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Festival opener in safe hands
Les Rendezvous: Chi Cao and fellow dancers. Pictures: Bill CooperThree Short WorksBirmingham Royal Ballet
The Crescent Theatre
**** WHAT better way to open Birmingham’s
International Dance Festival than with the city’s own internationally
acclaimed dancers, Birmingham Royal Ballet, with two world première
ballets and a lovely piece of Frederick Ashton whimsy. The opener was Quatrain, a new work
choreographed by Kit Holder, designed by Adam Wiltshire and lit by
Johnny Westall-Eyre. Holder, a BRB first artist, was born in
Leamington Spa and started ballet training with Audrey Roper in Sutton
Coldfield, and he was given the freedom to pick his own team from design
to musicians to dancers for this piece and seems to have chosen well. The piece is danced to famed Argentine tango
composer Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
arranged by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov with four couples and a
huge steel irregular quadrilateral frame dominating the rear of an empty
stage. Piazolla was a skilled bandoneon player – it’s a
bit like a big accordion - who took tango into a new realms
incorporating elements of jazz and classical and is regarded as the
world’s leading composer of tango music – and if tango music isn’t
designed for dance, then what is?
The piece, with its sultry undertones, was also
marked by some wonderful virtuoso violin playing by the Royal Ballet
Sinfonia leader Robert Gibbs, who time and again delivers the goods. On this showing if times gets hard, he will be
more than welcome in any orquesta típica in any Buenos Aires waterfront
bar. The second world première was Kin. by former BRB
dancer Alexander Whitley – the full point in the title gives it a
double meaning of both family and an abbreviation for kinetic. The music here is American composer Phil
Kline’s The Blue Room and Other Stories written originally
for a New York based string quartet. The simple set and costumes were designed by
another ex-BRB dancer, Jean-Marc Puissant, who has designed Take Five
and The Seasons for BRB in the past, while BRB regular lighting
consultant Peter Tiegan lit the piece. The ten dancers appear as pairs, or in groups and
there is a lovely pas de deux between Jenna Roberts and Joseph Caley.
If there is a criticism it is perhaps the
lighting. It was moody, dramatic and atmospheric with slices and pencils
of light from the sides and light sources creating interesting angles
but just a tad more overall brightness might not have gone amiss. The final piece, Les Rendezvous, had no such problem as we find ourselves in a sunny, summer’s day. This was a trip back to 1933 when Frederick Ashton’s ballet first saw the light of day and BRB’s version opens with a scene that might have been Henley or the banks of the Seine in the 1920s or 30s, with the men in blazers and boaters and the women in summer dresses and tiny hats. All that was missing was a punt and a picnic basket - and perhaps a dog called Montmorency.
It is light hearted piece based on Daniel Auber’s 1850 opera L’Enfant prodigue, arranged by Constant Lambert, and was Ashton's first major ballet created for the Vic-Wells company. This later production was first performed by BRB
in 1991 at Sadler's Wells, uses Anthony Ward’s even later 2000 designs
and costumes and is lit again by Peter Teigen. It uses 17 dancers in a promenade and gives us pas de quatre, trois
and six as well as two solos from Chi Cao and Nao Sakuma and an Adage
des Amoureux from the pair. Originally written to showcase the talents
of Alicia Markova and Stanislas Idzikowsky, and then it was Margot
Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann. Now it does the same thing admirably for
Chi and Nao. Space limitations means a cut down Sinfonia under conductor Philip Ellis, although you would hardly notice and the pieces hardly demand a full symphony orchestra, Piazzolla wrote for a small tango orchestra of six to eight remember, while Kin. was based on music for a quartet. International Dance Festival Birmingham is
underway and could not have asked for a better opener, solid,
entertaining, engaging and made in Birmingham to boot. To 26-04-14. Roger Clarke
24-04-14
**** YOU could hardly ask for a better launch of the
2014 International Dance Festival Birmingham than this trio of
fascinating contemporary and traditional works. If you were looking for a taste of Swan Lake or
The Nutcracker, this isn’t it, but the cast from Birmingham Royal Ballet
delivered a rather unique performance for a capacity audience on opening
night. The first two of the short ballets seemed to be
an exercise in how many different ways the male and female bodies could
entwine, though in a more exotic than erotic way. It was spellbinding at
times, and a visual delight. They were premieres of two new commissions from
young choreographers – Quatrain, by Kit Holder, inspired by the vibrant
tango rhythms of Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, and
Kin, by former BRB dancer Alexander Whitley, to music by young American
composer Phil Kline. Costumes were dark and fairly simple, as were the
sets, but the dancing was exciting and imaginative. The mood changed in the third and final piece,
Les Rendezevous, by Frederick Ashton, first performed in 1933 , in which
the cast wore bright, colourful costumes – men in straw boaters, striped
jackets and bow ties and the ballerinas in white dresses highlighted
with red, green and yellow circles. BRB superstars Nao Sakuma and Chi Cao led the
cast stylishly in a fitting end to a hugely entertaining evening. For the final performance on Saturday night
(April 26), the company stage Kin, Quatrain and Facade. Paul Marston
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