'Curated by Carlos' by the Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells

'Curated by Carlos' is a triple bill of one-act ballets by the Birmingham Royal Ballet of which Carlos Acosta is the director. It's made up of 'City of a Thousand Trades', 'Imminent' and 'Chacona' and was being performed at a rather busy Sadler's Wells. I've never seen Carlos Acosta dance so the main draw was that he would dance with the great Alessandra Ferri as part of the show. I saw Alessandra dance at the Royal Opera House a few weeks ago and it's always special to see her on stage.

'City of a Thousand Trades' is a new work commissioned by Carlos Acosta as a love letter to Birmingham.  It's more choreographed movement than ballet with a weird musical landscape with lots of banging and strange percussion sounds. I found the music and movement quite distracting at times through the dance, and I kept thinking 'how on earth do they remember to raise an arm just there?' or 'move right just at that moment?'. There was no real fluidity to the work, nothing to suggest that this movement follows that movement, so how do they do it? Endless practice I suppose, with muscle memory, but also a lot of mental discipline. I'm pleased I saw it.

I preferred the second ballet, 'Imminent', which was more balletic, girls in slips and lads in vests and pants. They danced round the stage, leaping and posing, inter-changing duos as some ran on and some ran off and then got together as an ensemble again. It was a more 'traditional' piece so felt more familiar, less manic than the first dance. I thought it was beautiful.

The final piece was 'Chacona' and they'd saved the best till last. The music was by Bach but played by a piano, a violin and a guitar and that was really effective. As with the other two works, all the dancers were involved, dressed in black with dramatic lighting. In the first movement the dancers formed a 'wall' that moved every so often and Alessandra Ferri and Carlos Acosta moved through the 'wall' as they danced together, backward and forward from one side of the stage to the other. Alessandra is aged 58 and Carlos is 48 but you'd never guess. It was a joy to see them together and he effortlessly lifted her high into the air.

Then the ballet lads and lasses took over, pulling dramatic shapes in the dramatic lighting, moving together and then splitting into four rows of four dancers to dance and writhe in their personalised lighting before joining together again. It really was a dazzling performance of movement and sound. I hope to see it again one day.

'L'Heure Exquise' at the Royal Opera House

'L'Heure Exquise' is a work by Maurice Bejart based on Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days'. In the play, the lead character is buried up to the waist in rubble so in this dance version, she is buried in pointe shoes. The lead was played by the ever-graceful Alessandra Ferri partnered by Carsten Jung. Ferri has a long relationship with the Royal Ballet, training at the Royal Ballet School and joining the company in 1980, achieving the rank of Principal dancer and later becoming Prima Ballerina Assoluta. And she's still dancing. 

The performance was in the Linbury Theatre, much smaller and more intimate than the main stage, and it's great to be so much closer to the dancers. Ferri tells her stories of her past through words, song and, of course, dance. It starts with her buried to her waist in ballet shoes and then the mound of shoes opens up and she steps onto the stage to sift through her memories. One minute she's singing then the next she's riding Jung like a childhood rocking horse. He was a very able partner, morphing into whatever Ferri needed.

The most tense and puzzling section for me was when Ferri discovers a handbag full of memories - a compact, a pair of ballet shoes - that she takes out one by one, and then she pulls out a gun and holds it up in the air. What is that for? Why is it there? What happened in her past to make a handgun such an important memory? Especially when she points it at Jung and he slowly takes it from her. Clearly an important memory and, like the rest of the show, a puzzlement...

For most of the show I had no idea what was going on - just like when I saw the 'Happy Days' play a few years back - so I just let it wash over me. You don't always have to understand everything, sometimes just experiencing it is enough. It's always a delight to see Alessandra Ferri and admire her skill and art and I look forward to the next time.

'Trio ConcertDance' at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House

The Linbury Theatre has re-opened in the Royal Opera House, newly refurbished in glowing wood in the basement of the building, a far more intimate space for smaller dance and music pieces. The opening show was 'Trio ConcertDance' with the wonderful Alessandra Ferri dancing so I had to get tickets. One of the really good things about the Linbury is that you can sit right in front of the stage, mere feet away from the dancers, and can see the focus and emotion on their faces as they dance. The programme was devised by Alessandra and Herman Cornejo (our dancers) and by Bruce Levingston (solo pianist for most of the performance).

It's made up of four joint dances and one solo dance but both dancers, contrasting movement and stillness, silence and music, minimal costumes and no scenery or background expect for that created by the very subtle lighting. We were in the fifth row from the stage and had a perfect view of the stage. The sound is perfect in the Linbury, purpose-built for that. Other than the endless stairs going down, down, down to the stalls, it's a great venue for music and dance.  

From those opening moments I knew we were in for a treat. Alessandra is a delight to see dance, all grace and precision  and perfectly accompanied by Herman, who I haven't seen dance before. A selection of choreographers and music pieces working together with the solo piano and the dancers moving around the stage, using every inch. It was really quite astonishing, just two dancers and a piano creating do much on an otherwise empty stage.

Oddly enough, Bruce Levingston was on stage and playing far more than the dancers danced. Some of the breaks were simply him playing different pieces with an otherwise empty stage and that break from movement really helped to emphasise one of the themes of the work, that sometimes you need stillness.

The performance ended to huge applause for the three leads but where were the flowers for Alessandra? I've grown used to the lead ballerinas getting flowers at the end of the performance that it was very odd to see Alessandra leaving without flowers. I would've brought some if I'd known.

'Woolf Works' at The Royal Opera House

Two weeks ago we went to see the thirteenth performance of 'Woolf Works' by Wayne McGregor and the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House. This is the first revival of the production that I first saw in 2015 (which was the sixth ever performance). Four days later we also went to see this production at the cinema as it was broadcast live and co-hosted by Darcy Bussell. Yes, it definitely is worth seeing a mere days later and it was a pleasant surprise to see so many close-ups on the big screen.

'Woolf Works' was the first production I saw at the Royal Opera House and my introduction to the Royal Ballet and holds a very special place for me. It also features Alessandra Ferri, who helped create the leading role with Wayne McGregor in 2015. Alessandra is one of those rare creatures, a Prima Ballerina Assoluta. And, of course, she trained with the Royal Ballet and danced with it in the 1980s. She has astonishing poise and skill and is a joy to watch.

'Woolf Works' is a series of three ballets based on three of Virginia Woolf's novels, in order, 'Mrs Dalloway', 'Orlando' and 'The Waves' and named 'I now, I then', 'Becomings' and 'Tuesday'. The programme opens with the voice of Virginia Woolf talking about the English language and words in the only recording of her voice with words projected on the screen and coalescing into her portrait as the curtain rises.

'I now, I then' opens with Alessandra Ferri standing still on the stage with three huge rectangles of wood slowly turning on the stage, sometimes in unison and sometimes at different speeds, and Clarrisa Dalloway is there amongst the sounds of London as the music starts. We see Clarissa as a middle aged woman and as a teenager with friends Peter and Sally, dancing their joys, and sometimes the older Clarrisa gets lost in her memories as she prepares for her party. We also get Septimus and Rezia, and even Evans who died in the trenches who does a dazzling solo as he spins round and round the stage at great speed, vanishing into the shadows at the back of the stage. Septimes's death is quite a shock as he falls from the window and the lights go out.

It's lovely to see the young Clarissa and Sally dance their joy, occasionally joined by the young Peter and, once, by the older Clarissa in memory. The music is perfect for this romantic and quite narrative dance and it was lovely, seeing it on the big screen, to see how they looked at each other as they danced. Sally in all her flighty blondness flitting around the stage, fearless and full of life, the love that Clarissa couldn't marry.

It really is a gorgeous ballet I want to see again.

'Becomings' is a different creature entirely but still telling the tale of Woolf and her worlds. Orlando was born male in the time of Elizabeth but wakes up one morning as female and immortal as she travels down the centuries. The book has been described as the longest love letter, from Virginia to Vita Sackville-West, and while there are some slow and tender moments in the ballet, I remember speed and movement, lasers and electronic music, shiny costumes flashing and lights darting as the maze of dancers spin around and leap and glide.

In several places the action takes place in the spotlight, with dancers leaping into the spotlight to take their turn and then leap out for others to take their place, constant movement, constant sharing of the stage and all impeccably done. And we had Steven McRae and Sarah Lamb dancing together in a world of their own.

One thing that stunned me was that at several points it seemed that everyone on stage was moving to their own dance, moving and twirling across the stage in different formations. How can they maintain such concentration that the movements of the dancers beside them don't affect their own dancing. This isn't just physically rigorous, but mentally rigorous too. This is why these are some of the best dancers in the world.

The stage had a covering of some shiny material during 'Becomings' to create a mirror image to most of the dancing and it was terribly effective - not the whole stage, simply the middle half so the reflections didn't outstay their welcome. And neither did the stabbing spotlights or the lasers that shot out around the auditorium (something we didn't see in the big screen version).

The final ballet was 'Tuesday', based on 'The Waves', with its backdrop of slow motion waves projected on the back of the stage and the constant movement of the dancers. This ballet was preceded by Gillian Anderson reading Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard, which got rapt attention in the auditorium. Once again, Alessandra took the lead role in this ballet, with Federico Bonelli and Sarah Lamb.

The constant movement, imitating waves on the seashore, keep the whole piece flowing and moving. Early on, the children from the Royal Ballet School joined their heroes on stage to play on the beach  with shrieks of laughter mixing with the seagulls as they played on the shore. And then the waves crashed again and the dancers appeared out of the shadows.

The repetition was mesmerising, almost transcendent as the dancers moved and created patterns on the stage, appearing and disappearing into the shadows at the back of the stage under the projection of the waves.  You know the tide has changed when the dancers started forming patterns based on waves as they sweep into the shore and then back again into the shadows , time and again as the tide goes out and fewer dancers grace the stage, then fewer still. And night falls.

'Tuesday' is a lovely, gentle ballet with some romantic movements and some narrative twists, that creates a marvellous experience, perfectly matched by the music and lighting on that simple and bare stage.

'Woolf Works' is a marvellous exercise in dance and marries together the music by Max Richter, the lighting and staging. It works as a whole with each element complementing the next. Most of the music is available on CD from Max Richter, 'Three Worlds' and I'm listening to it as I type.

I think 'Woolf Works' is included in the programme of ballets on the Royal Ballet's summer tour this year so see it if you possibly can. I will patiently await it's next revival and will be there to see it at the Royal Opera House. I wonder if Alessandra will take her role again in that revival? I do hope so.