Were those gerberas in Francesca Hayward’s bouquet on opening night? Gentlemen admirers take note: no woman, ballerina or otherwise, has ever welcomed a bunch of gerberas. Hayward deserved better for her adorable Dorabella in Enigma Variations. In white flounces and gathered bloomers she lighted the stage with sprightly sweetness in Frederick Ashton’s one-act ballet set to music by Edward Elgar.
The moment: Edwardian. The mood: lamentation in the drawing room. The look: tweed, knickerbockers, pipes, monocles, moustaches held on with glue. Julia Trevelyan Oman’s designs set us at a country-house party — William Morris wallpaper, parlour games, cold tea — in a palette of somnolent drabness. There was handsome dancing by Laura Morera, Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Olivia Cowley, Itziar Mendizabal, Reece Clarke and Matthew Ball as Elgar’s circle, but it was all rather bloodless and snoresome.
The evening’s triple bill opened with the pep and pizzazz of Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto: three abstract movements in Sunny Delight colours set to Shostakovich, a last dose of vitamin D before the clocks went back.
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