Flying high: London City Ballet in Resurgence

Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham Spa
August 2, 2024

Twenty-seven years after it finally succumbed to financial pressures and closed, London City Ballet has been reborn. In its first incarnation, the company toured widely, taking ballet to towns and cities off the radar of its larger cousins. It also had a deserved reputation for high standards and diverse repertory. The great news is that all of that is very much in evidence with the new company’s Resurgence programme, a mix of old and new.

But before the dancing, a brief look back at what was. The tone of a short, rather nostalgic film full of photographs of the company and newspaper reports is just about right. It also reminds of the importance of the patronage of Princess Diana, seen visiting rehearsals and chatting with dancers.

Resurgence gets underway on stage with Ashley Page’s Larina Waltz, a chamber ballet for five couples, the men in black, the women in white. Danced to the sweeping waltz from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Page’s out-and-out classical choreography mixes ensemble sections with mini-duets for each couple. You wouldn’t call it an impactful ballet, but its a pleasingly fine opener that establishes firmly the classical credentials of the company.

Kenneth Macmillan’s Ballade is altogether meatier. Created in 1972 for a one-off performance in Portugal, it was never performed again. Until now. It was made for his wife, Deborah, who until recently had never seen it on stage, having missed the premiere thanks to food poisoning after a seafood dinner the previous evening. Reconstructed entirely from the notation, there being no known film or photographs, it was inspired by how the couple met.

Performed to Fauré’s Ballade, it has the feel of the sort of warm, early summer evening on which the premiere was danced, the ballet’s three men (Joseph Taylor, Arthur Wille and Nicholas Vavrečka) in white shirts and trousers, the sole woman (Ayça Anil) in a fitted dress of the time.

Having met them watching a film at the cinema, the quartet soon move to sit at a table as if playing cards. It’s not long before a sort of courtship ritual starts, each of the men dancing with Anil. But, as they make their play for her, it’s soon clear that it’s Taylor who she is going to choose.

The choreography is subtle but richly detailed, the ballet needing no notes to understand. Anil and Taylor’s blossoming romance is portrayed in a gorgeous pas de deux. In many ways, the choreography, full of difficult lifts with the carefree, light-as-a-feather and beautifully pliable Anil often wrapped around her partner’s shoulders, is not unlike that we would later see in Manon, but here it’s way more subtle.

Harold King, artistic director of the original London City Ballet, was never afraid to commission new work, so it’s good to see today’s director, Christopher Marney, following suit. And I suspect Arielle Smith’s Five Dances might just be a winner.

Set to five short dances from John’s Book of Alleged Dances by John Adams, Smith’s is a ballet of sinuous movement. It’s compelling from start to finish. While Smith’s classically-rooted but modern choreography is very much non-narrative, it often feels a little more than a simple response to the music. Time and again in solos, and especially duets and trios, you get the feeling that something is behind it, even if you’re not quite sure what.

At the ballet’s heart is a fine, intense duet. Isadora Bless and Alejandro Virelles danced with controlled energy, speaking as much with their eyes as with their movement. A later duet for Jimin Kim and Álvaro Madrigal is delightfully upbeat and playful. Among the solos, the beautifully fluid Arthur Wille took the eye for his ease of movement and ability to find time in everything.

Resurgence closed with Marney’s Eve, which looks at the story of Adam and Eve from Eve’s perspective and her relationship with the Serpent in particular. It’s a meaty twenty minutes that provides a different take on the familiar tale.

In red under a grey overcoat, the sensual Alvaro Madrigal cuts a potent figure as the Serpent. Menacing yet not without allure, it’s easy to see how Ellie Young’s naive Eve might be drawn to him. Having had her curiosity, and perhaps more, aroused, Eve rides him, before allowing herself to be lifted and carried as she surrenders to him in a taut pas de deux. Having literally wrapped herself in his coat, he then turns more forceful as the relationship becomes laced with even more danger. And then she takes that fateful bite of the apple.

The super Young and Madrigal are later joined by the ensemble in the shape of multiple Adam and Eves. While their arrival undoubtedly dissipates the ballet’s impact for a while, they do allow for a reset of Eve’s narrative as she rediscovers her Adam.

Eve was a fine end to a fine programme, albeit one that, with an overall running time of just 90 minutes, including an interval. At Sadler’s Wells, it will be boosted with the pas de deux from MacMillan’s Concerto, however, with Alina Cojocaru also joining the company to appear in Ballade.

Time will tell just how much Christopher Marney, has his work cut out persuading regional audiences to go and see mixed programmes. But there’s a lot of goodwill around and Resurgence is a fine start. The phoenix has risen. Long may it fly.

London City Ballet continues on tour to September 22, 2024. Click here for dates and venues.