Birmingham Royal Ballet Introduce Into The Music

Birmingham Royal Ballet introduced its latest triple header at the Birmingham Hippodrome last night, with the premiere of the exhilarating ‘Into the Music‘. The programme, consisting of three short ballets, Forgotten Land, Hotel and The Seventh Symphony was explained as a celebration of the marriage of music and movement, and it certainly delivered on all counts, with the elegance of the dance only matched by the soaring syphonies of Benjamin Britten and Beethovan, performed majestically by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.

Forgotten Land

The programme started with the brilliant, haunting Forgotten Land. Based on the painting ‘Dance of Life’ showing the different stages of life by Edvard Munch, the ballet starts starkly without music, you can only hear the sound of crashing waves descending onto a beach, and the sounds of the dancers feet on the bare stage. It is stark and beautiful, a glorious way to begin a dance that is by turns hopeful and romantic, and then filled with longing and regret. The dancers coloured dresses, which reflect those worn in the painting, echo the different stages of life, from the youth and innocence of the white dresses, to the red of life at it’s prime, and then the black of a life coming to its end.

Hotel

My personal pick of the three ballets is Hotel, a new ballet from Ballet Now, which has echoes of The Shining, Hostel, and even the dark side of Disney like Pinocchio. A hotel that actually resembles an asylum has a string of guests arrive, but all is not as it seems to be. As guests are lead to their rooms, we see what happens behind closed doors as images are projected onto the walls. This is clearly no ordinary hotel, and as guests enjoy a most delicious evening meal, our sense of unease grows, as day turns to night and nightmarish events begin to occur.

This is an outstanding piece of dramatic ballet which is in turns both creepy and bonkers, with stark set pieces that long linger in the mind. Everything about this is perfect, from the taut attempts to escape the hotel through dance, the edgyiness of the music, to the dark shadows cast by the lighting.

This is a brilliant, unconvential ballet that you watch through gaps in your fingers.

The Seventh Symphony

The final ballet is a true celebration of the marrying of music (in this case by Beethovan) and dance. After the darkness of Hotel, this is all light and joy, from the springlike feel of the symphony, to the crisp white costumes worn by the dancers, that almost give the impression of Olympic gymnasts. This is a ballet with no real story, just the most joyous elements of dance for all to enjoy. At times, particularly with the female dancers dancing en masse, you have reminises of the iconic Busby Berkeley musicals of the 1930s, and these are the movements I most enjoyed, although the whole ballet is uniformly excellent and just enchanting.

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