The Guardian: Bausch, Forsythe, Van Manen review – a company awakening

By Luke Jennings

26 March 2019

In the five years since she was made artistic director of English National Ballet, Tamara Rojo has remade the company, introducing challenging new work and promoting a new generation of soloists and principals. Her latest programme offers pieces by three of the 20th century’s most influential choreographers: William Forsythe, Hans van Manen and Pina Bausch. ENB are the first British company to perform Le Sacre du printemps(The Rite of Spring) by Bausch, a notable coup for Rojo.

The triple bill will run at Sadler’s Wells until Saturday, and the fact that it is not playing outside London is a reminder of the hard economics underpinning a major-scale ballet company. At ENB, the books are balanced by touring classical story ballets such as Le Corsaire and Coppélia, and by a long winter Nutcracker season. So it’s good to see the dancers cutting loose in less traditional fare. It’s clearly liberating for them, but evenings like this also offer audiences the chance to see company members in a different context. Dancers who might spend most of their year performing as part of the ensemble, as pirates in Le Corsaire or Rhineland villagers in Giselle, can find themselves suddenly and strikingly foregrounded. Ballet careers are all about seizing the moment, about taking the chance when it presents itself.

Read the full article in The Guardian.