Next Generation Festival: The Royal Ballet School

Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, London
June 20, 2023

The Royal Ballet School’s contribution to this year’s Next Generation Festival at The Royal Opera House showcased the Upper School and Pre-Professional students’ skills and artistry in a programme of classical and contemporary works old and new.

Without doubt, the high spot of the evening was Jiří Kylián’s Sechs Tänze, performed by dancers from the Pre-professional Year, which closed the first half. Full of richness, fantasy, clownery and madness, it suits the students, and one suspects their sense of humour, a treat.

One of Mozart’s many abilities was to react to difficult circumstances with outbursts of nonsensical poetry. Inspired by that and the composers Sechs Deutsche Tänze, Kylián’s creation is nonsensical dance. Each of its six dances are a romp, filled with the best physical comedy.

The dancers conveyed the work’s humour and moments pathos superbly. Coming with with them in powdered wigs and pared-back eighteenth-century costumes, it looks vaguely like a court of the period. On the other hand, such is the level of silliness and squabbling, it could just as easily be a group of children let loose in a costume and prop store.

Everything is overdone. Be prepared for bewigged men in giant ballgowns gliding gracefully (mostly) across the floor, an apple speared with a sword and eaten, and a mock beheading and much, much more. There are innumerable puffs of powder and even soap bubbles. One senses it’s as much fun for those on stage as us watching.

The programme got off to a cracking start courtesy of the Vision Scene from Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote. It’s a good choice for a school show as it calls for a lot of dancers and a lot of technique. They did look a bit squished and struggling for space in the ensemble sections but all coped really well.

Ravi Cannonier-Watson was a perfectly dreamy-eyed Don, but this is very much a scene for the women. With their tutus in shades of rose pick, green, purple, lemon yellow and white, it really is a picture. Chaeyeon Kang as Kitri and Katie Robertson as Amour both pleased, but it was Milda Luckute as The Queen of the Dryads who really caught the eye. Tall and long-limbed, this elegant young dancer is full of beautiful lines.

From the women to the me and Fast Blue, a new work by Mikaela Polley. The highlight comes early, a sinuous, powerful but intensely graceful solo, danced here by Austen McDonald. The ensemble sections, filled with leaps and turns, call for lots of athleticism and energy, which the men delivered in spades. They sometimes looked less comfortable with the male-male partnering however, very much out of the usual mixed-gender textbook than being anything ground-breakingly new.

More restrained classicism came from Liya Fan and Tom Hazelby in the pas de deux from Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons. It was neatly danced although Fan perhaps gave a little too much on the facial expression. The required subtlety will no doubt come but it’s not quite there yet.

Later, there was work from Kenneth MacMillan too in the form of his The Four Seasons. A million miles from the recently seen Anastasia, it’s a pleasing and utterly classical, if somewhat unexciting series of small group dances.

But for beauty in movement, look no further than the excerpts from Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour, one of his best abstract works that sees the dancers moving to music by Antonio Vivaldi and Ezio Bosso. Guillem Cabrera Espinach and Tom Hazelby were excellent in their visceral duet, while Sierra Glasheen and Blake Smith were all sensuality in their much more subtle, beautifully understated pas de deux. Best comes last, though. A dance of joy and energy to Bosso’s energetic, driving, slowly speeding up second movement (‘I’m Born Child (African Skies)’) of his String Quartet No.2 (‘The Nights’), the Finale is a treat of machine-like non-stop movement.

Elsewhere, Pre-professional year student Caspar Lench thrilled as his bare-chested body responded to the propulsion and rhythms vocalised by Sheila Chandra in Robert Battle’s powerful solo, Takademe. The work’s kathak influences are plain.

It’s to The Royal Ballet’s School’s credit that they usually find space for at least one piece of student choreography. This year, it came in the form of Forgetting, a duet by Upper School 2nd Year Tom Cape, performed by him and Francesca Lloyd, although I’m not convinced it fully evoked the intended essence of longing. There was also Romanian folk dance performed by White Lodge Years 10 and 11.

Either Sechs Tänze or, given its classicism, Within the Golden Hour, would have made a fabulous finale. Instead, that honour fell to Bold by Ballett Nürnberg director, Goyo Montero. Created in just one week at the 2023 Prix de Lausanne for 24 dancers from the competition’s partner schools, it’s typical of his work: very much an ensemble piece, although some dancers do get brief, individual moments in the spotlight.

Best is a tightly choreographed section to piano where the dancers’ movement reflects the instrument and its playing. Elsewhere, there are lots of the front-to-back lines that Montero so likes, forming, dissolving, reforming. Overall, it does feel a little bitty, though, something of a collection of ideas rather than a totally coherent whole. Probably a reflection of its swift making.

But overall, a fine start to The Royal Ballet School’s performance season, which now continues at Opera Holland Park and The Royal Opera House’s main stage.