At first sight, the new Royal Ballet double bill might come across as an odd coupling: Ashton’s sparkling The Dream on one side, MacMillan’s metaphorically sombre Song of the Earth on the other. Yet the two works are complementary in that they show two distinctive and historically significant facets of 20th-century British dance-making.
On the opening night, an impressive roster of stars appeared in MacMillan’s reading of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The refined artistry of Tamara Rojo, Sarah Lamb, Lauren Cuthbertson, Carlos Acosta and Rupert Pennefather turned the performance into one of the best I have seen.
Stars populated The Dream, too. Alina Cojocaru is a splendid Titania and Valentino Zucchetti, as Puck, dazzled viewers with his technique — even though he needs to fine-tune his exuberance. As Oberon, Steven McRae, in his debut, came across as an almost perfect interpreter of the part: majestic and whimsical, mercurial and charismatic, breathtakingly at ease with the most demanding passages.
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