The Royal Ballet in Crystal Pite’s Light of Passage
A welcome return of Light of Passage at The Royal Ballet — Crystal Pite’s meditation on safe movement, displacement, community and mortality…
The ‘Covenant’ section of Crystal Pite’s ‘Light of Passage’. © @FoteiniPhoto
Royal Ballet
Light of Passage: Flight Pattern, Covenant, Passage
★★★★★
London, Royal Opera House
20 February 2025
www.rbo.org.uk
In a world where we so often sweat on our first world problems, like which brand of toothpaste might make our teeth whiter, super annoyed when the train is five minutes late, or wondering if the TV would be better ten inches bigger — Crystal Pite reminds us of what is truly important: the power of community, helping each other, nurturing the young, all with the certainty that we won’t last forever. Light of Passage is monumental yet profoundly human in its telling; watching it can be both uplifting and humbling - it’s a work that makes you think. By some margin, it is the best full-length work the Royal Ballet has commissioned in recent years, representing ballet of the here and now, rather than the past or some flashy whizz, bang, bit of modern artifice.
2022’s Light of Passage may be a deeply weighty work, but its three sections are short, comprising just an hour of dancing, split by an interval. Nonetheless, it feels like the right length, and I can’t think of any unrelated short work that would complement it for a fuller evening. There are no programme notes as such, but a fine interview with Crystal Pite by Sarah Crompton neatly covers what drives the work, and I encourage a read.
Pite’s first creation for the Royal Ballet was Flight Pattern (in 2017), which serves as the opening bedrock of this longer piece. Flight is about refugees and the trudge of migration as 37 dancers in anonymous trench coats wearily forge their unknown path forward, pulsing with a mix of energy, pain, and, most of all, hope. Pite has done more than anyone to make the ballet corps relevant and potent again, as she shuffles and folds dancers like mini shoals of fish, with sparkling, striving movement catching the eye from all across the stage. Often in canon, the movement looks both beautiful and profoundly soulful — appropriately it is set to Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (No. 3).
While much of the movement flickers with free-flowing differences across the corps, there is a noteworthy section of 19th-century Petipa reverence, with everyone working in strict synchronisation as they change clothes and settle in for a night under the stars. But for all the memorable corps movement, Flight Pattern is built around Kristen McNally and Marcelino Sambé’s journey and the deeply touching loss of their child, which becomes a cipher for the losses of many who set off and never arrive. Their duet is on a par with Kenneth MacMillan’s blockbuster pas de deux for emotionally connecting with us. Towards the end, there are distant sights of a ‘promised land’, but the cost of entry is way too high for them. Flight offers a very human perspective on what it means to be a refugee, far removed from the easy words of political debate.
The shortest section of the night (at 10-15 minutes) focuses on children and is driven by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Covenant features none of the horrors that the convention seeks to prevent, but instead shows that there is nothing more important for society than guiding and growing the next generation. It is built around 9-11 year-old Junior Associates of The Royal Ballet School and, beneath some exquisite images conjuring the creation of the universe (by Jay Gower Taylor), portrays them being swaddled in support and given every opportunity to succeed. While it presents idealised behaviour that may not withstand the realities of tantrums and the other vagaries of modern life, it offers an uplifting vision that will resonate with us long afterwards and should remain with us.
Death is the final frontier for us all, and Passage explores ageing and the loss of loved ones. It is led by Christopher Havell and Isidora Barbara Joseph of Sadler’s Wells Company of Elders, comfortably enjoying their last lap with its illnesses, memories, and mutual support. The corps flickers as both community and life energy and spawn some duets of caring and thoughtful love without histrionics. But it does close with the inevitable passage to the other side, while underscoring that all that matters is that we did our best for ourselves and each other while we could.
In Light of Passage, Crystal Pite lifts us all up a level - its just such a profoundly moving work. It may be stating the bloody obvious, but we need more of Pite.