Encounters ***

Legacy ***** 

Much as it is wonderful to see the Royal Ballet perform the classics – and the dancers perform them very well indeed – a company cannot exist solely on the old audience favourites, so it is particularly heartening to see more modern works take the spotlight at the Royal Opera House, both on the main stage and at the smaller Linbury Theatre.

Encounters: Four contemporary ballets is a mixed bag of new works by 21st century choreographers. The performance kicks off with Kyle Abraham’s The Weathering, first danced in 2022. It is a serene, dreamy piece, a meditation on love and loss. Melissa Hamilton gives a standout performance of delicate beauty, while Sae Maeda adds her quicksilver presence to a series of speedy variations. Set on a bare stage, save for lanterns which rise and fall, it is a tad overlong, but impressive nonetheless.

Or Forevermore by Pam Tanowitz is an expansion of an earlier pas de deux created in 2022. I wasn’t a big fan first time around and the longer work adds nothing to the original, though Tanowitz does use her very specific dance vocabulary to provide some witty moments.

Dusk, by Joseph Toonga combines elements of hip-hop with more classical ballet, but it left me unmoved. The most interesting part was the floating fluorescent square of light which hovered above the dancers.

This programme saves the best till last: Crystal Pite’s The Statement is worth the price of the ticket alone. Funny and devastating at the same time, it uses four dancers around a long table, moving in frenzied phrases while unseen actors punctuate their movements with voiceovers. Something bad has happened: a bureaucratic mess which has led to some sort of disaster. The “people upstairs” are trying to sort it out: “The situation is escalating...they are killing each other”. We are not told exactly what it happening but perhaps that is the point. Performed with precision and power by the dancers, it is the highlight of the evening.

Kristen McNally, Joseph Sissens, Ashley Dean, Calvin Richardson in TheStatement (Photo:Tristram Kenton)

Downstairs in the Linbury Theatre, Legacy is a mixed bill dedicated to Black and Brown ballet dancers and the contributions they have made to the dance world. In a varied programme put together by Royal Ballet Principal Joseph Sissens, we see the enormous pool of talent present among dancers of colour. (Until recently, ballet shoes were only available in shades of pink – now shoe manufacturers make them for darker skinned dancers so using dark foundation on satin shoes is no longer necessary to make them blend in with the dancers’ skin tones.)

The evening was a smorgasbord of 12 pieces: brief excerpts from well-known works alongside short ballets. Standout moments were Celine Gittens channelling her inner Piaf in Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and Casper Lench, Francisco Serrano and Joseph Sissens in Chroma – dancing without tights enables the audience to see every tendon and muscle in those extraordinary legs!

Joseph Sissens,Francisco Serrano in Wayne McGregor's Chroma (Photo: AIan Hippolyte)

Lovely to see English National Ballet’s Precious Adams on stage in a couple of dances and Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour looked good.

Junor Souza and Precious Adams in This Bitter Earth, Legacy2024 (Photo: Ian Hippolyte)

We were treated to a powerful performance of Alvin Ailey’s Sinner Man and the world premiere of Arielle Smith’s Pass It On brought the night to a memorable conclusion.