London City Ballet at The Joyce Review
October 27, 2026 | The Joyce Theater – New York, NY, USA
It was my first time seeing London City Ballet, and Program A at The Joyce Theater proved to be an ambitious quadruple bill. The evening showcased the company’s eclectic range of historical and contemporary repertoire, beginning with a joyful waltz in sexy black pointe shoes and building toward sophisticated expressions of distressing human experiences through abstract contemporary ballet.
Across the four works, darkness and delight continually intersected, revealing the many ways choreography can transform difficult subjects into compelling works of art.
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London City Ballet at The Joyce Review
Like having dessert first, Ashley Page’s ebullient and breezy Mephisto Waltz kicked off the evening in high spirits and immediately grabbed my attention.
Five ladies wearing Jon Morrell’s colorful velvet tutus danced en pointe with their partners against an orange, soda-colored backdrop. Black neck ribbons, reminiscent of those in Degas’s paintings, completed their costumes, but these dancers were anything but the dainty Degas ballerinas one might imagine.
Instead, they waltzed briskly to Johann Strauss II’s music, taking turns showing off complicated, seemingly never-ending sequences of movement.
I quickly realized that Page’s choreographic distinction lies in his ability to make classical ballet pop.
The way Page plays with the music and the dancers’ weight shifts forms the backbone of his choreography. He inserts offbeat allegro steps in the middle of a phrase, sends dancers traveling off the expected count, and propels the choreography around the stage with a sense of constant rebound.
Every movement feels different, and each couple showcases its own distinctive sequences.
Yuria Isaka stood out in a maroon tutu, bringing exceptional dynamism and lyricism to every maneuver. Later, Jimin Kim folded her leg over Arthur Henderson’s arm before extending it skyward, while her partner provided unwavering support, turning and lifting her in creative, unpredictable ways.
Toward the end, the gentlemen lifted their partners into the air following a series of en dedans turns, before the couples struck their final poses midstage and the lights faded.
It was all too short and sweet, leaving me wanting more.
Page choreographed a tribute to Tchaikovsky in 1993 for eight principal dancers of The Royal Ballet, and Mephisto Waltz reminded me of that work, albeit with one additional couple. The piece was a delightful opener, and it was the standout from the night.
After the cheerful opening, the U.S. premiere of Tasha Chu’s Soon transported us into a much darker world.
Muddled, sweeping gusts of wind permeated the atmosphere, immediately establishing an ominous mood.
A woman (Sahel Flora Pascual) and a man (Siméon Sorange-Félicité) stood upstage, while another man in a white lab coat, perhaps a doctor in an emergency room, stood with his back to the audience in a pool of light at stage right. He suddenly walked offstage, and another man entered, collapsing to the floor and launching into a churning floor solo as the lighting shifted to blue.
Pascual and Sorange-Félicité performed a pas de deux around the stool on which she had been sitting upstage. Meanwhile, three other male dancers (Arthur Wille, Josué Gomez, and Samuele Barzaghi) walked across the stage in the background to the electronic music of Sam Robinson and Gavin Bryars.
The group sliced through space, rolling and folding their arms before forming a V-shaped formation. They then moved slowly around one another, exchanging glances, sinking into a grand plié, and pressing their wrists together before falling to the floor.
The men lifted Pascual several times, as though she were desperately trying to catch her breath. One lift, in particular, recalled the final moment of George Balanchine’s Serenade, with Pascual standing upright on the men’s hands.
Pascual subsequently moved around the stage, repeatedly gesturing as though she were hitting an invisible wall wherever she turned. Later, she and Sorange-Félicité performed another pas de deux, this time imbued with greater sorrow. She straddled his shoulder with her right leg before they transitioned to the floor to the lyrics of Gavin Bryars’s “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.” The moment brought to mind Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, particularly “Fix Me, Jesus,” evoking a similar sense of spiritual anguish and vulnerability.
I kept questioning the exact source of the woman’s grief, but her suffering was beautifully internal rather than loud.
In the quietness of her response to pain, I saw admirable courage and strength.
In the end, her partner lifted her again as she arched into a backbend, before he fell to the floor and she walked downstage along a diagonal as the lights faded.
One of the hardest things to achieve in choreography is to express distressing themes without leaving the audience distressed. Jerome Robbins’ Quiet City, the next work on the program, explored one of humanity’s darkest subjects while offering a sense of hope rather than leaving us in despair.
Aaron Copland’s music began as a group of dancers stood in a silhouetted circle against a blue backdrop. Suddenly, three male dancers in white unitards plunged in from an upstage corner. One was lifted like a bird, stretching his arms outward and arching upward, almost like a cuckoo emerging from a grandfather clock. The piece soon became a trio, with the remaining dancers watching from the sidelines.
Joseph Taylor emerged as the central figure, running into a penché along the diagonal. Wille and Barzaghi acted almost like guardian angels, catching and supporting Taylor through his every movement, balance, and jump. The trio recalled the three muses in Balanchine’s Apollo, reimagined as men, while the music increasingly evoked the dramatic sensibility of a Martha Graham work.
The dancers jumped, turned, contracted, suspended their arabesques and battements, and ran around the stage with extended arms and flexed hands. They eventually turned inward, and Taylor collapsed to the floor.
Wille and Barzaghi then performed a duet, echoing each other’s grace before lifting Taylor into a melancholy solo.
He reached longingly toward the diagonals, appearing to struggle toward some distant destination, but his efforts could not be sustained.
He slowly fell backward again as the two men lowered him to the ground.
After a brief pause, they lifted him once more, allowing him to leap and flip onto their shoulders before they ascended toward the same wing from which they had entered. The ensemble returned to its blue silhouettes as the lights dimmed.
My immediate interpretation was that angels had come to the city to offer us hope, uplift our spirits, and remind us that we can keep getting back up. I later learned that Robbins’s Quiet City, restaged by Robert La Fosse, who danced in its original premiere at New York City Ballet in 1986, was created in memory of dancer Joseph Duell, who plunged to his death from his New York apartment while dancing with the company. This context gave the work an additional layer of poignancy.
Although the dance was inspired by a great tragedy, I appreciated Robbins’s mastery in transforming such a painful subject into a subtle work of art, leaving room for audiences to develop their own interpretations.
The choreography seemed to speak to the hardships Duell experienced and to the ways we respond to difficult moments, ultimately encouraging us to find hope amid life’s challenges. There was a sense of delight within all the darkness, which is precisely why I consider the piece an important masterpiece.
Concluding the program was John Neumeier’s Ghost Light (a new 2026 version), featuring guest artist Alina Cojocaru. The work had moments that resonated deeply with me, as well as others that fell short.
The term “ghost light” comes from the theatrical tradition of leaving a light onstage after a performance, allowing the ghosts of performers to continue their work through the night. Neumeier drew on this idea during the pandemic, creating a work that emerged piece by piece as he considered how dancers could continue performing despite the restrictions on staging and movement.
The result explores the fears and anxieties that dancers carry, laying bare the shadows of their minds while searching for a sense of hope.
The stage was stripped down to its brick walls, with a lightbulb on a stand placed off-center and a white chair lying on the floor downstage right. Cojocaru entered in silence, wearing pointe shoes and a white swan tutu. One could feel her stage presence and the aura of a former Royal Ballet principal.
She reenacted Odette’s entrance from Swan Lake, but, to my surprise, suddenly began speaking aloud: “Where is the prince? Where is everyone? I’m not ready yet, I need to do my hair, I have to dance…” She ended the sequence in a dying-swan pose on the floor.
A prince (Sorange-Félicité) entered silently, approached her, and began dancing the iconic pas de deux from Act II of Swan Lake. He lifted her offstage midway through the pas de deux, and other dancers swept onto the stage carrying chairs, launching into a series of vignettes set to Franz Schubert’s music.
Some scenes depicted situations that felt universally recognizable. One centered on a couple in which a seemingly happy woman (Kim) eventually discovered the darker side of her lover (Barzaghi) and decided to leave him. In another, a woman in a purple leotard (Francesca Velicu) and her partner (whose name was not listed in the program of 16 dancers despite 17 appearing in the curtain call), wearing a plaid shirt, explored a tense relationship through a succession of pushes, drags, lifts, and pulls.
Unfortunately, the work began to feel increasingly fragmented, and its length did not help; I thought the ending had arrived at least twice, only for the piece to continue.
The contrast between its individual vignettes was not always enough to create a cohesive whole, and I found myself wishing for a stronger sense of direction. Ghost Light eventually concluded with the dancers gradually leaving the stage, until only Cojocaru and the Sylph (Tatyana Meijer) remained as the lights slowly dimmed.
I understood the work as an attempt to assemble the collective memories of a difficult historical moment, drawing on experiences and emotions that many of us can recognize. Its exploration of fear, isolation, uncertainty, and human relationships was meaningful, even when the choreography did not fully cohere.
Ultimately, Ghost Light highlighted the complexity of how we relate to one another, and I was glad to witness it, particularly for the opportunity to see Cojocaru dance. Still, my final verdict was mixed: despite several moments that hit home, the work as a whole felt too disorganized to be fully appreciated.
Taken together, the four works in London City Ballet’s Program A offered contrasting perspectives on the relationship between darkness and delight. The program was not without its shortcomings, but sometimes delight comes from simple, courageous choices of continuing to dance through the darkness.
Featured Photo of London City Ballet‘s Joseph Taylor, Arthur Wille, and Samuele Barzaghi in Jerome Robbins’ Quiet City. Photo by Steven Pisano.
