Royal Ballet triple bill review: A sharp new work and a ballet star’s searing farewell

Hail and farewell: The Royal Ballet’s new mixed bill opens with a sharp new work by Wayne McGregor, and ends with a searing farewell from much-loved ballerina Laura Morera, who is retiring from the stage after 27 years. It’s a bold, thoughtful evening.

McGregor’s Untitled, 2023 takes its name from the artist Carmen Herrera, who would often date but not title her works. This collaboration with Herrera, who died last year at the age of 102, is her only set design. The backdrop is a wide, shallow triangle, vivid green on a white ground. Those lines and colours are echoed in the costumes, by Burberry: body tights in white and green, with different geometric patterns. The music, two monumental scores, is by in-demand composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

McGregor has always had an eye for art trends and big names. His combinations can be modish, but Untitled, 2023 creates a distinctive atmosphere, both spacious and reflective. In Joseph Sissens’ opening solo, a springy jump turns into a dead stop, before flowing on into sculptural poses. It overlaps with a second solo by Leo Dixon, turning into a winding duet.

Fumi Kaneko is gorgeously serene in her duet with William Bracewell. The music here is a rich wash of sound, with little flurries cutting across it. Kaneko and Bracewell shift from echo to unison and back again, always in tune with each other.

Throughout, the 19 dancers come and go. They stand alone or pull together, responding to or cutting across the music. A whole group huddle together, in a low side-to-side like speed skaters, with more dancers coming to join them. One final solo lingers past the end of the music, a man spinning alone as Lucy Carter’s lighting fades from lilac to darkness.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games, created in 2018, is an athletic setpiece to music by Leonard Bernstein. Dressed in gauze and black ribbons by Erdem Moralıoğlu, dancers sprint and play. Annette Buvoli brings a jazzy, flapperish quality to the second movement, while Mayara Magri leads the fifth with Amazonian attack.

Morera bids goodbye in the third act of Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia. It’s a stark, expressionist drama. Held in a mental hospital, haunted by memories, its heroine believes she is the last surviving member of the Russian royal family. Morera, a superb dramatic dancer, has always been sensitive to both music and style. Here, she gives movement the quality of thought: when she’s shaken by traumatic memory, when she relives it, when she faces it down. It’s a fine swansong from a marvellous artist.