New York City Ballet star Tiler Peck has a world premiere, her first ballet choreographed for a European company. And where is the big night? In a small theatre on the edge of Leeds city centre.
That’s a minor coup for Northern Ballet and its artistic director, the former Royal Ballet dancer Federico Bonelli. While Peck is still at her peak as a dancer, she is picking up steam as a choreographer (not to mention all-round social media personality). And she’s learning fast. London audiences have already seen her piece Thousandth Orange in the Turn it Out With Tiler Peck and Friends show back in March, but this one, entitled Intimate Pages, is better.
That’s partly because she has chosen music from Janacek’s second string quartet – played live – that is simpatico with her dancing instincts, full of intricate, darting rhythms and dramatic changes of pace. Peck employs those characteristics in the dance, where quick chains of steps and turns might be cut with a lyrical phrase, or the mood moves from dark to light as if the clouds suddenly clear. Peck uses elements from her NYCB background as a Balanchine dancer: there are contemporary steps woven in with unforced ease, and moments of invention.
The 20-minute piece centres on one man (Harris Beattie) who is searching. He is yearning for love, that’s obvious (Sarah Chun is his would-be partner), but it’s more existential than that. Peck fills the small stage with four more couples, sometimes arranged as trios, in a way that is highly organised but can also feel organic in the way patterns materialise. Among the cast, Aerys Merrill deserves a mention for her sparky performance, but Beattie is the strong core of the piece, even when he’s being buffeted around the stage by his emotions.
Intimate Pages proves Peck the choreographer is not just trading on her star dancer status. In the mix of the triple bill, Bonelli has also given a platform to another dancer with a sideline in choreography: Benjamin Ella, currently a soloist at the Royal Ballet. His work Joie de Vivre has three couples promenading, courting, flirting, treading softly through a carefree summer evening in the twee way that only happens in ballet. He’s going for a Dances at a Gathering vibe (the Jerome Robbins ballet) and hasn’t quite made it, but it is pretty dancing, faithfully responsive to the music – lovely piano and violin pieces by Scriabin – and demonstrates craft.
The third piece is a 20th-century classic, Hans Van Manen’s Adagio Hammerklavier, adagio being the operative word. The dancers eke out the transitions between movements, hold positions for longer than can surely be comfortable, and in slowing everything down, intensely draw our focus. Dancers Amber Lewis and Jonathan Hanks are particularly striking, with Lewis holding a lot of intentional tension in her body, and a lid is just about kept on all their loaded emotions.
Bonelli took over the top job at Northern last year, and while the company will continue to tour its familiar dance-dramas (Beauty and the Beast and Romeo & Juliet are both coming up), this programme is a signal from Bonelli about what else he’d like to accomplish. It bodes well.
• At Northern Ballet, Leeds, until 16 September, then Linbury Studio, London, from 31 October to 2 November.
