Pam Tanowitz’s Royal Ballet triple bill is fresh, witty and unique — review

A buzz of genuine excitement in London for Saturday’s Royal Ballet triple bill by New York choreographer Pam Tanowitz. All three pieces fizzed with wit and invention and were danced to the hilt by 19 young soloists at the Linbury Theatre, many of whom have been blushing (almost) unseen in the ensemble: a powerful reminder of the company’s strength in depth.

In the world premiere of Secret Things, Tanowitz, whose training was in contemporary dance, mines the muscle memories of her cast for nuggets of classicism, which she playfully subverts and deconstructs. Classroom steps and pointework are intercut with sudden flops, hops and slouches, and dancers look sidelong at their partners as if checking their place in the text, larky flashes of lèse majesté that give the work an edgy, almost improvisatory vibe.

Secret Things is set to Anna Clyne’s string quartet Breathing Statues vividly played by Fiona Bonds, Kathryn Spencer, Lauren Steel and Kaoru Yamada. The choreographic response is keen-eared but relaxed, freeing the eight dancers from the tyranny of counts. Like Tanowitz, Clyne plays games with classicism, quoting from Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge just as the movement makes free with different registers. The pick-and-mix vocabulary is tricky to master but Hannah Grennell and Liam Boswell seem completely at home, unfazed by the protracted balances and navigating the mercurial changes of mood and direction with deadpan insouciance.

The evening’s centrepiece is a film of Dispatch Duet, the dazzling seven-minute duet that was the highlight of last November’s Diamond Celebration, marking the 60th anniversary of the Friends of the Royal Opera House. Tanowitz’s choreography ransacks the repertoire for bravura flourishes: javelin jetés for Anna Rose O’Sullivan, a grand pirouette for fellow principal William Bracewell. The live performances had made a feature of Covent Garden’s gilded auditorium, bathing the proscenium in light. Anthoula Syndica-Drummond’s smart, funny film takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the whole theatre, relocating the dance to the foyers, bars and back staircases.

The hour-long programme closed with Everyone Keeps Me, created for the Royal Ballet’s Merce Cunningham centenary tribute in 2019. The nine-person piece, danced in slippers to Ted Hearne’s string quartet Exposure, plays out on a floor marked up like a mysterious board game. The dancers ebb and flow across the space in a succession of solos, duets and ensembles, creating multiple centres of interest — and multiple relationships.

The writing is refreshingly free of fussy pairwork or iffy lifts — possibly thanks to Tanowitz’s sensibility, possibly just good taste. Tanowitz, who was a student of Cunningham dancer Viola Farber, borrows freely from the master — tilting torsos, frisky jumps, filigree footwork — but the result is uniquely her own and she conjures dialogues and emotions which evaporate as rapidly as the colours in Clifton Taylor’s prismatic lighting.

Costuming, so important on a bare stage, is hit and miss. The bell sleeves and flared shorts of Victoria Bartlett’s frumpy organza playsuits blur the lines of Secret Things but the fit-and-flare frocks for Everyone Keeps Me by veteran Covent Garden costume chief Fay Fullerton flatter both dance and dancers: a masterclass by a mistress of the art.

★★★★☆

To February 16, roh.org.uk