What a joy - a celebration of pure classical ballet and then a rolling out of the huge and eccentric power of Carmina Burana, the first ballet David Bintley choreographed for BRB as its director.
He describes The Seasons as “no story, no sets, very simple costumes and nice old Verdi”, which is just how it comes across and with a youthfulness and beauty that is quite disarming. The apparent simplicity masks a lot of very complex movement and amid the technicalities of what the feet are actually doing, steps appear that seem wholly fresh and new.
Carmina Burana is just awesome, right from Silvia Jemenez’s calculated solo entrance as Fortuna, Empress of the World. It is a great sequence of events in which scuttling seminarians are caught up in the whirlwind of power and deity symbolised by the flying in of great wooden crosses, pregnant ‘Women in Spring’ dance decorously by a billowing giant washing line, head-butting street gangs run wild, chairs become dancing partners, and a Wild Swan emerges from a silver tureen.
The Court of Love is the highlight with stunning performances from the partnership of Iain Mackay as the Third Seminarian and Silvia Jimenez as his temptress. He strips off his religion with his clothes and dances in torment and humiliation before a slow and beautiful love dance in which the two are briefly equals. The Tarts are both alluring and androgynous, sexy and sexless in this great exposure of the human condition, a ballet that really does go to the head.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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