Classicism to the fore: John Cranko School

Opera House, Stuttgart
July 16, 2023

It was a middle-of-the-day couple of hours that sent you away very happy. In part because director John Cranko School director Tadeusz Matacz is clearly doing a fabulous job maintaining standards. The quality of dancing on show was top-notch. I can’t help thinking that the fact the school has a smaller cohort than many similar institutions, thus allowing for more personal attention for each dancer, must be a factor.

But also, and this may be unfashionable these days, because this Ballet Matinée was absolutely and unashamedly classically-focused. Even the student choreography. The contemporary pieces were clearly classically underwritten too. The only disappointment in this, the 50th anniversary of his death, was that there was no sign of anything by John Cranko, although the school did dance several pieces in the recent gala celebrating the choreographer and his work.

The matinée got off to a fine start with a suite of excerpts from Act Two of the Petipa, Ivanov and Vainonen The Nutcracker, led by Alice McArthur and Joshua Nunamaker. McArthur impressed with her fine, delicate technique and winning smile, as she did throughout the show, and indeed last year. It’s no surprise she’ll be joining Stuttgart Ballet as an apprentice next season. Youngsters Alexa Jensen. Ruka Suginohara and Waku Tohara also delighted in a pas de trois, while Alexei Orohovsky pulled off some terrific, consecutive tours en l’air and super pirouettes in his solo.

More Petipa followed with Abigail Wilson-Heisel and Mitchell Millhollin (also moving on to Stuttgart Ballet) dancing the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake. Millhollin not only produced great height on height on his jumps, but featherlight landings too. Wilson-Heisel could perhaps have been more alluring. There wasn’t too sexuality or sense of her reeling in her catch, although that is a tricky for young dancers to get just right. No question about her technique, though. She made the tricky variation look easy, including her fouettés, which were right on the button. She did all 32 too, finishing super cleanly.

The only extended contemporary piece was Alessandro Giaquinto’s very appealing Drifting Bones, a dark intense work to music by the unusual combination of Bach and jazz singer Norma Winstone. It was so good, I could have watched it again immediately.

In many ways it’s a perfect graduation or school show piece in that, while an ensemble work, it also gives each of its eight dancers plenty of individual opportunities to shine, as in the opening three solos, all danced with the sort of clarity of line associated with more classical choreography. Clara Thiele stood out, in particular. The highlight was a deeply absorbing duet by Farrah Hirsch and Leon Metelsky (again, joining Stuttgart Ballet), the one time the choreography appeared to hint at narrative, however.

As it progresses, there is a lot of floor work, with hands over faces or mouths a recurring image. It may be quite melancholic but there is humour too, notably when one dancer (Maceo Gerard) continues after the music ends, suddenly realises that fact, waves to the audience and walks off. It was fabulously lit too, shafts of light catching and bouncing off bodies that sometimes seem to drift in the otherwise dark space. Perhaps that’s where the title comes from.

Stuttgart Ballet has long encouraged young choreographers and it’s good to see the same happening at the John Cranko School. Immediately after the interval, the pleasing Fantasie Impromptu, a neatly constructed piece created by the six dancers involved, was notable for Carlos Strasser playing the piano, and very well indeed too, as well as dancing.

After Desolation, a dance for three by Justin Padilla, still only in his final year at what might be considered the ‘Lower School,’ McArthur showed that, while she may be an exceptional young talent as a dancer, she knows how to choreograph too. Even better, and refreshingly, unlike most ballet school student dance-makers, she’s not afraid to use pointework. To music by Fanny Mendelsohn, Present in absence is a well-worked dance for two couples, one in purple, one in black, the latter coming with a slightly more contemporary edge, who tend to dance around each other, just occasionally coming together.

Back to the classics, Keisuke Miyazaki, in the same class as Padilla, gave a solid performance of Siegfried’s variation from Act Three of Swan Lake before the handsomely elegant Alexei Orohovsky treated us to a snippet from Paquita. His outstanding series of pirouettes in second and attitude did not surprise those of us who remained in the auditorium in the interval, however. The curtain was left up and we saw him practising. He was just as good them too!

Immediately prior to the traditional closing Etüden came the new, and quite lengthy La Nascita di Venere (The Birth of Venus) by Stuttgart Ballet apprentice and 2022 graduate of the School, Emanuele Babici.

Set to music by Edvard Grieg, it pares down the Greek myth into just a few scenes starting with the announcement of the birth of Venus (Alice McArthur) by Mercury (Maceo Gerard). Appropriately for a ballet set on Mount Olympus (check) with a cast of gods, grace and good manners reign.

Babici shows he certainly knows how to handle an ensemble. It’s a fine piece to show off classical technique. The structure and choreography are finely tuned, although the latter is a little old-fashioned in feel. The narrative is not as clear as it might be either, the sheer volume of named characters probably not helping. Other roles include Venus’s father, Uranus (Mitchell Millhollin), who dances a fine central pas de deux with his daughter; her mother Tellus (Ji-Young Kang), her brother Saturn (Leon Metelsky), Zephyr (Leonardo D’Onofrio), Flora (Abigail Willson-Heisel), the Three Graces (Clara Thiele, Kaela Tapper, and Ayako Tsukada), and the Seasons (Farrah Hirsch, Noa Shoda, Katharina Buck and Anaelle-Jade M’Dallal).