Review: Bundesjungendballett, Next Generation Festival ★★★★★

Less than five minutes into the performance of Bundesjugendballett (BJB) it struck me I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen such a group of beautiful, fresh-faced, intensely likeable young people.

BJB, founded in 2011 by the veteran choreographer and director of Hamburg Ballet, John Neumeier, is a junior company consisting of eight international graduate dancers aged 18-23, directed by the vastly experienced Kevin Haigen.

Not only are they beautiful, but all are exceptionally good dancers, with finely-honed technique, engaging stage presence and shining commitment to their material.

The first pleasant surprise, though, came early on when a group of five musicians filed onto the stage. Live music in the Next Generation Festival – a rarity and what a difference it made!

The piano/strings quintet played Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye, a musical exploration of a collection of fairy tales, which provided the starting point for Neumeier’s In The Blue Garden, the first of two pieces in BJB’s programme.

Neumeier places a shipwrecked group of characters on an island where they have to find ways of getting to know each other and live in their new surroundings.

The veteran dancer Marijn Rademaker guests as a mysterious character, wrapped up in an outsize black overcoat, a hat obscuring his features. Described only as He, he holds himself apart from the other characters, each a light reference to fairy tale figures: Girl, Woman, Blind Man, Stranger and The Echo, the latter made up of two couples in black.

BJB, In The Blue Garden. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

They engage with each other, Neumeier’s muscular choreography based on classical ballet (the women display beautiful feet in pointe shoes) but with energetic, very physical additions and distortions.Two men dance together in a grappling duet more competitive than erotic. Blind Man shuffles gingerly around. And impossible to ignore is the intrusive Stranger, danced with impish vitality by Giuseppe Conte, whose face and manner reminded me of the young Rudolf Nureyev.

In The Blue Garden is a long, yet gripping choreographer’s piece which showed off the dancers at their very best; but the second piece in the programme, BJB Songbook or What We Call Growing Up, belonged to the performers themselves.

The dancers were joined on stage by a collection of ambulatory musicians and singers who performed cover versions of well-known popular songs, ranging from Joni Mitchell to Bob Dylan, Carol King and Leonard Cohen. Dancer Milla Loock opened by speaking a brief text that graphically outlined the disquiet of growing up: “we don’t know what truth is, but we keep looking, anyway.”

BJB Songbook or What We Call Growing Up. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

Over a sequence of eight songs, now appearing as themselves in casual clothes and socks, they danced the clashing emotions of youth, joy and sadness, hope and disillusionment, until the finale, when on voice over each of the dancers spoke of the pressing issues facing humanity today: HIV/AIDS, climate change, homophobia, violence against women, fear…They asked, ‘why do we feel so helpless?’ And then the cry ‘hope is taking action’ led to a jamming session to Tracy Chapman’s Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.

Thus they affirmed full ownership of their dancing, along with a very youthful determination to own their lives and their world, too. It was a uniquely moving moment, perfect for a company of dancers on the threshold of their lives and their careers. It left me quite choked.