[Review and Photo Album] The Royal Ballet School Summer Performance 2023

PHOTO ALBUM below

This year's Royal Ballet School matinee on the Opera House stage was dedicated to the memory of two former ballerinas, Dame Beryl Grey and Lynn Seymour, both alumni of the school. The programme was chosen to reflect the school's close connection with the Royal Ballet company, drawing on its choreographers, coaches and rehearsal directors. There were extracts from works by Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan and Christopher Wheeldon, as well as from Carlos Acosta's production of Don Quixote for the company. (He's done another one for Birmingham Royal Ballet.) The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Pail Murphy, played for most of the pieces on the programme.

Acosta's 2013 account of the Vision Scene from Don Quixote opened the show in extravagant designs by Tim Hatley. Upper School students from all three years (ages 16-18) were presented as a full-scale ensemble with a female corps de ballet, soloists and principals, framed by huge flowers on the backdrop – a jardin des fleurs with pretty tutus and jolly music by Minkus: bliss for lovers of 19th-century ballets and proud parents and teachers.

In this version, Don Quixote (Ravi Cannonier-Watson) mingles with the dryads instead of slumping in sleep: it's his fantasy, after all. Milda Luckute was an imperious Queen of the Dryads with a buoyant jump; Taeryeong Kim as Kitri/Dulcinea had impressive control of her balances and Italian fouettés; Katie Robertson was a fleet-footed Amour. The corps of 14 young women and ten demi-soloists made good use of the large stage – useful experience for pre-professional students.  All 24 graduates have contracts, with six joining the Royal Ballet as Aud Jebsen Young Dancer apprentices.

Later in the programme, many of the same female Upper School members performed the prologue from MacMillan's The Four Seasons, joined by male students from the 1st and 2nd years. The school's publicity and programme information misleadingly implied that this was the complete 1975 one-act ballet. In fact, the prologue has nothing to do with the seasons. The corps dancers in the original production were intended to be travellers meeting outside an inn called Le Quatre Stagione. Most were dressed as Italian peasants, while some of the men were soldiers. Soloists then emerged to represent the seasons, to music from Verdi operas. The Summer pas de deux has sometimes been done as a gala number. And Wayne Sleep, who yesterday celebrated his 75th birthday with a performance in the Linbury Theatre, was memorable in an Autumn solo of incredible speed.

The school's revival of the prologue (last performed in 2017) has the young women in simple dresses, the men in shirts and tights. The girls start by clustering together in drifting bourrées, breaking away to extend a hand for a prospective suitor to kiss. The men bound and beat together in a semi-militaristic fashion, though there's no indication that they are soldiers. The choreography was designed to display the abilities of the company's award-winning corps, as if MacMillan needed to prove that he was capable of challenging them as classical dancers, not just as the usual brothel revellers in his 3-act ballets.

Different challenges awaited the 3rd year graduates in excerpts from Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour, with its quirky variations on academic choreography. There's a suggestion of oriental influences in the women's quartet with flexed wrists and feet and in the swaying, pulsing ensemble in the finale. Two men (Guillem Cabrera Espinach and Caspar Lench) competed in counterpoint, very accurately. Sierra Glasheen and Blake Smith performed the central pas de deux, in which she has her back to him most of the time, ending with her lying on top of him, facing upwards, at the end. Wheeldon specialises in making ungainly elements in duets appear lyrical. The graduates looked spectacular in Jasper Conran's shimmering minimalist costumes.

Upper and lower school students combined in an account of August Bournonville's 1849 Konservatoriet (from Act I), mounted by former Royal Danish Ballet dancer Diana Cuni Mancini. The delightful set was borrowed from the Royal Danish Ballet's 1965 production. A view has obviously been taken that it's acceptable for today's dancers to raise their legs much higher than the decorous levels observed in Bournonville's day. Simple pirouettes from second position pose problems, as do fast linking steps. When the little ones from White Lodge joined in, feet not yet fully trained, it became clear how demanding the Bournonville style is to master. The pas de trois for the ballet master, Ptolemy Gidney, and his favourite pupils, Aurora Chinchilla and Erle Østraat, was nicely done by Upper School 1st years, without modern flourishes. (Great names for promising dancers!)

White Lodge youngsters from Years 7-11 (ages 9-15) were given ample chance to perform in Hora la Aninoasa, a suite of Romanian folk dances arranged and choreographed by Tom Bosma, a folk-dance specialist. Each year group performed dances from a different region, coming together for a rousing finale, arms and shoulders linked. Two boys, Nika Skribiana and Logan James, battled it out with batons in a virtuoso duet. There were hints of Les Noces in a dance on either side of a courting couple. Since these youngsters coped splendidly en masse with complicated rhythms played on unfamiliar Romanian folk instruments (recorded), they'd have no problems with Stravinsky's score for Les Noces, should they be lucky enough in future to dance in Bronislava Nijinska's wonderful ballet.

Behind Hora La Aninoasa with Tom Bosma, by Hannah Cook

Contemporary dance choreography for Upper School students came from Mikaela Polley, Fast Blue, and Goyo Montero, Bold. Thank goodness both pieces were upbeat instead of gloomily angst ridden. Polley, RBS alumna and former Birmingham Royal Ballet dancer, collaborated with 19 young men in ballet-based moves to a string quartet by Elena Kats-Chernin, the Soviet-born Australian composer. A sinuous solo was performed in silence by Austen McDonald to his own rhythms, before being joined by sleekly dressed cohorts, darting across the stage like arrows. There was nothing militaristic about their choreography, which involved male partnering and group lifts. As one of the 1st year dancers remarked in an interview, they experienced how their female partners would want to feel in conventional pas de deux.

Montero's Bold was originally made for this year's Prix de Lausanne competitors from 24 different countries. It's confrontational, involving shouting, flailing and aggressive co-operation by a black-clad horde. At one point, a slightly built girl resembles a sacrificial victim, fallen in front of a block of uncaring youngsters semaphoring mysteriously with hands and wrists. Though the threatening ‘hive-mind' groupings are ingenious, the rhythms of Owen Belton's commissioned score are less interesting than the Romanian folk music. Bold serves its purpose as release of energy for youngsters who don't have to worry about technical perfection.

Most of the large works in the programme provided few opportunities for stand-out performances in solos or duets. Jiri Kylian's whimsical Sechs Tänze (1986) allows 11 dancers to make grotesque clowns of themselves to Mozart's Six German Dances. Apparently Kylian's intention was to contrast the lightness of the music, and Mozart's childish silliness, with the disasters of the world around us. Really? Feisty girls are treated as rag dolls to be thrown around by male poltroons, all pulling funny faces. Not many laughs from my part of the audience.

The tear-inducing final pas de deux from Ashton's The Two Pigeons was included as a tribute to Lynn Seymour, who was so poignant as the Young Girl in the 1962 ballet. Lia Fan, 3rd year, got the fluttering bird imagery just right, tenderly supported by Tom Hazelby. She goes to the National Ballet of Canada, he to Birmingham Royal Ballet II.

Caspar Lench, who will join the Aud Jebsen apprentice programme, performed a solo that he originally did for the school's Lynn Seymour Prize for the most expressive dancer. He learnt Robert Battle's Takademe from a video and was then coached via Zoom by Kanji Segawa of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. Choreographed by Battle for himself in 1999 (he's now artistic director of the company), it was made for a confined space. Lench was able to let rip on the Opera House stage, responding in his own way to the Kathak-style vocalisations of Sheila Chandra's recording.

Appreciative applause for his compelling performance was soon swamped by the audience's enthusiasm for the Grand Défilé that has ended RBS Opera House matinees since 2001 (apart from Covid restrictions). All the school members enter in turn to Czerny's Etudes music until the stage is filled with aspiring dancers and their teachers. It's a joyous sight, as is the crowd of family and friends thronging outside the stage door.

PHOTO ALBUM – The Royal Ballet School Summer Performance 2023

Don Quixote

Fast Blue

Hora La Aninosasa

The Four Seasons

Sechs Tänze

Konservatoriet

BOLD

Within The Golden Hour

The Two Pigeons

Takademe

Grand Défilé

Jann Parry

Jann Parry, former dance critic of The Observer (1983-2004), has written for many publications as a freelance, and has contributed to radio and TV documentaries about dancers.

She is the author of the award-winning biography Different Drummer, the life of Kenneth MacMillan (2009).