New York City Ballet makes a long-awaited return to London at Sadler’s Wells — review

Was it something we said? After an absence of 16 years, New York City Ballet has finally returned to London. Director Jonathan Stafford, clearly keen to shift the focus from the core repertoire by founder George Balanchine, has selected a programme featuring new(ish) work by Pam Tanowitz, Kyle Abraham and Justin Peck, NYCB’s resident choreographer.

Peck’s 2020 Rotunda, set to a Nico Muhly commission played live by the Britten Sinfonia, makes a blandly palate-cleansing opener. Twelve superb dancers in pastel stretchwear ebb and flow, cluster and pair, echoing the score that pours from the clarinet like birdsong.

Abraham’s 2022 Love Letter (on shuffle) is drip-fed by James Blake’s drivetime rhythms. The 16 dancers sport unflattering outfits by fashion designer Giles Deacon, who jettisons the thrifty minimalism of the Balanchine aesthetic in favour of photo-printed Lycra, embellished with ruffs, cuffs, jabots and peplums. And bloomers.

Abraham makes tremendous use of the NYCB speed and attack and the dancers clearly relish the polyglot vocabulary. Ballet clichés — little swans, gargouillades, scary six o’clock extensions — are delivered at warp speed and gleefully cross-fertilised with contemporary and street dance. The star is Taylor Stanley, who embodies these choreographic contradictions with throwaway brilliance.

The programme’s centrepiece features Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Gray No 1, set to Caroline Shaw’s Chopin-esqe piano composition played on stage by Stephen Gosling. Four dancers wearing stunning scarlet costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung — a clever cross between a surplice and a unitard — ripple through Tanowitz’s measures with deadpan wit. The writing is musically alert and bracingly unpredictable. The foursome pair off into double duets, limp into sulky unison or slouch unexpectedly out of dance mode as if still deciding what comes next.

At the evening’s heart lies Balanchine’s sublime Duo Concertant, composed by Stravinsky in 1932 and finally choreographed in 1972 for NYCB’s legendary Stravinsky Festival. A piano (Elaine Chelton), a violin (Kurt Nikkanen), two keen-eared dancers (Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley) and steps that seem to blossom spontaneously from the score.

★★★★☆

To March 10, sadlerswells.com

The New York quadruple bill is strictly “returns only” for the rest of its cruelly short run. Sadly, the Royal Ballet has lost the knack of devising and marketing mixed programmes (discounts abound for the forthcoming MacMillan evening), but there are two magic words that will always fill the house . . . 

The latest revival of Liam Scarlett’s 2018 Swan Lake opened on Wednesday. The production has its weaknesses, but John Macfarlane’s sumptuous costumes and easel-worthy sets are a joy in themselves and Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare has made sure of a five-star review with a smartly drilled corps of swans and a thoroughbred opening cast.

Vadim Muntagirov’s 2022 run of Rudolfs in Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling has darkened and intensified his unmissable reading of Siegfried. The unhappy prince’s sorrowful soliloquy, with its swooning turns and yearning arabesques, is a masterclass in understated grandeur.

Marianela Nuñez danced her first Royal Ballet Swan Lake in 2005, before Wednesday’s youngest cygnets were fully fledged, and the dual role of the enchanted Swan Queen and her mysterious doppelgänger holds no terrors for her. But, as the great critic HT Parker wrote of Pavlova, she has “the ability to veil the bravura technique in the mantle of beauty”.

★★★★★

To June 28, roh.org.uk