Lest We Forget, English National Ballet - dance review

Star dancer and artistic director Tamara Rojo moves bravely into the future as she looks back at the Great War
Lyndsey Winship6 April 2014

It's official, pointe shoes are out. The theme of English National Ballet’s new show may look to the past — the centenary of the First World War — but the content is future-focused, jettisoning the pointe shoes for bare feet and classical choreographers for contemporary ones.

Not everything works, but it’s a brave and brilliant move from director Tamara Rojo. There are three new commissions on the bill (a fourth piece, George Williamson’s Firebird, is an unnecessary addition) and the big draw is choreographer Akram Khan performing with Rojo, one of the few dancers who can match his on-stage intensity.

In the atmospheric Dust, Khan’s convulsing, gyrating form finds solace with Rojo, their bodies origami-ing in a duet that suggests both strength and deep-seated desperation.

The rest of the company fully embrace the pounding waves of Khan’s movement: feet rhythmically hitting the floor, chests contracting as if taking body blows.

Elsewhere, the dancers don’t look as comfortable in Russell Maliphant’s Second Breath — a little stiff for the rich flow of his martial arts-inspired movement — but ethereal ballerina Alina Cojocaru brings a new perspective to Maliphant’s work, appearing to dance almost in slow-motion.

Ballet boy Liam Scarlett’s No Man’s Land takes the most narrative approach in a story of couples parted, and not always reunited, while women work in the munitions factory and men at the front escape into dreams of their left-behind lovers. Taking on such heavyweight reality in dance could be cringeworthy, but Scarlett’s treatment is moving, with a sense of the exhaustion and endurance of wartime existence and a masterful performance from Rojo at the centre.

What does all this say about how we view war? That it’s bleak and wearying, not glorious, perhaps. And what does all this say about ballet? That there’s more to life than tutus. Hurrah.

Until April 12 (020 7638 8891 barbican.org.uk

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