We ballet-goers may be the most self-deceiving audiences in theatre. Put a ‘new work’ in front of us and half of us go into conniptions because the classical palace is being brought down and the other half into raptures at not having to sit through some old-hat ballet-ballet.
Twenty years ago, David Bintley was appointed artistic director at Birmingham Royal Ballet. For his debut creation there, having defined himself at Covent Garden as a well house-trained classical choreographer, he picked on Carl Orff’s bold, brash choral work about naughty medieval priests, Carmina Burana.
The London critics’ reception was broadly (if I remember rightly — I was one of them) sniffy. I think I thought that the unfrocking monks were vulgar without being ballsy or funny, as the libretto’s jolly blasphemies and Orff ’s knowing grossness required. But what a difference 20 years of TV and newspapers make. The centrepiece of BRB’s celebration of 20 Bintley years looks like a prophetic compilation of cultural references.
The OTT atmosphere of Philip Prowse’s styling (bleeding crucifixes, smoke, a sinister masked lady in red) is pure Dan Brown.
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