Requiem/ A Wedding Bouquet/ Les Noces
Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, London WC2
Inevitably, the opening fare of the Royal Ballet's autumn season has been dubbed Two Weddings and a Funeral. A tribute to Sir Frederick Ashton, whose centenary is being celebrated this year, the triple bill frames his 1937 A Wedding Bouquet with Bronislava Nijinska's Russian marriage rite, Les Noces, and Kenneth MacMillan's Requiem.
An unusual combination of ballets, two choral, one narrated, it casts fresh light on each work - which is what good programming is all about. MacMillan's Requiem, created in 1976 in memory of John Cranko, has been appropriated for Ashton, on the grounds that it's one choreographer's homage to another. The blessing with which the ballet ends is an inclusive one, encompassing the audience as well as the celebrants. Since Les Noces concludes in the same way, we leave twice blessed, rejoicing in performances that have such power to move.
All three ballets have been strongly cast, with a number of dancers making a welcome return to the Covent Garden stage - Darcey Bussell, Jonathan Cope, Gary Avis and Elizabeth McGorian among them. After the summer break, everyone had to be in good shape for the revealing costumes in Requiem: Yolanda Sonnabend's gleaming body-tights with semi-anatomical markings, a reference to the William Blake drawings that inspired the ballet's groupings.
The translucent pillars of the set have been remade clearer and sharper, so that dancers passing behind them seem as insubstantial as angels. Principal roles, however, require steely physiques, with Bussell leading the female mourners, Cope and Carlos Acosta the men. Leanne Benjamin was maternal as the white-clad woman who consoles the congregation and child-like in her solo to Fauré's contemplative setting of the Pie Jesu.
Instead of being laid to eternal rest, however, Ashton's spirit bounced back in A Wedding Bouquet, to Lord Berners's delightful music. Fifteen years have passed since the Royal Ballet last revived it, so all the faces were new, apart from Anthony Dowell as the speaker of Gertrude Stein's absurd text. Since what he spouts is not as nonsensical as it sounds, you'd think in-house tech nicians could have made him audible above the orchestra. If they could do it back in the Thirties, why not now?
What the revue-style piece requires is a director who could adjust the timing and point up the comedy (as well as the dancers' feet). Sparky cameos - Zenaida Yanowsky's determinedly sozzled Josephine, Johan Kobborg's shifty bridegroom - weren't well enough supported. Ashton's humour is subversive: he would slyly send up other ballets, including Tudor's Lilac Garden and Nijinska's Les Biches , while adding his slant on Stein's beady view of social rituals. It's not the dancers' fault they can't do him justice: the production needs a fresh eye and a skilled narrator.
Les Noces, the ultimate wedding ballet, has been immaculately restaged by Christopher Newton. The Royal Ballet has performed it over a hundred times since Ashton first persuaded Nijinska to revive it for the company in 1966. The intent faces of the present international crop of dancers demonstrate how individuals have to give themselves over to Nijinska's choreography for the masses. They are implacable forces, in thrall to Stravinsky's rhythms.
If one puts a foot wrong, the whole rite falters. The Kirov was guilty of dire misjudgment when they made a mess of Les Noces last time they were here.
The Royal Ballet's corps, pounding and leaping in unison to the shrieks from the pit (the chanted words as nonsensical and as meaningful as Stein's), evokes a society both pagan and religious. The bride laments the sacrifice she must make, yet she is summoned to the marriage bed by peals of bells. As they ring out in the music, the tribe on stage reasserts its humanity: a village youth, whom we now recognise, raises his hand in blessing and farewell.
