Stephen A’Court
The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Ryman Healthcare season of Solace: Dance to Feed Your Soul premièred Thursday night at the St James in Wellington, with three ballets that pushed the art’s boundaries.
The opening ballet, Infra, by British choreographer Wayne McGregor, was originally commissioned by the Royal Ballet and débuted at the Royal Opera House in 2008.
McGregor began with the idea of contemporary urban life, and how people are usually focused on themselves while walking to the point where they do not notice others. However, after the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, he noted that people began to see others. He wanted to make a point about being curious about other people.
With a simple set design along with LED animations above the stage by Julian Opie, Infra showed digital figures walking while the dancers performed below. Six couples dance in their own squares of light to a moving Max Richter score. Moritz Junge created the costumes, allowing for the dancers’ intimate movements and showing a sense of reality, including our human fragility. McGregor pushed what was possible with the dancers’ movements, taking them in different directions, flowing, repeating, and exploring.
The award-winning designer Lucy Carter, a collaborator of McGregor, created the lighting.
It is the RNZB’s first performance of this acclaimed ballet, executed beautifully, with Jennifer Ulloa, Damani Campbell Williams and Mayu Tanigaito three of the company whom we particularly noticed on opening night. The ballet left us with an optimistic note with its final duet.
McGregor was awarded the CBE in 2011 and knighted earlier this year.
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Stephen A’Court
RNZB choreographer-in-residence Sarah Foster-Sproull’s To Hold was the highlight of the three for us, her fifth original work for the company and a world première. To Hold explores holding and being held, with an emphasis on fingers, hands and arms and the forms they can create, and reflecting the choreographer’s memories of embracing others, holding on to someone for support, and giving energy. Donna Jefferis’s costumes were very creative, and the choreography was heart-warming, with its efferverscent movements and technical precision. The ballet concluded with possibly the coolest stage addition.
Eden Mulholland collaborated with Foster-Sproull on the score, with vocalists Anita Clarke and Anna Edgington and cellist Helen Mountfort. Jon Buswell once again mastering the lighting and set design that took us into the dreamscape that Foster-Sproull envisaged.
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Stephen A’Court
After the interval, Alice Topp’s High Tide was particularly moving for us with music by Ólafur Arnalds, an Icelandic composer we had been following for some time. This was Topp’s first original work for the RNZB on stage, and she selected five of Arnalds’ tracks to accompany her work. Of the three, this was the most raw, dealing with the cycles of life, showing a deep trust by the choreographer in the dancers to bring their own personalities to the work. A fish-eye mirror on stage gave an additional perspective to the dances—a master-stroke from set and lighting designer Buswell that gave the ballet an other-worldliness. Topp was also responsible for the colourful costumes on stage. Challenging lifts and movements gave High Tide particular impact and showed off the dancers’ strength. We could layer on multiple interpretations to the abstract ballet, which was precisely the point: Topp explored how human lives develop, and how we relate to others, including personal fears of ageing or abandonment, and wider concerns such as our planet, wars and disharmony.
This was a conceptually rich and beautiful collection, one that rewards with every ballet. It brings the best of New Zealand and one of the UK’s most acclaimed ballets together. For those who love ballet—beyond the classical favourites—Solace is an enriching evening.
Solace is in Wellington till August 3, before moving to Auckland for August 8–10, then Christchurch for August 16–17. Bookings are available from rnzb.org.nz.
Lucire thanks Sarah Munn for her contribution to this review.
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