Song of the Earth/La Sylphide review – Rojo powers a demanding double bill


With its guileless storytelling and Romantic mingling of the folksy and sublime, August Bournonville’s La Sylphide is a tricky ballet for modern companies to inhabit. Tamara Rojo’s decision to challenge English National Ballet’s dancers to take it on may have been sparked by her brilliantly bold investigation of its sister classic, Giselle, last season, with a traditional staging danced alongside a radically updated version by Akram Khan.

But ENB does not convince in Sylphide as they did in Giselle, in part because Frank Andersen’s production is a tad overliteral in its characterisation, but also because too many of the performances are limited to one note. As the titular spirit Sylphide, who seduces mortal James away from his intended bride, Jurgita Dronina is appealingly light-spun: her arms are pretty, her footwork skimmingly fast; emotions flit across her face with sweet transparency. But there should be a lethally capricious quality to her innocence. We should see James fuddled and intoxicated by her changeable moods, her disarming freedom from moral scruples. And if Dronina’s Sylphide is too benign, Jane Haworth’s Madge, her witchy nemesis, is also insufficiently dark. While Haworth hobbles around with a crackle of sardonic energy, she doesn’t plumb the depths of Madge’s anger, her outsider’s hatred against the world of entitled men such as James.

Isaac Hernández’s James does look like a man worth fighting over his beautifully filleted beats and bounding jetés are among the evening’s highlights. As the rivalrous Gurn, Daniel Kraus is also very good – joyously embodying the mobile twists and turns of Bournonville’s épaulement. But Hernández’s expressive range doesn’t fully encompass tragedy; in contrast to Anjuli Hudson, whose Effie is made convincingly distraught by James’s betrayal, Sylphide’s death leaves Hernández more rumpled than shattered.

It doesn’t help the ballet that the orchestra plays with so little love; nor that it’s programmed to follow Kenneth MacMillan’s magisterial Song of the Earth. This is a work against which many ballets would struggle to compete, although ENB’s dancers do not yet have the measure of it, either. As the Woman, Rojo is physically extraordinary, articulating both the delicate chinoiserie and stark expressionism of her choreography with compelling, musical authority. Yet neither of her two male partners comes close to matching her power, and with so little to react against, Rojo is left dancing in emotional limbo.

Ballet Reviews