Dutch National Ballet (live stream), 19/12/2020
Christmas Gala
Artists of Dutch National Ballet
Dutch Ballet Orchestra
Matthew Rowe
After the excellent multiple bill programme Dutch National Ballet presented in livestream at the end of November, I was very keen to see this Christmas gala performance and, once again, the company delighted with a generous and varied celebration of entirely 20th and 21st century choreography, no matter how classical some of it may have looked.
A celebration it certainly was, and got off to a sparkling start with substantial extracts from Balanchine's Who Cares?, set to songs by Gershwin in orchestral arrangement by Hershy Kay. It's an abstract ballet in that it has no story in and of itself, but it's a love song to Broadway, with its Jazz Age-inspired costumes and plenty of showbiz pzazz. The 10-strong corps and four soloists were bright, crisp and perky, with a sweetly seductive duet on "The Man I Love" for Jessica Xuan and Martin ten Kortenaar in nicely calculated constrast.
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| Martin ten Kortenaar, Jessica Xuan "The Man I Love", Who Cares? Dutch National Ballet (screenshot, 2020) |
The programme then settled into a sequence of pas de deux, starting with the first of the two creations for tonight's event, Echoes of Tomorrow, by Wubkje Kuindersma, set to a melancholy violin and piano piece by Valentin Silvestrov. Kuindersma is a Dutch dancer-turned-choreographer with strong links to Dutch National Ballet. The company programme provided a brief explanation of the idea behind this choreography, but I can't say I saw it, and the piece as a whole did not leave much of an impact on me, though it was, I think, well danced by Salome Leverashvili and Timothy van Poucke. It certainly quickly lost whatever memorability it might have had, given that it was followed by an explosive duet from Wayne McGregor's Chroma, now widely considered a contemporary classic. This was vividly interpreted by Maia Makhateli and Vito Mazzeo, and set to a jagged, fierce adaptation of The White Stripes songs by Joby Talbot.
It's been a very long time since I've seen the Grand pas classique, maybe 40 years. I'd certainly forgotten the choreographer, Victor Gsovsky, though elements of the choreography came back to me as I watched, notably the female variation which is quite a popular competition piece. The conspicuous thing about the Adagio is the sheer number of unsupported one-point balances the ballerina is required to perform - it must have been a speciality of Yvette Chauviré's, who was a pupil of Gsovsky and for whom he created this piece. Note to cameraman - do not close in on the dancers when the ballerina is preparing to let go her partner's hand prior to such a balance, because it's invariably delicate, and the hands shake which, close up, looks even more precarious than it already is! At any rate, Xuan and Jakob Feyferlik did not perfectly accomplish that fiendish move in the middle of the Adagio where, after one such balance, she has to drop to one knee at the same time as her partner who has just done a tour en l'air, and that three times in succession, but, well, it's one of those things which is a) exceptionally rare, b) takes your breath away done properly and c) tells you you're in the presence of really extraordinary talent, and not just good dancing when it is pulled off correctly. Xuan got it the first time (which is already a major feat), but not the subsequent two. Apart from that, however, this was a fine homage to the Imperial Russian style, and the variations and coda were also performed with flair.
The second creation of the evening was David Dawson's Metamorphosis I, to piano music by Philip Glass. This is a work in progress, there is more to come if and when conditions permit, but this first part is a fluid, sometimes painful duet between Anna Ol and James Stout, hopeful yet uncertain, and I'd be curious to see the whole work when it's done. Though it was interesting however, it paled in comparison with the bold and vital choreography of Hans van Manen, and "Vayamos al Diablo" from his 5 Tangos. Van Manen is perhaps the defining voice of Dutch choreography, more than anyone else he put the country, and the company with which he so often collaborated, on the dance map with his striking, vivid choreography, and 5 Tangos has lost none of its appeal after over 40 years. Artur Shesterikov was the soloist here, not as incisive as I like to see, but still good.
While Van Manen forged the path ahead in choreography, the company itself owes as much, and maybe more, to Rudi van Dantzig, dancer, choreographer and director of the Dutch National Ballet for 22 years. His choreography is not well known in Britain at all, and I do not know what kind of circulation it has outside the Netherlands, but it remains at the heart of the company's repertory. His Romeo en Julia was created in 1967 and then revised in 1976, the original post-dating MacMillan's much more famous version by two years. It's difficult to see almost any version of Romeo and Juliet without comparing it to MacMillan; in the Balcony Scene shown here, there's a naïvety and innocence that MacMillan's characters don't have. On the other hand, there's too much fussing around with cloaks! I like Qian Liu's Juliet, but thought that Semyon Velichko's Romeo was a little too mature.
The last movement of Ted Brandsen's Classical Symphony followed. I had seen this as part of the previous livestream, and enjoyed this movement for its exuberance, which was repeated tonight, criss-crossing patterns of the all-male company, delivered with bounding enthusiasm. Christopher Wheeldon's Duet uses the slow movement of the Ravel G major Piano Concerto. I have to say I wasn't sold on this piece until quite near the end, when it started to gain a poignancy I hadn't felt before, while previously my attention was more on the very Turner-esque backdrop. This is not meant as any sort of reflection on Anna Tsygankova and Constantine Allen, who performed it with a stately grace and quiet strength.
Then followed another Van Manen piece, glorious in its clarity and brio, Solo, set to a movement from one of Bach's Partitas for Solo Violin. Despite the title, this is for three male dancers, but they never dance together at the same time, save for right at the end. Instead, it's almost like a wrestling match, where they tag each other on to and off the stage, though there's no physical contact involved. It's brilliant and quirky, and excellently performed by Sho Yamada, Daniel Silva and the mercurial Remi Wörtmeyer.
For some reason, John Cranko's work is not popular in the UK. If he left Britain early, it's entirely our fault, he was being persecuted for his sexuality, and that's no reason to neglect what work was left before his untimely demise. Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet) used to perform Pineapple Poll and The Lady and the Fool, but it has been years since I've seen Onegin mounted here, and it's only very recently returned to British stages. I will admit that I find some parts of Onegin overlong, but the final duet, superbly performed here by Anna Ol and Jozef Varga, is magnificent, concise, brooding, passionate, elegant and expressive, all beautifully brought out by the dancers.
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| Anna Ol and Jozef Varga Onegin, Act 3 Dutch National Ballet (screenshot, 2020) |
Finally, as the programme notes state, it wouldn't be Christmas without The Nutcracker. Dutch National Ballet has what looks like a very original version of this beloved classic, choreographed by Wayne Eagling (Van Dantzig's successor as director of the company) and Toer van Schayk, Van Dantzig's partner and third member of the triumvirate which brought the company up to international pre-eminence. From the twenty minutes or so seen here, it looks well worth seeing, although they kept the best-known version of the pas de deux without significant alteration. The Snowflakes Waltz was something I'd have liked to see from a bit of a height, because it looked like they were forming something like snow crystal patterns in the constant circular movements of the dancers. The Chinese dance was a dojo of martial arts students, while the Reed Flutes was a trip to antique Greece, with a dryad courted by an elderly roué, a gilded young man, and a faun whose choreography very clearly referenced Nijinsky's Afternoon of a Faun. The decor for these dances had a distinctly steam-punk look to them. Maia Makhateli and Young Gyu Choi were excellent as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Nutcracker Prince, and all I can say is that if I'm ever in Amsterdam at Christmas time, I want to see this production!
In a programme this extensive and varied, you can't expect perfection all the time, but even the items that impressed me less were still of a very high standard, and worth seeing. This was a delight, original, well thought-out and produced, and delivered in a true gala atmosphere.
[Next : The only thing I have on the calendar is 31st December, but as I've said before, watch this space!]