Birmingham Royal Ballet: Luna

Birmingham Hippodrome
October 3, 2024

There is plenty of terrific dancing in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Luna. There is also lots of very watchable choreography, with one duet in particular quite ravishing. Having five choreographers of varying backgrounds and styles was always going to be tricky, but for all its good intent the ballet’s biggest issue is that it doesn’t hang together as a coherent whole.

The ballet was originally going to be about the life of now Birmingham-based, Pakistani education activist, Malala Yousafzai but somewhere down the line it was decided that Shropshire author Louise Palfreyman’s book, Once Upon a Time in Birmingham: Women Who Dared to Dream, should instead be the starting point for the creative efforts of each of the female choreographers.

The ballet certainly puts women at the forefront. Not only are the five choreographers all female, each movement puts them centre-stage. The rest of the creative team is all-female too.

But, while inspired by the women of Birmingham, the generalist way in which the work’s undoubtedly important themes are tackled mean it could be about women anywhere. And while the image of the Moon does tie the six movements together to some extent, the link is largely tenuous.

The highlight of Luna is its third movement, ‘Unwavering,’ by Cuban choreographer Thais Suárez. A stunning pas de deux for Beatrice Parma and Javier Rojas, it’s set to four movements of composer Kate Whitley’s arrangement of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem sung on stage by the equally fabulous soprano Marianna Hovhanisyan and baritone Themba Mvula.

As the sun sets against a sea, Parma appears beset by challenges. She seems to teeter on the edge, buffeted by life and all it throws at her as she seeks a way forward. Support comes from the initially black-hooded Rojas, we are told playing the memory of her father. As the sky behind them changes to one of stars, the duet slowly gets more dramatic. The sometimes tricky partnering was gorgeously smooth.

Whether Luna will reappear after the present season, I have my doubts. But I’ll be amazed if ‘Unwavering’ does not come back as a stand-alone ballet.

Parma also excels in Iraxte Ansa’s ‘Overexposed’ (the fifth movement), a very blunt and hard-hitting look at female oppression that sees her, strikingly dressed in red, handled and otherwise manipulated by eight masked men in white. There is something disquieting about the way she is the object of the attention of these faceless beings, but that’s nothing compared to how unsettling and disturbing it turns when they take their masks off and reveal themselves.

In many ways, closest to Palfreyman’s book is Seeta Patel’s second movement ‘Learning to Dream Big.’ It also stands out for being different; certainly the most hopeful and brightest fifteen minutes in an evening that is otherwise tends towards the dark. As her five female dancers dream of the professions they might follow, conductor, teacher, doctor, Patel’s choreography and storytelling is quite childlike but comes with a likeable innocent quality. Unlike some of the other sections, she leaves you in no doubt about what she is saying although the unfurling of a ‘Support the NHS’ banner is most definitely a step too far.

While Patel decided deliberately not to employ bharatnatyam movement, it does pop up fleetingly in the movement’s best moments. Whitely has also cleverly incorporated South Indian rhythms into her score.

‘Empowerment’ by Arielle Smith, which opens the second half is neatly constructed and pleasing, but any connection with its title was lost on me.

The ballet is bookended by two fine movements from Dutch choreographer Wubkje Kuindersma, both led by Yu Kurihara and Tzu-Chao Chou, and Rachele Pizzillo and Riku Ito. Both brim with energy and classical steps, although they come with very different feeling. Both also make use of a large children’s choir who sing their hearts out.

While the opening ‘Terra’ is grounded, the final ‘Luna’ is light and comes with a hint of other-worldliness that’s contributed to enormously by Hayley Egan’s video projection of an eclipse turning into a hopeful, ever-changing cosmos of stars. Apart from the excellent leading quartet, a duet for Céline Gittens and Gabriel Anderson hits the mark, before the whole cast is reunited for the finale.

Luna is a ballet of fine intentions. A ballet of plenty of fine moments. A ballet that, at times, is quite powerful. And it is great to see Birmingham’s company paying tribute to the city and its people. But it is also a ballet in need of much stronger thread to hold it all together.

Birmingham Royal Ballet perform Luna at the Birmingham Hippodrome to October 5, 2024; then at Sadler’s Wells, London on October 22 & 23.

Read David Mead’s conversation about the ballet with choreographers Wubkje Kuindersma and Seeta Patel.