However much they smiled, though, they couldn’t make it look interesting – with the honourable exception of William Bracewell, who – lucky him – seemed to be under the illusion that he was in West Side Story, snapping, smouldering and throwing his shoulders around with some of the Robbins flair the piece desperately needed. The dancers are to be commended for their fitness in keeping up this breathless, yet heavy, petit allegro for so long, and for their synchronisation, without which the choreography would have been unwatchable. Unfortunately Dave Brubeck’s catchy, understated tunes seem flat and repetitive when isolated in a large space and required to provide enough material to drive half an hour of dancing, and for choreography we had 28 minutes of rather unimaginative tripping about, dominated by glissades (a run/glide normally used to travel or to connect bigger movements) which followed the beats of the music exactly, a conceit which became actively irritating towards the end. Opposites Attract was the title chosen to tie three pieces together in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s first triple bill at Sadler’s Wells this week, but that was optimistic: these three were so different in both style and quality that it was hard to find any affinity between them, or any sense of the company as a whole.ĭavid Bintley’s Take Five should be appealing, featuring as it does five couples, live jazz, lively jumps and turns, and colourful (but tour-appropriately minimal) lights and costumes.
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