Notes on Light (chamber version) (2009)

Limen, danced to a Kaija Saariaho cello concerto, is cast to the hilt. McGregor has a greed eye for fabulous talents such as Yuhui Choe, Eric Underwood, Steven McRae and Paul Kay, and he mixes and matches dancers in thrilling new partnerships, including an absorbing duet for Underwood and a white-hot Sarah Lamb.

Wayne McGregor’s latest short
work for the Royal Ballet is a
companion piece for Chroma and
last year’s Infra; Limen’s enigmatic
qualities are framed by Kaija
Saariaho’s cello concerto Notes
On Light (performed by Anssi
Karttunen) and Tatsuo Miyajima’s
wondrous light installations. Dancers
first emerge and subside into a blue
soup behind a gauze scattered with
tumbling digital numbers; then, clad
in acid bright colours, they lock into
combative formations brimming
with tension; and finally they move
in and out of shadow against a
backdrop of LEDs. It doesn’t elicit
the emotional jolt that Infra
achieved, but its strange, liminal
world is thrillingly immersive.

Kaija Saariaho's cello concerto, Notes on Light, is full of drifting, shimmering sounds.

The best came last, with Limen, shadowy, mysterious, more sensuous than we've seen before from Wayne McGregor. It may come with all the usual guff about "exploring thresholds of darkness and light, presence and absence ..." – but these things are hard to talk about, easier to watch. Its central duet for Eric Underwood with Sarah Lamb – his dark limbs cradling her coiled white body like a solar eclipse – contains images I won't forget. A resounding reason to go.

Limen, the new work by Royal Ballet resident choreographer Wayne McGregor (here given its world premiere), is rather different. Cold, mechanical and visually stunning, it's set to Kaija Saariaho's apocalyptically slithery cello concerto and opens with the dancers performing McGregor's spine-rippling steps as flickering digital numbers appear to float back and forth across the stage. It makes the dancers seem half-real, like computerised avatars. Extraordinary.
The cast of 15 proceeds to dance it formidably well, with Watson excelling himself and Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae matching him.

The surprise in Wayne McGregor's new Limen is his evolving style. McGregor is the Royal's resident choreographer and until now we've known him for his highly articulated, almost insect-like movement vocabulary. In Limen he includes a softening line and sensuous poise. The duet Melissa Hamilton and Eric Underwood features gorgeously sinuous lifts and falling catches, and looks every bit the love duet you least expect from McGregor.
No surprise is McGregor's tip-top collaborators, with new music by Kaija Saariaho and set design by LED artist Tatsuo Miyajima.