In the foyer of the Linbury Theatre is an exhibition which gives a very upbeat account of the presence of black dancers in British ballet. Photographs dating back to the 1950s, 60s and 70s show practitioners of extraordinary physicality and verve, with wide, confident smiles.
So what happened? On the whole, not much. Yes, Jerry Douglas, aged 19 in 1997, became the first African American officially to join the Royal Ballet. But was he given roles to match his talent? On this point the exhibition text is mute, but my last remembered sighting of Douglas on the Covent Garden stage was as a liveried footman. He departed soon after for American Ballet Theatre. Sure, young black dancers have been training in British ballet institutions for decades now, but almost all have had to seek work abroad.
The situation is improving. Legacy, an evening proposed and curated by the Royal Ballet’s newest principal dancer, Joseph Sissens (pictured above), makes the most persuasive case possible for current black and brown ballet achievement in a gala-style programme chock-full of clever and surprising choices. In 35 years of dance watching I’ve not witnessed anything more joyous or technically dazzling than the Royal Ballet’s Caspar Lench, bare chested in pillar box-red slacks, flipping and bouncing his way through Takademe, a kathak-inspired solo by the American choreographer Robert Battle. And Lench is only two years out of the RB school. Nor have I seen a dancer more serenely magnificent than ENB’s Precious Adams in This Bitter Earth, a duet by Christopher Wheeldon set to the Dinah Washington song. It sat in this mixed programme more comfortably than the Act II pas de deux from Swan Lake, for which Celine Gittens and Yasiel Hodelin Bello of Birmingham Royal Ballet chose a dirge-like tempo. And why resort to old chestnuts when there’s so much recent material to enjoy? Gittens restored the balance later in her gutsy impersonation of Edith Piaf in the clever solo Non, je ne regrette rien, by Ben Van Cauwenbergh.
Given the logistics of assembling a dozen pieces, some of them for several performers, and 19 dancers, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, it’s little wonder the show didn’t manage more than three nights. (The entire run at the Linbury Theatre sold out long before the event.) But it's none the less frustrating: this is the kind of show that begs to be enjoyed more widely, for yes, there will always be new fans to be made for Revelations, the ageless Southern spirituals-based hit which since its creation by Alvin Ailey in 1960 has been seen by more than 25 million people across the globe. And there will always be new converts to the more extreme reaches of contemporary ballet, as seen here in a white-hot extract from Chroma (pictured above), the piece that propelled Wayne McGregor’s off-balance aesthetic to a place at the heart of the Royal Ballet repertory
Given the generous number of items a single review won't cover them all, but a world premiere by Arielle Smith can’t go unmentioned. She is the young dynamo whose collaboration on a new Nutcracker for ENB is due to be unveiled next month. Compared with the high-profile pressure of working on that seasonal behemoth, Pass It On, set to four vocal treatments by mouth-magician Bobby McFerrin, feels like something made as respite. Clad in beige Crimplene trouser suits, Miranda Silveira, Blake Smith and Marianna Tsembenhoi (the last two, pictured above right) explore a larky combination of hang-loose rhythmic grooves and precision leaps and turns. In another section, Precious Adams, working a turquoise silk frock whose sumptuousness matches her silky moves, responds to McFerrin's self-harmonising cover of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" with a frank spirituality. Every heart is in every mouth.
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