Royal Ballet Triple Bill review: Powerful and atmospheric
Marilyn Monroe had only a hot-air vent. Natalia Osipova, fragile and flyblown as the new belle in town in Arthur Pita’s The Wind, is buffeted by three roaring wind machines.
Designer Jeremy Herbert creates an unforgettable spectacle: the tiers and ruffles of Osipova’s skirt billow, her bridal veil streams downstage, the address of her husband-to-be Lige Hightower is swept across the Texas prairie.
Pita adapts Dorothy Scarborough’s unsettling novel The Wind (1925); he calls it his “Gothic, sci-fi, supernatural ballet”. He gives us the wild, wild, windy west. Thiago Soares, pictured, is a swaggering Hightower in stetson and cowhide chaps, fringing catching the breeze.
Edward Watson is a lost Comanche ghost. Powerful dancing and brave ideas, but the story is rushed and compressed.
Twyla Tharp’s The Illustrated “Farewell” opens with a spry Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae. Yasmine Naghdi draws your eye in a crowd; Joseph Sissens is handsomely expressive. The stage is spare, the light stark, the costumes drab.
Where to see dance in London
Hofesh Shechter’s Untouchable is dark, smoky, slow-building. Figures mass and disperse. They slope, slide, pound their chests. It is atmospheric, but directionless. Matches are struck, the fire never lit.
