Review: Next Generation Festival NEBT/NNB2 ★★★★★

Having moaned about the gloomy, same-y choreographies that made up the first programme of this year’s Next Generation Festival at the ROH Linbury Theatre, it was a delight to be offered variety, vitality and joy in this second mixed bill shared by New English Ballet Theatre (NEBT) and the junior company of Norwegian National Ballet (NNB2).

NEBT concentrates on commissioning new work, here from The Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball, who’s developing a parallel career as a really interesting choreographer, and its own assistant director Daniela Cardim.

Entitled Acts of Exaltation and set to music by Monteverdi, Matthew Ball’s piece for seven dancers is imbued with mysticism. His seven dancers, costumed by Elin Steele in quasi-religious robes, create ever-changing groupings that often point towards images of religious iconography. It’s a work that opts for creating impressions and emotional responses and does it very effectively, and it’s pitched perfectly at the level of the performers. The meta intrusion, though - choreographer walks on from the stalls, opens the curtains and calls on dancers to begin - is superfluous.

In Baroque Encounters Daniela Cardim seeks to translate snatches of Bach into movement in a piece for seven dancers, though the first movement seems to have been choreographed for the dancers' voluminous skirts (costume design April Dalton), which are twirled, lifted and spread out with monotonous regularity, overshadowing everything else.

Norwegian National Ballet 2 is company made up of a core of 14 extravagantly gifted young dancers, aged 18-22; and they presented a finely judged, diverse and hugely enjoyable triple bill that properly showcased the dancers’ abilities.

Where It Began came first.

NNB2 Where it Began, HannaThi Dvargsdal, Alicia Rose Couvrette, Isabella Boyd, Dmytro Litvinov, Giuseppe Ventura. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

A piece for five dancers, created by Anaïs Tourer and set to an industrial score by Joey McNamara, it seems to posit the dancers as parts of a complicated machine, their syncopated movements perfectly synchronised. In its almost black and white filmic atmosphere and regimented movement, it is at times reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It’s a mesmerising piece and the dancers excelled.

In a complete change of mood, the next piece, Limerence, by Kumiko Hayakawa amounted to 15 minutes of pure neo-classical bliss.

NNB2 Limerence Gabriel Gudim, Isaac Martin. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

Judging by the smiles on their faces, its five couples, the women in long flowing tulle skirts, clearly enjoyed the opportunity to show off their impressive classical technique. And in Taeryeong Kim NNB2 has a ballerina of exquisite poise and talent. One to watch, for sure.

The last piece was a work by Sol Léon and Paul Lightfoot, the veteran duo of choreographers from Nederland’s Dans Theatre. Called Step Lightly and set to haunting Bulgarian folk songs, it was danced against a backcloth depicting denuded trees. It was their first work together and, like so much in Dutch contemporary dance, it was heavily influenced by Jiří Kylián.

Again the dancers, four women and two men dressed in forest green and brown, showed their versatility in their absolute command of a very specific choreographic language with its deep pliés, bodies and arms stretched at an angle, and lots of floor work.