Bernstein Centenary, Royal Opera House, London, review: The greatest celebration is of the dancers

To celebrate the centenary year of composer Leonard Bernstein’s birth, the Royal Ballet’s leading choreographers Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon have created new works

Joseph Sissens and Akane Takada perform in ‘Yugen’ (ROH)

The Royal Ballet’s new triple bill celebrates the music of Leonard Bernstein, and its own leading choreographers, but the greatest celebration is of the dancers. In bright new works by Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon, established stars and the company’s rising generation dance with joyful strength and feeling.

McGregor’s Yugen is set to Bernstein’s robust, rhythmical Chichester Psalms, sung in Hebrew with chorus and treble soloist William Davies. 11 dancers, dressed in flowing red by Shirin Guild, dart and soar through it, dipping into wriggles and exploding into lifts and leaps.

The set, by ceramicist and author Edmund de Waal, is a series of tall boxes, lit up or left dark, framing a bare stage without wings. It emphasises McGregor’s striking use of space, with zigzag angles of movement. Two or three soloists will slide into unison, then go on their way. The steps are unusually classical for McGregor, given colour and contrast by his distinctive twists and squirms. Like Chroma, one of his biggest hits, it suggests his delight in these dancers, a terrific cast led by Sarah Lamb, Federico Bonelli and Calvin Richardson.

Bernstein’s most famous dance connection was with choreographer Jerome Robbins, his collaborator in ballets and musicals, including West Side Story and On the Town. The New York thread is there in Liam Scarlett’s 2014 The Age of Anxiety, in which four 1940s New Yorkers meet, drink and worry. Lamb, Alexander Campbell, Bennet Gartside and Tristan Dyer bring vivid character to their roles, though the work still feels inconclusive.

Christopher Wheeldon’s new Corybantic Games, set to Bernstein’s Serenade, After Plato, looks back to ancient Greece while pondering love. Like the title, the start of the ballet tries a little too hard. Fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu dresses these dance athletes in rather 1950s underwear with trailing black ribbons. The balance of aesthetics and athletics sometimes feels cute, as when a line of men flip into shoulder stands.

But as the piece progresses, it gains depth. One sequence features three pas de deux – male/female, female/female, male/male – with tenderness and assurance, each dance individual but sharing an intimate mood. Non-heterosexual pairings are overdue in ballet, and its good to see them danced with such lyricism. Lauren Cuthbertson, Ryoichi Hirano, Yasmine Naghdi, Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Matthew Ball and William Bracewell are all outstanding. Tierney Heap dances her solo with grand drama. Marcelino Sambé and Mayara Magri speed through a duet full of dazzling turns and jumps, as if they and Wheeldon are intoxicated by the possibilities of ballet.

​Until 9 April (roh.org.uk)