Dance review: Raven Girl, Symphony in C

Last Friday, ballet’s overcrowded aviary welcomed a new addition: Raven Girl.  Sexy, sleek, troubled and troublesome, she is the creation of the bestselling author Audrey Niffenegger and Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer Wayne McGregor.  Expectations were high, as McGregor is not a choreographer one would normally associate with balletic storytelling. The work, with stunning designs by Vicki Mortimer, splendid lighting by Lucy Carter, great video design by Ravi Deepres and a lusciously seductive score by Gabriel Yared, enthrals the senses and sits perfectly with McGregor’s vision of a creatively synergetic unity of the arts. It’s a pity that neither the choreo-graphy nor the dramaturgy were as impressive.

The problem, a typical one with contemporary ballet-makers, is that the transition from plotless or ‘abstract’ to narrative dancing is never an easy one, especially at a time when contemporary storytelling — filmic, theatrical, literary, musical, etc. — follows formats and formulae that ill-fit the tenets of ballet, whether it be classical, modern or postmodern. Lack of dramatic invention is the biggest problem here, as the story plods on with no memorable narrative twists or ideas. In adapting Niffenegger’s fairy tale for the stage, McGregor has fallen prey to the standard pitfalls of narrative-ballet composition.

Exasperating stretches of pedestrianised pantomime are not the best way to convey things, and in today’s world silent acting looks contrived, unnecessary and even ridiculous at times. It is a long time before we get any dancing, as a rather ill-mannered but frank viewer near me remarked with a ‘loud’ whisper to her friend. And when we get to the dancing, things are not great either. The choreographer, known for working within and against the ballet canon, seems to have opted for fairly tame and traditional, if not trite, ideas, which evoke, rather awkwardly, images from some post-second world war ‘modernist’ ballets.