English National Ballet’s R:Evolution review – a triple whammy of Balanchine, Forsythe and Graham

Sadler’s Wells, London
In a stunning evening, fearless and faultless dancers deliver a trio of classics, ending with a gorgeous yet more subdued piece by David Dawson

English National Ballet’s new season launches with a quadruple bill that follows a loose thread through ballet’s evolution over the best part of a century. You can see the inheritance, morphing across the decades, as well as one work of rebellion.

We start in 1947, but looking back to the late 19th century, with George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, a neoclassical piece aping the Russian imperial ballet. It gently sparkles (that’s not just the diamanté necklaces) and proudly lays out its patterns and steps, academic in presentation but infused with deep love of the form, as if saying: “Here is ballet, isn’t it beautiful?!” Yet within that formality there is hidden swagger, in certain angles for example, that plants it firmly in the 20th century.