The artistic benefits of not being publicly subsidised

Spectator

18-06-2025

Paralysed rather than empowered by the heavy hand of Big Brother Arts Council, the major subsidised dance companies are running scared and gripped by dismally risk-averse and short-termist attitudes. Free from the deadening metrics of diversity quotas and targeted outcomes, smaller more independent enterprises – London City Ballet and New English Ballet Theatre among them – can be lighter on their feet: they have inherited something of the pioneering spirit of Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois a century ago and they deserve support.
Another such is Ballet Nights – a series of one-off galas masterminded by Jamiel Devernay-Laurence, who doubles up as an embarrassingly brash compère, introducing each performer as though they were contestants at a rodeo. I wish he wouldn't. But Devernay-Laurence has some sound ideas too: he can structure a programme, he knows the value of live music (even if it is restricted to a piano and string quartet), and he seems to have an eye for interesting dancers. The concert platform of Cadogan Hall offers him a less than ideal space, but with the help of some rudimentary lighting, he makes the most of it.
He is also evidently ambitious to present new and unfamiliar repertory rather than falling back on old chestnuts: the programme I saw featured several commissions and world premières, with only the balcony pas de deux from MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet (rather perfunctorily executed by Reece Clarke and Anna Rose O'Sullivan) as an obvious sweetener. A couple of duds emerged, inevitably, and I didn't think it was worth putting Eve Mutso to the trouble of resuscitating Peter Darrell's flappy and flabby solo to Mahler's 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen'.
But I enjoyed much more Harris Beattie's droll account of Richard Alston's Dutiful Ducks and Constance Devernay-Laurence's elegant narcissism in Christopher Wheeldon's party piece I Married Myself. Best of all was William Forsythe's Slingerland Duet, a tautly conceived dialogue, structured through complex torsions and danced here with seamless assurance by Gareth Haw and Sangeun Lee.
In a fullish and enthusiastic house there was little sign of the usual London ballet crowd; further performances are scheduled for July in Glasgow and September back at the Cadogan Hall. I am left with two related questions: where does Devernay-Laurence get the money for this, and how long can he keep it going?
Rosie Kay has lately been preoccupied with her worthy campaign to nurture an atmosphere of freer speech in the prissy world of the arts, but it's good to see her return to the stage making intelligent dance. In Adult Female Dancer she presents a sort of autobiography in a recorded narration, to which she dances in counterpoint. Although this isn't an altogether original idea (Jérôme Bel created something similar through Véronique Doisneau 20 years ago), Kay is warmly engaging as she explores early traumas and recalls hideous injuries in an effort to address her love-hate compulsion to keep dancing into painful middle age. It could be maudlin, but it isn't. There's no wallowing in self-pity, and uncostumed in white shirt and black tights Kay moves with an unaffected honesty that makes you feel she has nothing to hide or prove.
A longer piece, Fantasia, follows. Dressed first in outlandish tutus and then in shimmering tasselled catsuits, three barefoot female dancers pay tribute to the sun, moon and Earth – at least that's according to the programme, because you could have fooled me. What I saw was a wittily eclectic, almost but not quite parodic homage to the classical symmetries of Petipa, the hopping and skipping of Isadora, and the deep-bend intensities of Martha Graham. Meaningful or not, it's certainly a stylish and attractive choreographic exercise.