One of Tamara Rojo’s early acts as creative director of English Nationwide Ballet was to mount a manufacturing of the Nineteenth-century traditional Le Corsaire. Now, as she is about to go off to the brand new pastures of San Francisco Ballet, her remaining present to the corporate she has led with such dazzling daring for a decade is her personal new manufacturing of Raymonda.
Rojo loves these Nineteenth-century warhorses, the legacy left by Marius Petipa that set the template for classical ballet. She thinks they make dancers dance higher (which they undoubtedly do) and that they signify a historical past that have to be reinvigorated however preserved. That, I feel, is extra debatable.
The explanation that Raymonda, first seen in 1898, has fallen out of the repertory of each British dance firm – although the Russians and the French proceed to bounce it with out a lot fear – is a plot (invented by society creator Lydia Pashkova) that was all the time idiotic and is now unacceptable. Set on the time of the Crusades, it encompasses a bland, posh-girl heroine who loves the noble warrior Jean de Brienne however is pursued by an evil Saracen.
Rojo, helped by dramaturg Lucinda Coxon, has moved the motion to the Crimean conflict. Raymonda (Shiori Kase) now leaves her household to seek out fulfilment as a Florence Nightingale-style nurse, and within the course of finds herself torn between her emotions for her uninteresting fiance, John de Bryan (Isaac Hernández), and his glamorous Ottoman ally Abdur Rahman (Jeffrey Cirio). Rojo preserves a number of Petipa’s choreography, although not all the time in the identical locations, whereas offering linking passages herself.
It’s intelligent, and at occasions it really works. Antony McDonald supplies sumptuously sensible designs with a photographic theme, with frames enclosing the motion and a ramp behind the stage down which, in a dream sequence, wounded troopers course of in agony, like an echo of the shades in La Bayadère. The costumes, all tartan cottons, swishing silks and pink candytuft, are brightly evocative.
However transposing the choreography to a special storyline retains among the similar issues. On a regular basis you may really feel the fierce pressure of Rojo’s intelligence pushing in opposition to steps which can be gorgeous in themselves however not expressive of which means. At too many moments the motion stops so the contributors can get on with some fairly dancing. The plot actually will get pushed to the perimeters of the stage, the place troopers undergo and Rahman makes his case to be the love of Raymonda’s life. Cirio makes him sexily compelling, however he doesn’t have sufficient to do.
As John, Hernández scissors across the stage successfully, his appeal benefiting from a thankless position. Treasured Adams shines as a saintly Mary Seacole determine. However although she is splendidly fluid in her actions, Kase’s calm, delicate presence can’t present the drama the choreography lacks; Raymonda’s choice to pursue her profession fairly than both man feels rushed.
The chief success of the night is ENB’s dedication to creating it work. Your entire firm dances with ardour and precision, and Glazunov’s rating, usually considered the primary triumph of the ballet, is given its full value by the orchestra underneath the course of Gavin Sutherland. Rojo is leaving her firm in tremendous, courageous form.
Raymonda is on the Coliseum, London, till 23 January. It transfers to the Mayflower, Southampton, 30 November-3 December 2022
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