Youth Company of the Finnish National Ballet Review
The Youth Company of Finnish National Ballet joined the RBO Next Generation Festival with a difficult triple bill
The Youth Company of Finnish National Ballet is a multinational troupe of 14 young dancers; and like every other junior company, its mission is to prepare graduates for life as professional dancers, be it in the main company or elsewhere.
The repertoire of the Finnish National Ballet shows a 50:50 balance between the classics, for example, Cinderella, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and cutting edge contemporary work by the likes of Alexander Ekman and Bintou Dembélé, a foremost exponent of French hip hop.
Given that some of the youngsters will be joining the main company, I was expecting a fairly wide-ranging bill that would show off their readiness to tackle that repertoire, like the programme with which ABT Studio Company opened the Next Generation festival at the Linbury.
Instead, the Finnish company presented a contemporary triple bill that was difficult to dance and even more difficult to watch.
It opened with Fragments of Time by the French choreographer Julian Nicosia.
As mish-mash of genres and styles, it purported to illustrate memories, and was danced to an eclectic score that started with Bach and worked its way to the Welsh electronic musician Kelly Lee Owens.
Bach informed neo-classical choreography, giving the dancers the chance to demonstrate their schooling. On the whole they negotiated the steps with poise, if not perfect coordination.
Julian Nicosia, Fragments of Time. Photo: Roosa Oksaharju
The style abruptly changed to contemporary, centred on complicated pair work for two nearly naked men, with grappling semi-lifts and lots of off-centre hyper extensions.
Julian Nicosia, Fragments of Time. Photo: Roosa Oksaharju
In the pause before the second piece we were offered a film meant presumably to introduce the dancers; but it consisted of giggly, irrelevant fragments, one dancer announcing “I can’t sing”. That the film kept breaking down didn’t help.
Reija Wäre’s Clique (pictured top) came next.
Visually, it had the merit of breaking the sombre monotony of Nicosia’s piece: it centred on a bright red figure, the impish Werneri Voitila, surrounded by a bevy of women in oily gold leotards and gauze skirts, and men with gold cummerbunds and gauzy flounces around their upper arms. Pop aesthetics apparently.
Danced to a diverse score by Minna Koivisto, the steps again blended classical and heavy contemporary and didn’t really seem to cohere at any point.
I’ll be careful what I say about the last piece in the programme, as its choreographer Marco Goecke is notorious for overreacting to negative criticism.
Blushing is the sort of disconnected, gimmicky piece that requires one loudly gum chewing dancer to blow a huge bubble at us; it involves repeated scaramantic gestures, the meaning of which is never apparent.
Marco Goecke, Blushing. Photo: Roosa Oksaharju
I was startled when a dancer twice dashed across the stage shouting “poo-tah! poo-tah!” Later I consulted a Finnish friend as to the possible meaning of the word. It could be “lack of” or “some wood”, he said.
Ever helpful, my friend suggested: “Maybe he was signalling he identified as a tree…”
I wouldn’t put it past Goecke…
The dancers of the Youth Company of the Finnish National Ballet were uniformly endearing and they performed their little socks off. I would suggest to Artistic Coordinator Nicholas Ziegler they deserve better.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image credit: Reija Wäre, Clique. Photo: Roosa Oksaharju)
The Youth Company of the Finnish National Ballet performs at the RBO Linbury 13 – 14 June 2025. Full info and tickets here
The Next Generation Festival continues at the RBO Linbury until 29 June 2025. Full info and tickets here