Programme
This was a wonderful opportunity to see the talented dancers of Northern Ballet Theatre performing in a variety of dance styles, mixing existing short pieces from the company's repertoire with some excellent and inspiring new works.
The evening opened with "Glass Canon," representing Northern Ballet Theatre Ballet Master Daniel de Andrade's first choreographic work for the Company, and to my mind the best work of the night. An ecletic mix of Eastern European dance music performed by Scottish musicians Moishe's Bagel and dance Middle Eastern and Spanish inspired dance moves, this was a very bouncy piece for six male and five female dancers with many novel movements which the dancers obviously took great enjoyment in performing.
Next, to please the classicists, we had the Grand Pas de Deux from "Don Quixote" beautifully performed by Hironao Takahashi and Isabella Gasparini, after which, by contrast, Victoria Sibson reprised her modern solo piece, Ossein, which was first seen at the NBT Gala Evening. Set to the music of a lone piano, this piece sees Victoria run through a series of expressive, athletic variations.
Rounding off the first act was another reprise from the Gala Evening, David Nixon's highly energetic modern work for the whole company, "Powerhouse Rhumba" - an imaginative fusion of gymnastics, latin american dance and modern ballet to rouse the emotions.
The second act consisted of a single work, Mark Godden's tribute to Shaker culture, "Angels in the Architecture." Twelve dancers performing as male and female groups or as six mixed couples run through ritualistic routines set to Aaton Copeland's hauntingly beautiful "Appalachian Spring." The men in are dressed in Working clothes and the women in chaste, flowing white dresses and the choreography is largely based around the iconic use of brooms, with symbolic sweeping movements, and simple wooden chairs, on which the girls are raised into the air by their male partners.
The final act was taken up by a brand new piece, the titular "As Time Goes By," a kind of jazz ballet that sees the dancers in elegant evening wear performing group sets and romantic duets set to popular songs in a cabaret lounge environment. The songs (including "Always" and the title song, among others) were performed live on stage by the charismatic young northern singer Peter Grant and the orchestra certainly entered into the spirit of the occasion giving their own best performances of the night. The choreography, on the other hand, despite some fine moments, was largely uninspiring and as a whole this piece was much too long and repetitive in it's content and consequently didn't really work for me.
Overall, a varied evening, especially marked by the discovery of a great new choreographic talent in Daniel de Andrade. His opening piece will long remain my abiding memory and will, I hope, equally long remain in the company's repertoire.
NB: Northern Ballet Theatre's rotating cast system means other cast members may play the roles mentioned above on your night of attendance.
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