So Are We: León and Lightfoot review – exciting moments in the Royal Ballet back home | Dancing

Paul Lightfoot is a legendary British choreographer, winner of many awards, more than 35 years in the business, dancing as a duo with his ex-wife Sol León. However this is the first time their work has been performed by a British dance company. It seems hard to believe.

The pair used their careers at the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), as dancers and musicians, then Lightfoot was artistic director from 2012 to 2020. But Cheshire-born Lightfoot trained at Royal Ballet school, then this is a kind of problem of the prodigal son, the Royal Ballet danced in the evening of the work of the two: one piece of twenty years will be revived, the other that came from the closing that has been recreated especially for this company.

His dance style is very different (based on NDT director Jiří Kylián). It is full of steps, exclamations, exaggerations and quirks. It is very stable, and changes the tone and timbre. The dancers of the Royal Ballet are used to moving in a difficult, extreme manner, but you can see how difficult it is to adapt to a new style, and it is interesting to see dancers who play against type, like Vadim Muntagirov, the former prince, who is now very difficult, very beautiful in 2006 Shooting the Moon. He is one of five people in the intelligent circle around which different rooms and relationships appear. Not so much a story as a (unintelligible) event. The genre can be a bit Marmitey: Euro arthouse angst, well-dressed people in trouble for Philip Glass. Always a beautiful challenge, though.

The dancer who invested the most in this project is Lauren Cuthbertson, who is about to be reinstated in the piece. At one point there is a camera feed on the stage and we see a close-up of Cuthbertson on the screen, the expression of his face as his body. It’s funny, if a silent movie star is wandering around in different roles – puffy cheeks, evil ash – it would be funny if he didn’t commit himself. The only thing is, there are so many words (and so many steps), they say so much, that they almost don’t say anything; trying to tell a hundred stories, but sometimes one story is enough.

A relaunch of the Royal Ballet, Salle de Danse is an hour-long piece based on the company ballet template, with many dancers from different parts of the company. Acrobatics are shown on stage – tendos, ronds de jambe, pirouettes – although there is often just a nod to the head step before moving on to the next part. Some of them are the same; familiar tropes over and over again. But when there is a difference, wow – especially the middle part and the whole company in unison, moving their arms with the strength of an archer in pursuit. Also the incongruous looks of Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé, passionate and gentle, as if shot from another ballet.