Frederick Ashton is the most romantic of choreographers. Yet while the defining image of this all-Ashton programme is Sergei Polunin flying in a billow of black cloak to Tamara Rojo's bedside in Marguerite and Armand, the enduring marvel remains Ashton's genius for translating emotion into pure physical states.
It's there in the shiver of infernal rapture in the first slow lifts of La Valse, and the Dionysiac counterpoint of swooping bodies against the music's rhythmic pulse. It's also present in the running jumps that skim the floor in Voices of Spring, and the silvery thread of adagio that floats in an unbroken melodic line through Monotones II. If Ashton's choreography brushes against the superhuman, it's not through grandiose leaps or pirouettes, but his gift for distilling movement into the sublime.
Simple as some of his effects appear, they can be fiendishly difficult to master, and La Valse runs some of its dancers a little ragged. Yuhui Choe and Alexander Campbell are outstanding as the wittily airborne couple in Voices of Spring, however, and the casts of both Monotones are very fine, folding and angling through the delicate origami of the first, whispering and curving through the second.
While Monotones veers close to abstraction, no one knew better than Ashton how to showcase stars, and Marguerite and Armand elicits magnificent performances from its guest principals. The sturm und drang of Polunin's dancing has acquired more clarity since his own stormy departure from the Royal Ballet, and Rojo gives the performance of her career. When she balls up her fists in agonised denial of her impending separation from Armand, or tries to nestle her cheek against his hand as he strikes her, the imagery is etched in raw emotion. Ashton has been neglected in London of late, but this programme demonstrates exactly why he remains so necessary.
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