Rhapsody
Dancers – Laura Morera, Sergei Polunin
Jonathan Higgins (piano)
Sergey Rachmaninov – Music
Frederick Ashton – Choreography
Jessica Curtis – Designs
Neil Austin – Lighting designs
Christopher Carr, Grant Coyle – Staging
Sensorium
Dancers – Mara Galeazzi, Melissa Hamilton, Nathalie Harrison, Laura McCulloch, Bennet Gartside, Gary Avis
Kate Shipway (piano)
Claude Debussy, with orchestrations by Colin Matthews – Music
Alastair Marriott – Choreography
Adam Wiltshire – Designs
John B Read – Lighting designs
Artists of The Royal Ballet
Orchestra of The Royal Opera House
Barry Wordsworth
Reviewed by: G. J. Dowler
Reviewed: 17 March, 2011
Venue: The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London
Let me deal with all this in reverse order. Firstly, the lure of a second viewing of Serge Lifar’s wondrous Suite en blanc at the Coliseum (see link below) proved too much and with a nifty piece of footwork I made it just in time to catch the work at the end of ENB’s Black and White mixed bill. That meant I had to forgo David Bintley’s anthropomorphic eco-ballet ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café and stay only for the first two works in the The Royal Ballet’s new triple bill. There is an internal logic of sorts to programming these ballets together, all being by British choreographers, but musically it was strange to present the Rachmaninov and the Debussy, both of which centre on the piano with orchestra combination.
Sensorium dates from 2009 and is by company Principal Character Artist Alastair Marriott, who, with it and other works, has not quite lived up to the promise of his first main stage ballet Tanglewood in 2005. It is fluent and looks superb, with Adam Wiltshire’s beautiful ‘sail’ dominating the stage picture. It is also expertly lit by John B Read, a cool, watery lightscape which perfectly matches the seven Debussy Préludes sympathetically orchestrated by Colin Matthews. The choreography is cool, distant even, which makes Sensorium a work one can admire at best, but never love. Marriott has scored it for two lead couples, a pair of demi soloists and a corps of women. He is at his most fluent with those corps de ballet members, arranging them expertly around the stage and investing them with fluid movement, but I do not enjoy his over-complicated pas de deux work (the second of the two duets for Mara Galeazzi and Bennet Gartside is the shorter and more successful), which involves a great deal of grappling and contortion. If truth be told, it all comes across as rather flat, almost as if a scrim had been lowered between performers and audience, the dancers given no opportunity to engage their audience with cool movement, cool stage picture and cool music; it is not a work I need to see again.
Rhapsody has undergone two unsuccessful redesigns, the originals having been jettisoned: Patrick Caulfield’s bright Art Deco stage picture was never popular but was preferable to the present ones by Jessica Curtis, a moody, stormy backcloth and rather non-descript costumes, all rather darkly lit by Neil Austin – if there was ballet which requires brightness and light it is Rhapsody. Jonathan Higgins gave a reasonable account of the piano part but the Orchestra of The Royal Opera House was on variable form under Barry Wordsworth. Another, equally starry cast also dances the ballet this season but Polunin and Morera make such a stunning pairing in this work that I recommend them without hesitation – this is what ballet is all about!
- Further performances on March 21 (12.30 p.m.) 23, 24 & 28 at 7.30 p.m.
- Royal Opera House
- English National Ballet’s Black and White at The Coliseum