Northern Ballet, Generations Review ★★★★★

Leeds-based Northern Ballet specialises in narrative ballets; little wonder, then, that when asked to dance three essentially abstract works the dancers are capable of finding ethereal narrative lines with which to captivate their audience.

The programme for the company’s first visit to London under the new management of former Royal Ballet principal Federico Bonelli is called Generations: it sandwiches a contemporary classic, Hans van Manen’s Adagio Hammerklavier, between two brand new works by current dancers: the Royal Ballet’s Benjamin Ella and New York City Ballet’s Tiler Peck.

Ella’s Joie de Vivre (pictured top) opens the programme. Clearly inspired by Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering, it has three couples going through a series of impeccably classic, flowing dances set to a selection of pieces for piano and violin by Jean Sibelius, played live (hooray!) by Ewan Gilford and Geoffrey Allan.

It is a supremely elegant, gentle and unhurried piece, conveying a very sensual pleasure in dance. Playfulness runs through the whole thing, the men mock fighting, the women teasing them. The lead pair of Joseph Taylor and Dominic Larose dazzled, and were well supported by Sarah Chun and Harris Beattie and Saeka Shirai and Jun ishii.

Hans van Manen is the grand old man of Dutch ballet, admired and respected throughout continental Europe. Adagio Hammerklavier is one of his most demanding pieces, which illustrates his signature style – clarity of lines, rigorous structure and meticulous attention to the music

Northern Ballet dancers in Adagio Hammerklavier. Photo: Emily Nuttall
Danced to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no.29 in B-flat major, Op.106, played extra slowly by Colin Scott, it’s also a piece for three couples, but there the similarities with the previous piece end.

Here the three white-clad couples appear totally absorbed in their own dance, drawing lines of the utmost classical purity, their arabesque penchés like arrows pointing at the sky, lifts seemingly effortless. They start and end with the same collective sequence, but in between break into dances for individual couples: Larose and Taylor return and are joined by Amber Lewis and Jonathan Hanks, Alessandra Bramante and Jackson Dwyer.

In truth, nobody dances van Manen like the Dutch, but Northern Ballet made a decent fist of it, not helped by their ill-fitting and unflattering costumes.

The programme ends with the explosion of joy and energy that characterises the American approach to ballet in Tiler Peck’s hugely enjoyable Intimate Pages.Inspired by Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No 2, Peck’s piece loosely tells of a young man, Harris Beattie, whose search for love appears doomed to failure.

Northern Ballet dancers in Intimate Pages. Photo: Emily Nuttall
He wants Sarah Chun, but Aerys Merrill and Heather Lehan constantly get in the way, and an ensemble of six appear determined to frustrate his efforts.

In bright red costumes against a backcloth the brightness of which changes with Alistair West’s atmospheric lighting, they go through Peck’s energetic. fast moving, stage devouring choreography, the vivacious Aerys Merrill appearing particularly at ease with its demands.

Northern Ballet is in fine fettle, and although it's unlikely to jettison its primarily mission to stage full evening narrative ballets, with Generations it shows it's more than capable of tackling new challenges.