Ballet Nights 006, Cadogan Hall Review ★★★★★

Cadogan Hall, primarily a music venue, has good conditions for dance, with a spacious stage and clear sight lines. It made for a good joint birthday bash - Ballet Nights’ first, Cadogan Hall’s 20th.

Of course, in a disparate collection of dance pieces, ranging from purely classical to aggressively contemporary, quality varies wildly; and perhaps a good measure of what worked is what will remain in your memory.

So, I will, of course, always remember with a surge of emotion the pas de deux from Act II of Swan Lake, danced by English National Ballet principals Sangeun Lee and Gareth Haw. Rarely can there have been a more limpid account of this encounter between swan-woman and all too human prince - Lee exquisite in her yearning fragility, Haw the impassioned suitor, their preternatural chemistry between them breaching the fourth wall to burrow straight into our hearts.

I could go on; but it would be unfair to the other nine dance numbers, as well as to Ballet Nights’ resident pianist, Viktor Erik Emanuel, who opened both Acts, the first with a startlingly vigorous rendition of Chopin’s 'Ballade No 1 in G Minor', and the second with a liquid interpretation of Ravel’s 'Gaspard de la Nuit.'

Sarah Pierce & James Lankford of Nashvile Ballet in Ballet Nights at Cadogan Hall. Photo: Deborah Jaffe
There were two London debuts: Nashville Ballet, represented by Sarah Pierce and James Lankford, and the American Joy Womack, who trained and danced with the Bolshoi Ballet, until the invasion of Ukraine forced her to leave Moscow.

Neither choreography, respectively by Nashville Ballet director Nick Mullikin and Constant Vigier, will stay long in the memory, but all three dancers impressed.

Joy Womack in Ballet Nights at Cadogan Hall. Photo: Deborah Jaffe

Always good to see Constance Deverney-Laurence, award-winning former principal with Scottish Ballet, her dancing as compelling as ever even if she was poorly served by Jordan James Bridge’s unmemorable choreography set to Dinah Washington’s September in the Rain.

Final year students from Rambert School put on a nerveless performance in the jerky, ultra-modern Set Fast by the young talented choreographer Grace O’Brien.

Two contemporary pieces impressed: Pett/Klausen-Knight’s compelling account of a fractious love affair, Tanzt, danced by Rebecca Bassett-Graham and James Pett to the live music of composer/singer Madil Harris; and James Wilton’s Four Seasons: Summer, danced by Wilton himself with Sarah Jane Taylor and set to Max Richter’s re-reading of the Vivaldi original. This swirling, almost acrobatic piece depicts elemental particles clashing and breaking apart with exciting pair work.

By contrast, the whimsy of ENB’s Rentaro Nakaaki’s deconstruction of ballroom dancing, Cha Cha and Tiara, performed by his colleagues Julia Conway and Erik Snyder, overstayed its welcome.

We were served a surprising curiosity: If. Together Jamiel Devernay-Laurence, the multi-talented poet Jonzi D (he of the Breakin’ Convention) and the promising young dancer Alexander Fadayiro swept the cobwebs from the piece of Victoriana that is Rudyard Kipling’s poem If to produce a fresh, contemporary piece.

Jonzi D & Alexander Fadayiro in Ballet Nights at Cadogan Hall. Photo: Deborah Jaffe

Finally, Royal Ballet principal Steven McRae, who’s been with Ballet Nights from the beginning, performed his own Fortitudine, a Scottish-inspired tap piece accompanied on the fiddle by Charlie Siem – not as gripping as his better known Czárdás, but great to see him back dancing after a serious injury.