BIRMINGHAM Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia return to York on Tuesday and Wednesday with a mixed programme of Galanteries, The Dance House and Elite Syncopations.
Galanteries, choreographed by company director David Bintley, mirrors the classical perfection of Mozart’s music. The piece displays the influences on Bintley’s work by two of his idols: George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton. “A divertissement in the true sense of the word, this ballet is pure entertainment: a mixture of beautiful, unpretentious music and dance,” he says.
The Dance House was choreographed by Bintley in response to the early death of a friend and colleague who was a dancer. He locates both a light, witty tone and yet dark resonances in Shostakovich’s music in his poignant reinterpretation of the dance of death, drawing inspiration from a medieval poem and woodcut that depicts the “Danse macabre”.
In Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, a stripped-back theatre bursts into life when dancers in brilliantly coloured costumes gather for a dance competition. An equally vibrant rag-time band plays old favourites from Scott Joplin and his contemporaries to accompany a string of sketches, spanning the dazzling, the witty and the touching as, one by one, the dancers takes their turn to compete.
* For tickets, phone 01904 623568.
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