“Encounters: Four Contemporary Ballets” at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London: Arts Intel Report

Pam Tanowitz’s first big ballets—far along in a fecund career that lately was skyrocketing—were less free or legible than pieces for her own troupe or even for such modern dance heavyweights as the Martha Graham and Paul Taylor companies. At the New York City Ballet, this deeply intelligent and observant choreographer seemed so fixated on the discipline’s peculiar commonplaces that that’s all you saw—the stage became a pointillistic blur. But with her second batch of ballets, in the wake of the pandemic, she broke through. The dances have been as bold, beautiful, witty, and elusive as ever, yet in a ballet key. Which is to say: don’t miss her latest Royal Ballet commission, to an original score by Ted Hearne, whose music is dense, allusive, and gorgeous, especially for a live orchestra. Tanowitz has good company on this program: Crystal Pite, Kyle Abraham, and hip-hop Cameroon-Newham native Joseph Toonga with the night’s other premiere. —Apollinaire Scherr