National Youth Ballet: Evolving Visions

Crescent Theatre, Birmingham
August 21, 2024

After workshops and rehearsals through the year, every summer, promising young dancers aged 9-19 from all over the country come together for the National Youth Ballet’s short season of performances, which culminates with an evening on the main stage at Sadler’s Wells. As a brief film shown after the interval makes clear, NYB is as much about participation, inclusivity and learning, about empowering its young dancers and developing their confidence, as it is about performance and skills, however.

Evolving Visions opens with a welcome revival of artistic director Louise Bennett’s 2018 ballet, Ada, which celebrates the life and work of mathematician Ada Lovelace, an associate of Charles Babbage, for whose prototype of a digital computer she created a program, although it was never actually tested.

It’s a shame the connection isn’t made clear in the programme book. Like very other piece, it has not even a single line about intention or inspiration.

In movement terms, Ada can easily be taken as abstract, the link with Lovelace being most obvious through Kenneth McLeod’s super projections that do indeed suggest a computer whirring away. But however viewed, it’s a very pleasing ballet that underlines the company’s classical ballet core. It’s very musical, and full of fine groupings and patterns. Among its several brief solos, two stood out: by Maisie Fletcher, whose dance was sparky, light and full of neat jumps; and by Innes Oliver, who delivered a slower, more elegant, thoughtful number.

Created for NYB’s Junior Company, Tierney Lawlor’s Learning The Ropes is about a child who can’t skip. Light, bright and very playful, it also emphasises the importance of friendship, support and compassion for each other. The youngsters looked like they were having a ball.

A touch of the surreal comes with In Out Loud by Spanish choreographer Neus Gil Cortés. It features 20 dancers, all in white, all with voluminous, white, curly, Afro wigs. Ostensibly about confronting inhibitions and what might happen if we allowed ourselves to be silly, it starts with everyone lying in a line across the stage. After slowly coming to standing, they chant ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,’ individuals being ejected from the group from time to time. Then, slowly but surely, a sort of freedom wins out. It is just a shame that Cortés great ending comes so soon.

Besides providing opportunities for talented performers, NYB offers a platform for early-career choreographers through its Beyond Ballet programme. Two such present new work in Evolving Visions. Rosie Mackley’s What You’ve (Already) Got initially makes some fun use of clothes on a rack but rather loses its way and ends weakly. Stronger is Amy Groves’ Ready, and…, which takes a slightly different look at ballet through unexpected twists and turns in the ballet studio. Groups form, flow and dissolve pleasingly, although its theme does get a little lost.

First up after the interval, Open Water (Just What You Wanted) by Daniel Davidson, was inspired by the Scottish myth of the Kelpies, shape-shifting water creatures that appear on land as horses, and who entice humans to ride them, before taking them to a watery grave.

With Emilie Depauly-Viguie’s shiny black and deep blue all-in-one costumes, Andrew Ellis’ shadowy lighting and Rhia Mitsuhashi’s stunning projections, it looks a treat. Sure enough, the dancers first appear like creatures emerging from the dark, inky depths of the lake of the backdrop, the choreography imbued with an other-worldly feel. A sense of loss comes when the piece changes tone as the action returns to underwater. Open Water (Just What You Wanted) is at its best in the ensemble sections, although, as here and there with a couple of the other pieces, the stage did feel rather crowded at times. I suspect Sadler’s Wells will suit it much better.

Best of the new works is Richard Bermange’s Ephemeral Blueprint, arresting from start to finish. Inspired by diverse forms of architecture, it again feels abstract, but what a gorgeous ten minutes of dance. The steps may be classical through and through but, as with the music by Mason Bates’ to which it’s danced, it’s an imaginative meeting of tradition and modernity. Full of neat patterns and lines, it was confidently danced too, with excellent pointework, and super partnering from the boys.

BLANK by Miguel Altunaga imagines what might happen if dancers were left to their own creative devices. Once we get past the opening, which sees one dancer ask the audience how we are before being bundled away, and another talk about what he is not going to do, things pick up enormously. Danced to the familiar Paganini of the South Bank Show theme, it looks, and probably is, a bunch of disconnected ideas. There’s a bit of ballet, some cartwheels, shadow boxing, a touch of jazz and hip hop. While in one sense an anarchic as it sounds, far from being simply ‘thrown together,’ it is in fact very tightly choreographed.

In many ways, BLANK shouldn’t work. But thanks in no small measure to the dancers, it most certainly does.

The show also included two short solos by company dancers: Out of Body by Tilda Marriage Massey and Time Lapse by Harvey Stevens.

Apart from the omissions in the printed programme, the only criticism is that the show too often seemed rushed. It was like the staging was racing the clock, pieces coming and going at machine gun pace, no more than a few seconds separating each.

But that’s a small point. Evolving Visions is a happy couple of hours in the company of some very talented young dancers, whose joy and enthusiasm reached across the footlights. Well done to all!

National Youth Ballet are at Sadler’s Wells, London on Sunday September 8, 2024, when the programme will also feature the NYB All In! Company, including young dancers with and without disabilities from NYB and Parable Dance, in a creation by Beyond Ballet choreographers Ross Black and Hannah George inspired by Romeo and Juliet.