Dark with Excessive Bright, ROH Review ★★★★★

It is definitely stylish.The Royal Opera House second stage, the Linbury Theatre, was stripped of the stalls seats to create a performance space with three oval-shaped asymmetrical stages, separated by narrow passages along which the audience is invited to circulate. Shizuka Hariu’s set is duskily lit by Simisola Majekodunmi, whose shifting lighting design subtly points the eye in the right direction. Tucked away in a corner a chamber orchestra plays American composer Missy Mazzoli’s score, which offers an atmospheric, though hardly memorable, bed for the steps.

Onto this carefully laid set step The Royal Ballet dancers – 11 in total in a series of relays. In flesh-coloured body stockings, with skimpy fluttering chiffon flounces on the upper body, they look like elemental creatures.

So far this is an enticing way of kicking off the ROH Festival of New Choreography – seeing the Royal’s extraordinary dancers up close is indeed a rare privilege.

Taisuke Nakao, Nicol Edmonds, Anna Rose O'Sullivan in Dark with Excessive Bright ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

Robert Binet, now choreographic associate of the National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Ballet's first choreographic apprentice way back in 2012, conceived this 45-minute piece (its duration counted down on a large digital clock placed above the set) as an immersive event that imagines the clashing forces of the universe in human form.

Trying to portray growth and decay, chaos and order, he has his dancers perform solos, duets, trios, sometimes on one stage, more often simultaneously on different stages.

You’d have to know about his intention, though, to find it in his impeccably academic and not terribly informative choreography. For all that some of the pairings escape the usual man/woman format allowing men to dance with men, women with women, this doesn’t somehow feel like a major step forward.

To the last man and woman the dancers are, of course, superb. But herein lies the problem if, like me, you are affected by a serious case of FOMO. I may be mesmerised by Joseph Sissens dancing right in my unimpeded sightline.

Joseph Sissens in Robert Binet's Dark with Excessive Bright ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski
But then through a forest of heads I see on the far stage principal Reece Clarke and first soloist Melissa Hamilton performing what appears to be an intense duet.

Reece Clarke, Melissa Hamilton in Robert Binet's Dark with Excessive Bright ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski
What to do? Abandon Sissens mid-solo and wander over to pick up Clarke/Hamilton mid-duet? And what if my indecision is compounded by suddenly realising that the hugely promising Mariko Sasaki is dancing on the third stage? And does the necessarily fragmentary nature of this kind of viewing add to or detract from what’s posited as ‘an experience’?

Those who prefer not to promenade can view the piece sitting in the upper levels, but their view of the whole performing area is curtailed.

I desperately wanted to love this, but it left me strangely cold. I found the concept obscure and there was nothing in Binet’s choreography that made my pulse run faster.

In short, style over substance. Still, those dancers really are gorgeous.