Western Symphony
Choreography by
George Balanchine
Music arranged by
Hershy Kay
Staging by
Patricia Neary
Designed by
John Boyt and
Karinska
The Two Pigeons by
Frederick Ashton
Music by
Andre Messager
adapted by
John Lanchbery
Designed by
Jacques Dupont
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Western Symphony and
The Two Pigeons
Birmingham Royal Ballet
Sadler's Wells
26 - 30 October 2004
The Birmingham Royal Ballet is a youthful, fresh, attractive and highly talented company, full of energy and vivacity, and brim full of acting as well as dancing ability. Their renditions of Balanchine's 'Western Symphony' and Ashton's 'The Two Pigeons' give each an excellent showing, and incidentally bring out the characteristics of the two choreographers in colourful and educative detail.
Balanchine was assiduous in choreographing dances for the American mood and style, and in this plotless evocation of cowboys and saloon girls he well captures the ho-down 'Western' atmosphere, as decades of Hollywood films have represented (or invented?) it. His eye for the detail of the Western iconic idiom was searching; he captures nuances of gesture and positioning which look wonderfully accurate to an audience who might be imagined to have learned what they knew of the real thing from such films as 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' and other all-singing all-dancing Western musicals.
And one thing that Balanchine's choreography brings out is how much Western dancing owes to Irish dancing, fused and blended with folk rhythms and sounds from other European traditions for the style in question is quite different from the rich tradition feeding Black American music and dance and all that this latter has led to.
There can be no criticism of the energy and technique of the Birmingham dancers in fulfilling Balanchine's intentions, which they most enjoyably do. If there were one small criticism it would be that the synchronisation achieved by the male dancers was not exact, an imperfection that affected the Ashton also.
Ashton's two greatest gifts were his genius at telling a story, and the intricate, delicate, beautiful choreography through which those stories were so compellingly and often wittily told. What other gifts could a choreographer need? In this charmingly-told tale (some find it sentimental, even saccharin; going with the flow prevents these more sceptical reactions) acting skills are needed alongside dancing ones, and as already stated the Birmingham dancers have it in abundance.
Nao Sakuma dances a delightful Young Girl, full of teasing and the over-cuteness that drives her fiancé away for a time, and Molly Smolen who shines in the Balanchine earlier too is a superb and fiery Gypsy Girl, well matched in the smouldering department by Dominic Antonucci as her lover. The find of the evening is Robert Parker as the Young Man, a strong and luminous presence throughout, filling his role with great gusto and believability. The production survives the risky business of the white pigeons flying across the stage or almost does: at the end, where the second pigeon is meant to join the first on top of the circular-backed chair, it refused to do so. If anything, that merely highlighted the pleasure of Ashton's lovely duet for the couple danced by Nao Sakuma and Robert Parker, which concludes the piece; for it showed that where nature can fail us, art hardly ever does.
AC Grayling
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