Giselle: Ballet Cymru at the Wycombe Swan, 15th November 2021 – Maggie Watson reviews

Ballet Cymru’s Giselle treats the well known story in a fresh and original way that nevertheless respects the original text.  Both the score by Catrin Finch and Lee Child, and the choreography (attributed to Amy Doughty, Darius James and dancers of the company) draw on the nineteenth century ballet to create something completely new.  There are musical quotations from Adolphe Adam’s music, and the dances also echo the original in interesting ways, for example using the posés temps levés with ballonés that are traditionally Giselle’s on her first entrance for the whole cast.  Nevertheless, this is a wholly new creation.

 

Ballet Cymru: Cinderella, Wycombe Swan 25th November 2018

Darius James and Amy Doughty’s Cinderella for Ballet Cymru is enthralling. As the lights go down, an invisible narrator speaks an introduction in Welsh, adding an extra layer of magic and mystery to the fairy tale, before the company tells the story with wonderful clarity entirely through dance.

Every aspect of this production knits together in an artistic whole: Jack White’s musical score fits the choreographic action like a glove; Citrus Arts’ aerial effects have dancers as birds, descending from the flies on silken skeins of cloth, and the ingenious use of projection replaces the need for sets and scenery that would clutter the stage. The quality of the dancing was excellent throughout.

 

Tim Podesta’s Shadow Aspect: Ballet Cymru, Lilian Baylis Studio, 5 November 2017 – Maggie Watson reviews

Tim Podesta’s unsettling creation for Ballet Cymru explores the darkness that lurks within us, disrupting our relationships with others. It is a work that shakes assumptions about love, gender and sexuality as he pitches his dancers into a series of disconcerting encounters. Although there is no narrative as such, we see a succession of incidents, all told with Podesta’s distinctive part-classical, part-contemporary movement vocabulary. The piece centres around Mara Galeazzi, but this is a company work: every dancer matters and they have all absorbed and internalised Podesta’s style, with its use of strongly arched backs, forward bends hinged at the hips, swift precise hand movements, lifts in which dancers move torso-to-torso, and unexpected pirouette turns spiralling out of one foot.