Queer beauty: Les Beaux dormants at the ROH
Les Beaux dormants
Le Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin
Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
Circle D22 standing, £7
22 November 2019
ROH page
I hugely enjoyed Les Beaux dormants and its imaginative queering of ballet norms choreographic and musical. The only fly in the ointment is that with only 50 minutes to play with there shouldn’t have been the occasional longeurs that there were – but whatever choreographer Hélène Blackburn and composer Martin Tétreault might lack in grand shape they more than make up in wit and energy. They’re of course ably supported by the tight, sharp dancers of Le Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin.
The show has been billed as for kids but I think that’s based almost exclusively on length rather than content. There is some video involving children which might have further given that steer but I think that more satisfyingly integrates with the rest of the ballet as being part of the narrative to query ballet’s tropes, particularly in a fairytale ballet. Not that there’s any reason children shouldn’t enjoy the show’s pizazz.
Tétreault’s score could so easily have been annoying. Instead his extensive sampling of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty score mixed with pulsing dance beats produces almost continual delight. He rearranges his splices of Tchaikovsky to queer their original effect: repeating motifs that originally built to climaxes instead unravel backwards, always rudely constrained by the unrelenting beat. It’s catchy, fun, clever, danceable to and bonded absolutely to Blackburn’s choreography.
Here the few female dancers are relegated to walk-on parts – sad in itself but you can see why Blackburn’s done it. In place of ballet’s usual celebration of the female we have men at the centre, sometimes partnering each other, sometimes (half) en pointe, always taking the lead. When the collective dances ballet’s innate gendering is discarded for the unison, all dancing the same steps in the same way. The vigour and purpose of the choreography avoids it feeling like a simple send-up – this is an alternative vision of what ballet can be – perhaps with the exception of the mime sequences, where the frantic, fantastically complex storytelling is exploited in part for comic effect.
All in all I had a whale of a time. Les Beaux dormants is refreshing, concise, imaginative and just serious enough, and has the added, sadly unusual bonus that dance and music work as one.
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