Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces was a 20th-century masterpiece, and to mark its centenary, ENB commissioned American choreographer Andrea Miller to make a new version set to the original, remarkable Stravinsky score. It is one of two world premieres in this triple bill under new director Aaron S Watkin.
Miller has never made a story ballet before, and she underestimates how clear you have to be for the audience to pick up narrative. What may be obvious in the studio can be completely missed from out in the auditorium, which is to say: you won’t have a clue what’s going on. Does it matter? Maybe it doesn’t have to.
Miller jettisons Stravinsky’s scenario, a wedding, and sets her piece as a sequel to the Rite of Spring (another Stravinsky/Ballets Russes production, choreographed by Nijinska’s brother, Vaslav Nijinsky). In brief: after the sacrifice of a Chosen One, a bountiful harvest fails to ensue, the community’s leader plans another ritual, the sacrificial maiden’s brother intervenes and there’s much emotional turmoil.
The effect overall is absorbing: the music majestic, orchestra and singers gripping, there’s an apocalyptic maelstrom on stage, movement surging through the dancers bodies, with groups in sudden flight across the floor or dancing in angular repetition on the spot, echoing Nijinska’s folk phrases.
What will stop you in your tracks is Alice Bellini as the grief-stricken mother of the sacrificed girl: hollow and desperate, empty but full of love to give only to a ghost. Especially poignant is that the performance is dedicated to the sculptor Phyllida Barlow, who designed the set before her death earlier this year, her decaying sculptures looking both ancient and futuristic.
While the plot may be lost, what’s never in doubt are the dancers, fully invested in every movement, and they leap between styles for each piece in the programme.
David Dawson, a British choreographer who has spent much of his career in Europe, has a very particular style. His default poise is that of a gymnast ending a tumbling routine, chest thrust forward, arms splayed in a V shape behind their heads. They dance in italics, in a serif font – broken wrists topping off each line. But what are they saying? Look at this beautiful body mainly. Dressed in nude leotards, somehow the laying bare of their form makes the dancers less human, existing in another realm.
The piece is named after Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, music that fills the stage with high drama (bravo to conductor Gavin Sutherland and musicians). And there’s drama in each individual’s movement but not in the work as a whole, which has expertly crafted phrases of complicated partnering, lots of lifts and arresting tableaux, every moment a photoshoot.
Elsewhere, a fiendish technical challenge in George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations (set to Tchaikovsky). High classical style with tricksy choreography demanding precision and ease, footwork packed with beats and frills. Emma Hawes opens proceedings with decisive sweeps from pose to pose and authoritative presence.
This is a company really pushing themselves and that’s always great to see, even if ideas don’t always live up to their ambitions.
At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 30 September
