Review: GALA DE DANZA, Central Hall Westminster

Photo credit: Melody Battentier

Dance Gala’s usually follow a pattern, and we’ve been to quite a few. Lots of great dancers and plenty of famous excerpts from ballets but despite all the fireworks, it can get a bit tedious after a while. That was definitely not the case at Gala de Danza, seen at the Central Hall Westminster on its first visit to the UK.

Gala de Danza is an initiative set up by eminent dancer Christina Lyon. As Founder and Director, she has developed a model which blows all other dance galas away, by combining great dancers from around the world with young and up and coming performers. Music features too, so it’s not all dance.

Central Hall may not seem like the ideal venue for a dance performance, although the foyer staircase (supposedly based on that at the Paris Opera) provides a suitably grand entrance, graced for the gala by towering flower arrangements and posing ballerinas on the stairs. It is clear inside the Hall that a great deal of effort has been put in to this two day production, with excellent lighting and a detailed programme on every seat.

It is impossible to list everyone in this 90-minute performance (actually more like two hours, a long sit without an interval), but music includes an upbeat amplified Vivaldi to open proceedings (‘Winter’ in fact – quite a contrast to the heat in the hall). Counter-tenor Jakub Józef Orliński is a great favourite with the crowd, his powerful voice barely needing the amplification which is a feature of all the items on the bill. He is also a champion break-dancer, as he shows in the Finale.

Guitarist Marcin stuns too with his combination of guitar and percussion, as well as providing accompaniment for some Latin American ballroom dancing interludes. William Close installs and plays his Earth Harp, with strings reaching right across the Central Hall, and which he plays with gloves from a console.

It is the ballet and contemporary dance that most people were there to see however, and that certainly did not disappoint. Stars from the Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and Rambert are joined by other dancers from great companies around the world, dancing solos or pas de deux. Far too many to list, but among the audience favourites are Viola Pantuso and Shale Wagman in ‘Flames of Paris’, and Nikolas Gaifullin in a powerful solo, ‘Take Me to the Church’.

Perhaps the highlights of the performance for many were the newcomers. The astonishing Braylon Browner expresses his response to ‘Ave Maria’ with every bone in his body, even though he is so supple as to look as though he doesn’t have any. Young performer Spencer Collins from Los Angeles fearlessly commands the stage in the Franz Variation from Coppelia at the age of twelve. Choreographer Juliano Nunes worked with several groups of performers but most sensationally with the talented young dancers in the Swans Workshop, filling the stage with their take on the familiar Swan Lake music but totally reinventing the familiar choreographic moves. It looks in equal parts joyful and totally disciplined.

Perhaps the most remarkable performers are Murmuration Compagnie under choreographer Sadeck Berrabeh, who also appears in both pieces as a kind of conductor or leader. In Dentelle and in Into the Wild, the dancers are seated and dressed in black, with the choreography featuring mostly their heads and their exposed forearms. It might sound banal but the effect, when delivered with this level of skill, invention and perfection, is quite stunning. When the dancers somehow manage to rapidly spell out ART IS FOR ALL with their arms, there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

So come back again Gala de Danza, maybe next time in a theatre like the London Coliseum, and stun us again with your mix of dancers at the top of their game and those just beginning.

***** Five stars

Reviewed by: Chris Abbott