Triple Bill
Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House
‘Saucy’ and ‘funky’ are not terms one would normally expect to hear in relation to a ballet performance. Nor is the irritatingly ubiquitous ‘cool’, which is what my young(er) date uttered last Saturday at the end of the Royal Ballet’s triple bill. Yet they all suit perfectly well a programme that edges provocatively on the borders of dance-theatre and postmodern dance, and stands out for being highly entertaining as well as refreshingly amusing. Indeed, a baritone in drag, shouting Spaniards, sleazy motels and bars and a kind of butch, cigar-smoking Carmen might not be everyone’s idea of ballet. Still, this not-so-traditionally-classical evening is a superb showcase of what ballet can also be today, thus providing the Royal Ballet artists with a unique chance to engage with performing modes other than the often stale, more conventional ones.
I was particularly happy to see Will Tuckett’s Seven Deadly Sins again, for I had given it the thumbs up the first time round, and had fond memories of it. This, Kurt Weill’s and Bertolt Brecht’s so-called ballet, is indeed a diabolical one to stage, particularly in the light of all that has been said and written about its creators. Wisely, Tuckett steers away from a philological rendition of their revered formulae, as well as from a more radical reading of the same. His staging is a beautifully linear, theatrically well-devised interpretation that takes into account a number of cultural, historical, political and theoretical factors; but it never slips into one of those mind-boggling and mind-taxing exercises in performance analysis that the Brecht/Weill’s oeuvre seem to elicit these days. As Anna I, Martha Wainwright provides a uniquely non-clichéd rendition of the songs, which matches and complements, in terms of style, tone and interpretation, Zenaida Yanowsky’s mesmerisingly powerful dance reading of Anna II. Among the others, Laura Morera was an exquisitely racy stripper, Gary Avis an ambiguous Director and Edward Watson a heart-wrenching hapless good lad caught in the net of sleaze and greed.
Sauciness is also the ingredient of Mats Ek’s Carmen, a rather irreverent take on both Mérimée’s novella and Bizet’s opera. Still, his is a humorous sauciness used effectively to challenge the conventions of our culture and to question, in a funky, intentionally cartoonish and even slapstick way at times, the sacredness of artistic monoliths such as Carmen. As the eponymous, cigar-smoking heroine, Tamara Rojo was excellent, even though she could have worked more on the intentionally anti-classical requirements of the role. Next to her Lauren Cuthbertson was a true revelation as the haunting M (which may stand for Michaela, Mother or Muerte — or Death), a role she appropriated with great sensibility and artistic depth. Similarly, Thomas Whitehead as José sent shivers down many spines, for the way he turned the colourful postmodern romp into a vibrating drama at the end.
Christopher Wheeldon’s DGV: Danse à grande vitesse, to Michael Nyman’s music, is not, in my view, an ideal complement to the rest of the programme, for its neoclassical, non-narrative linearity clashes too vividly with the more dance-theatre modes of the previous two works. Still, it is a powerful choreographic and visual work, thanks also to Jean-Marc Puissant’s stunning designs and Jennifer Tipton’s engaging lighting. It was a sheer pleasure to see the Royal Ballet artists move from one work to the other with such technical ease and artistry, showing what came across as true, in-depth participation in each of the three works. I only wish there were more ‘cool’ programmes like this.
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