London City Ballet at The Joyce Review
September 16, 2024 | The Joyce Theater – New York, NY, USA
City Ballet is back. Not that city ballet. The other one: London City Ballet.
Founded in 1978, the company closed its doors in 1996 due to financial strain. Rekindled in 2023, the troupe operates specifically in a touring capacity with a goal of presenting new works as well as “resurrecting older works that may no longer be in the mainstream repertoire”.
An efficient group of twelve artists, the dance collective’s focus on chamber pieces rather than full lengths makes for easier touring and an obvious choice for the intimate Joyce Theater. Their time in New York City marks the last stop on their 17-theater tour.
With only 90 minutes in the program, they managed to highlight four works and the history of the company through video components. The nostalgic videos helped provide necessary exposition for the unfamiliar audience members while also conveying the brazen courage needed to resurrect a professional troupe.
London City Ballet at The Joyce Review
Guiding the evening with that need to reintroduce themselves, they delivered a breadth of work, although all bound by classical form. The speed at which they transitioned from piece to piece was so tight, it was a wonder how some dancers, present in all four works, had time to change costumes. But condensing that time gave the evening a welcome buzzing rush, an eagerness.
Opening the program was the US premiere of Ashley Page’s Larina Waltz, originally created in 1993. Resembling a proud défilé, it highlighted the dancer’s talents in a parade-like fashion, adroitly accompanied by a grand Tchaikovsky waltz from Onegin and regal black and white costuming by Emily Noble.
Page offers up challenging choreographic transitions and tricky hand switching, requiring the dancers to trade forward motion in favor of halting catch steps or reverse promenades. The difficulty is not shy, and the speed has the potential to be a roadblock for hitting lines, but the dancers are both prickly fast and lusciously generous.
This is not a typical stuffy défilé - it has style and richness.
Liam Scarlett’s Consolations & Liebestraum from 2009, accompanied by Franz Liszt’s piano score of the same name, presents another shade of the company. Where Page tackled fullness, Scarlett’s choreography finds stillness within pianist Luc Xu Cheng’s hovering piano notes.
Reminiscent of Jerome Robbins’ In the Night, we see three stages of a romantic relationship from the dawn of love to its demise. The deeply expressive Ellie Young opens and closes the piece, as if looking back on bleak memories and making stops in time.
Dressed in shades of black and grey and often dramatically lit with a single spotlight, the work evokes a somber tone even in the happy moments.
Scarlett pays special attention to the hands: how they touch, where and when, what they do when they make contact. A delicate reminder of how sweet it feels to hold hands and cold when open palms are not filled.
Each section receives its own gratifying button to conclude it; for example, the tumultuous couple spend most of their time aggressively hooking elbows and denying open hands, but they end in an embrace, locked in despite everything. The layout is pleasantly balanced, with three pas de deux and one group section in the middle, framed by solos at either end.
And because we start as we began, with Young kneeling and pondering past the fourth wall, there’s a sense of satisfaction and unresolvedness that hangs just like the piano notes in the air.
The newest work of the evening, Arielle Smith’s Five Dances, set to a spirited, almost pastoral score by John Adams, takes the dancers out of their rigid ballet shoes, instead opting for friction-less socks, and requires them to get low in grounded pliés.
The vibrant shades of orange, teal, and red costumes by Stevie Stewart reflect the cheerful humor of the dancers. We start to see them relax with playful smirks and glimmering eyes, eliciting the knowing glances of an inside joke.
Arthur Wille shone brightly in a solo where he ate up the stage in flying assemblé jumps and confident extensions and then finished it off with a gentle grin, an almost chuckle.
Although completely different in style from Scarlett’s, the work is similar in its structural simplicity.
Five Dances is just that, five dances. Described as “a celebration of dance in its purest form,” each section echoes the essence of the one prior yet retains its own character.
Undulating spines, deep drops into the ground, and slick floor slides make this the most “modern” work of the evening, but it still relied on ballet’s scaffolding.
Smith knows how to give a thrill too.
The work closes in a blackout that hits just as the dancers dive forward toward the audience, giving the effect of jumping into a dark abyss. Shoutout to the stage manager who called that cue because the timing was perfect, causing several audience members to gasp aloud.
The second half of the show was dedicated to Artistic Director Christopher Marney’s Eve, a retrospective of the pitfalls in earthly paradise from Eve’s point of view.
Cira Robinson is magnetic as the confused and lonely first human woman, awakened by the seductive and lithe serpent, dancer Álvaro Madrigal.
Jennie Muskett’s (MBE) music echoes and aches, like the soundtrack for a barren planet.
Costuming is a bit confusing with Eve already constrained by a corset, although perhaps a metaphor representing the burden of Adam’s rib, it was still surprising to see her in something synonymous with modern dressing.
Marney’s choreography feels moment to moment and although a bit shaggy in the storyline, the shapes are sculptural and use of props refreshing. Like when Eve and the serpent take turns biting the apple, her teeth remain clenched in the fruit, the red sphere acting as a Scarlet Letter of sorts.
And as Eve and Adam walk into the sunset away from Eden, the orange light felt like freedom and possibilities, quite like London City Ballet.
Featured Photo of London City Ballet‘s Cira Robinson in Christopher Marney’s Eve. Photo by ASH.
