Magical evening...
The Northern Ballet’s Great Gatsby (at Sadler’s Wells) attracted an enthusiastic crowd at sadler's Wells, hardly a surprise, I suppose.
This 10th year revival of David Nixon’s choreography (with a score by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett) is still a delight to watch.
Dressed full-on 1920s (an elegant era) with an entrancing and cleverly simple set, the skill here is in telling a somewhat complex plot through dance, whilst keeping a ‘proper’ ballet structure – the score, which plunders 20th century cinema as an influence, together with jazz and dance catches the age, and allows different genres to move us to different emotional states.
The designers have cleverly copied Mia Farrow’s hair style (and make-up) for their Daisy (obviously they expect the earlier film to be more memorable to their audience).
The complexity and depths of the relationships is of course key to the original plot, the film and this ballet – necessarily the more complex and nuanced social commentary in the book is wholly lost in the ballet (and pretty well in the film, to be honest).
It seems fully booked, but if you do catch it, mugging-up on the Fitzgerald plot might help, but, it must be said, not entirely. It was however an entrancing and beautiful evening of music and dance, very well played and danced.