The orchestra of the
Royal Opera House
conducted by
Peter Manning
The Lesson
Music by
Georges Delerue
Choreography by
Flemming Flindt
based on
the play by
Eugene Ionesco
Designed by
Flemming Flindt after Bernard Dayde
The Teacher
Johann Kobborg
The Pupil
Roberta Marquez
The Pianist
Zenaida Yanowsky
La Sylphide
Music by
Herman Lovenskiold
Choreography by
August Bournonville
Additional
choreography by
Johann Kobborg
Production by
Johann Kobborg
Designed by
Soren Frandsen
Staging by
Johann Kobborg
Assisted by
Sorella Englund
The Sylph
Alina Cojocaru
James
Ivan Putrov
Madge
Sorella Englund
Effie
Iohna Loots
Gurn
Jose Martin
Anna
Sandra Conley
Two Men
Philip Mosley
Bennet Gartside
Little Girl
Julia Roscoe
First Sylph
Belinda Hatley
Two Sylphs
Gemma Bond
Samantha Raine
Artists of the Royal Ballet and Students of the Royal Ballet School
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The Lesson and
La Sylphide
Sadler's Wells
6 Oct - 7 Nov 2005
The Lesson
In Ionesco's play, the lesson is about mathematics; in Flindt's 1960s ballet-lesson version there is much greater possibility for different interpretations of the Teacher's murderousness. Is he a psychopath who murders all his pupils? Is he enraged by his pupils' inability to achieve perfection? His entrance, and the subsequent efforts of The Pianist to dissuade him from his course, suggest the former; and that is how Johann Kobborg dances this dark, sometimes funny but ultimately chilling tale.
There is every reason for this pungent short ballet to become a classic of the repertoire, and it is a surprise that this is not already the case. It is a wonderful show case for the talents of three different sorts of dancer, as the cast here prove; Zenaida Yanowsky, tall and stern with a bun, Roberta Marquez an enchanting ballet student, and Kobborg evolving from a shy, anxious, disturbed presence into a magnificently mad killer, each enjoying to the full Flindt's showcase choreography.
That choreography has a striking though subtle obliqueness to it in the matter of its vocabulary - classical, but with something that is not quite as other modern inflections of the classical are. The secret is in the portrayal of the psychological; The Pianist's angular watchfulness, The Teacher's occupancy of a strange parallel place, and the innocence and unwariness of the pupil, are like three planes of mind intersecting only in the last violent moments and their denouement, when the body of the pupil has to be carried off even as the doorbell rings with the next pupil, and the chairs - as at the very beginning - have to be set back to normal after the frenzy of the murder.
Georges Delerue's score and the careful design - it is the choreographer's own adaptation - are characters in the drama too, and beautifully fitted to it. With the main event they made a very memorable whole.
La Sylphide
And why is 'La Sylphide' also not a standard of the international repertoire? From this early ballet much tradition flows, and it is surprising how accident and attitude have combined to keep the font more or less separate from the streams of ballet that have flowed from it - except in its native Denmark, where it sprang from an earlier 'La Sylphide' at the Paris Opera, danced by the famous Marie Taglioni.
The story is orthodox fairy-tale: a sylph falls in love with a young man about to be married, and he with her; and after a short period of painful indecision between her and his human bride, he chooses her - only to find that when he can at last clasp her in his arms, she has been poisoned by a cloak that a witch, to take revenge on him, as given him to catch her in. For the abandoned bride not all is lost, because she gives herself to her fiancé's rival instead; and the moral of the tale is that we will lose things of value if we strain after the impossible.
The choreography of August Bournonville, supplemented by Johann Kobborg - who has had a very large hand in bringing this Royal Danish Ballet production to the Covent Garden stage - is very interesting, and not just for historical reasons. It relies on mime a great deal, as all early ballet did, but one suspects that Kobborg has chastened that reliance somewhat, while keeping the narrative essentials. But it also achieves a considerable expressive power on the basis of a smaller resource of movement than we have grown accustomed to in an age where modern dance has always offered supplements to the classical language.
In its own day Bournonville's 'La Sylphide' was a revelation, employing such tricks of stage-craft as wires to add new dimensions to the fairy-tale quality of the piece. But it is a ballet still, and gives its principals superb opportunities to dance. In both acts there are sequences for the soloists and corps de ballet that enthral. Set in a Scottish baronial mansion in the first act, and an enchanted forest in the second act where (with all the flattery of imitation) a Macbeth's witches scene opens proceedings, the settings suggest ideas: Scottish dance motifs, and fairy flittings, in acts one and two respectively.
The beautiful and delicate Alina Cojocaru is always wonderful to watch, and is the perfect sylph. Ivan Putrov is very romantic and attitudinal in the best manner. Jose Martin is called upon for less athleticism and character than he usually is, here playing the second suitor Gurn; but he is a consummate professional, and supports the action nobly. Sorella Englund as the witch is magnificently bony, angry and menacing, and is one of the best things about the production. The drama moves along at a robust pace, and is admirably served by Herman Lovenskiold's score, played with the Opera House orchestra's accustomed elan.
It is in ballet's power to move and lift the heart as much as the dancers themselves lift and move on stage; if this one did not do it as so much, it was because the tale itself was told with some detachment by its choreographer, not because of the dancers, whose grace and energy was as it always wonderfully is on the Covent Garden stage.
AC Grayling
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