To Excavate and Elevate

This season opener from English National Ballet gathers four markedly different works to showcase the gamut of the company’s evolving repertoire. Presented in chronological order from the date of choreography, the bill also tells a story of ballet’s own development throughout the twentieth century, from proudly neoclassical to powerfully contemporary, showing the possibilities of revival and renewal. Herein lies the platonic and the carnal, the playful and the profound.

Performance

English National Ballet: George Balanchine’s “Themes and Variations,” Martha Graham's “Errand into the Maze,” William Forsythe's “Herman Schmermann”

Place

Sadler's Wells, London, UK, October 1, 2025

Words

Sara Veale

Emily Suzuki and Rentaro Nakaaki in Martha Graham's “Errand into the Maze.” Photograph by ASH

If the variety highlights the versatility of ENB’s dancers, who step capably between styles, it also invites comparisons between their efforts, starting with George Balanchine’s “Themes and Variations,” from 1947, which demands specificity in its rigorously aromantic aesthetic, privileging depth, speed and line over dramatic storytelling or individual expression. It’s telling that the two dancers who look most comfortable with this brisk, uniform style here—Alice Mariani and Ricardo Castellanos—are on loan from elsewhere (La Scala and Norwegian National Ballet, respectively).

The ballet was Balanchine’s ode to imperial Russia, a Tchaikovsky-scored oom-pah-pah that’s grand, bright and tightly wound. Crystals glint from the rafters, necks, tiaras, bodices; lemon and coral tutus parade through elaborate constellations, always perky and always upright, punctuated with pauses for applause. There’s a passion underpinning the pageantry—a devotion to the splendour of pomp and precision. The dancing is methodical, sometimes painstakingly so, but it’s never cold or without spirit.

Aside from Castellanos, who’s spotlit in several gallant solos, the focus is the ballerinas, who extend and twirl, the angels to his Apollo. A handful of male corps are wheeled out towards end to escort and promenade them, spin and dip them. In between is some beautiful footwork from the pas de quatre—eight perfectly arched feet prancing as one. The wider ensemble lacks this evenness, though; the spell feels close to coming undone at several moments, including when one dancer’s headpiece becomes stuck on another’s tutu. But the pitch-perfect Mariani brings us back from the brink, brilliant and nimble in silvery satin. The cast musters some gorgeous timing for the pinwheeling finale, summoning stately long lines amid the horns and cymbals.

English National Ballet in George Balanchine's “Theme and Variations.” Photograph by ASH

It's incredible to think that working at the same time, elsewhere in Manhattan, was the prodigious Martha Graham, providing her own response to the classical. “Errand into the Maze” is her 1947 take on the Theseus myth, and encapsulates her twin loves for mythology and psychoanalysis, which culminated in an artistic mission to excavate and elevate female interiority. She called her works ‘ballets’, but this is modern dance through and through, a grounded, barefoot foil to Balanchine’s sparkling ballerinas.

The opening image of woman with downcast eyes and crossed arms, assiduously breathing before striking a sharp pose in profile, feels right in sync with the geometric abstraction of Mondrian and Picasso. The zigzagging pattern stitched across her dress calls to mind a line Graham told a reporter during her breakout years: “Life today is nervous, sharp and zigzag . . . that is what I aim for in my dances.” A tether snakes across the stage, an allusion to the ball of string Theseus used to trace his way through the labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur.

But this Theseus (Emily Suzuki, in the role originally played by Graham) is no divine hero. She contracts her torso and sends up a leg, creating a half-moon with her floor-length skirt; she cups her hands and lifts her gaze to the sky. She is earthbound and all the more powerful for it. Enter the Minotaur (Rentaro Nakaaki, face painted and a rod poised tight between his shoulders), and together they tussle, assuming taut, majestic shapes like an Etruscan vase come to life. Sexual tension hangs pungent in the air as he bestrides her and mounts her on his back. Eventually, staunchly, she defeats him.

You can see why photographers like Barbara Morgan flocked to Graham—there are so many moments here I wanted to press pause on and luxuriate in. The baleful flutes of Gian Carlo Menotti’s discordant score, coupled with Isamu Naguchi’s spare, sculptural set design, harmonise exquisitely with her slanted choreography, full of flexed feet and sharp inhalations. The dancers approach it graciously and keenly, grabbing hold of its raw, edgy power.

English National Ballet in David Dawson’s “Four Last Songs.” Photograph by ASH

A remount of a quintet shown earlier this year, at a celebration of ENB’s relationship with William Forsythe, catapults us forward to the 90s, when stylised sass strutted its way onto the ballet stage. “Herman Schmermann” is all powerhouse extensions, swooping rond de jambs and bands of orange velvet. It’s a good look on the cast, who sashay, flick and slide, taking pleasure in Forsythe’s off-kilter phrases. They’re confident but not cocky, relaxed but not aloof. Alice Bellini has a rangy charm—a winning contrast to the feline exactitude of her two fellow ballerinas, who slice downstage to join her in a gorgeous triptych, each doing something a little different with it. The group’s final move before the curtain drop—a vanishing dive behind a black box downstage—is a cheeky exclamation point on this quick-moving, good-humoured piece.

The evening closes on an ethereal note with David Dawson’s “Four Last Songs,” a 2023 number created for ENB and danced to a song cycle by Richard Strauss. Elysian clouds hover above as the company glides between billowy formations like a flock of swallows, arms outstretched in yearning. We’re invited to bask in this skyscape, which reflects the pathos of Strauss’ music, a serene, melodic composition that sets the poems of Herman Hesse to song. Gareth Haw brings impressive gravitas, with a presence that takes up much more space than his physical footprint. Dawson’s phrasing demands intensity and care but without the pressure for uniformity, which offers some breathing space we don’t see in the Balanchine, allowing for organic moments of individual expression to emerge.

Soprano Madeleine Pierard, positioned stage left, intensifies the proceedings with her deep-bodied singing. At several points she reaches out to the dancers as they sail past, breaching an invisible barrier. They reach back, a fleeting exchange that’s somehow heavenly and human all at once.

Sara Veale

Sara Veale is a London-based writer and editor. She's written about dance for the Observer, the Spectator, DanceTabs, Auditorium Magazine, Exeunt and more. Her first book, Untamed: The Radical Women of Modern Dance, was published in 2024.

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