Royal Opera House

Dear Readers, on Wednesday night I headed into Covent Garden to get some long-overdue culture. I used to go to the National Theatre every few weeks to take in a matinee of something or other, but somehow, since lockdown, I don’t seem to have gotten back in the way of it all. So, it was quite something to find myself at the Royal Opera House, for one of the performances celebrating Frederick Ashton, the founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet. My friend S, who not only loves watching ballet but goes to ballet classes four times per week, tells me that Ashton is most famous for the way that he matches the choreography of the ballet to the music, and you could really see this in the performances – the way that the movement of a hand or a sequence of steps combines with the music, at its best, is as sharp as a tack. It does make Ashton’s ballets technically challenging, however, as we saw.

The programme was of three short pieces: first up was Rendezvous, a light-hearted and witty piece about friends meeting in a park with costumes by Jasper Conran and a general mood of flirtatiousness. I confess that I haven’t been to a ballet since I was about eighteen, so I spent most of this section wondering how on earth the dancers did it. How did the chaps just pick up the women as if they were gossamer? How did the women do that pointy-toe thing for so long? Would my size eight feet have made me too tall to be a ballerina as I would have been six feet six inches tall on my tippy toes? And of all the colours in the universe, why would someone make a grey tutu? But in general I was transported and amazed, which is pretty good for a Wednesday night, especially as I usually go to bed at 9.30 and the show ran until 10.45.

Then it was ‘The Dream’, a retelling of Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Mendelssohn’s lovely music. The role of Oberon is said to be one of the most difficult in ballet, although in this performance I think he was outshone by a leaping, feather-light Puck. I know nothing about ballet, but I do get a sense of when someone isn’t quite at home, whether the performer wasn’t feeling well, wasn’t that confident in what was possibly a new role, or was just having an off night. There’s something about the way that a role is inhabited, whether in dance or theatre, that helps you to suspend your disbelief and sink into what’s going on, however unlikely. After all, this is a piece about how the Queen of the Fairies falls in love with a donkey.

The last piece was ‘Rhapsody’, with a score by Rachmaninoff. I know this is my friend’s favourite Ashton piece: it was choreographed with the physicality of Mikhail Baryshnikov in mind, and it involves a ridiculous amount of leaping/turning/general high voltage activity. The dancer in the role on the night that we saw it was technically brilliant, but much more delicate – he was lovely in the pas de deux, tender enough to move me to tears, but in the solo parts he didn’t seem quite right. He would have been a superb Ariel, or indeed Puck. Maybe just a bit of a miscast?

And any ballet buffs out there are welcome to tell me exactly why I’m wrong. This is very much a civilian first impression.

But did I love it? Yes, I did! The evening sprinted past, and I didn’t even mind getting to bed after midnight. It made me feel as if I should do lots more things. After all, London is such a extraordinary place, and I am retired now, you know. So who knows what’s next? Watch this space…