The austere title of Wayne McGregor’s new ballet is clear: Untitled, 2023 is not about stories. The set, designed by artist Carmen Herrera shortly before her death at 106, is strikingly stark, its ice-white expanses cut by geometric emerald. The same colours bifurcate costumes by Burberry’s Daniel Lee, so that bodies flare and shade as they turn. It’s a cold world warmed by the dancers’ thrilling commitment.
Catamorphosis and Metacosmos by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, gathering storms from an era of climate crisis, are not conventional dance scores. Don’t expect stepping-stone beats or snatches of waltz; rather, the percussive rumble and sliding, swishing textures unfold into a glacier-like soundscape where the dancers must locate purchase and rhythm.
The result bristles with detail. A windswept Joseph Sissens ducks and dives, nuzzling at Leo Dixon. Needle-sharp moments include Melissa Hamilton’s unsentimental partnering – yank and shove – and Fumi Kaneko’s rapid silent transitions, while the ensemble form sculptural tussocks on the white floor. Abstraction comes alive – it’s a fascinating premiere.
The second piece, Corybantic Games (2018) by Christopher Wheeldon, was named for frenzied rites from Greek legend but is winningly athletic rather than ecstatic. His engaging ensemble relishes pockets of honey-sweet dance to Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade: Matthew Ball and William Bracewell’s tenderly competitive duets; Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Luca Acri’s sass and jostle; three couples who twirl apart then pull close, gradually twining into a polyamorous arch. An Olympian Mayara Magri presides over a lemon-lit finale, her dauntless assurance matching the score’s sly strut (Bernstein wrote West Side Story soon after).
Capping the evening is Laura Morera’s final production before retirement: Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia Act III. Always a vividly empathic ballerina, Morera plays Anastasia, last of the Romanovs – or at least Anna Anderson, purported survivor of the 1917 assassinations. MacMillan created this punchy tour through her troubled mind in 1967, later expanding it into a full evening. The heroine endures asylum visitors (sceptical doctors, haughty ladies in picture hats) and searing memories (gunfire, Ryoichi Hirano’s lowering Rasputin). Morera (sharing the role with Natalia Osipova) is cowed, truculent, running from her own thoughts. Anna’s royal identity may not be real, but her torment undoubtedly is.
• At the Royal Opera House, London, until 17 June.
