Review: Brno National Theatre Ballet, Linbury ★★★★★

Set up barely two years ago, Ballet NdB2 is made up of a dozen young dancers of various nationalities, all clearly very talented, all absolutely committed and all, I felt, badly served by choreographies heavy on concept and totally devoid of the ludic element of dancing.

The triple bill with which the company opened the ROH Next Generation Festival started with Symphony No. 7 Allegretto (pictured top) choreographed by Mário Radačovsky, the artistic director of the Brno National Theatre Ballet.

The piece is set to the first movement from Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad Symphony’, first performed in Leningrad in 1942, almost a year into the German siege of the city.

It’s danced on an unremittingly gloomy stage against a back projection of a hazy industrial skyline, where a pastoral first scene by the women in simple 1940s dresses and socks, gives way to a passionate farewell duet between a conscripted young man, Joshua Williams, and his sweetheart, Rashmi Torres. Most of the work then embodies the aggression and physical effort of combat, with the dancers periodically crawling as if under barbed wire.

A shocking finale sees the young man return to his girl, only to be shot as a deserter by the pitiless General, Manuel Romero.

After such a heavy start, I longed for a radical change of mood; but there was no discernible lightness in Pampúšik, a short piece by NdB choreographer Margaréta Štofčíková. Billed as a manifesto to childhood, it centred on a human puppet - a dancer wearing a manikin head – who appears not to be able to connect with the very serious people around him. Everybody is dressed in black, nobody is required to smile, and the contemporary choreography is energetic but doesn’t tell a story.

Ballet NdB2 in Pampúšik. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

The final piece was Distant Instant by the Spaniard Carolina Isach, another NdB resident choreographer. Set to a medley of music by Nils Frahm, Charles Aznavour, Don Swan and Joseph Capriati, this piece was again rooted in a ponderous concept, the words in the blurb not necessarily finding a translation into movement. It started with a solemn young man carrying a lit glass bowl across the dark stage while a Spanish voice over declaimed the properties of water.

Based, we’re told, on the philosophical concept of ‘fluidity’, this piece had the merit of showcasing the hip hop talents of this versatile company. A solo, a female duet, a male-female duet danced to Aznavour’s La Bohème (what a welcome blast from the past!) and a series of ensemble sequences for the seven-strong cast created a measure of variety, though the meaning of a woman dancing around the stage twirling a huge plastic sheet, from which she had earlier emerged, was well beyond me.

Ballet NdB2, Izabela Gracikova in Distant Instant. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

It seems the people in charge of such a talented group of young dancers – and a special mention must go to Izabela Gracíková – don’t feel the need to offer them material that simply showcases the pure pleasure of dance and allows them to just be young and carefree – and smile. That I found very disappointing.