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A Fair Lady indeed: Elisha Willis as Gertrude Lawrence and Jonathan Payn as George Bernard Shaw. Picture: Simon Tomkinson
Going faster: Ambra Vallo with Jamie Bond and William Bracewell - photo Bill Cooper Summer Celebration Birmingham Royal Ballet Birmingham Hippodrome ***** THREE ballets, one all 1930's art deco elegance, one traditional whimsy and a third modern, fast and furious – and a world premiere to boot – all in one night ad home before the epilogue - so what more could you ask for? Picking up the gold
medal, even if it came second in the programme, was David Bintley's new
ballet Faster,
Birmingham Royal Ballet's contribution to London 2012 The title comes from the Olympic motto Citius,
Altius, Fortius which for those who did not do Latin at school – I
was encouraged to do metalwork after just one lesson – means Faster,
Higher, Stronger.
Bintley's piece, with music by Australian
composer Matthew Hindson, the same combination which produced the award
winning E=mc2, could on one level be a
representation of sports with high jump, gymnastics, fencing, swimming,
sprinting, wrestling and walking all easily identified, ending with the
entire cast in a marathon. But on another level it is a representation of
human endeavour and achievement which can apply to any field At times it has a look and feel of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, another project turning sport into art where results were not as important as the visual impact of shape and form - athletes as artists rather than competitors The ballet achieves the same end documenting
abstract contests and competition with no winners, or losers, until the
very end when in a stylised marathon involving the entire cast of 21,
everyone is a winner, achieving their goal Faster, as the name might suggest, is just that, keeping up an unrelenting pace broken only with pauses on islands of reflection as breaks between rounds, such as when Ambra Vallo goes through a balletic gymnastics routine with two vest clad helpers. It is slow, controlled and elegant with just a
hint of trepidation, a posh word for terror, on her face in the
execution of unfamiliar lifts which are more at home in the world of
sawdust and acrobats than the more refined universe of balle
There is also a fine pas de deux between Iain Mackay and Elisha Willis in costumes reminiscent of wrestlers, a clash which evolves into a solo triumph with Willis using Mackay as her podium. We even have humour with an Olympic walker – who
may still be going as he was at the curtain call. A special mention here for Peter Mumford who
designed the lighting including an impressive curtain of light in the
opening sequence as the dancers, lit by a tiny patch of light on each
leg were suddenly revealed as a wave of light swept upwards. That was
classy as was the whole ballet which will join Bintley's growing body of
impressive work in the BRB repertoire. The Grand Tour is the height of elegance
in ballet with the music of Noël Coward arranged and adapted by Hershy
Kay and choreography by Broadway choreographer and director Joe Layon
with designs by John Conklin.
Then there are the united artists, Douglas
Fairbanks (Joseph Caley) and Mary Pickford (Carol-Anne Millar), full of
youthful exuberance as well as the jigs and clicking heels of Irish
playwright George Bernard Shaw (Jonathan Payn) who seemed to have an eye
for the ladies, especially early movie sex symbol Theda Bara (Samara
Downs). A pair who didn't really catch GBS's eye though
were Alice B Toklas (Jade Heusen) and her lifelong partner Gertrude
Stein (Rory Mackay), Stein being a role created specifically for a man –
Gertrude was never what might be described as a “looker”. Amid all the fame and fortune we find a rather
pushy American lady, camera at the ready, (Victoria Marr) who Cowards
asks to dance for the amusement of his fellow passengers. The result is a funny, and very clever pas de
deux with chief steward Jamie Bond with Marr dancing the dance of
someone who can't dance – if you see what I mean, and it is no easier to
do than it sounds. The music is familiar with songs such as Mad
Dogs and English Men, I'll See You Again, The Stately Homes of England
with Rule Britannia, Drunken Sailor and The Sailor's
Hornpipe thrown in. We even have a song, sort of, when Lawrence as
Coward mimes to a crackly recording of Coward singing Half-Caste
Woman. It is a piece with a talent to amuse – as
Coward might have put it and on this performance, he would have loved
it.
The final part of the trilogy was Frederick
Ashton's The Dream based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's
Dream with music by Felix Mendelssohn. The ballet takes just the
section of the play in the forest outside Athens as Hermia (Samara
Downs) and Lysander (Steven Monteith) prepare to elope while Demetrius
(Mathew Lawrence), who has been promised Hermia's hand in marriage by
her father, chases after his bride to be pursued in turn by Helena
(Carol-Anne Millar) who loves him. Are you keeping up at the back? A mix up with magic love potions by Puck (Mathias
Dingman) adds to the confusion amid our mortal lovers while Oberon (Chi
Cao), king of the fairies, has his own fun with the Queen, Titania (Nao
Sakuma) using secret herbs to make her fall in love with brainless
rustic Bottom, usefully given an ass's head by Puck. As in the play, it all comes right in the end, but only after some fine dancing including a touching pas de deux between Titania and her lover Bottom in his ass's head much of it en pointe, or en hoof in this case by Dingman, and another duet between Nao and Chi Cao before we get to Mendelssohn's famous Wedding March to round off an evening of quality and variety with something for every taste. Roger Clarke
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