This was a long time ago, so I’ll keep it brief. One of the
Royal Ballet’s most successful triple bills in the last year – a well balanced trio
of varied styles, and different emotional levels.
Starting things off the evening was Ashton’s ‘Rhapsody’ to
Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini’, with Sergei Polunin dancing
the central role originally choreographed for Baryshnikov. His fantastic
elevation and now well-controlled turns made this performance a pleasure watch.
And with Laura Morera bringing all her musicality and vivacity to the stage as
his female counterpart, there was very little, if anything to gripe about after
this performance. Following this Ashton triumph, was Alastair Marriott’s 2009
creation ‘Sensorium’. This is pleasant enough to watch – something strangely
tactile about the movement – but in all honesty looking back two months later,
I can’t remember too much about it, so not a ballet that leaves a lasting
impression.
The evening’s finale was David Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the
Penguin Café, and an unexpectedly good (in my case anyway) end to the evening.
Choreographed at a time when awareness of the threat posed to many endangered
species was just beginning to grow, a series of animal characters dance us
through to the music of the Penguin Café. Liam Scarlett’s Texan Kangaroo Rat
and Iohna Loots’s Hog-nose Skunk Flea were a particularly amusing delight, with
the audience chuckling away. Then followed surprisingly moving numbers – Ed Watson’s
Southern Cape Zebra and the trio ‘Now Nothing’ (Kristen McNally, Nehemiah Kish
and Minna Althaus) – the haunting emptiness and hollowness of this last trio
particulary spellbinding. ‘Still Life’ was certainly an unexpected treat to end
a very successful evening.
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