from the wings into the middle of a group and went down on her tutu to an intake of breath from the audience.  But she recovered well and found her way back into the music after a beat or two... well done Itziar.

After a pause we had Balanchine's cheeky TARANTELLA, a duet of great charm and character which allows it's male and female to really stamp personalities on the roles.  Capering around the stage and around each other, Meaghan Grace Hinkis and Alexander Campbell were delightful.

Next was the first revival of Christopher Wheeldon's narrative ballet STRAPLESS which we first saw last year as part of a Wheeldon triple bill; in my blog for that production I hoped that it would be revived sometime but I didn't expect it to be so soon!  Oddly enough, the jitters which might have explained Itziar's stumble in VERTIGINOUS THRILL... also affected STRAPLESS when, during the scenery change for the second act, one of the ballerinas positioning a panelled column for the Café L'Avenue set, pushed too hard and the column went BANG across the stage only for it to be dragged off ignominiously!  The ballerina I hasten to add just wandered off and left it!

It has been slightly reworked to focus more on the main characters of Amélie Gautreau and John Singer Sergeant - the model and artist of the notorious MADAME X painting which scandalized Paris in 1884 - but again I felt that the story proves too elusive when reduced down to just ballet.  But Lauren Cuthbertson captured the skittish society beauty Amélie very well and her haunting of her now-famous portrait remains a powerful moment; the modern-day gallery visitors blind to the real woman whose image they admire.

The last ballet was Liam Scarlett's new production SYMPHONIC DANCES based on Rachmaninoff's last composition.  Written in 1940, the composer had asked Mikhail Fokine if he would be interested in using the music for a three-part ballet but Fokine's death in 1942 ended the possibility of it happening in Rachmaninoff's lifetime.  Since then ballet productions have been mounted but Liam Scarlett's is the first in the UK.

STRAPLESS sits well with SYMPHONIC DANCES as it too is centred around the central figure of a statuesque diva, and for good reason... This season will be the last danced by Principal Ballerina Zenaida Yanowsky and Liam Scarlett in SYMPHONIC DANCES has choreographed a production in which she remains the centre of attention at all times.

Yanowsky looked every inch the diva in her opening costume, a strapless black bodice and huge, multi-layered skirt which became almost a character in itself as it whipped and swirled around her.  Red and black also ruled in Jon Morrell's stage design, a stark and empty Opera House stage glowed with red lighting amidst the onstage mist while a large metal lighting grid hanging above the stage cast ominous black shadows beneath it.

The second part of the first movement featured Yanowsky seemingly unmoved by the sinuous capering of James Hay; in the second scene she reappeared in a black and red tuxedo while it was the turn of the men in the ensemble to wear the full skirts - indeed there was a noticeable wobble from one of the men proving that the Devil works in threes after the Itziar and column incidents.

The final movement saw the metal grid horizontal to the stage with Yanowsky losing the tuxedo to appear in just a bodysuit, this time duetting with Reece Clarke, before Rachmaninoff's dramatic, oppressive score built to a devastating climax.  As Wayne McGregor says, an abstract ballet cannot help but have some sort of narrative because of the human element and Yanowsky and the ensemble made me think of an imperious Empress slowly thawing and allowing emotion into her life through her adoring acolytes.

Zenaida Yanowsky was cheered to the Opera House's Fabergé egg-like roof and rightly so; she was astonishingly powerful and totally in command of her stage; Laura Morera is playing the role too so it would be interesting to see it with another energy, another persona doing those moves.

All together, it was an evening of passionate performance and thrilling choreography.  I am still wondering about those three errors however, could it be that this company - who were different from the opening night apart from Yanowsky - had been under-rehearsed?  Ah well, I suppose it goes to show that they are human underneath all that well-drilled skill.

FRANKENSTEIN at Covent Garden - Frankenstein's at it again... this time on point!

Surely ice-skating is the only area of story-telling that has not been utilized to re-tell Mary Shelley's classic horror novel FRANKENSTEIN.  Since it's publication in 1818 it has been revisited, re-imagined, re-written, re-filmed... all a testament to Shelley's original idea of how man can be brought down through hubris and by his refusal to face the consequences of his actions.

However there is so much going on in her novel that any part of it can be picked on as a way to view the material.  And now it's latest incarnation is in a full-length production by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden and I saw it's 5th performance last week - always nice to be able to say that, with Royal Ballet productions it's usually the 305th!

Liam Scarlett is the Royal Ballet's artist-in-residence and this is his first full-length production for the company and it was marvellous to watch due to Scarlett's firm grasp on the narrative allied to a genuinely thrilling score by American composer Lowell Liebermann.

Scarlett stays mostly true to Shelley's story, dropping the framing device of Victor Frankenstein recounting his tale to the captain of a ship that rescues him and also the abortive creation of a mate for the creature but adds his own new spin as a finale which works within the spirit of the text.

The genesis of the story is almost as famous as the novel itself.  In 1816, aged only 19, Mary Godwin, her lover Percy Shelley and Mary's half-sister Claire Claremont travelled across Europe to visit Claire's lover Lord Byron and his physician John Polidori in the rented Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva.  Bad weather kept them indoors and Byron suggested they all try writing scary stories.  Mary struggled with hers but a later talk about experiments in galvanization gave her the idea of a man attempting to revive a corpse - the fact that she was still grieving for her baby who had died only two months before must have influenced this idea.

The story both reflected and foreshadowed Mary's life which was shrouded with death: her mother Mary Woolstonecraft died a month after giving birth to her, three of her children with Shelley died young, her step-sister Fanny killed herself as did Shelley's abandoned wife Harriet, Shelley drowned at sea in 1822 and Mary herself died aged only 53 in 1851 from a suspected brain tumor.

Liam Scarlett's production also utilizes a moody set design from John Macfarlane and David Finn's exceptional lighting design, along with a mood-setting front cloth of a skull seen in profile which at the start of the second act turned to face the audience - wooo!  As I said it was all marvellous to watch but, on reflection, the most negligible thing about the show was Scarlett's choreography.

I am no balletomane but time and again I found myself wondering how many scenes of prancing maids and servants does the story of FRANKENSTEIN need?  There was also a puzzling tavern routine which sat in between the anatomy lecture-room scenes which did nothing to forward the story and seemed to be there only to give the female members of the corps a chance to whore it up. 

I can appreciate that Liam Scarlett wanted to make the character of Elizabeth more than just a typical horror story heroine but again, when you realize that you are watching yet another interminable pas-de-deux for her and Victor, then you know something is off-kilter.  I must say however that Sarah Lamb as Elizabeth danced the role well, full of grace and humanity.

What made me brew on this so strongly was that the final confrontation between Victor and his Creature must surely be the emotional climax of the show but here it just did not spark - was it because we had the Male Team B of Tristan Dyer as Victor and Ryoichi Hirano as the Creature?  The only thing I could compare it to was the end of Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE which, no matter the dancers, always delivers an emotional punch.

There were fine performances from Ethan Bailey as William, Victor's young brother who plays a fatal game of blind-man's-bluff with the Creature in one of the more suspenseful scenes, James Hay was good as Frankenstein's friend Clerval, the always good Itziar Mendizabel did what she could with the minimal opportunities she had as the housekeeper Madame Moritz while her tragic daughter Justine was danced well by Francesca Hayward.

Despite my issues with the choreography I am glad we saw the show and more than enjoyed living through the story - which is more than 8 of the main 10 characters do!  It's few remaining shows are sold out but hopefully it will rejoin the repertoire - maybe in 2018 to mark the novel's 200th anniversary?

In the same week, by some odd stroke of luck, we found we had booked a Horror Triple Bill at the theatre: FRANKENSTEIN, DOCTOR FAUSTUS at the Duke of Yorks and JEKYLL & HYDE at the Old Vic - who came out the winner?  Constant Reader, read on...