This is a soft-shoe Carmen, a Carmen without heels, a Carmen without Bizet. It's a folksy Carmen, and a newish one (originally performed by the Gyor Ballet in Hungary in 1997) by Robert North, artistic director of Scottish Ballet. Sadly, it's also a provincial Carmen - too clean by half and lacking in lust. Flashing eyes tried for size don't light the fire and flamenco flare-ups break the story politely, while the love affair that causes a man to kill three times and finally face execution himself fails to deliver the emotional goosebumps.
It is a shame because this production is pretty and competent, and even clever in parts. There has been no corner-cutting on research - North keeps to the original 19th-century short story by Prosper Mérimée and looks to Goya and Gustave Doré for visual inspiration. The design is neatly efficient, allowing one set of big wooden tables to become the prison, the tobacco factory, a riverbank, the bullring and the gallows just by moving them around and turning them over.
Written specially for this ballet, the score by composer Christopher Benstead illuminates the dance without overtly competing with it. In the programme he says he's looking for a filmic quality; he's got it. The music bends and turns in waves with the action, never imposing, always in step. Despite his deference, though, the music holds most of the emotional cards. Spanish songs sung with modest beauty by Annique Burms and Stephen Ashfield act as our guide to Carmen and Don Jose's feelings. Three guitars, a solo trumpet, an accordian and an ever-present percussion add a little heat. Although there is nothing grand about this interpretation - it is certainly not Carmen as we know it - Benstead delivers something soothingly attractive.
The dance, by contrast, dreams its way through love and murder with an anonymous, rather chilly detachment. Carmen's proud spirit seems tamed and Don Jose's passion hardly seems murderous. Lorna Scott and Ivan Dinev are well-matched but their title roles are set in fable rather than drama. The company are comfortable in this contemporary ballet with a flick of flamenco and folk but it does not take them to the scary, risky and, ultimately, tragic world in which a gypsy girl practises sexual freedom and dies for it.
We're told to expect passion, jealousy and obsession. The pedigree is right on paper, but this Carmen won't carry you away.
