Light of Passage
(Picture: ©Tristram Kenton)If the world wasn’t terrible, this wouldn’t be the Royal Ballet’s first full-length work by a female choreographer in almost 30 years. Crystal Pite’s commission is long overdue and the Canadian choreographer – a contemporary dance whizz for whom classical companies clamour – creates a tender ballet about gateway states of being, set to Henryk Górecki’s pulsing Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
Flight Pattern, Pite’s 2017 Olivier-winner prompted by the refugee crisis, opens the evening. Thirty-six dancers form a huddled mass, alternately with heads thrown back or bodies hunched forward, swaying between hope and dejection.
