Review: A Life in Four Seasons – unmemorable dancing to Vivaldi in Regent’s Park
Graham Watts sees A Life in Four Seasons – there was much to admire, but the production was confusing, and the choreography struggled to get beyond bland.
| Title | A Life in Four Seasons |
| Company | Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre |
| Venue | Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre |
| Date | 13 June 2026 |
| Reviewer | Graham Watts |
Hats off to applaud Drew McOnie and the team at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre for following through on their commitment to commission innovative new dance work. After the success of last year’s Dream Ballets: A Triple Bill, in celebration of the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, they have engineered this street-style interpretation of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
Hats on to avoid sunstroke, since this performance happily took place on a balmy mid-June evening, when the blanket we brought with us, in light of previous experiences, was not needed. Any performance here suffers from the risk of the weather, but gains immensely on such an evening as this, where the bucolic ambience of the woodland surroundings above and besides the stage adds a star to any show.
And to be honest, that extra star was needed here since, although there was much to admire, the overall feel of the production was confusing, and the choreography struggled to get beyond bland. Although I loved the place and the excellent cast, the production left me feeling lukewarm.
The concept of linking the performers to the idea of A Life in Four Seasons was good and interesting, and mixing artists in their spring and summer lives with those of autumn and winter (although in truth none appeared to be in that final quarter) was fascinating. Jacqui Jameson (UK Lead of the Verdon Fosse Legacy), Susan Kempster, Mark Smith and Mami Tomatani (formerly a New Adventures dancer) were the Winter quartet, and each brought a significant degree of maturity and the strongest expression to the work: Smith’s extraordinary, plasticine facial expressions resonated throughout the piece. In terms of movement quality, there was never a moment where one was aware that these were older dancers.
Taking a lead from Vivaldi’s quartet of violin concertos themed on the seasons in nature, the work was split into four sections and each season was represented by four dancers, although other members of the 16-strong ensemble weaved through the four seasons as a kind of permanent corps. Each season had a ‘Gut’, a ‘Head’ and a ‘Heart’, plus a supernumerary given the title of ‘Swing’. It wasn’t obvious to me, but I’m guessing that these terms related to the characters’ decision-making. Was an action determined by a gut feeling, the romantic ideals of the heart, or the cold rigour of the head? To cement this notion, the stage set included three plinths (looking like concrete blocks but clearly not that heavy) with ‘gut’, ‘head’ and ‘heart’ written on them.
The idea appeared to be to take these three characters and show them developing through the four seasons of life, beginning exuberantly in shorts and Doc Martens and ending with the slower, more considered movements of maturity. To help identification, each character wore the same colour outfit throughout (Heart was pink; Head was blue; and Gut was orange), although the subtle shift of age is portrayed in Ryan Dawson Laight’s costume designs for each season. Dawson Laight also designed the sets with large silhouettes of what appeared to be building facades, enabling entrances and exits to and from the stage. There seemed to be a lot of walking.
Vivaldi’s popular work was given a hip-hop makeover by DJ Walde, best known to dance audiences for his long collaborations with Kate Prince’s Zoo Nation. Although the music opened in a rather distorted way, in general he did a good job in keeping the familiarity of Vivaldi’s music but layering it with electronic beats. By necessity, the music was recorded, and it sounded a little ‘tinny’ at times.
Alexzandra Sarmiento’s choreography seemed a cocktail of commercial, musical theatre and street influences. She has some previous experience with Regent’s Park, having been assistant choreographer on Legally Blonde in 2022, and her credits are dominated by musical theatre. I didn’t feel that the choreography helped to delineate the characterisations, and none of it was especially memorable, perhaps overshadowed by the beauty of the place rather than the movement within it. The second act seemed very brief and anticlimactic, and I found it hard to deduce any meaning or conclusion from the passage of these lives, however enthusiastically they were performed.
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.
