Review: Firebird – A Double Bill at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

In its third year of touring internationally in its current iteration, it has made its way to Sadler’s Wells with a double bill of John Neumeier’s 2020 ballet for Hamburg Ballet, Ghost Light, and the late Glen Tetley’s 1981 gothic reimagining of Stravinsky’s Firebird.

A ghost light is a single electric light left burning on the stage of an empty theatre when everyone has gone home and so, in this piece, the setting for the ballet is a bare stage, bare to the back wall, with a single ghost light off-centre downstage and a tipped-over chair. To no music, the swan Odette appears. She folds and sinks to the floor as her Prince appears. He lifts and supports her before they leave the stage to make way for a variety of personalities in changing and different gender combinations: pas de deux, foursomes, often to an adagio, with slow, sustained and continuous movements but periodically with rushed, semi-chaotic confusion. Neumeier has also designed and lit the show, with costuming in red, black and other shades, sometimes formal ballet tunics and sometimes casual wear.

What is it about? Does it have to be about anything other than transient relationships between the dancers? No. Ballet just needs to be! Its raison d’être often just needs to be the cause of creating beauty, and this piece is one such example. It is haunting, to a recorded piano accompaniment of various pieces of Schubert, and it is beautiful. Perhaps when the theatre is locked up, the stage is haunted by spirits of its past. Perhaps not. The ghost light remains silent.

After the interval, the audience was treated to a delicious Firebird, rebooted, so to speak, by Tetley and staged by Christopher Marney. Firebird is a 1910 ballet and orchestral concert work composed by Igor Stravinsky for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The original choreography was by Michel Fokine, who collaborated with Alexandre Benois and others on a scenario based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. Set in the evil immortal Koschei’s castle, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who battles Koschei with the help of the magical Firebird.

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Tetley’s version is gorgeously and gothically framed against a black-and-white projection design, with the Firebird, played by the outstanding Ellie Young, in orange. This is very much a take on the Prince Siegfried/Odette/Von Rothbart relationship, danced sublimely in classical style to a recorded orchestral score. Costuming is less fairy tale than starched Edwardian, with an ensemble of black-clothed Mrs Danvers look-alikes for the family, skeletal sleek shiny-blue outfits for the male ensemble, and for the finale, when good triumphs over evil, the women welcome the Firebird, now transformed, to her marriage in pure white gowns. It is a striking stage image as designed by John Macfarlane.

Arthur Henderson and Joseph Taylor dance, respectively, Koschei and Ivan with passion, and the whole is a work of considerable beauty, but not just beautiful, thrilling as Stravinsky’s score reaches its climax. The central dynamic relies on melting, highly intricate duets and lifts, particularly between the titular bird and the Prince.

As an additional delight for the audience, the original Tetley Firebird, Mette Hønningen, took a bow after short clips of her original 1981 performance.

London City Ballet moves to New York next week and then to Europe. The evening was a glorious celebration of both contemporary and classical dance which will be long remembered by its fortunate audience.

Listings and ticket information can be found here