Spoonfuls of sugar: Les Patineurs / Winter Dreams / The Concert at the ROH
Les Patineurs / Winter Dreams / The Concert
Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House
Balcony D30 standing, £6
18 December 2018
ROH page
It’s something of an odd programme, sandwiching the gloomy Winter Dreams between the light-almost-to-substancelessness Les Patineurs and The Concert; it feels like Kevin O’Hare is trying to sneak us some MacMillan medicine by luring us with mince pies and chocolate. But for all its unevenness, the programme does create an interesting comparison between the RB’s two house choreographers, different in every aspect of their art from subject to style to steps.
Les Patineurs is the finest piece of the three, even with its mini-slump just before the finale. The delight is in the detail of Ashton’s choreography, the work’s substance in its ludicrous difficulty and ample opportunities for good old-fashioned ballet showing off. Those opportunities are seized upon by all the strong cast, including William Bracewell and Fumi Kaneko, Yuhui Choe and Anna Rose O’Sullivan, Beatriz Stix-Brunell and Mayara Magri, but most of all by Marcelino Sambé. The golden boy, eager to take the stage and all the applause, could have been made for Sambé’s phenomenal speed and technique and his overpowering charm and self-confidence. He is a wonder and he knows it.
Compared to Les Patineurs the lighting is sepulchral as the curtain rises on Winter Dreams, faces cast in shadow and sometimes impossible to make out. And where Ashton’s choreography is almost a parody of elegance, MacMillan’s delights in the awkward, the ugly and the strange. I had somewhat dark expectations following the ghastly Judas Tree and The Invitation, but Winter Dreams has rather a pleasant quiet melancholy and gentle repression. Enjoying it was made easy by pianist Rob Clarke and the balalaika band’s excellent performances, and also in large part the beautiful dancing of Yasmine Naghdi, Bracewell and Nicol Edmonds in the Irina sub-story. I was less bothered by the supposedly central pairing of Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares as Marsha and Vershinin; the tragedy of their parting struck me only as histrionic. I attribute this partly to Soares, assiduous a dancer as he is nevertheless unable to step into the dramatic Russian boots of the role’s creator Irek Mukhamedov. Maybe Nuñez could also have dialled it down; but MacMillan’s overwrought expressions of woe leave her little room to temper.
Nether Les Patineurs nor Winter Dreams will ever be my favourite manifestations of Ashton and MacMillan’s work, but they do make an interesting pairing, each highly idiosyncratic and completely unmistakeable. What else could have accompanied them? Balanchine seems the obvious answer, something punchy and brassy like The Four Temperaments or Agon. Instead we get Robbins’s The Concert. I can see why O’Hare keeps it on; parts of it are genuinely funny, and Rob Clarke and the dancers perform it superbly. But while cheering and pleasant enough The Concert is too light to put up with – not funny enough to warrant its length, not choreographically or dramatically interesting enough to give you anything else to go on. Though harmless it is unavoidably silly, and a weak companion to the flawed but sincere Les Patineurs and Winter Dreams.
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