Dance review: Light of Passage

Unlike Kenneth MacMillan, whose greatest creations are his exquisite pas de deux, Pite excels when she is working with large numbers of dancers: they sway and shudder as one; their bodies lurch and rock as they move on to some unknown refuge. Her dancers achieve a sculptural beauty, even when they are depicting the horror of loss.

Covenant is the shortest of the sections and the least successful. It seeks to express the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in dance form. Children run, skip and are carried around by older dancers but they fail to convey the complex ideas set down in the UN document – an impossible task, surely, and something even Pite cannot pull off.

She has more success with the final piece. Passage begins with two older dancers – Isidora Barbara Joseph and Christopher Havell – who are guest artists from the Company of Elders. They move slowly together on a bare stage, bringing emotion to every gesture. How brave of these artists to appear with Royal Ballet dancers, for they are over 60 and I am sure they will not mind me saying that their bodies are not the physically perfect specimens we are used to seeing in dancers on the Opera House stage. But that is the point of the piece: it is about final farewells, the ultimate goodbye and moving on to a new place.

Jay Gower Taylor has designed an impressive set, which enhances the mood but does not intrude and special praise must go to Francesca Chiejina, the magnificent soprano who adds her own particular magic to Henryk Gorecki’s sorrowful third symphony.

Light of Passage is at the Royal Opera House until 3 November