Cinderella, The Royal Ballet 17/04/10,22/04/10,03/05/10

A busy month means this review is extremely late, but here goes anyway. Cinderella was the second Ashton ballet for the Royal Ballet this season, and while not quite up to the high standards of La Fille Mal Gardee, these were still three very enjoyable evenings.

The production is glitzy, in the same vein as the Nutcracker, while the pantomime Ugly sisters make for less dull tweeness than Sleeping Beauty. Prokofiev's often haunting music also adds depth to what could easily become a superficial waltz through a fairy story.

Curtain up and Cinderella is alone by the fire, until her stepsisters fall onto the stage. The sisters get a lot of stage time in this ballet, almost more than Cinderella herself, and while a limited amount of pratting around is funny, by the end of the evening one rather tires of it. Luke Heydon's face is a picture, but was so subtle as to only be appreciable from the stalls, while Gary Avis and Philip Mosley projected far better to the nether regions of the Opera House. Wayne Sleep waddled endearingly, but played his part rather one-dimensionally. Cinderella pines for her dead mother, and her somewhat drippy father rather pathetically lets himself be pushed around by the sisters. Once the sisters are dispatched to the ball, Cinderella wish-dances with her broom. Miyako Yoshida was the picture of refinement and subtle emotion on what was her penultimate performance at the Royal (17/04/10), and Yuhui Choe (22/04/10) sweetly graceful as she stepped in last minute for Alina Cojocaru. The Fairy Godmother then turns up to work her magic - Laura Morera was fantastic, ruling the stage with her energy. Tara-Brigitte Bhavnani had less success, seeming nervous and failing to exert anything like Morera's stage presence. The fairies spring, summer, autumn and winter were danced to varying standards on all three nights. The choreography for summer is dire (even Yuhui Choe couldn't completely pull it off), but Iohna Loots' Spring was dynamic, and Clare Clavert's winter perfectly flitting between hard ice and flurrying snow flakes. The corps weave onto the stage as the moon becomes a clock, cyclically dancing the whirring hands and cogs of ticking time.

Second act, enter the Prince. Stephen McRae managed to exude double his stature in stage presence, and in the few solo sections danced exuberantly, and pretty much perfectly. He partnered Miyako Yoshida to perfection; really some of the best partnering I have seen in many years - every line perfectly echoed, every moment perfectly synchronous. Yoshida was the very picture of elegance and precision. Gary Avis and Michael Stojko pull off suitably ridiculous partners for the ugly sisters by simply playing it straight, the pas de deux between Luke Heydon and Gary Avis being particularly hilarious, ending in a full lift. Paul Kay was a snappy jester, keeping the act moving and holding all the dances together. Time dances in and out, and eventually the clock strikes twelve and Cinders flees the scene, leaving the all important glittery pointe shoe at the top of the steps.

Things wrap up fairly quickly in Act III, after some funny dress swapping between the sisters. The shoe fits, and hey presto happy ending. The fairy godmother then orchestrates the final marriage, and Cinderella and her Prince walk off into the sunset, although only Yoshida and McRae managed to stay in time right to the end. It lacks a final grand pas de deux, which is a shame, but if danced well then the earlier dances should still be on your mind.

Cinderella is good fun, and if danced as well as on the 17th (Yoshida, McRae and Morera) then it is magical. Only negatives are that it is maybe a bit of a pantomime overdose, and you don't get quite enough of Cinderella.

La Fille Mal Gardee, The Royal Ballet, 09/03/2010, 18/03/2010, 21/04/2010

It is a sign of just how good this production is, that at my third performance, I was still laughing just as hard as at my first, and clapping just as enthusiastically until the very end of the curtain calls.

The perfect concoction of witty choreography, pantomime and warm-hearted delectably twee romance. Frederick Ashton tells us the story of Lise, the only daughter of a wealthy widow, who is in love, against her mother's wishes, with a young farmer Colas. Her mother would rather see her married to Alain, the idiot son of a rich landowner. We watch the fun and games unfold as Lise and Colas cheekily defy her mother, enjoy the gaiety of harvest-time and, and finally we see them united as we know they inevitably will be from the moment the curtain goes up.

Ashton's choreography is genius, timed perfectly with the nuances in the music; OTT yet tongue-in-cheek, this really is charming. The whole production is full of humourous surprises. Certainly you don't come to the Royal Ballet with the expectation of seeing dancing chickens and a real horse on stage! While the treatment of the character of Alain is perhaps ever so slightly un-P.C, on the whole the right balance is struck between sympathy and humour, and Jose Martin and Liam Scarlett both danced and acted very well. The comedy star of the show is the Widow Twanky of the pantomime, Widow Simone, played by Will Tuckett and Alastair Marriott, both to great effect. Her clog dance in Scene 2 is absolutely hilarious, with Will Tuckett going completely all out, slides, heel clicks, buckling ankles. Brilliant.

I am priveliged enough to have seen three different casts, Marianela Nunez with Carlos Acosta, and both Laura Morera and Alina Cojocaru with Stephen McRae. Nunez and Acosta were the most consumate  and confident performers. Not a partnership that we see often, they dance this piece very well together; the wittiest of the three couples by quite some margin. Also, Colas is a perfectly smug role for Acostas. Nunez and Morera dance very similar interpretations - youthful, cheeky, but not completely naive - whereas Cojocaru plays a far more childish, innocent (although not without a touch of stubbornness) Lise. McRae was on top form both performances, although he seemed to have better chemistry as Colas with Laura Morera than for Cojocaru; this pair getting an extremely enthusiastic response from the normally quiet Tuesday night audience.

This is a ballet of many props, and Lise and Colas certainly have some tricky props to contend with throughout the ballet, most notably a veritable cats cradle with ribbons in Act 1. This was met with varying degrees of success, and only Nunez and Acosta pulled all the ribbon antics off seamlessly right through to Nunez rock solid en attitude as the rotating centre of the may pole in scene 2. Cojocaru and McRae more or less got there, although wobbled at the may pole in scene 2, but McRae and Morera got the ribbon so tangled in scene 1 that in the they had to ditch it all together! However, it's all part of the fun, and when it goes wrong, it certainly doesn't detract from the rest of the evening.

La Fille Mal Gardee provides unabated fun and games, with lovely dancing, clever antics and charming humour from start to finish. Really one of the best things I've seen at the ROH for a long time, and certainly my favourite Ashton. As the friend I went with said, and quite rightly - "you just come out bouncing!"

Concerto/The Judas Tree/Elite Syncopations - The Royal Ballet 31/03/2010

A trio of MacMillan. And all works I've not seen before. A highly anticipated evening!

Concerto, danced to Shostakovich's beautiful 2nd piano concerto, started things off. This is possibly one of my favourite pieces of music, which was both a good and a bad thing. It was fantastic to see it visualised, made flesh (!), but at the same time, the tempos were all a bit rigid, and too slow for my liking in the first and third movements. The first movement should be garish and circus like, yet with militaristic overtones - puppetry is probably the most obvious theme that comes to mind. Certainly, the orange, yellow and red leatards met the garish criterion, but it still felt too understated. I wanted more angularity, harsher more abrupt movements than were evident. Laura Morera was fab as usual, although Brian Maloney, partnering her, was a little clumsy. The second movement, a pas de deux inspired by a ballerina warming up at the barre, is a stark contrast to the first and third. Dim lights rather than harsh lights, and slow lingering movements. The male dancer is a support, taking the part of the barre, and Ryoichi Hirano was solid, and symmetrical, beautiful echoing Sarah Lamb's sublime movements. This movement was peaceful and really did feel like music in motion. In the third however, Laura McCulloch had a hard task. Following two duos, she really needed to set the stage on fire, particularly after the slow 2nd movement. However, she felt cumbersome and heavy, and this is not the first time I've used those words to describe her dancing. She is a lot taller than her fellow female dancers, and in general bigger built. Which is fine, and sometimes works really well. But this whole dance felt strained - she overreached in her grand jetes, and lacked the radiance she sometimes exudes. However, despite ending on a down note, Concerto was definitely a hit for me.

The Judas Tree, MacMillan's last ballet, packs a punch and that's for sure. MacMillan at his grittiest, it is set in the Isle of Dogs during the regeneration period. Dealing with the concepts of collective guilt and betrayal, the choreography is rough and ready, and this work ends chillingly with a graphic representation of gang rape. Mara Galeazzi and Thiago Soares danced fantastically as the Woman and The Foreman, with Soares probably giving the best performance I've ever seen him give. I'll admit to finding this a pretty shocking ballet - I'm glad I've seen it, but I'm not sure I would be in a hurry to see it again.

Elite Syncopations couldn't be more different to The Judas Tree if it tried. And what a fun way to end the night. If Concerto's costumes were not garish enough, these may have gone too far. They are almost blinding! The band (ragtime music not being exactly orchestral) is on stage, creating a nicely informal atmosphere, even though the stripped down numbers and added distance from the auditorium compromises on volume. I felt like this got off to an unexpectedly slow start - the Sunflower Slow Drag felt a bit scrappy and a bit lacking in energy. Laura Morera was the star of this show as far as I'm concerned - perfect musicality and characterful dancing in the Calliope Rag. Yuhui Choe lacked pizazz and while Marianela Nunez was her usual seamless self (and that definition also extents to her stars-and-stripes catsuit!) she wasn't a patch on Laura. The Alaskan Rag, which turn the normal ballet partnership on it's head (short MALE dancer, tall female) was absolutely hilarious - Nathalie Harrison and Michael Stojko had their timing down to a tee. An extremely enjoyable end to the night, even if I felt it could have had just slightly more energy!

The Cunning Little Vixen, The Royal Opera, 29/03/2010

A charming production, and the least pretentious opera I've seen. Beautiful, yet highly stylised, ethereal set and costumes make Janáček's opera a visual feast. A large rotating wheel, gigantic mosquitos, a chain-saw-come-clock and more. Wow.

What it lacks in big sweeping songs, it more than makes up for in gorgeous, warm, dense orchestration and light floating melodies. The cast was strong, and were clearly (like the audience watching) having a whale of a time. Emma Matthews (Vixen Sharp-Ears) has a lovely light tone; a joy to listen to, even if she did struggle occasionally to cut through the orchestra. Elisabeth Meister replaced Emma Bell as The Fox, and acted the part well, although her voice has a shrill quality that jars on the some of the higher notes.

The plot is neither here nor there (or perhaps I just didn't get it) but this opera is witty, whimsical and wholesome fun. It's not all fun and games of course - gun shots in the second act bring us crashing back to earth - but overall an uplifting and unpretentious production. No melodrama here.

As One/Rushes - Fragments of A Lost Story/Infra - The Royal Ballet 01/03/2010

This was an unexpectedly good night. Three very modern works, including a debut for young choreographer Jonathan Watkins, with a strong cast of principals. I am writing this too long after the performance to write a fully detailed review, but I'll get down the general gist of things.

Watkins's As One opened the programme, and I was surprised at how coherent and compelling I found this new work. The choreography manages extremely effectively to portray both individuality and uniformity, loneliness and unity as it moves through a series of dances based on everyday life; channel surfing, a house party, school...In 'channel surfing' Laura Morera and Edward Watson dance almost entirely separately, seldom making body contact, and yet there is communication, a give-and-take in the choreography that makes it quite obvious that while these are two characters with individual struggles they are also united. In the 'house party' we see each of the dancers breaking out in individual sequences of steps. Interestingly, to begin with, my take on 'As One' was that we could strive to be individual but really we were just part of the mass, that even when we feel lonely and isolated and on the edge we are really on the uniform conveyor belt through life, as is danced through two solos including a flashingly brilliant, yet repetitive solo for Stephen McCrae. However, the final scenes create a sense of joy in the togetherness of our individuality, the final frieze showing the dynamic individuality of all the dancers meshing together to form one living breathing mass of united dancers! It was a delight, choreographically intriguing and creative. I didn't need to read the program to understand and get involved with this work, something deliciously unusual for the contemporary works that the Royal tend to perform. Go see. I hope they revive it in a couple of years!

Rushes, based on Doestoevsky's 'The Idiot' and danced to music by Prokofiev, however failed to grab me. Choreographically it felt like a poor Macmillan imitation, the set is intrusive, serving only to shut the audience out (although I think this may actually be the desired effect), and while Laura Morera gave a strong performance, and danced well with Carlos Acostas, there is little to get your teeth into here. My  sandwich filling hypothesis holdds true again it seems. So moving on...

Wayne McGregor's Infra was fortunately a return to the standard of the beginning of the evening. While I do find McGregor almost too abstract, his choreography generates a compelling tension between the dancers, whether there be two or twelve of them on stage. He has a very distinctive choreographic style, that's for sure, but I am dubious how many more similar ballets he can churn out before we tire of them. Strong performances from Ed Watson, and Eric Underwood (pictured).

A strong night for the Royal Ballet, which, for me at least, was all about As One.

Romeo and Juliet, The Royal Ballet 13/02/2010

Kenneth Macmillan's first full length work, Romeo and Juliet has been a staple in the Royal Ballet's repertory since it premiered in 1965. Combining the traditional with the contemporary, this ballet houses heavy costumes, character dancing and mime, with weighty emotions and a decent dose more grit than your average Swan Lake. The performance I saw was the day before Valentine's day, and boy could you tell - couples everywhere, all dressed up to the nines.

The first scene of Act 1 attempts to establish the enmity between the Montagues and Capulets. The fight scene completely lacks any real bloodlust. Perhaps this is deliberate and an attempt to unveil it all as a bit of a farce, but either way, it's tedious to watch, and while the dramatic tableau created at the end of the scene is impressive, it feels a little as though the entire scene was building up to the final pose. However, things pick up when we travel to Juliet's bedroom and meet the young Juliet (Marianela Nuñez) for the delightfully amusing dance with her nurse, immediately prior to meeting her suitor Paris, in which Juliet becomes aware for seemingly the first time that she is no longer a child.

Into the ball, and I always feel a little disappointed by the Dance of Knights, which is set to Prokofiev's most famous piece of music from this ballet. While it certainly feels austere, the choreography is repetitive and lacks any real drama, as with the first scene. However, Juliet, Paris and Romeo (Thiago Soares) weave intriguingly through the dancers which fits perfectly with Prokofiev's mesmerising score. From this point forth the romance takes off in a frenzy, and spirals onwards brilliantly towards the tragic finish. In the second act Gary Avis is, as always, spectacular as Juliet's cousin Tybalt, and Ricardo Cervera and Kenta Kura flashingly brilliant as Mercutio and Benvolio, outdancing Thiago Soares in some of the pas de trois.

This was the first time I've seen Nuñez dance a more dramatic role, and she threw everything and the kitchen sink into her rendition of Juliet. She was better partnered than normal by her Romeo (Thiago Soares), who despite a wobbly first solo (which is just after they've met and is supposed to woo her!) was suitably lyrical and romantic for the rest of the night. His acting at Juliet's tomb was heart-rending, and he outperformed Nuñez at this point. While they are not the best Romeo and Juliet I have seen by quite some margin, throughout the night I was very struck by how accurately Soares and Nuñez timed their acting with the music, despite the fact the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House were not having a stellar night. They used the space between them, and their positioning on the stage perfectly to almost paint emotion and tension onto the stage.

Romeo and Juliet is a slow starter, but once it gets going it's fabulous. It's a shame I won't see any other partnerships dance it this run. Nuñez and Soares pulled off the frenzied romance and tragedy very well, and I will definitely see them dance other dramatic roles in the future.

La Fille du Régiment, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City 09/02/2010

 

As I've said before, I am no opera buff, but I didn't need to be to appreciate this wonderful performance. The almost uniformly brilliant vocal performances combined with with tastefully over-the-top acting made for a thoroughly entertaining night.

Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment has, like many operas, a fairly ridiculous storyline, and this was handled perfectly by the star-studded line up of the Met Opera. While emotion was certainly not lacking, you never got the impression that any of the characters were taking themselves too seriously, which made for a very humourous performance. Diana Damrau made Marie the perfect boisterious tom-boy heroine, while Juan Diego Flórez was sublime as the smitten Tonio, his top notes simply gorgeous. In the smaller roles, Meredith Arwardy's voice was not my favourite of the night but she certainly made her presence felt as the Marquise of Berkenfield, and Maurizio Mauro was a very solid Sulpice - the dynamic between him and the Marquise very comic.

The set too was creative, beginning with a barricade built out of furniture that put me in mind of 'Les Miserables', and the floor of the stage covered in huge unfolded maps. While costumes were still period, this more modern setting laid the backdrop for the more contemporary feel of the acting, and further abolished any illusions that the story being enacted was in anyway realistic!

I really don't have a bad word to say about this production, other than that maybe Kiri Te Kanawa hammed up her cameo as the Duchess of Krakenthorp a little too much. It was the first time I have heard dialogue in opera, but it didn't intrude or jar. Donizetti's music is catchy and provides ample oppportunity for the lead roles to show off their vocal prowess - which they did with considerable gusto! It was only a shame that heavy blizzards had kept away much of what should have been a full house at Lincoln Center - what a treat they missed! Flórez is in London doing the same role at the ROH this season, and I am very tempted to go to see him again.