Dance Reflections, Tanowitz and Balanchine

Dances new and old by Pam Tanowitz and Balanchine elevated week 3 of Dance Reflections to new heights

A premiere from the New York choreographer Pam Tanowitz and a cross-section of work by George Balanchine, the third giant of 20th century choreography featured in Dance Reflections by Van Cleef &. Arpels (Trisha Brown featured in Week 1, Merce Cunningham in Week 2) made for a thrilling finale to this festival of choreography.

Pam Tanowitz, Neither Drums nor Trumpets 5*

Pam Tanowitz’s signature is her way of grabbing the familiar and turning it into something new, exciting and totally unexpected. Her latest piece, Neither Drums not Trumpets, for seven dancers of her Pam Tanowitz Dance with a group of students from Rambert School, was performed in the centre of the ROH Floral Hall, its leafy green costumes (Maile Okamura) a subtle nod to the hall’s previous incarnation as the Covent Garden flower market.

Excerpts from Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral Symphony’, blended in with Caroline Shaw’s original music, and the unexpected arrival of The Royal Ballet’s William Bracewell and Deirdre Chapman, who crossed the floor donning big white aprons and carrying a vase and a bunch of flowers, offered yet other subtle references to the site to which the work was specific.

Referential it may be, but the work is not narrative. Under the natural light pouring in from the hall’s massive glass façade, the dancers moved in precise, clean cut lines creating an ebb and flow of movement, their faces expressionless except when a knowing smile informed a brief dialogue. Sometimes they danced in unison, sometimes they watched from the sidelines, or from the balcony level.

As with all Tanowitz works the moment it finished I yearned to watch it again.

Balanchine: Three Signature Works 4*

On the main stage, the Royal Ballet celebrated the genius of George Balanchine with three very diverse works: Serenade, Prodigal Son and Symphony in C.

Premiered in 1935, Serenade was Balanchine’s first ballet in the USA, and he set it on Tchaikovsky’s elegiac ‘Serenade for Strings’.

It is a work of serene beauty, dominated by the women in ethereal long skirts with just a hint of blue, which illustrates his teachings from the basic positions to ever more complicated enchainments. Balanchine quoted from established ballets, such as Giselle, and incorporated little occurrences from his daily classes: a girl falls, one arrives late, a few men join later.

A joyous Mayara Magri flew weightlessly across the stage like a proper Balanchine ballerina alongside Melissa Hamilton and Lauren Cuthbertson; particularly exciting, though, was a buoyant William Bracewell partnering Cuthbertson with tremendous joy and technical finesse.

In glaring contrast, Prodigal Son, which Balanchine created for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, is a powerful expressionist work. Based on the well-known biblical parable, it’s danced against fauve landscape backcloths by Georges Rouault, and set to music by Prokofiev.

On opening night the Prodigal Son, who longs for freedom and adventure only to fall prey to a gang of skin-head grotesques and a Siren, was César Corrales, credibly managing the transition from reckless hot head to chastened youth, crawling home to beg his father’s forgiveness. Natalia Osipova, not a natural Balanchine ballerina, was the temptress.

The evening ended with a personal favourite: Symphony in C, set to Bizet’s eponymous work.

Created in the late 1940s for Paris Opera Ballet, this is a work of the purest , most crystalline classicism. Each of the symphony’s four movements is led by one couple and two subsidiary pairs ahead of an ensemble of women in crisp white tutus.

In the finale all four casts join up in an exhilarating tightly marshalled crowd.

All four lead pairs were sublime: Marianela Núñez and Reece Clarke in the dreamy adagio, her unrushed balances like a suspended breath, he a handsome, considerate porteur; fleet-footed Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Daichi Ikarashi boisterous in the third movement Allegro Vivace; Letícia Dias and Joseph Sissens joyous in the final movement; and in the first movement, like music made woman, a radiant Fumi Kaneko, partnered by Vadim Muntagirov in superlative form.

Under the all seeing eye of Patricia Neary, who’s been staging Balanchine work across the world for decades, The Royal Ballet appeared to dance with extra oomph.

What a way to end Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels for another year!

Balanchine: Three Signature Works continues at RBO until 8 April. Full info and tickets here