Last Updated on January 23, 2025
Bowin’ in the Wind
The Royal Ballet has created a new double bill of two critically acclaimed one-act ballets, both winners of Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards for Best Classical Choreography and written for the company. Valentino Zucchetti’s 2021 post-lockdown work Anemoi is the shorter of the two and opens the programme, to be followed by The Cellist. Zucchetti is a First Soloist of The Royal Ballet and has taken inspiration from the four Ancient Greek gods of the winds, north, south, east and west, collectively known as the Anemoi. This is the first revival of the work which unusually was written as a showcase for the younger dancers in the corps de ballet with all sixteen of them being featured.
The stage is bare, with lighting designer Simon Bennison’s backdrop of evolving pink and purple hues illuminated by a white sun that moves inexorably across the horizon. Jean-Marc Puissant’s costumes come in earth colours, the women in short fluid dresses and the men in leggings and shirts. Zucchetti’s choreography is a contemporary and highly technically accomplished take on classical ballet with the sweeping romanticism of the Rachmaninov score echoed in the dance. There is an elegant and expressive adage as well as several romantic pas de deux. Most of all we feel the wind reflected in the company’s movement with conductor Koen Kessels sweeping us along from the pit.
The four main soloists each have an individual character. In a string maroon outfit, Mariko Sasaki stole the show, sinuous and expressive but explosive when necessary. She has a strong technique and surely more prominent roles beckon. Lukas B. Brændsrød impressed with his athleticism and strength and I enjoyed Leticia Dias’ playful pirouettes and Taisuke Nakao’s stylish leaps.
Zucchetti is clearly someone to watch. He marshalls his forces with clarity and precision, combining the steps of classical ballet with the more individuated ensemble aesthetic of contemporary dance. I will be interested to see him attempt something more long-form, but in the meantime, this is an impressive calling card.
British choreographer and dance company director Cathy Marston has made an international impact with her storytelling through dance. The Cellist is a substantial work that runs for just over an hour and is an expression of the life of Jacqueline du Pré. Du Pré’s life was sadly curtailed by the ravages of Multiple Sclerosis.
Marston frames the narrative through the lens of two of the cellist’s primary relationships; with her husband, the Argentinian conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, and her Stradivarius cello. We follow du Pré’s story from childhood; we see her and her sister as children, running playing and fighting with Ayla Orsborn giving a characterful interpretation of the youthful Jacqueline as she is literally swept up by her instrument. Cello soloist Hetty Snell has the unenviable task of ‘playing’ du Pré and did a fine job of it, capturing the passion and tone of the icon.
Christina Arestis is brilliant as du Pré’s mother, and caring as Jacqueline succumbs to illness. We see how the young musician is out of place at school causing tension between parents as to whether her focus should be academic or musical.
At the heart of the piece is a passionate love triangle between Lauren Cuthbertson as du Pré, Matthew Ball as her husband Barenboim and Marcelino Sambé as the cello. The casting is excellent with all three principals at the top of their game.
The Cellist begins with a prone Sambé hugging the cello case. Through some exquisite floor work, he releases a series of vinyl disks, du Pré’s legacy, unleashing her music onto the world through the swirling rotations of the dancers. Sambé finds a way of expressing the curves and verticals of this most human of instruments and there is some delightful interplay with the cellist and her mother as du Pré’ builds her extraordinary symbiotic relationship with the instrument’s wood and gut strings.
Matthew Ball brings Barenboim’s charisma and arrogance to the stage. He enables du Pré to fly but also engulfs his wife in a whirlwind of work that breaks her. Philip Feeney’s cleverly constructed score becomes more discordant as the pressure builds. There is a gloriously romantic pas de deux between the two lovers after their wedding but for much of the piece, whilst the lovers are interlocked, there is always Sambé’s cello wrapping himself around her.
Lauren Cuthbertson captures the intensity and passion of du Pré with a luminous performance that received a deserved ovation, with the dance creating a balletic analogue of the cellist’s physicality.
The Cellist is a hugely moving and accessible piece of contemporary dance that finds a way through Marston’s choreography of constructing a brilliant physical articulation of the relationship between the conductor, the soloist their instrument, and the orchestra. But it is a construct built on an understanding of the deeply embodied emotional connection between musician and instrument. Combined with the tragedy of du Pré’s story, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Go and see it.
20 October–2 November 2023
Royal Opera House, Bow Street, London, WC2E 9DD
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