Critics Round-up: Royal Ballet in Jewels

This pro­duc­tion opens Mon­ica Mason’s last sea­son as dir­ector of the Royal Ballet.

To recall the com­pany as it was 10 years ago, after the dread­ful year in which Ross Stretton’s dir­ect­or­ship had reduced the troupe to a con­fused and uncer­tain state – the Queen’s Golden Jubilee gala remains a night­mare for those who sat incred­u­lously through it – is to recog­nise how much Dame Mon­ica has achieved in re-invigorating the com­pany and its identity.

remembered Clem­ent Crisp in the Fin­an­cial Times. And Dame Mon­ica seems to have chosen well with Balanchine’s Jew­els to kick off the bal­let season.

Emer­alds

First up is the intro­spect­ive Emer­alds, “so restrained it was almost bash­ful” com­men­ted Mark Mon­ahan in The Tele­graph. As The Daily Express’s Car­oline Jowett over­heard in the foyer,

Emer­alds is bound to be a bit flat, the dan­cers are already on a downer because they are not in Rubies.”

Well Rubies is nat­ur­ally nearer the musical heart of 20-somethings, but Emer­alds, maybe less fun to dance, offers the greater artistic chal­lenge. The Inde­pend­ent on Sunday’s Jenny Gil­bert, loathes the piece,

Emer­alds, the Romantic opener set to second-rate Fauré, is so demure and low-key that you almost expire with long­ing for an inter­val drink. Tamara Rojo’s glim­mer­ing con­tri­bu­tion aside, it could be scrapped tomor­row and no one would mourn it.

Debra Craine in The Times thinks differently,

Emer­alds, set to Fauré, is always the hard­est to pull off. You really have to feel the uplift of its Romantic mood and the pull of its del­ic­ate finery.

But pull it off they did, said Judith Mack­rell in The Guard­ian,

[Tamara Rojo] deploys her rare legato qual­ity to del­ic­ately pas­toral effect, hint­ing at rev­erie, mis­chief and love without break­ing the spell of her dream­ing trance. [Leanne] Ben­jamin is her more play­ful baller­ina sis­ter – her quick, bright foot­work hear­ing a more spritely, fairy music in Fauré’s accom­pa­ny­ing score.

Jowett com­men­ted rather poetically,

The prin­cipal girls Tamara Rojo and Leanne Ben­jamin are won­der­fully flow­ing as they thread and weave like green rib­bons through the corps. Nehemiah Kish com­mands the stage and it would be inter­est­ing to see him tackle more demand­ing roles.

Though David Dou­gill for The Sunday Times found Kish “rather col­our­less”. Luke Jen­nings, writ­ing for The Observer, admired Rojo too, but didn’t for­get her partner,

Rojo, her­self some­thing of an enigma, has made this role her own, but praise too to [Ryoi­chi] Hir­ano, whose skil­ful, sym­path­etic part­ner­ing so elo­quently frames her performance.

Ismene Brown for The Arts Desk noted,

Tamara Rojo’s abil­ity to con­jure the most fleet­ing nuances of thought in her sen­su­ously wind­ing arms is unpar­alleled in the company.

Rubies

In com­plete con­strast is the jazzy Rubies, the crowd-pleaser of the trio.

A blaze of mus­cu­lar wit, of street­wise man­ners, of laser-cut dance shaped by New York and its take-no-prisoners energies,

says Crisp. Though Jen­nings finds the bal­let “easier to admire than to love”. Mon­ahan loved the girls,

Sarah Lamb had fun and a hand­ful of eye-widening moments, but over­all she didn’t quite cap­ture the Man­hat­tan­ite angu­lar­ity of Balanchine’s cho­reo­graphy here. By con­trast, Zenaida Yanowsky, as the Amazo­nian goose­berry, got it spot on, her phras­ing tight, ever-so-slightly brassy, and immensely watchable.

but, like oth­ers, was puzzled by Steven McRae.

My only cavil – not for the first time with him – is that there were points, espe­cially at the start, where the show­man in him took over from the bal­let dan­cer (he was an expert tap­per by the age of 12), and some cam­perie crept in. Not a ter­rible crime, but it was distracting.

As was Craine,

Steven McRae’s cock­sure atti­tude was all wrong.

Yet Crisp wrote,

In super-human and unbeat­able fash­ion, was Steven McRae, rid­ing on the crest of the dance with an insouci­ant mastery.

And Sarah Frater for The Even­ing Stand­ard thought likewise,

Steven McRae deb­uted in the bal­let and out­danced both Lamb and Yanowsky, a con­sid­er­able achieve­ment con­sid­er­ing their exper­i­ence, skill and charisma.

Horses for courses. Brown also had reser­va­tions about the company,

As in Emer­alds, the corps rather lumped its way through, the Twen­ties syn­co­pa­tions of Stravinsky’s jazzy 1929 piano Capric­cio not get­ting under anyone’s skin.

Dia­monds

In Balanchine’s trib­ute to his St Peters­burg roots, Dia­monds recalls the regal grandeur of Petipa, and Bal­anchine chose Tchaikovsky’s Pol­ish sym­phony to accom­pany the last of the three ballets.

The con­clud­ing Dia­monds I thought needed clean­ing, polishing.

thought Crisp. The cent­ral couple, though, pleased.

Alina Cojocaru and Rupert Pen­nefather never break eye con­tact as they approach each other across the stage, to wind through cho­reo­graphy that glit­ters and melts. Cojocaru fin­esses every moment with a jeweller’s art. But the audi­ence love her, too, for the pas­sion with which she pushes the cho­reo­graphy to its cli­mactic lim­its. There is beguil­ing ten­der­ness in her dan­cing, but also fire and ice.

said Mack­rell, and Frater was in agreement,

Its lead couple were Alina Cojocaru and Rupert Pen­nefather, whose pol­ish and artistry are dis­arm­ing. Cojocaru was the evening’s stand-out. As well as per­fect place­ment and eleg­ant man­ners, she con­veys a downy-soft artistic con­vic­tion that sus­tains your belief in bal­let, which is not about pretty steps or expens­ive gems, but human longing.

Cojocaru was indeed the evening’s stand-out: for Monahan,

The Romanian sylph seemed taller, stronger, lighter and faster than every­one else on stage.

for Brown,

…a jewel of an artist, a petite prin­cess of rarest sweetness…

and Dou­gill,

Alina Cojocaru is the most gor­geous jewel of the evening.

Though Dou­gill found Pen­nefather “courtly but dull”, it was Crisp who had some harsh words about both,

Alina Cojocaru and Rupert Pen­nefather do their eager, ingra­ti­at­ing best, but they seem ill at ease: the lin­eage, the grand titles, the great fam­il­ies, are not theirs.

Ingra­ti­at­ing? Ouch! But he gave the even­ing a four-star review anyway.

And let’s not for­get the sets. Hugely dis­liked from the out­set, as Mon­ahan reminds us,

Three boos, though, to Jean-Marc Puissant’s sets, which look more vul­gar with each viewing.

Craine agreed,

Jean-Marc Puissant’s designs — chan­deliers and swag cur­tains — are a dull accom­pani­ment to Bar­bara Karinska’s col­our­ful cos­tumes, and Dia­monds needs more sparkle in its look.

Finally, the music. Not an easy even­ing for the orches­tra with three such dif­fer­ent styles and moods, but Valeriy Ovsy­anikov and the Cov­ent Garden orches­tra tri­umph, says Monahan,

Three cheers to the Royal Opera House orches­tra (espe­cially the brass).

Pho­tos: all pho­to­graphs © Royal Opera House / Johan Persson

 

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