Visionaries: Robbins and MacMillan

Last Updated on November 10, 2026

Two masterpieces of pure dance in the Royal Ballet’s latest bill

5.0 out of 5.0 stars

Visionaries brings two hours of pure dance to the RBO main stage, a radical change from the detailed story-telling of MacMillan’s Manon, which preceded it in the schedules – no sets, unobtrusive lighting and unadorned costumes, the visual simplicity of a practically denuded stage privileging the genius of choreographers Jerome Robbins and Kenneth MacMillan’s responses to the music of, respectively, Fryderyk Chopin and Gustav Mahler.

They may both be primarily about dance, but the two works that make up Visionaries – Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering and Kenneth MacMillan’s Song of the Earth – evoke two radically different moods: Robbins’ work is a light kaleidoscopic assembly of playful encounters within a group of young people identified only by the colours of their soft costumes, while MacMillan’s captures the dark soul of Mahler’s meditation on grief and death. On opening night The Royal Ballet dancers made both pieces their own with assured, arresting dancing.

First on was Marcelino Sambé, a dancer surely at the very peak of his remarkable artistry, opening Dances at a Gathering with a solo of extraordinary perfection of both execution and lightness of mood, danced to the first of number of mazurkas, which along with waltzes and etudes, make up the score of 18 short piano pieces by Chopin. As the work’s unrelated scenes succeeded each other, the Royal’s Portuguese principal returned to engage in playful wrestling with the tall Reece Clarke and offer secure partnering to a radiant Yasmine Naghdi.

Dances at a Gathering, which premiered in 1969 in New York and first came to The Royal Ballet in 1976, is a 65-minutes long work for 10 dancers, and Robbins was insistent that there were “no stories, no plots, no roles”. Instead, he asked the dancers to be themselves “dancing with each other to that music in that space.” It was, then, heart-warming to see these dancers we’ve come to know so well embodying somebody else in a variety of roles grabbing the opportunity to be themselves: Mayara Magri, Anna Rose O’Sullivan, Lauren Cuthbertson and Leticia Dias, and Reece Clarke, Joseph Sissens, Luca Acri and Harris Bell, as well Naghdi and Sambé, to the last person dancing with glorious expressiveness. Which is not to say that there weren’t hints at something more here and there: a little flirting, gentle rivalries, love and loss, all expressed in the pure language of classical ballet, with quotes from Polish folk dance – flexed feet, clicked heels, hands on hips. Plaudits also to pianist Leonardo Pierdomenico, who stepped in late to give a subtly nuanced account of Chopin’s music.

Mahler’s Song of the Earth is a collection of lieder based on poems from the Chinese medieval Tang dynasty and MacMillan’s vision is centred on three figures: the Woman, the Man and the Messenger of Death.

There is the flimsiest of plots: the Messenger of Death, haunting almost every scene, takes the Man, and both come for the Woman at he end of the ballet. However, most of the ballet’s one hour consists of plotless dances for a 16-strong ensemble – with the lovely Sae Maeda standing out from the crowd – capturing the mood of each of the six songs, with the lightest of references to the words of the poems, which were sung by tenor John Findon and the immensely powerful mezzo Beth Taylor.

On opening night the Woman was Marianela Núñez, her account of MacMillan’s choreography typically impeccable, with the final long sequence of bourrées skimming the stage with anguished finality; as the Man, Patricio Revé showed his polished technique and ability to slip easily into MacMillan’s style. William Bracewell made for an interesting Messenger of Death, his menace coming not from assertive power, but from the way in which he appeared to materialise as a light but malignant presence, now owning the whole stage with energetic dancing, now barely there.

Visionaries is a very satisfying programme and I can only hope that the Royal Ballet doesn’t leave it too long to bring these two pieces to the stage.

Visionaries is at the RBO 9 – 28 November at 7.30 pm Sat mat 28 Nov at 1 pm
Dur.: 2 hours 35 mins inc one interval Ticketsl £7 – 152

RBO
Bow Street
London WC2E 9DD