Dance

It’s the big bang. Nothing could be more explosive for local dance fans than the return of New York City Ballet to London after an absence of 25 years.

The ‘Spring Dance’ season at the London Coliseum is set to be one of the most impressive dance festivals ever. It’s all thanks to English National Opera’s decision to think small, which gave the dance world an opportunity to think big.

Temporarily vacating the Coliseum, ENO is heading off south of the river to create intimate new opera productions in tandem with the Young Vic. This allows an unlikely alliance of dance presenters to club together and rent the Coli for a five-week season which will showcase top international dance. And it’s not just for this spring; the deal has already been secured for the next two years, and there is even an option in place to renew these spring seasons all the way up to 2012. The mix of impresario Raymond Gubby, the production company Askonas Holt and Sadler’s Wells Theatre may make for strange bedfellows, but the result is going to produce a fantastic buzz.
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‘This is such a huge project,’ says Alistair Spalding, the artistic director at the Wells, ‘that it is something no one could afford to do on their own. They approached me with the idea, and I couldn’t resist the tantalising notion of presenting some of the major international companies which simply would not physically fit on our stage.

‘Also this project comes at a time when our own audiences are reaching capacity and I saw it as a way of extending, of reaching out to new audiences with really big companies such as City Ballet in tandem with some of the productions that we’ve initiated here. Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant have already presented “Push” at the Wells for three separate seasons. For each of those weeks there wasn’t a single ticket we didn’t sell. So, I thought it was time to give “Push” another profile, another push, you might say.’ It will be at the Coliseum, April 4-7.

There is, of course, a wish list of top companies to be included over the next two seasons, such as the Paris Opera Ballet and American Ballet Theatre; but, as Spalding says, having the project kick off with New York City Ballet is ‘an absolute no-brainer’.

The company, founded by George Balanchine, is one of the world’s most exciting, yet it hasn’t been seen in London since 1983. Starting March 12, there will be 85 dancers performing 14 one-act ballets in four different programmes ranging from Jerome Robbins’ giddy comedy ‘The Concert’ to Christopher Wheeldon’s dreamily ecstatic ‘Carousel (A Dance)’ to a ballet suite from ‘West Side Story’. They’ll be seen alongside such contemporary classics as ‘Serenade’, the first ballet Balanchine choreographed after he arrived in the USA in 1934, and the Balanchine/ Stravinsky collaboration ‘Agon’, which will star City Ballet’s Wendy Whelan.

One of America’s most illustrious dancers, she has been a City Ballet star for two decades. Now 40, she hoots with laughter when I attempt to dub her City Ballet’s ‘Queen Mother’. After we laugh about it, Whelan turns serious. ‘I do try to be a good role model, that’s important for me. The younger dancers need to know what it’s really about. I’m trying to show them that it’s cool to care. Either go all the way, or don’t go at all, because half-way doesn’t do anything.’

Whelan was nominated for an Oliver Award this season for her guest performances with Christopher Wheeldon’s new transatlantic troupe which debuted at Sadler’s Wells last September. She’s a laser beam; a dancer of such intense intelligence and clarity that she has imprinted her own personal style on a whole generation of ballerinas.

‘There will be West End ticket prices,’ admits Spalding. ‘The cost of the Coli, the cost of City Ballet is enormous.’ So the prices for City Ballet, running from £30 to £95, will make some people gasp. ‘We have a reputation here at the Wells of keeping prices low,’ counters Spalding, ‘and I think “Spring Dance” will help us build up our reserves so that we can continue to keep our own prices reasonable.’ That can be no bad thing for those loyal fans who make up the regular audience at Sadler’s Wells.

Spring dance
New York City Ballet March 12-22.
Stuttgart Ballet ‘Romeo and Juliet’, March 25-30.
Carlos Acosta and guests from the Royal Ballet, March 31-April 3.
Sylvie Guillem & Russell Maliphant ‘Push’, April 4-7.
Acosta and Danza Contemporanea de Cuba ‘Carlos in Cuba’, April 9-12.
London Coliseum, WC2 (www.eno.org/ 0844 412 4310)