“There are no mothers-in-law in ballet,” said George Balanchine, explaining why most of his ballets are abstract explorations of pure movement. It’s a good line, but it’s both right and wrong. Part of dance’s power springs from the attempts of various choreographers to use a silent medium to communicate complex thought – and the plot-driven ballet is a surprisingly resilient form.
Last week brought two contrasting examples. For a long time, Wayne McGregor has been grappling with new definitions of narrative. Pieces such as Raven Girl, Woolf Works and The Dante Project (for the Royal Ballet) and Lore (for La Scala), not to mention Autobiography for his own Company Wayne McGregor, reveal a fascination with reinventing the way that dance relates to story.
UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey is the latest step on that journey. Inspired by the 1982 Jim Henson movie The Dark Crystal, which turned battles between shrivelled Skeksis and wise Mystics into a sort of eco-myth, it dispenses with plot and elf-like Gelflings and becomes a shimmering evocation of the struggle for planetary survival. The spoken-word artist Isaiah Hull makes its message plain: “I guess the next generation pays the price.”
Films by Ravi Deepres, projected on a screen in front of nine fabulous dancers, place them in scenes of shattering beauty (a single fish moving within a watery current) and frightening depredation (a forest fire, a seabird covered in oil). Their costumes, by Alex Box and Philip Delamore, cover them in printed body suits that occasionally conjure the characters of the film, but more potently suggest they are part of the landscape that is being destroyed. Finally, there is a vision of a green Eden, a suggestion of hope and renewal.
It’s all fluent and fluid, with McGregor’s choreography to Joel Cadbury’s score creating momentum and panic but also images of tenderness and wonder. Lucy Carter’s superlative lighting carves out shapes and keeps the movement in focus. There’s a lot going on, but the overall impact of this plea for protection and care is lucid.
Northern Ballet’s former artistic director David Nixon adopts a more old-fashioned approach. His handsome production of The Great Gatsby, now revived 10 years after its premiere, has much to recommend it: sophisticated sets by Jérôme Kaplan, sumptuous costumes by Nixon himself, and an effective, swooning score created from music by Richard Rodney Bennett.
The dancing is sharp and well marshalled, with the party scenes at Jay Gatsby’s mansion and in New York particularly compelling in the way they mingle loose-limbed social dancing with tighter, more balletic steps. But elsewhere the choreography feels too limited to express the power of the story. No one walks when they can jeté; arabesques and pirouettes have to stand for romance, despair and lost innocence. They are pretty enough, but they don’t communicate anything.
By the close, the plot – the mothers-in-law, if you will – has strangled the ballet, reducing it to series of tableaux. Men in dark raincoats and trilbies are a poor substitute for the shadows stalking Gatsby’s troubled dreams and America’s dark soul. The story is the least important part of F Scott Fitzgerald’s towering novel, and in seeking to reproduce it so directly, the ballet loses the book’s adamantine heart.
Star ratings (out of five)
UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey ★★★★
The Great Gatsby ★★★
• UniVerse: A Dark Crystal Odyssey is at the Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House, London, until 4 June
