Celebrated is the right word: a glorious evening of three of Kenneth MacMillan’s works not often performed. All three, respectively thirty, forty-five and forty minutes long, with half-hour-long intervals to savour and separate each one, impress with his range and originality as well as his interesting choice of music. I’m in MacMillan heaven (and hell) with the second night cast.
In Danses concertantes, his first bold choreographic work in 1955, he explores every note of Igor Stravinsky’s joyful music with a young man’s ebullience. It was also his first collaboration with Nicholas Georgiadis, who was to become his regular designer. I see many influences from Ballets Russes. Stravinsky, of course, composed for Diaghilev—and there is something of their spirit here.
I’d seen an extract from the ballet in 2018 (Viviana Durante Company), and wanted to see more—here it is at last, the work that allowed him to leave dancing for choreography. Many have been motivated by this eminently danceable score, not least Balanchine (also once with Ballets Russes).
Georgiadis’s ‘Picasso / Matisse’ set design looks like another link to Ballets Russes. Costumes are vivid painted bodies, dancers finger-pointing musical box automaton. It’s a masquerade, a cabaret, a circus: nine women high-stepping en pointe, five men in spike helmets (Prussian helmets in Different Drummer, too—did he have a thing about German belligerence—or is it German Expressionism he liked?), controlled by an invisible ringmaster, the geometry intriguing.
Of course, these fingers could have come from the Fairy of the Golden Vine (‘the finger fairy’) in Sleeping Beauty. And maybe there’s a nod to Ninette de Valois 1937 Checkmate (also inspired by Ballets Russes). Inspiration knows no bounds and it can be subliminal in a fertile mind.
Nothing subliminal (or is there?) about his 1984 Different Drummer, based on Georg Büchner’s grisly mid-nineteenth century play, Woyzeck: a dramatic work of disturbing brutality. Is that severed head with its crown of thorns Woyzeck’s hallucination or a metaphor for his crucifixion by society? Anton Webern’s Passacaglia Op 1 and Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht tone poem illuminate MacMillan’s interpretation of Büchner’s controversial in its time play.
Expressionistic, all the elements of the play are there: Woyzeck (Reece Clarke) a poor soldier, abused and humiliated by the army Captain (Gary Avis good at venal roles) and experimented on by the cadaver-dissecting Doctor (Kevin Emerton), kills his common-law-wife Marie (Natalia Osipova) after her affair with the Drum Major (David Donnelly). And disposes of her in a pond, then drowns as he tries to wash himself clean. The pond is a bathtub—the set was designed by MacMillan himself with costumes by Yolanda Sonnabend.
Different Drummer requires dramatic acting as well as hardcore dancing. The duet choreography is erotic, sensual, and gymnastic—those spectacular shoulder lifts are very like his Mayerling duets. Osipova is a dramatic actress in Lynn Seymour mould, and this grey role, but for a flash of red at the dance, has echoes of Manon, seduced by money and fun.
The tall Clarke has to turn himself into a concave shape to project a feeble physique, and his duets with Osipova look appropriately arduous. Trauma and despair, MacMillan brought, not always appreciated, grown-up themes to the niche world of ballet.
In 1976, he created Requiem for Stuttgart Ballet in memory of their director and his friend John Cranko, who had died unexpectedly in 1973. Cranko had helped MacMillan out when things were not well at the Royal Opera House, but that’s another story.
MacMillan recreated it for the Royal Ballet in 1983, with a ‘heavenly’ stage, its square translucent ‘temple’ pillars, designed by Sonnabend with Peter Farley. Inspired by William Blake, Dante, Milton and the Bible, it is set to Gabriel Fauré’s beautiful 1890 Requiem. I see dancers transitioning from Dante’s Purgatory to Paradise. Soprano Isabela Diaz and baritone Josef Jeongmeen Ahn sing them on their way. My soul flies with them.
The cast fills the stage, with their angry fists railing to heaven, in the opening Introit and Kyrie. William Bracewell in loincloth and Lauren Cuthbertson in white, Son and Virgin Mary, mingle with them as they are processed. It is poignant. Carried like an effigy, she looks divine. Flying in and over their outstretched arms, she brings them eternal peace. In solo and duet, Cuthbertson commands them and the stage. I last saw it in 2012. Effigies and angels and rites of passage.
MacMillan (1929–92) is sorely missed. His works are inspirational, breathtaking at times in their audacity, yet faithful to his training. Not always understood, he raised the standard, increased the vocabulary of dance and probed at issues not usual to ballet in his day. Is the overarching theme tonight marionettes, human beings puppets in the hands of fate?
MacMillan Celebrated can be seen streamed live in cinemas 9 April with encore showing 14 April. Not to be missed. If you think ballet is all twee tutus and fairy stories, this will make you think again.