Inheritance
The glade in The Dream is small and contained.
Manageable. One hollow in an oak for the king and queen’s bed.
No turrets. No trees upon trees. Nothing goes higher than the lighting rig.
Henry Bardon, when he designed the set, did not think to include bricks of limestone and chalk, or winding paths of clay and sand.
He did not light the way with pinecones.
There are no birds among the orchestra. No rustle of leaves, or swaying boughs.
There is nothing real about it, and this should have reassured me.
But it did not. The artifice allows for timelessness, a chance to return to a world exactly as it was at the point of creation, and that was where the set and my home overlapped.
And all the while, there was Trix, looking for answers. Questions about family, childhood, language, heritage, home. Things that a mortal man could answer casually, without fear of pulling back the curtain on an entire world. Her questions stuck to me like thistles, soft but stubborn.
I came so close to telling her. But how could I? Where could I have begun? I could not lie to her. I could only speak around my father, my mother, my uncle. The family that still ruled me, and the family they all expected me to produce. I could only dance around it.
DANSEUSE
Symphonic Variations/The Dream: Ashton’s finest
Reviews | Ballet
Erin Desborough
Friday, 12 June 1987
… As soon as Sylvan made his downstage entrance, my seatmates either side of me softly gasped, with good reason.
The make-up and wardrobe department had propelled his already elfin features and enviable bone structure into another realm of striking beauty.
Between his noble bearing and (even by his standards) astounding footwork in the Scherzo sequence, The Dream constitutes Sylvan’s best leading performance to date.
His adages have come a long way over the last two seasons, exemplified by exquisite control on the tricky pirouettes in attitude that lengthen into slow arabesques.
But the role of Oberon cannot be built on virtuosic technique alone; it requires nuanced, attentive acting, which Sylvan delivers in spades.
There was genuine power in his gestures, enough to make even the most hardened sceptic believe in magic for a few minutes.
His King of the Fairies was calculating, aloof, resentful, and short-tempered, yet these traits were rarely expressed in isolation, as if his Oberon knew he should behave better.
That he should not deceive his wife, but also that his caprices would win out.
Meanwhile, fresh off the back of her scintillating run as Nikiya in La Bayadère, Errington as Queen Titania reminds us all that she remains the epitome of an Ashtonian English rose, holding her own in needlepoint-precise steps and easy in her épaulement.
Her Nocturne pas de deux with Oberon shifted gorgeously from wariness to mutual support, and from rediscovered affection to a sensual finish made effortless by Sylvan and Errington’s sizzling chemistry.
Flowers from Henry Bardon’s timeless fairy forest are also due to Charles “Charlie” Meesters, the soloist and budding choreographer playing Puck, who zoomed around the stage with mischievous, eternally youthful charm.
He seemed to feed off Sylvan’s spellbinding energy: after each of their scenes, his jumps achieved heights I hadn’t seen since Wayne Sleep twenty years prior.
Whether it’s the neoclassical abstraction of Symphonic Variations or The Dream’s magical glade, audiences seeking refuge from the dismal weather this summer will doubtless find themselves so enchanted by this mixed bill that they have no desire to leave. Encore, encore!
Symphonic Variations/The Dream is in rep at the Covent Garden Dance Hall until 4 July, with varying casts.