Tuesday night felt like quite an occasion at the Coliseum. This was the premiere of English National Ballet’s production of the 1898 classic, Raymonda. ENB director Tamara Rojo’s first creation for the company that she has (expertly and uncompromisingly) run for 10 years, it is also – given her just-announced departure, later this year, to run San Francisco Ballet – probably her last. What’s more, although the Royal Ballet still dances the ballet’s showpiece Act III, ENB is now the only British troupe to have the entire work in its rep.
Sparely but elegantly designed by Antony McDonald, this staging also sees classical ballet’s subtle cultural self-improvement continue apace, as well as representing the sort of bold transformation in narrative and setting (while essentially preserving the central “text”) that’s more commonly the preserve of opera. Rojo and dramaturg Lucinda Coxon have moved the plot – originally, infidel-bashing baloney – from mediaeval Hungary to the Crimean War. The titular heroine is no longer a helpless Middle-Age princess but a focused would-be Florence Nightingale, even if she’s still torn between her adoring fiancé and a dashing interloper – the latter an Ottoman soldier and prince, and therefore still “other”, but certainly not the boo-hiss cartoon Arab of the past.
Most of Petipa’s steps remain, but Rojo has tweaked them here and there, as well as adding a gently poignant section in Act I, Scene 3, in which nurses and fallen soldiers dance together, as well as turning the slightly earlier vision sequence into a very Bayadère-ish ensemble for 18 nurses with pretty lanterns (The Kingdom of the Lamp Shades, perhaps?). Expertly exploiting composer Glazunov’s mysterious, scintillating writing for woodwind, this passage both echoes and contrasts with that of the proud, cavalry-off-to-war boys in Scene 2 – eloquently done, even if the abundance of this sort of “pure dance” throughout the show may wrongfoot some after the lightning-fast storytelling of its opening few minutes.
At any rate, the result overall is still quintessentially classical in its steps, although several threads of modernity run through it. There’s the heroine’s internal tussle, not only between suitors, but also between both of them and her career. What’s more, the fact that that heroine is now a nurse feels decidedly of the moment, added to which (shrewdly exploiting the fact that the Crimean War was the first to be extensively photographed by the press) the production often has an old-school photographer documenting the characters’ exploits. Cameras everywhere: what could be more 2020s than that?
The performances fly, especially in the upper ranks. Shiori Kase is a lovely, lyrical Raymonda, making the character’s various dilemmas register subtly but clearly, her footwork strong, her arms so light they seem at times to be floating on air. True, Jeffrey Cirio makes Abdur Rahman a little too much of a prancing popinjay, but his dancing is electrifying even so, and does strike a vivid contrast with the impeccable, more guileless classical rigour of Isaac Hernández’s De Bryan. A special mention too for Precious Adams, at once lustrous and solemn as Sister Clemence: effectively Raymonda’s conscience made flesh, and greeted with the biggest cheers of all at curtain call.
