A prelude to the "Light of Passage" (Live at Lunch, ROH, 14.10.2022)

A full-length ballet Light of Passage (from the choreographer Crystal Pite) is performing at the Royal Opera House right now (until the 3rd of November). On Friday, the 14th of October, dancers of the Royal Ballet Ashley Dean and Luca Acri performed a little sample of this beautiful, emotional but also disturbing ballet during the Live at Lunch performance.

Luca and Ashley, coached by Deirdre Chapman, rehearsed a very sad "Pas de deux" about a mother who lost her child. This traumatic situation, emotionally difficult but very moving, was choreographed on Górecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs - the music reflecting on motherhood, love and loss, which goes straight to your heart with its sheer, simple beauty and sadness.

This particular Live at Lunch was performed in collaboration with the City Lit Mental Wealth Festival, as an annual tribute to mental health. After the rehearsal, Deirdre and the dancers were asked several questions about their approach to performing such deep, emotional ballets and how they deal with their emotions.

Deirdre explained that the choreographers (and dancers) always search to find and adjust little details that would be visually telling the audience what is happening and what they should represent. So concentrating on technical details may sometimes help dancers to distance themselves from such strong emotional experiences and stay in control, though they always want to convey a very believable and relatable story.

For dancers, it is a matter of connecting their personal feelings and experiences to the choreography - even if they do not have that particular experience (like the loss of a child), they approximate it to some kind of similar experience and interiorize the situation, so they can release the emotions through movements. Movements, as Luca and Ashley said, are in their veins, they are the dancers' language which they sometimes even can't explain in words but they're there. Dancers are used to dealing with different characters, and the Royal Ballet performs very often MacMillan's choreographies, which are full of dramatic situations (ballet Mayerling is performing in October and November at the ROH). So they know instinctively how to deal with these character changes and, once on stage, said Ashely, they are immediately in that role.

As for the choreographer (Crystal Pite), she is always very open and likes to cooperate with the dancers, leaving them space to find their own interpretation and the movements that would suit them best.