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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Danses Concertantes / Different Drummer / Requiem

Lauren Cuthberston and artists of the Royal Ballet in a 2011 performance of Requiem.

Mar 20 – Apr 13, 2024
Bow St, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9DD, UK

The late Kenneth MacMillan is best known for updating the full-evening story ballet, moving it from sweet fairy tale to sexy, violent, cinematic realism. But before and after Romeo and Juliet, Manon, and Mayerling, MacMillan made one-acts. The Royal Ballet—his home base and, since his death in 1992, keeper of his flame—is presenting three such works. These rarely staged ballets span his career. The 1955 Danses Concertantes, to the score Stravinsky made for Balanchine, announced MacMillan’s arrival fully formed, though, in its plotless musicality and wit, not the form the choreographer would become known for. The 1976 Requiem, to the gorgeous Fauré score, is more like it, with its elegiac gloom, if not its angels! (MacMillan had in mind William Blake’s blazing heavenly drawings.) More typical still is the 1984 Different Drummer, a fragmented take on the play Woyzeck, whose tortured working-class hero murders his cheating mistress before offing himself. —Apollinaire Scherr

A real-time showing is available in select cinemas on Tuesday, April 9, at 7:15 P.M. B.S.T., with an encore screening on Sunday, April 14, at 2 P.M. B.S.T. Only available to watch in the U.K.

Photo: © ROH/Tristram Kenton