Sylvia, Royal Ballet | reviews, news & interviews
Sylvia, Royal Ballet
Sylvia, Royal Ballet
That zany thing, a nymph ballet, gets a bewilderingly bad first night out
Wednesday, 03 November 2010
Marianela Nuñez's Sylvia: The most efficient nymph in Diana's establishment, but lacking tendernessAll photographs Bill Cooper/RB
Places, please, deliciousness, please. This is Delibes, a man whose music goes with delectable disbelief, and this is that zany thing, a Fifties nymph ballet, so let us sip hallucinogenic Arcadian cocktails and leave normality at the cloakroom. But the sheer prettiness of Léo Delibes's ballets (La Source, Coppélia, Sylvia) is too much for most dancemakers to digest. Even a choreographer so oozing charm as Frederick Ashton made no classic with his 1952 staging of Sylvia. Last night, given the bumbling performance by the Royal Ballet after a few years’ absence, it came over even more as a ballet best to have on iPod.
Places, please, deliciousness, please. This is Delibes, a man whose music goes with delectable disbelief, and this is that zany thing, a Fifties nymph ballet, so let us sip hallucinogenic Arcadian cocktails and leave normality at the cloakroom. But the sheer prettiness of Léo Delibes's ballets (La Source, Coppélia, Sylvia) is too much for most dancemakers to digest. Even a choreographer so oozing charm as Frederick Ashton made no classic with his 1952 staging of Sylvia. Last night, given the bumbling performance by the Royal Ballet after a few years’ absence, it came over even more as a ballet best to have on iPod.
With most ballets, it’s less the substance than the way you tell them. This kind of casualness kills a period-piece like Sylvia stone-dead
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