Striking but not altogether successful: ENB’s Our Voices reviewed

Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden, where he ran a similarly scaled company comfortably subsidised by public funds. Doubtless, he finds what the Arts Council gives ENB meagre to the point of stingy. One may wonder, therefore, what the attraction is, but he certainly inherits from Tamara Rojo a solid organisation and a fine body of dancers, particularly strong on the male side.

His inaugural piece of programming is striking but not altogether successful. It starts gloriously with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, an essay in his grand tsarist style, set to some noble music by Tchaikovsky, that poses notorious challenges for the leading couple. Baryshnikov considered it the most technically difficult ballet he had ever performed and remembers feeling that his legs would drop off after his solo.

There was no mistaking Francesco Gabriele Frola’s anxiety as he launched into an impossible series of pirouettes and double tours, but he tackled these feats with something like flair. I’d give him eight out of ten, and an A for effort. His partner was the enchanting Ukrainian Katja Khaniukova, coping equally heroically with the intricate footwork of her own solo but only truly blossoming in the gentler, almost bucolic pas de deux that precedes the regal parade of the dazzling finale. Great fun for the audience, even if it leaves the dancers panting.

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Two pieces commissioned by Watkin followed. I didn’t care for either of them, but at least he’s tried. American choreographer Andrea Miller has had the peculiar notion of using Stravinsky’s Les Noces to accompany a scenario that follows The Rite of Spring by asking how the family of the girl chosen for a propitiatory human sacrifice might feel about their loss.