A two-act abstract ballet in six movements, fifteen minutes each, with five international female choreographers, Luna is, inevitably, a bit of a potpourri, a mixed bag, a patchwork salvaged from choreographic incoherence by its creative team, projection designer Hayley Egan and lighting designer Emma Jones.
And by Birmingham Royal Ballet’s superlative dancers, as well as Kate Whitley’s musical choices and composition. Her arrangement of Fauré’s Requiem for act 1 scene 3’s Unwavering (choreographer Thais Suárez), sung beautifully by soprano Marianna Hovhanisyan and baritone Themba Mvula interacting on stage with dancers Beatrice Parma and Javier Rojas, is lovely.
Luna is the final part of artistic director Carlos Acosta’s Birmingham Trilogy vision (City of a Thousand Trades, Black Sabbath), celebrating the city and its citizens. Women get their turn now: taking inspiration from Louise Palfreyman’s book, Once Upon a Time in Birmingham: Women Who Dare to Dream, Luna sets out to celebrate “the pioneering and socially enterprising women of Birmingham who have contributed to the shape of the city”. Not that that is clear in the abstract telling or showing.
Each piece has a famous quote to indicate intention. Wubkje Kuindersma opens and closes the show with her Terra and Luna, the full cycle of the moon that has such an emotional hold on us, with a cast of sixteen and eighteen. Terra quotes Virginia Woolf and I immediately think of Woolf Works incorporating The Waves—the back projection is the moon’s reflection on a dark sea, and the dancers in grey-washed bodies must be the waves.
A chorus of about thirty children open and close the evening, singing “I am the sea, the moon, the sky”. The second piece, Seeta Patel’s Learning to Dream Big, would seem to be addressed to them. Five girls in a dorm at night open books, which light up with inspiration and aspiration: doctor, dreamer, activist, teacher, conductor are their dreams.
“When you educate a girl, you educate a nation" is its didactic prompting quote. There’s a huge banner “Thank You NHS”, so prominent during lockdown. What do hold my attention more are the delightful projections of children’s drawings and other animations, illustrating these fields of optimistic interest.
This is followed by Thais Suárez’s sophisticated drama to Fauré, Unwavering, with its Harriet Beecher Stowe quote, “no force is more powerful than a woman…” But, I am reminded of Kenneth MacMillan, not just of his Requiem but that huge red globe in Concerto.
Emma Jones’s hazy lighting is suggestive of a portal to the other world. The two singers accompany an astonishingly agile, troubled and resilient Beatrice Parma through dry ice and a startling red light to where—purgatory, or is she in it already, this tough woman?
Arielle Smith’s Empowerment for eight female dancers is beautiful to look at—their russet-coloured dresses (costume designer Imaan Ashraf) complemented by a back-projected whirlpool of bright lights that looks like a basket weave. Is it about dreams again, about warrior women, about clones perhaps?
Iratxe Ansa’s Overexposed, again with Parma, this time besieged by eight faceless masked men in white, is startling. A scrunched piece of projected grey-white paper turns into a cliff face. Is this the cliff she has to climb? Who are these nightmarish men she has to fight off? Are they corpses or is this the underworld—more female purgatory? Parma, again is remarkable, the star of the evening.
Finally, we have closure with Luna. “The moon is a companion for lost souls” is the quote, though I may have miswritten it in haste. Children enter carrying lit globes. My mind reaches back to 2017, to the Roundhouse where Wayne McGregor curated Random International’s Zoological art installation with its drone white globes. The mind has time to wander as it searches for meaning.
Against a Malevich-like Black Circle of a moon, eighteen dancers become particles of the solar system. Though I wish they’d still their flapping arms. The children have the final say with their wise words. We are all part of a mystery bigger than ourselves.
With the best intentions, trying to be all-inclusive, Luna in its disjointed if themed hour and a half seems too diffuse. Too many voices—maybe they need a conductor like Paul Murphy to fine-tune their harmonies. It’s a pleasure to have the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under his command in the pit.