Pam Tanowitz's run at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre with The Royal Ballet with a revival of Everyone Keeps Me as well as her second world premiere of the season for the company, Secret Things, has just come to an end – and the critics were delighted.
The evening in the Linbury also showed Anthoula Syndica-Drummond's filmed version of Dispatch Duet, which Tanowitz created for the company in November 2022, with Anna Rose O'Sullivan and William Bracewell.
Tanowitz's new work, Secret Things, is a ballet for eight dancers set to Grammy-nominated composer Anna Clyne's Breathing Statues.
Teresa Guerriero for Culture Whisper:
Her new Royal Ballet commission, Secret Things, hit all the right spots in the minds and hearts of the sold-out Linbury Theatre, and threw new light on her first piece for the company, Everyone Keeps Me.
Louise Levene for the Financial Times:
All three pieces fizzed with wit and invention and were danced to the hilt by 19 young soloists at the Linbury Theatre, many of whom have been blushing (almost) unseen in the ensemble: a powerful reminder of the company's strength in depth.
SECRET THINGS
Composer ANNA CLYNE
Costume Design VICTORIA BARTLETT
Lighting and Scenic Design CLIFTON TAYLOR
Staging and Répétiteur DEIRDRE CHAPMAN
Assistant to the Choreographer MELISSA TOOGOOD
String Quartet KAORU YAMADA, KATHRYN SPENCER, FIONA BONDS, LAUREN STEEL
Dancers: LIAM BOSWELL, MICA BRADBURY, ANNETTE BUVOLI, BRAYDEN GALLUCCI, HANNAH GRENNELL, NADIA MULLOVA-BARLEY, GIACOMO ROVERO, FRANCISCO SERRANO
Debra Craine in The Times:
Clyne's strident composition is called Breathing Statues, which seems to be the clue as to how Tanowitz handles the eight dancers (minimally dressed with sparkle and colour) who act like statues let out to play at night when no one is looking.
Roslyn Sulcas for The New York Times:
Tanowitz never appears to be choreographing to the music, but her choices of movement, groupings and focus are often quietly dramatic in relationship to the score. Sometimes she registers musical repetition in the choreography; sometimes she ignores it or works counterintuitively against a large sound with low-stakes gesture: a little foot shuffle, a neck roll.
One of the many wonderful aspects of “Secret Things” is how its eight dancers, mostly from the corps de ballet, emerge as distinctive personalities without being presentational. To put it simply, they are just doing the movement, not telling us they are doing the movement.
Teresa Guerriero:
Secret Things is a 25-minute piece for eight dancers set to a string quartet by Anna Clyne. As the house lights go down, a solitary dancer – Hannah Grennell – stands in front of the musicians, before slowly making her way to the stage.
Her costume, colourful, blingy, her sequined leotard covered by translucent yellow organza (costume designer Victoria Bartlett) hints at playfulness, though, as in all Tanowitz works, her face remains expressionless. Wearing turquoise pointe shoes, her feet appear to search for new ways of moving. Up. Down. Flex. Fast bourrée.
She is joined by other dancers, in a ceaseless assembly of groupings that form and dissolve to reform in a kaleidoscope of shape and colour.
DISPATCH DUET (FILM)
Composer TED HEARNE
Costume Design REID BARTELME and HARRIET JUNG
Director ANTHOULA SYNDICA-DRUMMOND
Staging and Répétiteur DEIRDRE CHAPMAN
Assistant to the Choreographer MELISSA TOOGOOD
Dancers: ANNA ROSE O'SULLIVAN, WILLIAM BRACEWELL
Graham Watts for Bach Track:
The filmed interlude of Dispatch Duet, danced by Anna Rose O'Sullivan and William Bracewell and directed by Anthoula Syndica-Drummond, was like a refreshing sorbet between courses of a gourmet meal. The editing was superb as the same choreography flowed seamlessly from shot-to-shot across many different locations, both backstage and front-of-house, in The Royal Opera House.
Rupert Christiansen for The Spectator:
As an interlude came a witty film of the scorching Dispatch Duet, first seen last November on the main stage, taking William Bracewell and Anna Rose O'Sullivan on a breakneck journey round the opera house, dancing off stage in sparky competition, on stairs and in foyers and passages before vanishing into a lift. It's a firecracker. And Tanowitz, let me repeat, is the real, rare thing: no concept, no plots, no claptrap.
Louise Levene:
The evening's centrepiece is a film of Dispatch Duet, the dazzling seven-minute duet that was the highlight of last November's Diamond Celebration, marking the 60th anniversary of the Friends of the Royal Opera House. Tanowitz's choreography ransacks the repertoire for bravura flourishes: javelin jetés for Anna Rose O'Sullivan, a grand pirouette for fellow principal William Bracewell. The live performances had made a feature of Covent Garden's gilded auditorium, bathing the proscenium in light. Anthoula Syndica-Drummond's smart, funny film takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the whole theatre, relocating the dance to the foyers, bars and back staircases.
EVERYONE KEEPS ME
Composer TED HEARNE
Costume Design FAY FULLERTON
Lighting Design CLIFTON TAYLOR
Staging and Répétiteur DEIRDRE CHAPMAN
Assistant to the Choreographer MELISSA TOOGOOD
String Quartet KAORU YAMADA, KATHRYN SPENCER, FIONA BONDS, LAUREN STEEL
Dancers: LUC FOSKETT, JOONHYUK JUN, HARRISON LEE, ISABEL LUBACH, TAISUKE NAKAO, VIOLA PANTUSO, HANNA PARK, AMELIA TOWNSEND, MARIANNA TSEMBENHOI
Sanjoy Roy for The Guardian:
Everyone Keeps Me, a reprise of Tanowitz's first Royal Ballet work, made in 2019 for the Merce Cunningham centenary, casts its own special spell. Without acting or emoting, its subtleties of feeling and significance emerge through form, shape and effort. A duet of halting jumps, strictly timed and repeated, becomes a gentle yet exacting form of play. A series of poised, backward steps requires so much care that their execution becomes a kind of introspection. Circles and lines are not only figures, but forms of togetherness. The choreographer's craft, in action.
Debra Craine:
The programme ends with a welcome revival of Everyone Keeps Me, the piece Tanowitz made for the Royal in 2019. No pointe shoes here but more emotional engagement in a piece that pays tribute to Merce Cunningham's aesthetics — multiple focal points, pop-up jumps and gender-neutral movement — while giving the nine dancers a chance to show how stately, strange and seductive they can be.
Roslyn Sulcas:
The final piece, “Everyone Keeps Me,” also to a Hearne score, was a quiet triumph for Tanowitz at its 2019 premiere, and it looks even better three years later. Like “Secret Things,” the work is lighted with painterly beauty by Clifton Taylor, and offers a cascade of dance imagery, from limpid Cunningham-esque balances to Nijinsky's “L'Après-midi d'un Faune.” One of the mysteries of Tanowitz's work is how she uses similar ingredients to make very different pieces. Perhaps because she is always humbly responsive to the here and now, working hard at what she loves: dancers and the dance.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
