According to some sources, the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev invented the mixed-bill formula for ballet. Whether or not this is true, there are times when one wishes he hadn’t. One century later, they increasingly come across as hurriedly and/or inharmoniously put together. Take, for instance, the most recent Royal Ballet triple bill.
Frederick Ashton’s 1980 Rhapsody was created for the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday and as a vehicle for the megastar Mikhail Baryshnikov. Although the work has many subtle layers, it retains much of its original ‘party piece’ essence, which calls for grandeur and sparkle. Alas, the redesigned sets and costumes do not provide either, nor did the corps de ballet’s dancing on the opening night. Only Alina Cojocaru and Steven McRae saved the hour with technical bravura and a memorable rendition of the central duet. Their sparkling performance, however, contrasted too stridently with the stern neoclassical ideas of Alistair Marriott’s Sensorium, which lacks incandescence and strives — unsuccessfully — to put across its author’s cerebral approach to Debussy’s music. Marriott’s stern neoclassicism, moreover, contrasts badly with David Bintley’s 1988 tragically jolly ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café, which is not an ideal finale. Still colourful at times, the work has long lost its bite, even though its ‘save the earth’ message remains a sadly valid one.
English National Ballet’s Black and White is a better conceived programme. Resolution, by artistic director Wayne Eagling, adds to the already endless list of ballets set to music by Mahler. And, not unlike many other Mahler-based works, this one also explores some more or less profound ideas and notions. Whether it succeeds is difficult to say. Yet it is a visually engaging work, in which an architecturally linear choreography captures the eyes of experts and lay viewers alike.
The same can be said of the other Eagling creation, Men Y Men, which stands out for the well-coordinated theatricality of the danced action, which addresses male bonding, and is punctuated by glimpses of homoerotic behaviour. The third, contemporary work of this rich programme, Van le Ngoc’s novelty, Vue de l’autre, is also easy on the eye, even though its formulae could have done with a more daring approach to the use of the neoclassical idiom.
It was a clever idea to squeeze in the ‘Black Swan’ pas de deux, given the recent fuss about Aronofsky’s movie. Personally, I don’t think this duet should ever be extrapolated from Swan Lake and presented as a bravura stunt. Erina Takahashi, sporting far too obviously Natalie Portman-inspired make-up, did all she had to do with class but little dramatic depth. Dmitri Gruzdyev, on the other hand, went over the top with grimaces and gestures, as the object of her seductive charms.
The evening ended with a reprise of Serge Lifar’s Suite en Blanc, which lacked both stylistic accuracy and the slickness this ballet calls for. After all, Suite en Blanc was conceived as a tribute to the great French ballet tradition when the Russian-born Lifar was in charge of the Paris Opéra Ballet. So the work contains references to a specific choreographic past which are central to its slightly tongue-in-cheek spirit — the ballerina’s carriage of the arms in the ‘Pas de Trois’, for instance, was modelled on a gesture called montrer les bijoux that first appeared in Paris in the late 1870s. Unfortunately, none of those many distinctive traits was given proper attention, even though the company danced brilliantly.
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