It is a gem of a summer season at BRB, a dazzling display of dance styles, and this final programme is the richest and most diverse of the three. Danced to Mozart, Les Petits Riens is courtly, graceful, classical ballet at its best - clear and clean and beautiful to watch. Molly Smolen, a strong dancer whose control and poise never falters, wholly abandons herself to the music.
Then comes Brouillards, a string of eight enigmatic sketches danced to Debussy and marked by concentrated and serious acrobatics, floor work and handling of bodies in ever-changing sequences. The dancers roll, spin, crouch and whirl out of formations to evaporate like the fog of the title. Strangeness and questioning characterise the ballet but there is also some wonderful clowning, notably in Général Lavine eccentric, danced with drollery by Kit Holder, Christopher Larsen and Kosuke Yamamoto and ending in spectacular collapse.
There is a concerted gasp from the audience as the curtain goes up for Elite Syncopations, as much for the honky-tonk dance hall design of the stage as for the brilliant plumage of the dancers. Ian Spurling’s witty creations make them look as though the patterns have been painted directly on to their skins. This whole ragtime ballet seems like something spontaneous, improvised even. It never falters for a moment. All the combinations are memorable, most of all the comic pairing of tall Silvia Jimenez and short Kosuke Yamamoto in The Alaskan Rag. The way they arrange their limbs is nothing short of genius.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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