The internet has been abuzz over the past weeks, if not months, about the Royal Ballet's latest triple bill with not one but two world premieres from its hottest talents, Wayne McGregor and Liam Scarlett. While the press has been awash with articles about McGregor's collaborations with Mark Ronson and Graham Pugh, the Royal Ballet's more loyal fans have been bubbling with excitement over Liam Scarlett's foray into narrative ballet. In all of these discussions, little mention has been made of Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia, which could be seen as prescient.

As the opening piece, Polyphonia is a neoclassical abstract work for eight dancers, featuring rising star Beatriz Stix-Brunell in an impressive solo. While there are interesting moments and changing moods to reflect each movement of Gyorgi Ligeti's music, it's a piece which is likely to be adored by neoclassical lovers, and dismissed by the rest.


Liam Scarlett's Sweet Violets, about Walter Sickert against the background of the Jack the Ripper murders, is gloriously star-studded, featuring the cream of the Royal Ballet in its first cast: Johann Kobborg as Walter Sickert and Steven McRae as Jack, with Thiago Soares, Federico Bonelli, Alina Cojocaru, Tamara Rojo, Laura Morera and Leanne Cope in additional roles. And there lies the first of Sweet Violet's problems: too many characters, most of them underdeveloped. While Leanne Cope gives a brilliant performance as a terrified whore, she's quickly dispatched and doesn't live beyond the opening scene. Similarly, while Steven McRae is perfectly cast as the sinister Jack, his is a role which could definitely be developed further, allowing Scarlett to explore further the relationship between Jack and Sickert. McRae's Jack could be interpreted as an embodiment of the demon within, and the way he holds up the dying Cojocaru to look at Kobborg's catatonic figure hints at some such link between the two men.

As this is Scarlett's work, of course there is beautiful and unusual choreography, but having watched the mastery of Asphodel Meadows, Sweet Violets is something of a letdown, as the choreography fails to live up to his high standards, and the narrative is woefully in need of editing. Definitely worth seeing, but probably not too many times.


The unexpected hit of the evening was Wayne McGregor's Carbon Life, proving that if you cram enough into a piece, there'll be something for everybody. Most welcome was the relaxation of McGregor's frenetic signature style, despite a brief blip towards the end as though to remind the audience what he's best known for. However, following the success of Royal Opera House's 'Royal Ballet Live', several of the sections felt a little too much like watching warmup exercises from their daily class - amid brilliant performances from all of his dancers, especially Lauren Cuthbertson and Steven McRae.

Live music was probably always going to be the next frontier for McGregor, although it's impossible not to compare the results with the far more superior staging of Hofesh Shechter's gig-within-a-dance-show Political Mother. While the live music factor may have had a significant impact on ticket sales, it didn't have as much artistic impact on the ballet as could be hoped.

The visual aspects of Carbon Life were by far the strongest, initially with a screen reducing the dancers to shadowy indistinct figures, and with their costumes which slowly built up from black briefs for all to outlandish items including bizarre tutus, headgear, wings and boots. But by the end, between the costumes and the squares of lighting, you start to suspect that actually all the blurb about Jung, animus/anima and the collective unconsciousness was just a diversion, and actually Carbon Life is all about chess. And after all, isn't it about time Ninette de Valois's Checkmate had a trendy makeover?

Bring earplugs and, if you're not sitting near the stage, binoculars.