Exhilarating William Forsythe shines brightest in English National Ballet triple bill

Stravinsky was never entirely convinced by Nijinsky’s legendary succès de scandale, his ballet Sacre du Printemps. Writing eight years after the premiere of Sacre, the composer insisted that it was “a piece of music first and last”, but that hasn’t stopped choreographers — almost 200 at the last count — from wrestling with his sabre-toothed score. The latest is Mats Ek. In 2016, the then 70-year-old dancemaker announced his retirement but, after spending the bulk of the pandemic in rural northern Sweden, he had a change of heart. His Rite of Spring serves as the finale to English National Ballet’s latest triple bill at Sadler’s Wells, London.

ENB already has two of the finest Rites — by Kenneth MacMillan and Pina Bausch — both of which adhere to the notion of tribal sacrifice encoded in the score. Ek dispenses with all this, choosing instead to recast the narrative as a wedding, arguing that “young women being forced into a tradition has become a major topic”. The set-up has conscious (if faint) echoes of Les Noces, the Stravinsky masterpiece choreographed by Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava, but never matches its ritualistic power.

Erina Takahashi and the commanding James Streeter play mother and father of the bride. Fernando Carratalá Coloma is the hapless groom and Emily Suzuki an angry bridezilla with explosive jetés and furious kicks in sync with the kettledrum. Marie-Louise Ekman, a painter and designer who has worked with Ek since 1976, sets the action against black cutouts of a house and its furniture and clothes the 20 dancers in gowns and pyjamas made of pink silk-faced foam. This curious fabric has roughly the weight and texture of an ironing board cover with a bendy stiffness that gives the performers a puppet-like quality, rendering individual movements hard to read.

ENB’s dancers, on superb form in all three pieces, give Ek their all in the eurhythmic ensembles, but the domestic scenario still feels too small for its score, stirringly played by Gavin Sutherland and the ENB Philharmonic.

The evening’s centrepiece is Stina Quagebeur’s well-crafted Take Five Blues, a choreographic response to Nigel Kennedy’s reading of Dave Brubeck and Bach. Her writing mimics the slippery, improvisatory vibe of the music and was stylishly delivered by a cast of nine, Julia Conway unravelling fouettés with jazzy insouciance.

Conway also caught the eye in William Forsythe’s exhilarating Blake Works I, created for Paris Opera Ballet in 2016 and first danced by ENB in its all-Forsythe programme earlier this year. The soundtrack, a playlist culled from James Blake’s 2016 album The Colour in Anything, is easy listening to a fault but somehow triggers a stream of choreographic invention that gets the evening off to an exhilarating start.

Kitted out in blue-grey practice dress, the 21-strong ensemble ebb and flow across the stage in a succession of groups, trios and duets. Forsythe delights in and celebrates the classical vocabulary — remember gargouillades? — but playfully subverts the classroom steps with slutty struts and hip wiggles. Fiendish and fabulous, it overshadowed all that followed.

★★★★☆

To November 12, sadlerswells.com