Tamara Rojo’s triumphant tenure at English National Ballet ends later this year – she’s off to shake things up in San Francisco. Her last hurrah – and her directing and choreographing debut – reboots a neglected classic. Raymonda (1898) was a late work by Marius Petipa, the genius choreographer behind Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Despite a sumptuous score, it was sunk by a shonky plot.
Rojo transports the tale from the crusades to the Crimean War, restoring the original choreography alongside other Petipa gems and linking passages of her own. She also gives the passive heroine a spine and a vocation, making Raymonda resemble Florence Nightingale and giving her more than romance to worry about.
A prologue shows Raymonda bored at home, deep in her newspaper while mother and sisters embroider pointedly beside her. When her fiancé, John de Bryan (an ardent Isaac Hernández), enlists for the Crimea she shrugs on a scarlet coat and bounds after him, on a mission of her own. In Sevastopol, troops display dash and discipline; cheerful nurses in red-edged aprons tend the wounded. John tries to distract Raymonda from nursing, but her attention drifts, however scissored his leaps and elegant his line.
Distraction arrives with pulse-raising Ottoman prince Abdur Rahman (Jeffrey Cirio), with his emphatic turns, killer cheekbones and unsettling bursts of speed. Suddenly, our heroine is all attention.
Raymonda is a quietly exacting role, pushing doubts into poise. The supremely pliant Shiori Kase gives her an unhurried, tilting grace in public, but privately digs into her tug-of-love tussle. Glazunov’s score is a stunner, and the orchestra under Gavin Sutherland relishes its lush and sparkling textures. Rojo and her designers (sets, which make imaginative but sparing use of video projection, and costumes are by Antony McDonald) create enthralling scenes, notably a dream where pleated paper lanterns cast a firefly glow as dancers swoop and scamper, building a tender collage of casualty and care.
The emotional temperature only rises during a party in Abdur’s tent – even Raymonda’s rose-toned frock looks like it’s blushing – until a concerned nun (the splendid Precious Adams, a still point in the ballet’s busy world) recalls her engagement – and, more importantly, de Bryan returns traumatised from a disastrous mission to the front.
Then it’s back to England for the wedding. This last act is all we usually see of Raymonda in the UK, a gaudy riot of show-off dance. McDonald’s costumes disdain bling for soft-hued texture, and Rojo works with screenwriter Lucinda Coxon (The Danish Girl) to keep a firm hold on the story.
As an onstage cimbalon plays an eerie, deliberate melody, Raymonda circles on pointe, alone and untouchable. She’s dancing on tenterhooks and I can’t remember the last time I felt genuinely tense as a classical ballet neared its close. Will Raymonda go through with a polite but passion-free marriage to John? Will Abdur intervene? What isn’t in question is the success of ENB’s handsome, ample and engrossing show.
