Crystal Pite’s Light of Passage review — deeply moving dance tackles human rights

When Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern premiered at the Royal Opera House in 2017, it was the first new ballet by a female choreographer to be seen on that stage for 18 years. Its scope, its command of a huge ensemble, its emotional resonance earned it an Olivier award and a permanent place in the Royal Ballet repertoire. The only problem was where to put it: Pite’s heavyweight material was at risk of dominating any menu.

Her dances celebrating the corps de ballet might serve to highlight her matchless mastery of a large ensemble but her subject matter — the international refugee crisis — would sit awkwardly in an old-fashioned variety line-up (what Ninette de Valois used to call “ham and eggs”). Slot Flight Pattern alongside Swan Lake act two and the audience might easily get the bends.

Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare has now solved this problem by commissioning two short footnotes from Pite using the remainder of Henryk Górecki’s 1977 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which supplied the music for Flight Passage. The result, Light of Passage, had its world premiere at the Royal Opera House on Tuesday, conducted by Zoi Tsokanou.

Flight Pattern retains all its power. The mass of bodies, 36 in all, bend and sway like a blasted crop in a bitter breeze. Like all great patternmakers, from Petipa to Busby Berkeley, Pite achieves her greatest effects by multiplying simple motifs. Jay Gower Taylor’s towering set becomes a major player thanks to Tom Visser’s sepulchral lighting. The monumental black flats, conceived on massive Gordon Craig-ish lines, inch imperceptibly back and forth, redefining the performance space — a border wall? a holding tank? — before funnelling the horde to their uncertain destiny.

Kristen McNally and the consistently impressive Marcelino Sambé allow us to focus on the plight of a single couple among the faceless throng. McNally, clutching a bundled coat in place of a lost child, enacts a heart-rending solo to the Virgin’s lament for her son powerfully sung (from the pit) by American soprano Francesca Chiejina.

The new 10-minute second section, Covenant, is a bid to give physical expression to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child using a black-clad corps of 18 and six impressively self-assured tots from the Royal Ballet’s Young Associates programme. The children are by turns menaced and guarded by surging lines of grown-ups like a Doré engraving or a modernist linocut.

The 20-minute final section, Passage, tackles what Pite calls “the ultimate border crossing” and features Isidora Barbara Joseph and Christopher Havell from the Sadler’s Wells senior initiative Company of Elders and a corps of 36. Occasionally a pair of dancers will peel away — Joseph Sissens and Ashley Dean particularly well-matched — as if suggesting the old couple’s younger selves in frisking (if slightly generic) pairwork.

The ensemble fold, sway, beat their feet then melt to the floor in synchronised swoons, arms crooked over heads like broken wings. Havell finally drifts off, leaving his spouse grieving but indomitable. Pite’s handling of love and loss, so deft and true in Flight Pattern, felt forced and manipulative here, but the gorgeous painterly imagery lingers in the mind.

★★★★☆

To November 3, roh.org.uk