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, Birmingham Royal Ballet: Autumn Glory - Sadler's Wells, EC1
Clifford Bishop 19 Oct 2011
There is a confessional tone to Birmingham Royal Ballet's Autumn Glory triple bill - a sense that these three early British ballets are company director David Bintley's way of saying: "This is what made me". The major trends that recur in his own work are all here: costume-epic vapidity, serene lyricism, and broad, heartwarming comedy.
Ninette de Valois' sumptuously designed Checkmate might be more impressive without the dancing. The conceit of basing choreography on how chess pieces move works occasionally - the springing box-steps of the knights - but also produces grotesqueries like the masked, dumb-bell wielding castles, who might as well be appearing in a workout video by the Ku Klux Klan. The performances are just as variable, with Victoria Marr's Black Queen exuding so little sex appeal she might as well be carved from wood.
The exuberance of John Cranko's Pineapple Poll, created in 1951 to a selection of tunes by Arthur Sullivan, stands in polar opposition to Checkmate's sterile formalism. Carol-Anne Millar brings the sort of well-observed, square-shouldered indomitability to the role of Poll, a lovestruck harbour salesgirl, that makes her look like ballet's answer to Catherine Tate.
Sandwiched between these is Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations, from 1946. Ashton pared down his treatment of César Franck's score again and again, to achieve a dance in which, strictly speaking, nothing happens, and doesn't happen so beautifully that you wish it would never end. The performance by Natasha Oughtred, Nao Sakuma, Elisha Willis, César Morales, Chi Cao and Joseph Caley is limpid, affectless, reverent and breathtaking.
Tonight (19 Oct) (0844 412 4300, sadlerswells.com)
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
