Wayne McGregor’s new Royal Ballet work is energised by a terrific cast

Does Wayne McGregor have a secret twin? Given his output so far this year — a dance version of The Crystal Maze, a critically acclaimed new work for the National Youth Dance Company, plus the dance directorship of the Venice Biennale — it surely cannot be ruled out. His latest Royal Ballet piece, Untitled, 2023, kicks off a tutu-free triple bill at London’s Royal Opera House, sharing a programme with Christopher Wheeldon’s 2018 Corybantic Games and the original one-act version of Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia.

The sets and costumes for McGregor’s Untitled, 2023 are taken from the angular, minimalist work of the Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera. The score — explored with relish by Koen Kessels and the orchestra — is by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. The Icelandic composer’s doomy 2018 Metacosmos imagines a journey through a black hole, while 2021’s Catamorphosis ponders the climate emergency. These preoccupations are not apparent in the choreography — McGregor likes to maintain a safe distance from his chosen music — but the extreme weather systems of Lucy Carter’s lighting keep pace with the changeable moods of the soundscape. Bi-coloured stretchwear by Burberry’s Daniel Lee highlights the Cunninghamesque moments in the text,

Anyone playing McGregor bingo will have crossed off the familiar tricks long before the 35 minutes were up: extreme extensions, insectoid distortions, long wriggles through head, neck and spine; but the familiar acrobatics are both mellowed and energised by a terrific cast. Joseph Sissens kicks and swivels through his dazzling opening soliloquy. Calvin Richardson brings down the curtain with a solo that swirls and shimmies with boneless ease. Melissa Hamilton finds menace and sensuality in the tricksiest origami. There is a fine duet for William Bracewell and Fumi Kaneko, although her late flurry of fouettés and chaînés felt ersatz and out of place on the McGregor menu and looked suspiciously like pastiche.

The weaknesses of Untitled, 2023 were highlighted by the exhilarating Corybantic Games, a ballet fizzing with playful musicality. Wheeldon’s choreography is fuelled and shaped by Bernstein’s 1954 Serenade, itself inspired by Plato’s Symposium on the nature of love. Wheeldon’s pairwork is fashionably pansexual but there is a glorious centrepiece for Fumi Kaneko and Ryoichi Hirano (Melissa Hamilton and Reece Clarke on Saturday) and Mayara Magri unleashed her inner showgirl in the jazzy fifth movement.

Kenneth MacMillan’s overblown three-act Anastasia began life in 1967 as a 40-minute expressionist drama for Deutsche Oper Ballet pondering the claims of Anna Anderson, a hospital patient who believed herself to be the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. Laura Morera, dancing her final Covent Garden performances, brought all her dramatic intelligence to the role of this deluded woman.

The romance of the Anna Anderson story pretty much evaporated after the exhumation of the Romanov remains in 1991, which established that Anastasia had indeed died with the rest of her family. Or did she? On Saturday the title role was danced by Natalia Osipova. Somehow the Russian star’s anguished virtuosity creates an alternative reality in which we forget the con artist and see only the Grand Duchess. She believes, and suddenly, in the teeth of all the evidence, so do we.

★★★★☆

To June 17, roh.org.uk