Birmingham Royal Ballet have once again danced a breathtaking triple bill performed to music by the talented Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by Thomas Jung.
Into the Music included Forgotten Land, World-Debut Hotel and The Seventh Symphony. Three incredibly different and yet complimentary pieces to one another.
The show opened with Benjamin Britten’s powerful Sinfonia da requiem for Jiří Kylián’s superb Forgotten Land. A World premiere back in 1981 for Stuttgart Ballet but a first for Birmingham Royal Ballet to perform, last night on 21st October 2022.
As the curtain opened, we were greeted with the dancers turning their backs from the audience. The howling of the wind filling the auditorium as we wonder if the dancers are in a storm but soon we realise we are watching a seascape. The beauty of watching classical ballet is that you can almost make the story in your own head.
We see six couples on the stage with the three main couples demonstrating feelings of mourning, young love and passion. A soulful and somber performance for the 12 dancers chosen for the piece. The dancers were completely at ease with the choreography that emphasised their breadth of movement. We saw the eloquent curves of the women’s backs (Momoko Hirata, Isabella Howard, Yaoqian Shang, Karla Doorbar, Rachele Pizzillo and Eilis Small) to the outstretched arms and poise of the male dancers (César Morales, Lennert Steegen, Mathias Dingman, Riku Ito, Louis Andreasen and Callum Findlay-White).
After a 25 minute interval, we returned to the world debut of Hotel a work by Morgann Runacre-Temple and music by Mikael Karlsson. It seemed poignant to have this performed in October (spooky season) as this had a modern contemporary and overwhelmingly dark feel to it. I was tense, captivated and intrigued watching the performance. I loved it.
We saw Tzu-Chao Chou play the role of the Manager of the hotel. Beatrice Parma, the assistant manager. They welcome two couples (Couple One: Sofia Liñares and Javier Rojas and Couple Two: Lucy Waine and Gabriel Anderson) and a lone guest (Haoliang Feng) to the hotel, where strange things happen. I feel like I don’t want to tell you everything about this performance as it is definitely one that you want to experience for yourself. But what I can highlight is the quality of the dancing, the superb use of filming and projecting and the utmost love and admiration I had for this performance. It is daring, it is unusual and it is a perfect way to draw more people into ballet.
After our second interval, we were treated to the final performance of the triple bill, Beethoven’s masterful The Seventh Symphony with Uwe Scholz’s tremendous choreography.
This ballet is simply beautiful, really showcasing what the bodies of ballet dancers can do. The movement, the poise, the strength and stamina. Made all the more perfect by Céline Gittens infectious smile and superb dancing and Mathias Dingmans ability to perform routines that caused the audience to clap before the performance was finished.
Birmingham Royal Ballet have such a strong team of ballet dancers and I particularly enjoyed seeing not only my favourites performing again (Céline Gittens, Beatrice Parma, Brandon Lawrence, Tyrone Singleton, Yijing Zhang, Karla Doorbar, Mathias Dingman and Tzu-Chao Chou to name just a few) but also to see some faces I am not so familiar with (Gabriel Anderson, Isabella Howard, Lucy Waine, Ryan Felix and Lennert Steegen). Every single person in last night’s performance was phenomenal and it is this calibre of dancer that keeps Birmingham Royal Ballet so well respected across the World.
You can catch Into the Music at Birmingham Hippodrome today at 2:30pm and 7:30pm before it moves to Sadler’s Wells . Book tickets here: Into the Music
Disclaimer: I was invited along to the press showing. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.