Scottish Ballet: Starstruck, Glasgow review: 'a sparkling two-act meta-ballet'
Christoper Hampson’s ‘director’s cut’ of his 2021 production deftly walks the tightrope between subtlety and melodrama, writes Lucy Ribchester
Scottish Ballet: Starstruck, Theatre Royal, Glasgow ★★★★★
If done well, the mechanics of telling a story through dance fly beneath the radar. The glances, the postures, the yearning carved out through leaps and sweeps; we don’t want to notice them as movements but absorb them as markers of character. It’s a tightrope walk between subtlety and melodrama (much like Old Hollywood noirs or screwball comedies) and one at which Scottish Ballet’s Artistic Director, Christopher Hampson, has time and again proved himself a master.
In this new ‘director’s cut’ of Starstruck, Hampson has expanded on the company’s 2021 production (an enhanced version of Gene Kelly’s snappy, sculptural jazz ballet Pas de Dieux), and along with Gene’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, extended it into a sparkling two-act meta ballet. The action takes place in a Hollywood world with which Kelly would have been familiar, ripe with egos, glamour and graft. But at its heart is a simple love story: a Choreographer and his Star Ballerina are creating a ballet about Zeus and Aphrodite that mirrors their own tempestuous relationship. It’s testament to Hampson’s storytelling skill that by the sultry final duet the passion has built so tautly that we are rooting for these larger-than-life lovers.
Yuri Marques in the Choreographer role is a phenomenal dance-actor, brooding through phrases that blend balletic spins with glimpses of jazzy mid-century masculinity. Meanwhile Marlen Fuerte Castro puts soul into the Star Ballerina; sure she can dial up the wattage with languorous power poses, but she also brings a poetic, melancholy tone to her solos.
This is all wrapped up in Lez Brotherston’s musky, muted designs, retro-stylish but simple enough to keep the focus on the dance. Gershwin, Chopin and Ravel – all magisterial score choices from Kelly and Hampson – pull their weight to underpin the drama, and the live Scottish Ballet Orchestra are on swooning, soaring fire.
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