An Evening in the Cheap Seats

Having not been to the ballet since I myself, as a rather robust toddler, was bounding around on the stage in far too much tulle and not enough glitter to make it worthwhile, I thought it was high time I experience the heady heights of an evening at the Royal Opera House. And the emphasis must be placed on ‘heights’. Climbing the steps to the rafters, and breathtakingly beautiful rafters they are too, my first experience of the Royal Opera House was from the cheap seats, or the ‘upper slips’ as they are more officially known.

The night’s performance consisted of three of the late Kenneth MacMillan’s ballets, each as different in their choreography and music as they were in their costumes; the day of the tutu was well and truly over in MacMillan’s performance and in its place, the Royal stage was filled with burnt out cars and neon spandex.

Concerto to Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto opened the evening with the light, colourful buoyancy we expect from ballet but the brightly coloured leotards which filled the stage left us ill-prepared for The Judas Tree, MacMillan’s allegorical representation of Christ’s betrayal set on a building site in Canary Wharf.

Put aside any thoughts of businessmen breaking into synchronised movements on the daily commute, The Judas Tree is a hard-hitting but resonating performance that seriously pushes the boundaries between classical ballet narratives and those of challenging contemporary dance.

With a cast of one woman and 11 men, the performance immediately took on a more sinister mood compared to the airiness of Concerto, as what began as playful seduction soon turned into a harrowing attack on a young woman resulting in betrayal, murder and eventually suicide. Not the most common themes you may have come to expect from The Royal Ballet but this simply acted as a testament to MacMillan’s talents at using the medium of dance as a vehicle for more serious issues and themes while celebrating the emotional power of ballet at its finest.

As the tense atmosphere still hanging over the stage was replaced by the joyfully syncopated rhythms of Elite Syncopations (the clue was in the title) provided by the onstage ragtime band, donned in matching outfits to the dancers – the aforementioned neon spandex – this was ballet at its most crowd-pleasing. In fact, I felt the buzz of energy that surged through the dancers into the audience bring us as close to rhythmic thigh-slapping as one could hope to get at the Royal Opera House. But the refrain that was exercised by the audience by no means took away the light-hearted feel of the performance and again worked to demonstrate the ways in which MacMillan was able to manipulate our emotions.

While putting someone as clumsy and gesticulatory as me in such a vulnerable position was most certainly an oversight, as the poor lady on the tier below me who went home with a rogue cashew nut in her hair will certainly vouch for, the view from above at the Royal Opera House was breathtaking. And not just because the air is rather thin at that height. Forget private boxes and tiaras, the cheap seats are where it is at.

Concerto, The Judas Tree and Elite Syncopations will be performed on 14 and 15 April. Tickets £4- £55.

The Royal Opera House
45 Floral Street
Covent Garden
WC2E 9DD

Box office: 020 7304 4000

Image by Uberculture courtesy of Flickr