Fire & Fury, Sadler's Wells, London review: Birmingham Royal Ballet lacks theatrical weight

The flames are right there on stage in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s double bill of new and recent work: fiery torches for David Bintley’s The King Dances, and more metaphorical fire in Juanjo Arqués’s new Ignite. Though the company dances very stylishly, Arqués’s action-packed choreography lacks theatrical weight.

Ignite is the third work in BRB’s ambitious Ballet Now commissioning programme, which will create a whole series of ballets, with new scores and, often, designers new to ballet.

A co-production with Dutch National Ballet, Ignite was inspired by Turner’s 1835 painting The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, which shows the burning Parliament as a huge smear of orange and gold light, cutting across the blues and greys of sky and river.

Arqués’s ballet is a large-scale plotless work, with soloists cutting across the ensemble. Tatyana van Walsum dresses the dancers in pale blue body tights, often with billowing overshirts in flame colours. Her set is a series of mirrored panels, tilting and moving behind and above the dancers, while Bert Dalhuysen’s lighting blends cold shafts of light with burning golds and oranges. Kate Whitley’s new score has atmospheric washes of sound, with appealing textures, bursts of urgent rhythm and a lyrical central section.

Soloists embody different aspects of the painting. As Sky, Mathias Dingman whirls through the action, running in swoops or bounding through leaps and spins. For that central section, he partners Delia Mathews’s River in an acrobatic duet, swinging her around him in complex lifts.

In one of the ballet’s most striking effects, Mathews stands at the front of the stage, her back to the audience, watching events unfold. Less successfully, the ballet ends with the whole cast looking out at the audience, shirts in hands, before backing away into darkness. It’s a heavy-handed conclusion.

The choreography is polished and full of activity, but needs more individual impact. Céline Gittens and Brandon Lawrence, both marvellous dancers, appear as a Fire couple. You can’t miss their strength, but Arqués does little to show their powerful personalities or their intelligent musical phrasing.

The company are in very fine form this season, with dancing as bright as those flaming torches. They’re courtly and elegant in The King Dances, a modern response to the royal ballets of Louis XIV. Max Maslen shows beautiful line as Louis XIV, his upper body gorgeously nuanced. Tyrone Singleton is a charismatic, sometimes menacing Cardinal Mazarin, with Yijing Zhang is coolly assured as Selene, the moon.

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