A monotonous trudge: Royal Ballet Triple Bill review

3 / 5 stars
Triple Bill

APPALLING programme planning turned the Royal Ballet’s latest Triple Bill from an exciting celebration of the company’s versatility to a monotonous trudge.

Royal Ballet, Triple Bill, Royal Opera House, review, Jeffery TaylorPH

Morera and Watson’s brilliant dancing failed to ignite fire in Song Of The Earth

There was something of the Holy Grail in the buzz of anticipation of modern dance wunderkind Hofesh Shecter’s debut with the Royal with Untouchable.

How would the dancers deal with such contemporary daring? Simple. Chew it up and spit it out because, as we all know, the classically trained body is equipped to deal with anything so-called revolutionaries can throw at it.

Not that Shecter posed any challenges at all in the half hour of hula hoop gyrations and semaphore arm waving presented as his idea of the shape of things to come. Dealing, I think, in a left wing sort of way with the tragedies and torments suffered by immigrants, a group of 20 dancers bravely fought back against the oppressive forces of officialdom.

As the General Election gets under way, Nigel Farage’s name featured briefly in the music. A sort of invocation of the Devil? Such adolescent angst might sit well in a university campus, but in the real world? Please - spare us.

The evening’s opening piece, Balanchine’s 1946 The Four Temperaments to Hindemith’s music, was also a low key affair. Bright spark Alexander Campbell got the piece going with Yuhui Choe, a lively  partnership, aided by Akane Takada and Federico Bonelli, superb dancers all.

But even the company’s bright young thing, Vadim Muntagirov, seemed recklessly understated while fellow soloist Eric Underwood appeared bemused by the whole thing. 

Thank goodness for Zenaida Yanowsky who injected a bit of “look at me” spice in the finale. Not only that but the lighting was a depressing funereal blue, setting the mood, as it happened, for the rest of the evening.

Last on the bill was Kenneth MacMillan’s Song of the Earth (1965), to Gustav Mahler’s symphonic work. Dealing with the random nature of life, the first name on the cast list is The Messenger of Death danced by Edward Watson. Oh, dear, a sinking heart is not the greeting this piece of choreographic brilliance and inventiveness deserves.

But the pleasure of the company’s dancing led by Laura Morera, Campbell and Choe again and the ever improving Melissa Hamilton, failed to ignite the fire of MacMillan’s genius. A sombre evening desperate for an injection of an essential ingredient, the old-fashioned joy of dance.

ROYAL BALLET TRIPLE BILL at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 (Run ended)

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