Review: Lithuanian National Ballet’s triple bill, Bodies and Codes

There is a special skill in curating a meaningful triple bill of unrelated ballets and this new programme, enigmatically entitled Bodies and Codes, presented an excellent alchemic example of adding even more value to three already excellent works. Although the programme itself was new, its ingredients were well tried and tested, each element being an acclaimed one-act work, created elsewhere and already performed in separate programmes by the Lithuanian company. Their familiarity with complex and diverse choreography was clear to see.  

The mix brought together Wayne McGregor‘s innovation in ballet through Infra (2008); the emotional intensity of Flesh (2011), the choreographic debut of Iván Pérez at Nederlands Dans Theater; and Krzysztof Pastor’s neoclassical blast of Moving Rooms (also 2008), originally made for Dutch National Ballet. Closing the programme with his ballet had an added significance since Pastor led the Lithuanian company from 2011 to 2020.

The title of Bodies and Codes reflected the different choreographic style of each work, offering idiosyncratic physical movement languages and emotional articulation, although there were also common themes of hyper-flexibility, floor-based movement, the physicality of complex lifts, contrasting elements of melancholia and passionate intensity and similarities in lighting design and costuming that spread across the programme. Each work was also characterised by powerful heterosexual duets.

I have seen Infra many times, and it is tempting to recall it only through reference to Julian Opie’s electronic walkers, traversing the LED screen above the stage in an ongoing flow, and to the crowd of real people that cross the stage towards the end, like a throng heading for the bus station during rush hour, passing and ignoring a traumatised woman. These are all important elements of McGregor’s treatise on the anonymity of individual citizens within a busy city, thoughts that coincided with the London bombings of 2005. Max Richter’s fascinating score juxtaposes the sounds of indistinct radio transmissions, distant train whistles and sonar noise with his haunting, minimalist orchestral composition.

Infra is a work for six couples, abstractly taking the audience on a journey through several successive duets, including the central device of simultaneous downstage pas de deux, performed in Lucy Carter’s lighting design of small square boxes. McGregor’s choreography incorporates his trademark sweeping arms, expanded steps and hyper-flexible extensions for individual dancers, although this articulation of his art of movement is routinely softened through the closeness and sentimentality of that partnering. There are many reasons why Infra is one of McGregor’s most enduring and successful works.

These twelve dancers gave a stunning performance that made the work seem freshly minted, amongst whom Nora Straukaitė was a memorable soloist. A mention is also due to Edvinas Jakonis, formerly a soloist with English National Ballet, who – prior to this performance – was presented onstage with the company’s male soloist of the year award, necessitating a very quick change for Infra. Incidentally, the female soloist of the year is 19-year-old Ieva Repšytė, clearly one to watch for the future.  

As with Opie’s digital people, Flesh also has a vivid, singular design image, being a huge steak knife with the tip apparently embedded in the reflective black floor. This is a visual articulation of Keith Douglas’ World War Two poem, The Knife, read in an enigmatic recording by Biruté Mar, opening under cover of darkness. Although that text is in Lithuanian, the elegiac mood was significantly conveyed via the haunting, whispering quality of her voice (helpfully the programme also carried the poem’s original English text).

Pérez created the work shortly after the death of his parents and the eight dancers strongly articulated this emotional intensity, especially through two impactful duets, first by Marija Kastorina and Imanol Sastre, followed by Kristina Gudžiūnaitė and Ignas Armalis, including a long transported kiss that must closely rival the length and intensity of that in the central pas de deux from Angelin Preljocaj’s Le Parc!  

Moving Rooms is another enduring masterpiece, which has been performed regularly around Europe since its creation almost twenty years ago. It is so packed with Pastor’s modern interpretation of classical movement that it seemed much longer than its twenty minutes. The ballet has no intended narrative other than the pure interplay of dance with the music (a seamless tapestry of work by Alfred Schnittke and Henryk Górecki), and Bert Dalhuysen’s striking lighting designs with the dancers starkly lit from above, often performing in close-knit squares and rectangles of bright light.

Pastor also focused the movement on duets with five couples augmented by a soloist (Aiden Bazylinski) and with a principal pairing of Olesia Šaitanova and Jonas Laucius distinguished by their black costumes and powerful partnering (their entrance from stage left was reminiscent of Odile and Siegfried in the black swan pas de deux).

The whole eleven-strong ensemble attacked the sophisticated and often fast-paced movement with a confident and vigorous flair. The impactful and abrupt ending seemed like an emphatic full stop to a splendid articulation of the company’s formidable strength, which is a great credit to Jurgita Dronina, just over a year into her role as artistic director, and her excellent artistic team.

All photos by Laima Arlauskaitė.

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.