London City Ballet: Momentum review – Bright, confident and smartly chosen

Last year, London City Ballet came back from the dead, relaunching after a 30-year gap. Twelve months on, the fondly remembered small company is looking bright and confident. Guest ballerina Alina Cojocaru is still there to lend star quality, but now there’s a stronger sense of company identity.

This touring programme, Momentum, has been smartly chosen, with rarities and smaller-scale pieces by big names. These are dances that might get overlooked by bigger companies, but give London City Ballet plenty to get their teeth into.

This was the UK premiere of George Balanchine’s Haieff Divertimento, a speedy classical setpiece created in 1947. The nine dancers will take a pose and play with it: in the duet, ballerina Jimin Kim shimmies hip-first into position, then twists her way into more formal lines. In another sequence, four men bound into jumps that change direction mid-air – this way, that way, and back again before landing.

A crisp, pacey work, it would benefit from more attack, particularly in the opening movement. But the dancers build energy as they go, responding to the shape and flavour of these lively steps.

Liam Scarlett’s early Consolations & Liebestraum sets three couples moving through duets, suggesting the progress of a relationship over time. In the first sequence, Alina Cojocaru kneels down and tucks a hand behind her, gentle and reflective. It’s a gesture that echoes through the piece, repeated by the other women or woven into embraces. Cojocaru presses a hand to partner Joseph Taylor’s heart and flows into complex lifts.

Soft Shore, a new work by Paris Opéra Ballet dancer Florent Melac, is a fluid quartet for a woman and three men. To a Beethoven quartet, they wind and twine around each other, limbs reaching into the air. Constance Devernay-Laurence is bold and athletic, springing through the bends and folds of Melac’s steps.

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Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition makes a colourful finale, with a shifting backdrop of watercolour images by Wassily Kandinsky and a live performance of the Modest Mussorgsky score. Ratmansky has fun with both the music’s shifting moods and the “promenade” linking sections.

The full cast parade in, or jump into sequences of lifts – women turning in their partners’ arms, one after another. Devernay-Laurence storms through an angry solo. A group of men bounce and dither with distracted energy. In group dances and in individual character moments, the whole company respond to Ratmansky’s punchy steps.

The London City Ballet is touring the UK and Europe through to November