It’s common enough in theatre and opera to preserve a classic text and entirely reconceive its production; less so in ballet. English National Ballet director Tamara Rojo has excellent reasons for a new take on Marius Petipa’s 19th-century Raymonda, an orientalist crusader story of a virtuous maid, noble knight and evil Saracen. She shifts the action to the Crimean war, where a young Englishwoman has followed her soldier fiance, and discovers a sense of vocation in nursing. It sounds like a canny move, setting the scene for a Victorian costume drama about a woman’s choices, inspired by the spirit of national treasure Florence Nightingale – perfect BBC primetime material.
Of course, score, sets, style, roles and steps had to be reworked to fit
the rethink, but never mind purism: does it work?
In parts, but not as a whole. The highlight is Raymonda’s dream scene.
It harnesses the essence of balletic magic – a stage flooded with
moonlight and dancers in gauzy white – but peoples this traditionally
female realm with both men and women, their ordered ranks, crossing runs
and sighing spirals engendering an almost spiritual sense of the tender
with the wounded. You believe that in nursing, Raymonda really has seen
a higher purpose.
