English National Ballet, Carmen Review ★★★★★

Carmen’s allure seems inexhaustible. The freedom-loving, uncompromisingly sexual gypsy of Prosper Mérimée's 19th century novella, which inspired Bizet's famous opera, has been tempting all manner of choreographers, and indeed dancers, for well over a century. A list of the dance-makers who tried their hand at Carmen includes luminaries such as the Cuban Alberto Alonso, the Frenchman Roland Petit, the Swede Mats Ek and more recently Carlos Acosta, whose remake for his own Acosta Danza comes to Sadler’s Wells in the summer. Among the many ballerinas tempted by the character is Natalia Osipova, who just under two years ago commissioned a version of Carmen centred on herself.

You’d have thought there’s nothing else to say, but the Swedish choreographer Johan Inger begs to differ. His Carmen, which premiered in 2015 in Madrid, supposedly shifts the focus from Carmen to her one-time lover and eventual murderer Don José and is meant as an examination of domestic violence.


ENB, Carmen, Rentaro Nakaaki as Don José. Photo: Laurent Liotardo
The action may take place in Seville, a city of sunlight, sensual warmth and the scent of orange blossom, but the set of Inger’s Carmen would better suit a 1950s Soviet gulag, all forbidding metallic grey, the only props a collection of rectangular blocks that look like huge filing cabinets.

These move around the stage throughout the performance to suggest the tobacco factory, the bullring, and an indeterminate psychological space for Don José’s overlong agonising that opens Act II.

A small cast, just six factory workers besides Carmen and her rival Manuela, for example, means that the ensemble scenes look disconcertingly jejune, and the generic choreography danced in soft shoes and blending angular arms a la Mats Ek with balletic steps and a touch of musical theatre is not cogent enough to tell a story. And why choreographers feel the need to include much shouting in dance shows connected with Spain is beyond me.

By accident or design the depictions of sex in this most sexual of all tragedies are generic and unsexy. Inger seems to think that having a woman wiggle her hips with legs splayed in deep plié is sexy, and his Carmen does a lot of it.

Minju Kang is a lovely dancer, but, more girl than woman, Carmen she isn’t. Rentaro Nakaaki convincingly conveys the gradations of Don José’s downfall from simple provincial soldier to obsessive spurned lover and eventual murderer. Most impressive in this cast was James Streeter, who brought his usual gravitas and stage presence to the role of Zuniga, Don José’s tormentor and love rival. Erik Woolhouse, in black leather trousers and sequinned top, was saddled with a lamentable pantomime caricature of the Spanish macho in the Torero.

Ultimately, and for all its good intentions, this Carmen adds nothing to our understanding of domestic violence, nor is the shift of point of view radical enough to turn it around.

The English National Ballet Philharmonic conducted by Manuel Coves gave a fast-moving rendition of Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite, adapted from the original Bizet score and augmented here with electronic music by Marc Álvarez.


Age Guidance: 12+