An excellent showcase for the English National Ballet School

New Wimbledon Theatre, London
July 7, 2017

Maggie Foyer

It was an evening of celebration as another year at the English National Ballet School comes to an end: first and second years move up a rung and third years leave the nest and launch their careers. There was an impressive list of students gaining contracts at major companies including four entering the English National Ballet, one of them, Rhys Antoni Yeomans on a full contract.

It was also an evening of variety with plenty of new choreographies from current students, alumni and famous names. The predominant dance style was neo-classical and danced with refreshing freedom, liberated torsos and expressive arms. This style came to the fore in Juan Eymar’s Two Movements in C, written to Bizet’s youthful Symphony. He included all three years of students, and it gave an overview of the strength of training and impressive sensitivity to the music. The partnering was secure, pointe work confident and assured and, when the students got the opportunity to show off, they pirouetted and leapt with abandon.

The first years had their own dedicated work in Aprés Une Lecture De Danse by Stina Quagebeur, former student and now first artist with the ENB. The music was a mixed bag including some jazz interludes and it was a chance to release their technique from the training manual and get down to using it, which they did with panache. They also bagged the folk-dance excerpt, a lively, balleticised Tarantella choreographed by Olga Semenova.

Petipa’s divertissement from Carnival of Venice which includes the Satanella Pas de Deux was the Third Year’s classical work with Misato Isogami and Yeomans taking the duet and four couples providing the frame. Isogami was ideal in the role which needs oodles of charm and precision-tooled pointes. Yeoman, an excellent partner, gave a strong showing in his solo and a brilliant jeté manège in the coda.

George Williamson’s Cinderella, part of the My First Ballet series for young people has been touring the country providing valuable performing experience for the second-year students. This stage experience paid off as Remi Nakano and Yuki Nonaka, in the romantic Final Pas de Deux, looked so at home on stage, communicating their emotions effortlessly.

The three top entries from the students’ choreographic competition were given a welcome repeat performance. It was good to have another viewing of The Cry for Man by Luke Watson with its intriguing insider/outsider theme and inventive movement. The trendily titled, afFront, by James Lachlan Murray was given an edgy performance by Watson with Daniel Myers. Myers own choreography, Fleeting Desires, danced on pointe but full of fluid motion looked even better on its return.

There were several more contemporary works. The Matter of Time by Neil Fleming Brown with a self-confident and gritty score was danced in bare legs and black leotards showing these third years could be as fiercely modern as the best. Daniela Cardim’s The Whisper was a class work of modern ballet with a quirky back story to give a handle. Morgann Runacre-Temple’s work, Short Ride in a Fast Machine to John Adams work of the same name is an extension of the work she choreography on Yeomans for the BBC Young Dancer Finals. It’s a concisely structured, neo-classical piece working on fast moving traverse patterns, sparse and athletic, and a great vehicle for the third years.

And in the middle was Mats Ek’s blissful Pas de Dans: two couples in a homespun romance, a little mix and match, a dash of comedy and Ek’s distinctive choreographic language. Pompea Santoro who set the work picked her dancers with skill. Antonin Faraut, tall and gauche with a gift for comedy, the feisty Anna Ciriano Cerdà and the passionate pairing of Júlia Baró Claveria and Jan Špunda each brought something of themselves to this intensely human work. It was hot and crowded in Wimbledon – there was another event just down the road – but the enthusiasm and professionalism of staff and students rose about all that, to provide an excellent showcase for ENBS.