London City Ballet’s Momentum is a multi-course feast for the eyes

It’s like being given a tasting menu and told to enjoy. Its latest programme, Momentum, is a pleasure throughout, particularly since Alina Cojocaru, one of the true ballet greats, is appearing as a guest star, lending her thoughtful presence to two of the four works.

The highlights came at the beginning and end, partly because they both represent choreographers who are not enough seen in the UK. George Balanchine’s Haieff Divertimento is a lost work from 1947, never before shown here. Its careful reconstruction reveals a sophisticated piece of filigree steps, their delicate classicism disrupted by jutting hips or little extensions of the wrists. At one point, a woman stands on one leg, supported by her partner, weaving patterns with the other leg in the air as if thinking where to go next. That sense of consideration illuminates the entire piece.

Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, its Mussorgsky piano score played live by Reina Okada and its performers set against projections of Kandinsky’s brightly coloured circles and squares, is more emphatic and speedy but full of moments of lyricism and grace. Ratmansky playfully reinterprets the steps of the classical vocabulary that dancers train in every day; the intricacy of his choreography matches swift changes of mood and pace.

The movement is often witty and unexpected, giving its 10 dancers the chance to excel. Joseph Taylor paints big jumps across the space; four of the women stretch their arms in expressive swoops like latterday Isadora Duncans.

Best of all, Cojocaru and Alejandro Virelles dance a duet in which she appears almost weightless, lifted in the air in pensive arcs, her arms wreathing around her head. That quality Cojocaru has of being utterly present in every movement, seeming to extend time, is there too in Liam Scarlett’s Consolations and Liebestraum, a piece for three couples that responds powerfully to Liszt’s piano score, creating a mournful mood of loss and longing.

Scarlett took his own life four years ago, after his career hit controversy. That knowledge adds a particular sadness to a piece that is a reminder of his ability to create elegant dance.

The commission on this programme – in line with Marney’s aim of combining forgotten works and new adventures – is Soft Shore, by French choreographer Florent Melac. It’s easy on the eye, but too close in tone to the Scarlett to make much of an impression. Like the rest of the programme, however, it is sensitively and beautifully danced by a company that is a judicious mix of youthful talent and extensive experience. Dancers such as Virelles (trained in Cuba), Taylor (formerly of Northern Ballet) and Constance Devernay-Laurence (once of Scottish Ballet) blossom in this new setting. Named after a company that had been extinct for 30 years, London City Ballet looks back to the past, but this bodes well for its future.

Momentum by London City Ballet is touring 

Photographs by ASH