Dance
Tasty
Julie Kavanagh
The Royal Ballet
(Royal Opera House, Covent Garden) The new triple bill at Covent Garde" three-course m akesmme etar kAgoofn, ea a crlathneranbcratrei familiar like sushimi is followed bY Kylian's Return to the Strange Land, over contrived but exquisite — tete de yea e kg amourette perhaps. Dessert is Der., Deane's new ballet, Fleeting Chantilly cream meringue, insubsta110.31 and a little cloying. I longed for Agon agai2 to clear the palate; even thou/Pi_ ecuted by the Royal Ballet. Only the .lecsi Balanchine's masterly work is not well Os conventional dancers — Bryon' 01111 Ashley Page and Mark Freeman intercee the quirky choreography with anYthing,inirk the incisiveness and thrust of the New Figures, City Ballet dancers. Among the girls grind alone has the infinite legginess the style
d. etnands. The others look curiously chunky In their cusped leotards.
Orl a second viewing Pippa Wilde replac- ed the injured Brind (she is second cast) and Was Composed, adept but bland. Her duet (with Julian Hosking) that is the climax of
this contest of athleticism and wit should startle the audience with its Houdini-ish Contortions, but Wilde, who lacks Brind's extraordinary flexibility, made even the toe-
3u-the-back-of-the-head pose look conven- tional, though a little strained. The wit of this stately duet depends on a ballerina who can Carry off the absurd convolutions with dead-pan ease. By contrast, I almost pre- te.rred the less streamlined second-cast girls, Bl1121n Chadwick and Ravenna Tucker, to Binda. and Alessandra Ferri in the Kylian ballet. They somehow made one less aware 0 . its fine craftsmanship and more aware of Its theme (death and exile), even though in the end one concludes that the method not the meaning is all. Alessandra Ferri told me recently that she used to dream of getting married in a gon- dola in Venice until someone reminded her that she would still have to wait a week to get a licence. Her romantic impulsiveness and .contempt for rules that forbid spon- taneity make her an ideal Juliet. She's also to Young (20) and she's Italian. Fern's heroine identification with Shakespeare's last er°Ine was powerfully evident at her debut .Saturday; and her Romeo, Wayne t agling, responded with an almost equal in- tensity, making this the most thrilling per- f,.(3rrnance of the ballet I've seen since its The Fonteyn/Nureyev heyday.
enthusiastic Prom audience helped
Charge the atmosphere even more, calling he Couple back after Act I — a regular oc- currence in opera but unique in dance.
p APart from her impact as an actress,
movements seemed to redefine and revivify the lr)vernents themselves — possibly because her beautiful legs and feet are very like seated on whom the part was
inreated; and MacMillan seems to have
Fit:, so many of the lifts and steps. in '"age to their expressiveness. Her miming manage me notice things I had not seen Nele're like her slumped reaction to the t,ur,se's whisper revealing Romeo's identi- oceJ• rerhaps it wasn't there before. Fern on things bypasses the choreography to do viings her way. Not always successfully: her glare whipping round from the window to a tre at Paris instead of gliding past him. in an, ranee is over-dramatic, just as her skids audible sounds in the potion scene and :_aggerated little-girliness with the Nurse "eeed.,toning down. How much more forceful h,1 s reckless abandon will seem when she e,7 I to pace things more. As it is, her trTressic'n at seeing Romeo lie dead is ex- di_ordinarily chilling; it's almost a look of d2,al3Pointment at seeing all her plans .7.:tro. ye, 413 all.Ish.u, rather than conventional Under the camera's scrutiny in a sev IcularlY harshly lit production of The de_eil Deadly Sins on television, Ferri st strated that she is as capable of being
grunglY subtle as she is mettlesome.
Previous page
