Review: Liudmila Konovalova guests in New English Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker

The Sainsbury Theatre at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), in Baron’s Court, hosted the London premiere of New English Ballet Theatre’s cut-down version of The Nutcracker. It’s not a theatre much used for dance, although it is a venue with great significance to ballet since this was the home of The Royal Ballet School for many years during the last century.

This touring production of The Nutcracker (it travelled to London from a brief season in The Bahamas) has been choreographed for just fourteen dancers by Valentino Zucchetti, one of the most musical of the new generation of internationally acclaimed choreographers. While his movement aligns so well with Tchaikovsky’s scintillating score, it was a pity that the uncredited recording halted abruptly from time to time. The setting for the first act house party was in modern times.   

The small cast doubled up in several roles, but necessity is often the mother of invention, and it was the first interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s score that I have experienced with men as well as women performing as snowflakes, an innovation that seemed very natural for modern times. And with apologies for my curmudgeonly impression of Scrooge, it was also a performance refreshingly devoid of children.

Zucchetti’s production also enjoyed the stellar presence of guest artist Liudmila Konovalova, a beloved principal at Vienna State Ballet since 2011 (and its guest soloist for this season) and arguably one of the great prima ballerinas of recent years. Konovalova danced the joint roles of Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy with that seductive, sophisticated combination of pristine, disciplined technique; gentle, expressive port de bras; and elegant, unhurried artistry. She is a ballerina that one watches with bated breath. Her cavalier was the exceptionally tall Luca De Poli, who was an attentive partner, always presenting Konovalova in the best possible way, although his own brief variation was unremarkable.

Several emerging dancers caught my eye. Audrey Nelson, formerly with The Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, was a delightful Snow Queen; Leila White performed a sensual version of the Arabian dance, here recast as the Coffee Pot duet, with Nicholas Rose who was an imposing presence throughout the ballet; and Emily Pohl gave an ebullient solo in the Fan dance.

Under the enthusiastic and ambitious leadership of its founder, artistic and executive director, Karen Pilkington-Miksa, NEBT is an adventurous young company with comparatively little resources, performing on small stages with the bare minimum of dancers. Tellingly, much of the programme for this performance was taken up with lots in a fundraising silent auction, including an impressive bronze statue of Natalia Makarova, captured in a graceful performance backbend from Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances, sculpted by Pilkington-Miksa herself. I hope it went to a good home for a goodly sum!

As if this these pressures were not challenging enough, the company suffered a cancelled return flight from The Bahamas and not all scheduled dancers made it back in time (the backdrop and costumes only arrived a matter of hours before the performance) but, in spite of all this (plus the inevitable jetlag) and in true “the-show-must-go-on” tradition, they still put on an excellent show and the intimacy of the space made the performance a memorable and almost immersive experience. And as a mighty bonus, any opportunity to experience Konovalova’s exquisite artistry in London (she still lives in Vienna) is to be savoured.

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.