An amazing resurrection after thirty years: London City Ballet is back installed in new, purpose-built Islington premises (since May) under the artistic directorship of choreographer and former dancer Christopher Marney.
The company, founded by Harold King in 1978, closed in 1996 having formerly been the resident company of Sadler’s Wells. Reformed last year, Marney has spent a year building a fourteen-strong touring company of international young dancers.
The intention is to work for six months a year for an initial three-year period, performing classical and contemporary pieces, some newly commissioned, some brought out of mothballs.
Before the evening of five short pieces kicks off, we are treated to a brief nostalgic archival footage history of the old company—when Princess Diana was patron—putting the present into context.
Only a hundred minutes with interval, Resurgence is a succinct but delightful inaugural showcase evening. Music is recorded: Tchaikovsky, Fauré, John Adams, Shostakovich and Jennie Muskett, commissioned in 2022 for Marney’s Eve. The evening opens with the very short Larina Waltz from Eugene Onegin. I am in heaven, but it is over in the blink of an eye, as is youth I suppose.
Created in 1993 by Ashley Page, it is a gala piece. Dancers, men in black, women in white tutus, are at a grand ball, the music is buoyant, and couple after couple (there are five) dance their socks off. I notice Arthur Wille. I’m going to be noticing him all evening.
More heaven comes with Kenneth MacMillan’s Ballade and later his Concerto, interrupted by Arielle Smith’s Five Dances. Ballade, a brief piece, is personal: he made it for his wife-to-be in 1972, and it has not been seen since.
Alina Cojocaru guests as the solitary women sitting at a table with three men, in a game of chance perhaps. All in white, outfits, table and chairs white—are the gilded youth ghostly images from the past? Who will get the girl… who wants the girl?
Cojocaru is lifted and passed from hand to hand, legs splayed in second position, riding over the boys’ shoulders, but it’s obvious who the winner will be: Alejandro Virelles. The others, Joseph Taylor and Nicholas Vavrečka, take it well enough. Fauré’s music is divine, the dancers are beautiful, it make me think of Nijinsky’s Jeux for some reason, to Debussy’s “poème dansè”—a game of young love.
So pleased to see such an early work of MacMillan’s, I am also delighted to see one I’ve seen many times, Concerto (the andante second movement from Shostakovich piano concerto no 2 in F major). Isadora Bless and Joseph Taylor do it justice. Clean lines, wonderful partnering—again, I am in seventh heaven.
Arielle Smith breaks up the dreamy mood—or cleanses the palate—with her spirited, colourful new work, Five Dances. Colours zing and so do the dancers skidding in and out of view against a vibrant, lozenge-bright backcloth. John’s Book of Alleged Dances keeps them moving, arms articulating beautifully as they flit in and out.
There’s something of Wayne McGregor in those supple, fluid bodies. Contemporary, classical and commercial dance forms fit the edgy music. I hear Cuban and Eastern tones and a fabulous fiddle. Costumes a vibrant palette of dazzling oranges, reds and mint green, they paint the stage with the exuberance of youth.
Talking of McGregor, I’m reminded of his Dante Project in the last piece, Marney’s Eve, made in 2022. Eve takes on the Serpent, conquers his power and escapes his clutches, births a family, the human race. Cira Robinson is a powerful Eve, Álvaro Madrigal Arenilla a sly Serpent. The tree of life grows tall. Jennie Muskett’s electronica mixed with birdsong complements the feathered images on the scrim.
As inaugural tours go, Marney and his company of young dancers and creatives have put down a strong marker. I can’t wait to see them again. Honouring their legacy and opening a new chapter after thirty years in limbo is quite something.
Since July, they have already been to Portugal, Bath, Cambridge, Suffolk, Cheltenham, Windsor, China and York and are off to New York after London. Marney is certainly putting London City Ballet on the map.