Crystal Pite’s Light of Passage at the Royal Ballet

Last Updated on October 2, 2025

A Haunting Meditation on Love and Loss

Expanded from her Olivier Award-winning 2017 work, Flight Pattern, into a three-part piece, Crystal Pite’s Light of Passage makes a welcome return to the Royal Opera House three years after its premiere here. For this first night performance many of the principal dancers, as well as the conductor Zoi Tsokanou and soprano Francesca Chiejina are familiar from the 2022 production and all perform superbly tonight.
Set to Henryk Górecki’s haunting Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Pite’s work takes as its subject the global refugee crisis, highlighting the plight of migrant peoples with themes of displacement and loss. The first and third parts take the perspective of parents who have lost children, and the second that of children separated from their parents.

Flight Pattern forms the first Act with a cast of 36 dancers clothed in shades of grey and black. Pite’s brilliance at choreographing large numbers of dancers is magnificently on display here as they sway, flow, bend and surge towards their uncertain future, endlessly lining up, queueing to get to a place of safety. Jay Gower Taylor’s set of large dark panels moving and changing the shape of the space contributes to the feeling of restlessness and displacement being experienced by the migrants. Despite the depersonalisation of these people, they retain their humanity – while some fall by the wayside as the crowd moves ever forward, others help them up and back into line. There is a shared experience but there are also personal stories to be told.

Kristen McNally and Marcelino Sambé (reprising their roles from 2022) are heart-breaking as a couple who have lost their child. McNally rocks a lifeless bundle in her arms in a solo to Chieljina’s ‘Lament of Mary, mother of Jesus.’ The bundle is in fact a coat and the crowd pile more and more of their discarded coats into her arms until she can barely stand. It begins to snow and the walls begin to close in forming an opening through which the mass of people pass, leaving only McNally and Sambé outside. Their grief is too great, they can go no further. Sambé, frustrated and raging at the injustice of their situation, executes a desperate and despairing solo to end the first Act.

Set to the second movement of Gorecki’s symphony, the choreography for the second part, Covenant, is inspired by the children’s version of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Six Junior Associates of the Royal Ballet are featured, dressed in white. These children are enabled and protected by 18 black-clad adult dancers who offer physical and emotional support, acting as stepping stones, bridges or shields as the children run and climb and in one beautiful episode are lifted in arabesque to cross the stage. Tom Visser’s lighting here is particularly effective with a lightening-like backdrop of white and red.

The final section titled Passage returns to the theme of parental loss, this time featuring older dancers in the form of Isidora Barbara Joseph and Christopher Havell (from the Company of Elders, a group of age 60+ non-professional dancers). Havell is alone on stage to begin with, moving his arms gracefully as 12 golden pillars descend. He is joined by Joseph and the pair dance a tender duet before being joined by the full corps now dressed in white, who swoop and flow around them. Particularly powerful are the moments when all 36 dancers move fluidly in unison, but four duets also feature here, including one performed by Ashley Dean and Joseph Sissens. These two have been involved in the creation and development of their roles in this piece from its beginnings as Flight Pattern in 2017 and their commitment to the piece is palpable. For Havell’s character, however, we have reached the end of the journey from life to death, and though Joseph struggles to push her way through weight of bodies to try to reach him, her efforts are in vain. The group offer comfort, forming an undulating line either side of her, but she walks forward alone. Passage is a fitting end to an exceptional evening.

Light of Passage is a short piece, Flight Pattern is only 30 minutes long with Covenant and Passage being 10 and 20 minutes long respectively. As a whole, however, it delivers a considerable emotional punch. Jay Gower Taylor’s set, Tom Visser’s lighting, Gorecki’s music, and of course the brilliant dancers of the Royal Ballet, create the haunting atmosphere of this profoundly moving work. This is not to be missed. – get a ticket if you can.

Light of Passage 

20 February – 12 March 2025

Royal Opera House
Bow Street
London
WC2E 9DD

Looking for something different? Check our review of Onegin at the Royal Opera House