Sadler’s Wells Theatre,
London
2nd and 5th October 2024
The performance date for each work reviewed is given after its title.
Stuart Sweeney
NBoC returned to Sadler’s Wells after a gap of eleven years. Hope Muir has been Artistic Director since 2022 and commissioned work from a number of international choreographers, including David Dawson and Sol León / Paul Lightfoot. However, Muir used this visit to celebrate Canada’s choreographers with three varied pieces.
Harrison James and Heather Ogden in Angels’ Atlas.
Photo by Johan Persson
The programme closed with Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas (2nd Oct.). Wagner originated the term Gesamtkunstwerk, meaning total theatre, and Angels’ Atlas epitomises the term, with a combination of lighting, music, choreography and dancers of the highest quality. And, for the first time in my 25-year reviewing career, I will begin with a description of the lighting. Tom Visser has a strong track record of providing ever-shifting abstract lighting patterns in works such as Pite’s Revisor. This time, Jay Gower Taylor, the regular stage designer for Pite, came up with an idea called reflective light and worked with Vissar to implement it onstage. Multiple strands of light blossom at the back of the stage, creating an almost 3-D effect. If one focuses on the dance for too long, you see the lighting has metamorphosised and you wonder, “What did I miss?”
Pite writes that the reflected light patterns were an inspiration, “Looking at that wall of reflective moving light, it looked to me like a portrait of the unknown. It looked to me like something benign and intelligent and otherworldly. It looked like a frontier or a portal.” Angel’s Atlas opens with the strands of light slowly descending for a minute or so and when we see the stage, there are over thirty dancers lying on the floor.
Large scale ensemble dance is a feature of the work and, throughout, the synchronisation of the dancers is impressive. One theme, to Owen Belton’s rhythmic soundscape, shows the dancers using their hands to indicate heartbeats and the intensity of living. At other times the ensemble crosses the stage and then one by one collapse. For variation, we see couples alone on the stage in flowing movement, often with one partner collapsing and the grief of the other. One grieving dancer walks slowly across the back of the stage with a single vertical, constantly varying shard of reflected light following their progress.
A featured dancer is Siphesihle November, who exemplifies Pite’s emotionally charged choreography. His own story is noteworthy. Born in a South African township, a ballet teacher saw his street dancing and invited him to her classes. Sponsored by a Canadian family, he attended the National Ballet School from the age of eleven. At 17, he joined NBoC and four years later was promoted to Principal. In the final stages of Angels’ Atlas his expressive movement captures Pite’s depiction of loss.
Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium provide slow, atmospheric accompaniment to several scenes. Angels’ Atlas is a remarkable work and Crystal Pite has once again shown why she is one of the most revered choreographers working today.
Artists of NBoC from another performance of islands
Photo by Karolina Kuras
islands (5th Oct.) was Emma Portner’s first work for a ballet company. Keen to explore new directions, she contemplated the iconic dress for women in ballet, the tutu, which always separates the dancers. She decided on a costume joining two women at the waist, which features in the first of the works three parts. With rapid movement to jagged music, Alexandra MacDonald and Hannah Galway perform Portner’s exuberant, innovative choreography. Rapid, synchronised hand movements feature with their bodies moving together and then opposed. I smiled as the two bodies joined on the floor with one dancer sitting with her legs tucked away, on the legs of the other, apparently making one person.
Then the joined trousers come off and the mood changes with an emotional as well as physical connection between the pair. Again, the movement is eye-catching, but I struggled with the sudden shift to an affectionate duet. On reflection, perhaps it is a consequence of the freedom to move. Created for Norwegian Ballet, I suspect we are going to see more of Emma Portner’s work for ballet companies searching for distinctive alternatives to the usual repertory.
NBoC artists from another performance of Passion.
Photo by Bruce Zinger
The opening work was Passion (5th Oct.) by James Kudelka, NBoC’s AD from 1996-2005 and a prolific choreographer. The work explores an intriguing idea, contrasting love duets in classical style and contemporary ballet. In the latter pairing, Josh Hall and Monika Haczkiewicz get the better deal. Their intense partnership, with Haczkiewicz’s legs swinging wide, then wrapping around Hall’s back and his lifts holding the inside of her thigh, reflect the passion of the title. Keaton Leier and Koto Ishihara perform their classical steps beautifully. Ishihara does her best to establish chemistry with her partner, with quick looks in his direction whenever she can, but Kudelka’s choreography gives the classical couple few opportunities to express love. Nowhere do we have a sense of the intense love scenes in ballets such as Swan Lake and Giselle.
Two more classical couples enter from time to time and five corps be ballet women weave their way around the stage at regular intervals. As if in a parallel universe to the other dancers, Haczkiewicz and Hall watch each other from opposite sides of the stage or weave between the others, their separations and reconciliations providing some narrative. However, there is much repetition in Kudelka’s choreography and the contrast between the two styles is uneasy rather than revelatory. I suspect there must be more successful works from Kudelka’s oeuvre.
Overall, a successful visit with the astonishing Angels’ Atlas, a look to a possible future with islands and fine dancing throughout from NBoC. Come back soon!
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