Choreographers: Iratxe Ansa, Wubkje Kuindersma, Seeta Patel, Arielle Smith and Thais Suarez
An evening of moon worship, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Luna celebrates five female choreographers inspired indirectly by the achievements of pioneering Birmingham women. Those two ideas don’t fully mesh across the six dances presented at Sadler’s Wells as part of Carlos Acosta’s Birmingham Trilogy and are never specific about the women who inspire them or their stories. Instead, the creatives focus on feelings and experiences common to those who triumph over adversity but with mixed success.
The opening piece is the most promising in Act One, and Terra by Wubkje Kuindersma begins with a lament performed by a children’s choir repeating the phrase “I am the sea.” From here, a handful of adult dancers emerge dressed in shimmering white against a video backdrop, initially of the darkened earth slowly rotating and then of waves cresting upon which the gentle moonbeam dancers fall and are absorbed. With an operatic composition by Kate Whitley, Kuindersma presents a light, sensitive and wistful dance that lingers.
Certainly until the end, when the choreographer is back with the show’s mirror piece, in which the choir return with glowing lamps to chant “I am the moon” and later “, I am the sky.” Instead of moonbeams, the dancers become celestial beings as a backdrop of stars roll by before they are joined on stage by all of Luna’s early characters to pay homage to the moon. Occasionally scrappy in transition, Kuindersma’s final piece is stronger when fewer dancers are on stage.
Thais Suarez is equally ruminative in the first act with a piece entitled Unwavering, which is nominally a tale of a single woman following a treacherous path but still finding her way through to a fixed destiny. But in staging, the central dancer (Beatrice Parma) appears instead to represent the dying day in a flaming red sunset costume that matches the setting sun on screen. Responding to the moon-like opera singer, Marianna Hovanisyan in silver, the latter sustains and motivates the dancer until the sun can rise again and day is reinvigorated. Suarez’s choreography is frantic, filled with movement where some moments of stillness and an opportunity for the performer to finish moves would be welcome.
The remaining dances are equally mixed Seeta Patel’s Learning to Dream Big is a sweet after-hours boarding school ballet in which girls live out the books they read under the stars, nearly incorporating both Beethoven and the Casualty theme music. Arielle Smith’s Empowerment uses echo selves to inspire a lonely, frightened woman using lots of circular movements and patterns, while Iratxe Ansa’s Overexposed proves slightly more baffling when men with bandaged faces appear. What looks like a First World War hospital drama is actually a nod to artist Barbara Walker focusing on an underdog character, but you will need the programme notes to understand that.
The performance quality is high, but Luna is a selection of interesting snippets that attempts something much bigger than it achieves with limited storytelling or connection between the five dances.
Reviewed on 23 October 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Limited connection
