It’s exciting when artists push boundaries, melt genres, revolutionise the possibilities of the body etc; dance needs all that. But sometimes it’s also wonderful to see lovely dancing set to beautiful music. And London City Ballet, the company revived last year after an almost 30 year hiatus, delivers it.
Take Liam Scarlett’s Consolations and Liebestraum from 2009. It helps that it opens with Alina Cojocaru, one of the world’s superlative ballerinas, who is always able to make your heart quietly leap, your breath still for a moment. The Liszt score, played live by Reina Okada, is longingly romantic but sets in train dancing with no schmaltz, unspooling threads of steps that are swift but unhurried: turn and lift, turn and lift in fluid swirl. Scarlett’s later career became mired in controversy and he took his own life in 2021; this is a reminder of the superiority of his craftsmanship.
A new commission, Soft Shore by Paris Opera Ballet’s Florent Melac, is easy on the eye and ear too, but suffers from being too close in mood to Scarlett’s piece. The second highlight of the programme is Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The famous Mussorgsky score was inspired by Viktor Hartmann’s paintings, but the backdrop here has projections of Kandinsky’s colourful circles. Again for solo piano, the music is illustrative, almost comical at points with a heavy, lurching melody, but Ratmansky’s response is not always the obvious – there is brightness and zing – and we are absorbed into the dance’s world. Joseph Taylor (formerly of Northern Ballet) gets a fantastic angry solo against a vivid red canvas; Constance Devernay-Laurence, another former principal with a large company (Scottish Ballet) emits the assurance only experience can bring.
Part of London City Ballet’s remit is to revive forgotten works by great choreographers. Here it’s George Balanchine’s Haieff Divertimento from 1947, never before seen in the UK. It has Balanchine signatures a-plenty: the practice-wear costumes; the clarity of individual steps, as if watching a ballet class; the idiosyncratic style of jutting hips and off-centre weight. Dancers train for years to absorb Balanchine’s technique and this is not a Balanchine company – although Cuban dancer Alejandro Virelles does a lovely combination of lightness and authority that’s very in keeping – but it’s a pleasure to see the work unearthed nonetheless.
• Until 14 September; New Theatre Oxford, 11 November; York Theatre Royal, 14-15 November
