Triple Bill
Royal Ballet, in rep until 11 June
After a number of successfully conceived and well-performed mixed programmes, the Royal Ballet’s latest triple bill, its last offering of the season, was a bit of a let-down. This was a pity, for the dancing was good and sometimes phenomenal. One of the problems was that none of the three ballets matched any other. Wayne McGregor’s postmodern heavyweight Chroma, at the beginning, thwarted the thin modernist lyricism of Christopher Wheeldon’s Tryst, which, with its slightly tiresome and uneven thematic layout, was no match whatever with George Balanchine’s Symphony in C, a sparkling tribute to pure classical dance.
In addition, the not so seamless combination of McGregor’s postmodernism and Wheeldon’s late modernism turned two thirds of the programme into a weary display of not so digestible cerebral choreography, which seriously challenged the viewers’ patience.
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