Five short pieces, neoclassical and contemporary, pointe and soft shoe, from New English Ballet Theatre (NEBT) and Norwegian National Ballet 2, a range of musical choices, distinctive though they are, produce a whirlwind kaleidoscope of images in my mind.
First up, before the first interval, are two pieces from NEBT, the first by Royal Ballet Principal dancer Matthew Ball, Acts of Exaltation, he the deus ex machina who walks himself into the picture as its creator, his rehearsal prayer book in hand.
In three acts, to Monteverdi’s glorious music, “he explores what the stage, the spiritual and the secular have in common”. In Elin Steele’s adaptable costumes, in white Grecian-style drapery and Catholic Church imagery, seven dancers, three male, four female, nymphs and priests, solemn and playful, exult in Ball’s possibly ironic choreography.
A warm up for the following, Daniela Cardim's Baroque Encounters, which explores Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto No 7 in G Minor and Sonata for Violin and Continuo in C Minor through gesture, through the body’s exploration and reaction to his music. She brings the harpsichord and strings to life.
It is wonderful, as are the seven dancers, dressed in April Dalton’s Renaissance plum-coloured costumes, long dervish skirts for all in the first, short Roman military style tunic skirts for the second, under Andrew Ellis’s chiaroscuro lighting. Expressive hands seem to be fingering the music, whilst bodies become a baroque chamber orchestra: Emily Pohl and José Alves (formerly with Ballet Black) excel in the pas de deux.
After the first interval come three pieces, which up the lightness of being, from Norwegian National Ballet 2, established in 2015 as a feeder for the main company. International in make-up, the ten dancers, most about nineteen-years-old, are full of youthful (and nervous) energy.
The ten-minute contemporary style Where It Began is a humorous appetiser from choreographer Anaïs Touret. Joey McNamara’s ambient and heart beat throbbing music drives these five white dressed ‘robots’ to greater and greater acrobatic feats until they all collapse in a heap.
Ten dancers bring elegance and idyllic grace to Kumiko Hayakawa’s fifteen-minute Limerence, a vast change in tone. Neoclassical pointe work and contemporary soft shoe bring reverence to Brahms. They could probably do with a larger stage for it.
Silhouetted against a brightly lit backcloth (lighting Paul Vidar Sævarang), five couples come and go. Five men dance, five women dance, showing off to each other, at a coming out ball, perhaps.
The final number, after the second interval, is the twenty-minute Step Lightly by Sol Léon and Paul Lightfoot, formerly with NDT, whom I have reviewed and enjoyed vastly many times. Step Lightly is the first work they created together. Costume, set and lighting is all theirs, a Gesamtkunstwerk.
The set, a projection on the back of silver birch trees and a sun / moon and the white floor newly laid in the interval, has the look of an illustrated page from a fairy story. The better to show the four females in demure, high-necked, midi, long dresses in velvet, deep green, the two men in yellow shirts and taupe trousers.
The notes tell us the title refers to stepping lightly over thin ice. Metaphorically, I assume. The music is a giveaway: Bulgarian folk music Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. A popular compilation album, its regional tracks speak of birdsong, a wedding procession, an evening gathering, a harvest song, a love song, a dancing song, a song from Thrace, diaphonic chant and so on.
Female voices sing stories, maybe fairy tales of times gone by, of village life in Central and Eastern Europe, with strong regional Turkish influences in the music. Boys dance separately from the girls, until one makes head contact with a girl, relationships form, movements are emotive.
Tentative young love, dancing in the village square... They are the landscape, the green of the fields, the yellow of the sunflowers and the corn. I think of Slavic folklore, I think of how useful folk tales have been to the ballet world. The boys work up quite a sweat, and the girls are all of a glow, as my sixth form mistress used to say. A most enjoyable evening.