United Kingdom Ghost Mild (John Neumeier) / Firebird (Glen Tetley): Dancers of London Metropolis Ballet (Inventive Director: Christopher Marney). Sadler’s Wells, London, 23.10.2026. (JO’D)
Ghost Mild
Choreography – John Neumeier
Music – Franz Schubert
Dancers – Alina Cojocaru, Josue Gomez, Joseph Taylor, Nicolas Gläsmann, Samuele Barzaghi, Arthur Wille, Yuria Isaka, Ellie Younger, Jimin Kim, Hui-Wen Peng, Sahel Flora Pascual, Arthur Henderson, Siméon Sorange-Félicité, Noah Cosgriff, Tatyana Meijer
Firebird
Choreography – Glen Tetley
Music – Igor Stravinsky
Dancers – Ellie Younger, Arthur Henderson, Joseph Taylor, Tatyana Meijer, Sahel Flora Pascual, Jimin Kim, Arthur Willie, Josue Gomez, Samuele Barzaghi, Siméon Sorange-Félicité, Noah Cosgriff, Yuria Isaka, Hui-Wen Peng, Vidya Cannonier-Watson
Because the Sadler’s Wells viewers takes its seats, the curtain is already up. The stage, prolonged to cowl the orchestra pit, is naked apart from a chair on its aspect and, at a long way, a flooring lamp with a unadorned bulb. John Neumeier’s Ghost Mild (2020) begins in silence as Alina Cojocaru, in tutu and pointe sneakers (however with free hair), enters from the wings and strikes with hesitant steps in the direction of the chair. That is the intriguing and considerably difficult begin of a ballet about love, longing and loss, which can maintain the eye of its viewers rapt for the following fifty-five minutes.
Alina Cojocaru breaks out in agitated speech. She is likely to be Odette in a state of confusion or misery. No sooner has her Prince (Josue Gomez) appeared, and the piano music of Franz Schubert begun to be heard on the soundtrack, than they each exit. Ghost Mild is a ballet of entrances and exits, and of ‘scenes’ that overlap. Regardless of the numerous presence of Cojocaru (in duets with Joseph Taylor, above all) and of Francesca Velicu, the main focus is on the male dancers. It’s the males, in up to date gown and sometimes semi-naked, who appear to occupy the stage; the girl, for essentially the most half, go throughout it.
That’s precisely what a girl dressed because the sylph from La Sylphide (1836) does, with the arm actions of the sylph, behind the stage, as two males (one in all them semi-naked) carry out a duet on the entrance. A reference, maybe, to a primary ballet to cope with love, longing and loss: the sylph dies; James, the ‘hero’, loses each her and the girl he was alleged to marry.
The music is at all times Schubert’s, to which the choreography at all times responds. Completely different moods are created by means of the color of a single costume: pale-blue, purple, deep purple. If, throughout a profession that started within the Nineteen Sixties, John Neumeier has devised a looking and expressive choreographic language during which the dancers’ arms ceaselessly prolong in the direction of their objects of need, a part of that expressiveness comes from his use of stillness, and of the look.
It was onerous to imagine, watching Ghost Mild, that London Metropolis Ballet in its current kind is simply three years outdated. Its dancers (Ellie Younger, Arthur Henderson, Joseph Taylor) have been no much less achieved in Glen Tetley’s Firebird (1981). It was not their fault that after the work that preceded it, the choreographic language of this ballet appeared easy and traditional.
The unique Firebird of 1910 is transposed from its Russian fairytale setting to what seems to be like North America of the nineteenth century. The Firebird (Ellie Younger) seems at first to be a younger girl oppressed by the black-clad chief of a sect (Arthur Henderson). Ivan (Joseph Taylor) frees her. Stravinsky’s music builds to its grand climax on the soundtrack. On the stage, smiling dancers in white garments, Ivan amongst them, collect to have fun the marriage of hero and heroine. But the ballet might not be so typical in spite of everything. The unsmiling bride’s inflexible manner may counsel the concern, or data, that she is exchanging one sort of oppression for an additional.
John O’Dwyer
Featured Picture: Ellie Younger and Joseph Taylor in Glen Tetley’s Firebird © Pictures by ASH
