Moor four

Paradoxically, some ballet masterworks absolutely depend on tiptop performing to demonstrate how great they are. If they don’t get it, they can look like the dodgiest of curiosities — did people in those days really rate this stuff? A whole genre of fiercely zipped tragedies of feeling emerged in Britain and the US in the 1930s and 1940s, fed by Antony Tudor, Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann over here, and Martha Graham and José Limón over there; works that, unlike classical dance, require acting skills of rare force and perfect pitch. And this genre can be difficult to restage these days, when we tend to react ruthlessly to work that might look like all sobs and no steps.

Limón’s 1949 The Moor’s Pavane has turned up on British stages once or twice, but I have not seen a more convincing showing of the psychological profundity and stylistic genius of this 20-minute distillation of Othello than Birmingham Royal Ballet gave last week on its excellent Shakespeare 400 triple bill.

The work is a tight quartet, a pavane for two couples, Othello and Desdemona v. Iago and Emilia, dressed Tudor-style and set to Purcell, whose sincerity (a score pieced together from The Gordian Knot Untied and Abdelazer Suite) has a perfectly ironic effect here, very English. As in fact Limón choreographed the entire thing without music, and had even considered plopping his creation on to Bartók or Schoenberg, we can’t describe his choreography as musical in that sense. However, it is exceptionally graceful, with its own physical music arising from the stormy emotional phrasing.