English National Ballet’s autumn season opened at Sadler’s Wells with four impeccably executed classics from the last hundred years, each technically razor sharp and visually dazzling. Yet for all its shine, the evening felt more like polishing heirloom silver than laying it out for feast: a careful preservation of the discipline’s established past rather than the spirit of rupture suggested by its title R:EVOLUTION.
Opening the programme, George Balanchine’s 1947 ‘Theme and Variations’ condensed the noble hierarchies and formal academic language of classical ballet into a dexterous half an hour package. His neoclassical choreography harked back to the splendour of the 19th century, recalling a style once favoured by imperial Russia’s gilded elite. The ensemble is effortless in their movements, creating symmetrical patterns that rotate to capture their resplendent traditional tutus, whilst guided by the reliable baton of musical director Maria Seletskaja. Alice Mariani is the crown jewel in the lead role, her limbs rippling with muscle as she glides across the stage like wax which hardens into unwavering pirouettes, développés and arabesques.
Also premiering in 1947, Martha Graham’s ‘Errand into the Maze’ stood in stark contrast to the enchantment of Balachine’s performance. Severe and angular, this piece adapts the Greek myth of Ardiadne and the Minotaur into a surrealist duet, redefining dance in the 20th century through rawness and unflinching human vulnerability. An exercise in binaries, physically marked by white string on the floor, the piece incisively interrogates the female and male experience, expressing fear and desire, purity and transgression, lust and love through movement. Its choreography is conceived in stark black and white, evoking a yin-and-yang duality reminiscent of a Kurosawa-esque cinematic sensibility. Particularly fantastic is Minotaur character Rentaro Nakaaki whose movements are atrophied by a pole slid between his shoulders to make his gestures carnal to combat Emily Suzuki’s weightless and petite frame.
Following a brief interval, the curtains raised to William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman, a quintet choregraphed 45 years on from Balanchine. Forsythe gleefully dismantles the rigid ballet vocabulary that Balanchine so stridently codified, transforming centuries of strict tradition into a playful and subversive performance. The choreography toys with voyeurism, presenting a layered hierarchy of spectatorship. One dancer sweeps across the stage while the other four observe with a playful casualness that feels unscripted. Yet beneath this seeming spontaneity lies a meticulously curated precision where every move is hyper curated. The audience, watching the dancers who are themselves watching, is drawn into this complex interplay of looking and being looked at resulting in a compelling tension between freedom and control, spontaneity and design. Recalling the Bauhaus movement with their asymmetrical formation and blood orange leotards, the quintet deliver a bold, jaw dropping performance – one of the programme’s strongest.
The final performance was David Dawson’s 2023 Four Last Songs which unfolded to Strauss’s haunting score, with Madeleine Pierard’s soaring vibrato commanding the stage. The dancers move with impeccable line and sculptural precision, yet the work lacks the intensity of the pieces that precede it. Pale, near-invisible costumes strip the movement of drama, and the performers seem subdued in the shadow of Pierard’s voice. While musically enthralling, the choreography struggles to hold the audience, leaving the piece feeling elegant but emotionally distant.
The season enthralled in technique and spectacle, yet only Forsythe’s playful subversions hint at the radical reinvention R:EVOLUTION suggests, leaving heritage and tradition firmly in the spotlight.
Review by Florence Marling
Sadler’s Wells 1 – 11 October
Photo Credit :
English National Ballet dancers performing George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations-©-Photography-by-ASH
Swanice Luong performing Herman Schmerman Quintet-© Photography by ASH-2
Emily Suzuki and Rentaro Nakaaki performing Martha Graham’s Errand into the Maze-©-Photography by ASH
Emma Hawes and Aitor Arrieta in David Dawsons Four Last Songs ©-Photography-by ASH-2
For upcoming performances visit:
English National Ballet Sadler’s Wells Sadler’s Wells East
Read Florence’s latest review KC and the Sunshine Band Brought Back to Life in Lisa Steven’s Disco Fever Spectacle – Charring Cross Theatre, until 15 November – Abundant Art
