United Kingdom Birmingham Royal Ballet’s La Fille mal gardée: Dancers of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Royal Ballet Sinfonia / Paul Murphy (conductor). Sadler’s Wells, London, 25.10.2024. (JO’D)
Creatives:
Choreography – Frederick Ashton
Music – Ferdinand Hérold (freely tailored and organized by John Lanchbery)
Scenario – Jean Dauberval
Designer – Osbert Lancaster
Lighting – Peter Teigen (tailored by Johnny Westall-Eyre)
Cast included:
Lise – Beatrice Parma
Colas – Enrique Bejarano Vidal
Thomas – Jonathan Payn
Alain – Gus Payne
Widow Simone – Rory Mackay
Principals, First Soloists, Soloists, First Artists, Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet
Created (in accordance with Frederick Ashton’s biographer, David Vaughan) in ‘an atmosphere of great happiness’, La Fille mal gardée would appear to transmit that happiness, over sixty years later, from no matter stage: the Royal Opera House; the Palais Garnier; on this manufacturing by Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells.
It is a manufacturing during which the roles of bucolic lovers Lise and Colas are taken by dancers properly matched when it comes to appeal, musicality and method. Beatrice Parma and Enrique Bejarano Vidal have each made an impression at Sadler’s Wells earlier than. She within the ‘Peasant’ pas de deux of Giselle in 2019. He as Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty earlier this yr. It is a pleasure to see them dance, and act, collectively now.
Clear and exact in all the things she does, Beatrice Parma ‘shows’ you the dance (as Balanchine put it). Enrique Bejarano Vidal’s highly effective legs, of their yellow breeches, give him the lusty swagger of a farm labourer, and assist him carry out the fouetté, sur place. Yet when Colas lowers Lise to the ground from a elevate in Act III, then extends his arms as if to guard and cherish her, Vidal sends a fragile ripple of motion outwards from his shoulders that makes the air between the 2 dancers resonate.
As a counterpoint to the 2 lovers there may be Alain, the vineyard-owner’s son who Lise’s mom needs her to marry. In the programme notes, the dancer Alexander Grant (on whom the position was created) explains that Alain was by no means meant to be the ‘village idiot’. He is, as an alternative, harmless and unworldly. Gus Payne’s Alain captures the hearts of the viewers. Above all on the climax of the ballet when he sits in absolute stillness on the ground, shoulders bowed as he contemplates the brightly glowing however now ineffective engagement ring he was meant to supply Lise.
Rory Mackay, en travesti, is a considerably reined-in Widow Simone (Lise’s mom). This could possibly be so as to not overdo the pantomime dame facets of the position. And after studying Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Ashton, Secret Muses, it’s attainable to see one thing of Ashton’s personal mom in Widow Simone. Alone collectively of their home after the harvest dance, she and Lise carry Ashton and his mom of their Earl’s Court flat to thoughts.
The music, taken from variations of the ballet in 1789 and 1828, is performed at a quick tempo by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia beneath their conductor, Paul Murphy. Musique dansante, with the addition of excerpts from Donizetti and Rossini, when designer Osbert Lancaster’s idyllic world of blue skies and yellow cornfields is interrupted, on the finish of Act II, by a dramatic storm. A storm throughout which Alain comes beneath fairly vicious assault from the Cockerel (August Generalli), who’s linked to Colas as a illustration of the life power.
For characterised by a deep sense of happiness as it could be, as a ballet by Ashton La Fille mal gardée will all the time comprise layer upon layer of that means. ‘The more trivial the subject,’ wrote the critic Edwin Denby, ‘the more beautiful is Ashton’s poetic view of it.’
John O’Dwyer