✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Dance

English National Ballet, Reunion review ★★★★★

17 May 21 – 30 May 21, 17 to 19 May & 25 to 30 May at 19.30 Wed 19 + Thur, Sat, Sun at 14.30 Dur.: 1 hour 20 mins no interval

Fizzing with energy and the joy of dancing, English National Ballet is back on stage at Sadler's Wells with a mixed bill entitled Reunion

By Teresa Guerreiro on 18/5/2021

Francesco Gabriele Frola and Emma Hawkes in Senseless Kindness by Yuri Possokhov © Morgan Sinclair
Francesco Gabriele Frola and Emma Hawkes in Senseless Kindness by Yuri Possokhov © Morgan Sinclair
English National Ballet, Reunion review 4 English National Ballet, Reunion review Teresa Guerreiro
Nothing could have proclaimed 'we're back!' so forcefully as the final piece in Reunion, English National Ballet's mixed bill of short works that returned dancers to the stage before a live audience at Sadler's Wells on Day One of our post-lockdown lives (fingers crossed…).


Arielle Smith's Jolly Folly is exactly how it sounds, and it is exhilarating. A throwback to the old days of silent movies, this is a high-energy, Chaplinesque work for eight dancers in unisex tuxedos, spurred on by Latin and jazz-infused covers of Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Mozart by the Klazz Brothers. It looks like a romp, yet the choreography, which often mimics the jerky speeds of old cinema, works on split-second timing, effortlessly blending feats of classical technique with comical wiggles of various body parts, and demands perfect coordination in the dancers' constant interactions.


On first night it felt like a controlled explosion of pent-up energy by dancers relishing the stage after having been kept away for so long; and the audience responded with whoops and whistles and clapping along – after all they, too, had been kept away for far too long…


Made up of five very diverse works originally created to be streamed during lockdown, Reunion starts with Yuri Possokhov's Senseless Kindness, the Bolshoi-trained Russian choreographer's first collaboration with a UK company. Inspired by Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate, about a Russian family caught in the Second World War, and closely responding to Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 1, this is a work for two couples, danced on press night by Isaac Hernández, Alison McWhinney, Francesco Gabriele Frola and Emma Hawes. An academic work in the Russian tradition, Senseless Kindness substitutes impressions, hints and suggestions for narrative detail. It's competent, though not greatly innovative.


Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Laid In Earth is a supernatural work, described as a 'torn apart' quartet, where the dancers are ghosts long ago laid in earth. In its streamed version it was all of one piece with director Thomas James cinematography, which set it in a humid, green-tinged ghostly world of sprouting, crawling vegetation. On a bare stage only a bare long-dead tree pointed to desolation. It was up to the score – new electronic music composed by Olga Wojciechowska sandwiching the poignant Dido's Lament, from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas – and the dancers to convey that intense atmosphere, and that they certainly did. Erina Takahashi, Precious Adams, Jeffrey Cirio and James Streeter were all sublime in their slow, drawn-out, other-worldly dancing.


ENB dancer Stina Quagebeur is fast making her mark as an inventive, accomplished choreographer, and her Take Five Blues, set to two of her favourite pieces of music, Paul Desmond’s Take Five, and a jazzy arrangement of Bach's Vivace, can only further cement her reputation. She says she created the work to show off her colleagues at their best: and under hanging mellow light globes in what could well be a 50s ballroom, her blue-clad dancers, five men and three women, injected freshness, humour and jazzy twists into her classical steps, performing first as a group, then breaking into playful individual athletic displays.


With choreographer Russell Maliphant's Echoes, we entered his unique world of slow, earth-bound movement framed and shaped by the pointillist lighting of video artist Panagiotis Tomaras, with a score by Maliphant's wife Dana Fouras, where plaintive melodic lines overlay an electronic continuum. Fernanda Oliveira and Fabian Reimair danced its long central duet with perfect balance of push and pull, force and resistance, under a slowly expanding cone of light.


Each piece was preceded by a short film showing the dancers in rehearsal, alongside brief explanations by choreographers and interpreters. Kept to essentials, these films added an extra dimension to an interesting and enjoyable evening.


by Teresa Guerreiro

What English National Ballet, Reunion review
Where Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London, EC1R 4TN | MAP
Nearest tube Angel (underground)
When 17 May 21 – 30 May 21, 17 to 19 May & 25 to 30 May at 19.30 Wed 19 + Thur, Sat, Sun at 14.30 Dur.: 1 hour 20 mins no interval
Price £15-£65 (+booking fee)
Website Click here to book



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 3–5 February
Things to do in London this weekend: 3–5 February
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London (Photograph: Peter Lewicki)
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2023
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Sushi Tetsu

    Feast on top-notch sushi, sashimi and udon at the sophisticated Sushi Tetsu. This tiny shrine to the best of Japanese food has only half a dozen seats at the counter, so advanced booking is definitely necessary.

    Read more...
    Book Map

English National Ballet

ENB

Sadler's Wells

Reunion

Senseless Kindness

Yuri Possokhov

Jolly Folly

Arielle Smith

Laid In Earth

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Echoes

Russell Maliphant

Take Five Blues

Stina Quagebeur

You might like

  • Artists of the Royal Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour ©ROH 2019 Photo: Tristram Kenton

    Review: The Royal Ballet, 21st Century Choreographers ★★★★★

  • Alexander Whitley, Overflow 2019. Photo: Johan Persson

    Alexander Whitley, Overflow review ★★★★★

  • Joseph Taylor as Valmont & Antoinette Brooks-Daw as Madame de Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons. Photo: Emma Kauldhar

    Northern Ballet at Sadler's Wells



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×