How would you picture the different meanings of ‘sensuous’? ENB’s newest programme, the triple bill Ecstasy and Death, brilliantly captures them all. After weeks of gazing at the beautifully haunting images of the promotional campaign (in collaboration with Vivienne Westwood) our expectations are completely met as Rojo’s first season as an Artistic Director comes alive on stage. The programme promises ecstasy and death and, indeed that is what is served.
Photography by Chantal Guevara
Continue reading ‘Beautifully dangerous or dangerously beautiful? Ecstasy and Death, by Katja Vaghi’
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Tags: Bach, Ecstasy and Death, Erina Takahashi, Etudes, Harald Lander, Jiri Kylian, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, Mozart, Nicolas Le Riche, performance, Rudolf Nureyev, Tamara Rojo, Zizi Jeanmaire
Tamara Rojo’s first triple-bill programme for English National Ballet promised to be something different. The curtain opens on Petite Mort - a title that refers to an orgasm in French and Arabic – and we’re faced with the dramatic backdrop of scantily clad men clasping swords.
Photography by Chantal Guevara
Through the silence, only the sounds of swords cutting through the air can be heard. Six ladies-in-waiting watch as the men play around with swords, flinging them round their heads in pendulum-like motions. Receiving a few laughs, the ladies – as they scuttle on with silhouettes of Victorian dresses on wheels – provide a release from the display of masculinity. The raunchy, fluidity of Kylián’s choreography contrasts with the politeness of Mozart’s Piano score and the dancers subtly pick up the ornaments and trills in the music with a flick of the hand or head turn creating effective moments.
Le Jeune Homme et la Mort also opens dramatically with the dark music rising out of the orchestra pit to the waiting Nicolas Le Riche. In a role that’s been previously danced by Nureyev and Baryshnikov, he certainly has some big ballet shoes to fill. Le Riche rises to the challenge, his expansive gestures and gravity-defying jumps passionately portray this troubled character. Tamara Rojo herself enters as a Cyd Charisse- like character with black cropped hair and long legs that eat into the space. ‘She uses staccato movement’s en pointe to represent her power, making a fantastic temptress that eventually leads love-forlorn Le Riche away to his death.’
Described in the programme as a ‘long-time favourite of English National Ballet audiences’, the evening finishes with Etudes, proving Rojo is remaining true to the long-term fans of the company by mixing the traditional with the new. The piece takes us through a ballet class, from barre work to centre exercises and finishing with feats of athleticism. The Company show us what they’re really made of with ornate movements, too many fouetté turns to count and an army of ballerinas to conclude. Essentially the choreography feels very ‘cutesy’ and seems to drag on despite fantastic performances by the company. It deprives the audience of the dark, dramatic finish which the beginning of evening promises. Overall it is a cleverly thought out programme with some show-stopping pieces taking English National Ballet to new heights.
Laura Warner
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Tags: Ecstasy and Death, english ballet, Etudes, Jiri Kylian, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, London Coliseum, Mozart, Nicolas Le Riche, performance, Rudolf Nureyev, Tamara Rojo
Tamara Rojo is a woman with a mission to strip away ballet’s perceived sugar-coated shell and reveal the bitter-sweet heart of dance. Posters in the London underground have been preparing her way for months. They might look like angels; but they “dance like demons.”
Rojo’s triple bill Ecstasy and Death which premiered at the Coliseum on 18 April, certainly focussed more on the demonic than the angelic. From the opening sequence of Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, in which six men in flesh-coloured corsets flexed and sliced with their individual fencing foils, it was clear that the audience was in for something very adult, very sophisticated and very European.
Photography by David Jensen
The twelve dancers cast in ENB’s first ever performance of Kylian’s classic were clearly nervous and a bit outside their comfort zone clad only in nude underwear. But what they created was a sensual tapestry of barefoot modern dance and Neoclassical ballet interwoven with two of Mozart’s serene piano concertos. There were dramatic and humorous props: the swishing rapiers, a billowing silken wave to cloak the stage and giant sculpted panniered dresses, like exoskeletons, out of which the women climbed in their basques and knickers. Flesh moved against flesh, feet were flexed and stretched, sinewy legs splayed, muscles hardened and backs arched. This was ballet on the cusp of gymnastics and it was beautiful. Without tights or satin shoes, it was pure dance between men and women of heroic strength, partnering each other in dignified and intimate harmony: for Art’s sake.
Petite Mort was a northern European post-modern comment on gender stereotyping. What followed was much less egalitarian take on gender relations. Le Jeune Homme et la Mort was expressionist dance-drama in the film noir tradition. A darkly glamorous pas de deux set to Bach’s stern Passacaglia, it featured the highlight of my evening, Nicholas Le Riche’s electrifying portrayal of the tortured Young Man on the knife-edge of insanity. Watching Le Riche was like seeing the almost unbearable repressed sexuality of Nijinsky’s Faun and the hunched pathos of the puppet Petrushka poured into the doomed youth’s powerfully muscular but helplessly passive body in rolled up denim dungarees. Rojo’s sadistic and raunchy personification of Death in her slinky yellow dress with smouldering cigarette was a devastating subversion of the feminine ideal of the ballerina. At the end, masked and trailing red and white robes, Rojo, the apotheosis of the dominatrix, embodied the woman incarnate on the front of the programme.
Photography by David Jensen
It was left to the Company to express the “Ecstasy” theme, through Harald Lander’s crystal sharp Etudes, which encapsulated the history of ballet in a dramatically lit, seamless flow of divertissements developed from the daily ballet class. The Company loved dancing it for the sheer joy of displaying the brilliance of their technique, although the pace was remorseless. Amongst them Vadim Muntagirov danced as though his life depended on it, relishing the folk influence on his native Russia’s bravura style of male dancing. Hurling himself into his leaps and turns he shone, not from the need to project his performance, but from within; relishing his almost god-like talent.
Rojo’s raison d’etre for this triple bill was to “make audiences hold their breath” and to “take ballet to a different level” This feisty Spanish diva certainly achieved her goal and the audience loved it. ENB has embarked on an exciting new journey.
Fiona Fraser
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Tags: Ecstasy and Death, Jiri Kylian, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, London Coliseum, performance, Petite Mort, rehearsal, Rudolf Nureyev, Tamara Rojo
English National Ballet have done it again.
As part of the triple bill forming Ecstasy & Death, Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort is as Tamara Rojo puts it, a ‘masterpiece’.
The choreography tells a story of a young painter in Paris who descends into complete madness and finally suicide, after perilously lusting after a cold and unforgiving woman who ignores his affections. Tamara Rojo and Nicolas Le Riche make their debut as a duo having not partnered before, yet they weave around the set confidently together with undeniable chemistry. Bach’s Passacaglia creates a foreboding tone in the dark and dingy set, transporting us into the life and mind of a desperate man.
Photography by David Jensen
Continue reading ‘Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, by Alison Jackson’
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Tags: Ecstasy and Death, Jiri Kylian, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, London Coliseum, Masterpiece, Nicolas Le Riche, Paris, Roland Petit, Rudolf Nureyev, Tamara Rojo
If you asked me to devise my ideal triple bill, Jiri Kylian and Roland Petit would be way at the top of the list – and I’m certainly not alone in that. So English National Ballet’s first triple bill under Tamara Rojo’s leadership is a dream come true, with Jiri Kylian’s Petite Mort and Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. And as English National Ballet is fundamentally a classical ballet company, it was only fitting that the Ecstasy & Death programme concluded with Harald Lander’s Études, a quirky insight into the workings of a ballet company.
Photography by Chantal Guevara
Petite Mort by Jiri Kylian opened in perfect silence, with six men walking backwards, each balancing a sword on a single fingertip. And in that perfect silence, we heard the sounds of the swords slicing through the air, as the dancers moved between a series of sword-driven friezes.
Jiri Kylian is a master at creating beautiful yet interesting movement, focussing on the sculptural effects of his choreography. And Petite Mort is a perfect example of this; “petite mort”, “little death” in French, also means an orgasm in French and Arabic, and this sets the theme for the work, which explores a diverse range of male and female interaction and poses suggesting frozen ecstasy.
With the dancers divided into pairs, each couple communicates in their own unique way, while props often become a second or third-party, whether the theatrical dresses-on-wheels, or swords.
While Jiri Kylian is closely associated with more modern companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, his blending of classical movement in a modern context is beautifully suited to the fluidity and grace of English National Ballet’s dancers, making all movement flow seamlessly, with all of Kylian’s playfulness and quirks.
Ending way too abruptly, Petite Mort is a work to savour, both the imagery and beautiful performances from all dancers throughout.
One of the greatest tragedies of English ballet is that Roland Petit’s work is too rarely performed over here. English National Ballet performed a triple bill of Roland Petit’s works in July 2011, barely two weeks after his death, with Ivan Vasiliev guesting in the male role. And there lies the challenge of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort: previously performed by the likes of Nureyev, Baryshnikov and Vasiliev, its associated with the very cream of male ballet dancers, and demands both virtuosity and compelling acting ability.
Photography by Chantal Guevara
At 41, and with his retirement from Paris Opéra Ballet imminent, Nicolas Le Riche is at the peak of his career, making ‘Le Jeune Homme’ an exhilarating experience to watch, grabbing you by the neck from the opening scenes of him smoking idly in bed and not letting go until the very end.
It’s a stylised yet naturalistic work: Le Riche repeatedly holds his wrist to his ear, and shifts his knees inwards and outwards. Meanwhile, in his opening solo, his character is reaching, yearning, defeated and trapped in his little attic room.
Tamara Rojo’s character – a woman in a yellow dress with a black bob and black gloves – in turn teases, seduces and captivates him, exploiting his inner vulnerabilities to the point where she has him completely under her spell, idly ordering him about the space until he is completely broken. Rojo portrays a cruel savagery, luxuriating in her power which increases as he declines further until his suicide, orchestrated by her.
The final work of the programme, Études is a work for classical ballet fans and classical-ballet-curious, offering the audience an insight into the workings of a ballet company, from the warmup stage of daily class to technique work and ongoing rehearsals.
Photography by Chantal Guevara
The warmup stages appear to focus more on the effect of the dancers’ movements in relation to the creative use of lighting rather than on the choreography itself, which helps to make Études more relevant to modern audiences.
The warmup over, the dancers proceed to rehearse excerpts of well-known classics – which will delight classical ballet fans, but allude those, like me, who’ve never actually seen any of them. If you fall into the latter category, there are aspects to appreciate such as watching seven dancers executing perfect turns in unison, and the indefatigable Erina Takahashi.
Quite simply, this is one of the best programmes of modern ballet you could hope to watch in London.
Review and Photography by Chantal Guevara
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Tags: company class, Ecstasy and Death, Erina Takahashi, Harald Lander, Jiri Kylian, London Coliseum, Nicolas Le Riche, performance, rehearsal, Roland Petit, Rudolf Nureyev, Tamara Rojo
1. It’s three ballets for the price of one and tickets start at just £10.
2. There is something for everyone, from classical ballet in tutus and pointe shoes to modern choreography in bare feet and even a narrative work.
3. Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, Etudes and Petite Mort are the ballets Tamara Rojo chose for her first season as English National Ballet Artistic Director.
4. Etudes has been performed by English National Ballet since 1955 and is an ecstatic showcase for the entire company, showing off stunning technique and bravura tricks.
5. The casting is amazing, with international stars Tamara Rojo, Nicolas Le Riche, Ivan Putrov, Daria Klimentova and Vadim Muntagirov all performing.
6. As well as incredible principal dancers, you can also see some of English National Ballet’s younger talents onstage, including Ksenia Ovsyanick, Shiori Kase and Nancy Osbaldeston.
7. Petite Mort means ‘little death’ but choreographer Kylian gave it that title because in France, it is considered a little death when you reach orgasm.
8. The music for all three works is stunning – by Czerny, Mozart and Bach.
9. Le Jeune Homme et la Mort is such a great ballet that the last time English National Ballet performed it, in 2011, Russian star dancer Ivan Vasiliev danced the lead role for free.
10. Company dancer Joshua McSherry-Gray posted on Twitter this week that it’s a “spectacular triple bill” that will “blow your socks off”!
Photography by Patrick Baldwin
By Laura Dodge
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Tags: ballet, ballet dance, Ecstasy and Death, english ballet, Jiri Kylian, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, performance, rehearsal, Tamara Rojo
It was Tamara Rojo’s vision to bring internationally-renowned choreographers to English National Ballet. And as she introduced last night’s Petite Mort masterclass, she said “it doesn’t get better than Jiří Kylián.”
Photography by Patrick Baldwin
Continue reading ‘Petite Mort, A Masterclass. By Laura Dodge’
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Tags: ballet, ballet dance, english ballet, Jiri Kylian, london, markova house, masterclass, performance, rehearsal, Tamara Rojo
