Review – SOLACE – Royal New Zealand Ballet

Review – SOLACE – Royal New Zealand Ballet

St James Theatre

Wellington

1 August 2024

Choreography: Sir Wayne McGregor, Sarah Foster Sproull, Alice Topp
Music: Max Richter, Eden Mulholland, Ólafur Arnalds
Set Design: Julian Opie, Jon Buswell
Costume Design: Moritz Junge, Donna Jefferis, Alice Topp
Lighting Design: Lucy Carter, Jon Buswell

Reviewed by Bridget Knight

The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s 2024 winter season Solace presents a triple bill of abstract contemporary ballets by three celebrated and engaging modern choreographers. Infra by recently knighted, award winning British choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor, To Hold by Auckland based Royal New Zealand Ballet Choreographer in Residence Sarah Foster Sproull, and High Tide by Australian Ballet Resident Choreographer Alice Topp, showcase the versatility of the Royal New Zealand Ballet company and artists, with the various approaches to contemporary ballet techniques providing opportunities for some lesser-known dancers to excel.

Opening the programme Sir Wayne McGregor’s 2008 work Infra (Latin: below) set to an elegiac score by Max Richter takes place below visual artist Julian Opie’s fluid, minimalist, reductive walking figures (melding the ancient with the modern – from Egyptian hieroglyphs and Japanese woodblock prints to public and traffic signage and information boards) striding the width of the stage in monochrome LED. A dozen dancers, sublime in McGregor’s crisp, surreal, urban, essential choreography move through solos, duos, ensembles with variety at once endlessly inventive yet coolly considered. Infra on the surface is the daily crowds walking dark London streets; beneath, endless possibilities of interactions, emotions, sparks, conjured narratives, imagined connections. McGregor’s choreographic toolkit is razor-sharp, his movement material is superbly confident and deliberately crafted, featuring flattering partnering and pointe work that is intelligent and modern. Perfect dancer casting produces a work that is balanced and exquisite, each performer strong, athletic, nuanced, and detailed. Principal Kate Kadow and Soloist Kirby Selchow are powerfully emotive and physically masterful in McGregor’s work, and Damani Campbell Williams who is featured prominently in Infra wields projection and gaze with engaging effect. With its sophisticated set design working harmoniously to frame the choreographic material below, Infra builds to a breath-taking climax flooding the stage with cohesively corporate/urban pedestrians expressionless and industrial, swamping the vibrant movement material of the dancer isolated in their midst. Effective, bold, but never bombastic, Infra is a beguiling ballet that has more to offer than can be appreciated in a single viewing.

Photographs by Stephen A’Court

Sarah Foster Sproull’s deeply personal To Hold, dedicated to her daughter Ivy, is the choreographer’s most powerful, authentic, and enriching work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet to date. Long-time collaborator Eden Mulholland’s pulsating, energised, abstracted score feels provocative as well as reactive, and Foster Sproull’s voice is once again clarified, feminist, assured. Jon Buswell’s sophisticated, minimal, creative set and lighting design presents To Hold in a blacked-out stage curtained on three sides by floor-length black fringing providing satisfying cohesion with Donna Jefferis’ rich, resplendent, stylised costumes in a flawless, expertly wielded colour palette. Considering two perspectives, the conscious and subconscious mind, the non-narrative contemporary ballet explores holding, being held, supporting, seeking comfort. Programme notes suggest a polarity of care and anxiety in the impetus for this work;

“To hold her hand.
To hold her head.
To hold her heart.
To hold her body safely to the floor.
To hold her tight.
This work is for my beloved daughter Ivy.”

Equally brutal and tender, surreal, dextrous, and driven, To Hold’s movement vocabulary is solidly rooted in Foster Sproull’s choreographic identity. Suggestive of a different and/or refined choreographic process, the ballet returns to an earlier signature of working in contemporary socks (rather than en pointe), relocating gravity, the powerfully deep plie, the articulated gestural attack. Some moments echo and abstract classical ballet structures (such as a diagonal of corps with featured soloists in front) while others reference and build upon features from the work of the late Douglas Wright, most notably Gloria (1990). Foster Sproull’s signature stacking/peripheral hands are utilised to maximum effect in To Hold, emerging and dissolving; a real/unreal pendulum of imagery flashing between divinity and horror. The full weight and surprise of some of these moments was tempered by the (understandable) teasing of the golden stacked fists in the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s advertising. To Hold’s movement material and aesthetic offer the well-deserved opportunity for company artist Jemima Scott to showcase her commanding stage presence, dexterity, and emotional range, Georgia Baxter, Jennifer Ulloa, and Ana Gallardo Lobaina uncover refreshing vibrancy, and Selchow finds every possible millimetre of extension, exploration, and depth from every single movement. The work builds to a sophisticated and deeply moving finale.

Photographs by Stephen A’Court

The fourth of Alice Topp’s work’s to be presented by the Royal New Zealand Ballet, High Tide draws inspiration from the fear of shadows, the human condition, the limits of our control, and our fragile environment. Topp has delivered bold and dramatic sets that integrate or change with the choreography in the past, and Jon Buswell’s breathtakingly ambitious set and lighting design aim for similar impact, dominating the space. A collection of five ambient soundscapes selected from Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds’ albums support and at times contrast with the visual world onstage. The work opens with a virtuosic solo by company artist Levi Teachout, back to the audience, a magnified silhouette against an enormous, stylised moon. This imagery is haunting and refined; the contemporary movement material perfectly loose, sophisticated, deeply flattering to Teachout’s physicality and darkly reminiscent of Joaquin Phoenix’s magnificent and heart-breaking movement vocabulary as Arthur Fleck in the film Joker (2019). Topp employs her signature structure of elegant, innovative pas de deux, focussing on intimate partnered relationships and building the choreography around them; High Tide features five pairs of dancers costumed in colourful satin who are supported by a corps of ten dancers in frequently shifting groupings. High Tide’s pas de deux choreography, with relentlessly original and innovative weight-bearing, hand grips, connections, and transitions, is extremely challenging to perform, and at times the effort required to maintain the integrity of choreographic decisions is over-exposed. With the large set restricting the choreography to the front half of the stage, and cold bright lighting, the superb artistry of the ten leading dancers is easily appreciated if sometimes clouded by the near-acrobatic work they are managing. Each of these soloists is worthy of mention, not least Rose Xu whose grace and clarity are showcased in Topp’s work. High Tide’s tremendous floating metallic orb has show-stopping potential with its dystopian image-warping reflections, but could benefit from more choreographic connection, time, and dramatic weight. Teachout returns at the end of High Tide in partnership with Principal Mayu Tanigaito, and while their pairing feels expressively dissimilar, their technique and physicality provide plenty to enjoy.

Photographs by Stephen A’Court

The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Solace programme is indeed soulful, intelligent, current dance, and the variety within the curated ballets will doubtless ensure every audience member connects most strongly with their personal favourite of the three markedly different and inspiring works. 

A note that printed cast lists were not provided for Solace but conveyed instead via monitors in the foyer. Accessing cast information when most needed inside the theatre may be possible for smartphone users but impractical or prohibitive for others and difficult to read in low light (as is printed programme information in small typeface). 

Photographs by Stephen A’Court