Celebrating young choreographers and new choreography (Royal Opera house)

Two weeks ago, the Royal Opera House opened its annual celebration of new choreographers and choreographies. This is a fantastic opportunity for emerging, young or less known choreographers to showcase their work and get themselves known to the wider professional or just dance-enthusiastic audience.

I attended the general rehearsal of the Festival of New Choreography at the main stage of the ROH (on Wednesday, the 14th of February) and I was absolutely spellbound of what I (we) have witnessed. We saw four different pieces from four different choreographers : Boundless choreographed by Gemma Bond, Never Known by Joshua Junker, For What It's Worth by Mthuthuzeli November and Twinkle by Jessica Lang. All four choreographers had a very different inspiration and the starting point but each of them transported us into a unique and intimate world of its creator. Every piece had a different mood, context, colour, texture, music or movement but they were all trying to explore new ideas and possibilities for dancers and pushing the boundaries of physicality, of the pair dancing or of exploring new combinations of classical and modern, street or tribe dance.

The first piece Boundless (choreographed by Gemma Bound) was inspired by Gemma's five-year-old daughter. As Gemma commented, the complete oblivion to any boundaries when children play, the freedom of movement and un-preconceived ideas of how they should react fascinated her and gave her the idea to explore it further in her choreography. The fruit of this inspiration - her piece Boundless was a very energetic, eclectic choreography, brilliantly danced on rather quick piano concerto by Joey Roukens. The second piece Never Known by Joshua Junker was a very nice contrast to the first piece: perfectly synchronised slow motion of the dancing group was an absolutely pleasure to watch and a calming moment to enjoy. The third piece For What It's Worth by Mthuthuzeli November showed the warmth, the vibrant colours and vivid rhythms of "Mother Africa" (Mthuthuzeli playing the percussions and singing african-tribe song himself) and the last piece Twinkle by Jessica Lang contrasted brilliantly yet again. It was inspired by the well-known children lullaby "Twinkly Twinkly little Star" (what is less known is maybe the fact that it is sung on Mozart's music). The choreography was composed on Mozart's lullaby variations and on Brahms Lullaby "Wiegenlied" (both played on the piano by Kate Shipway) and was conceived with the idea of showcasing the strong points and particularity of each dancer. Jessica said that the unique individuality and each dancer's strength were the inspiration for her to let them shine and create a choreography around them.

The festival of new choreographies also gives the opportunity to younger dancer of the Royal Ballet to shine, to express themselves and also to co-create the dance with the choreographers. It also opens the door for choreographers to co-operate with directors, light and costumes designers (which are an organic part of the whole performance) and have a "full" experience of showcasing their work.

Parallelly with the main stage performances of the new choreography, there were also performances (at the Lindbury theatre) called Dark with excessive bright, and Duets (at Clore studio, performed by the Northern ballet) as another showcase of new choreographers.