VISIONARIES ROBBINS AND MACMILLAN

About the show

Two profound meditations on humanity, community and connection. This mixed programme features Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering and Kenneth MacMillan’s Song of the Earth. DANCES AT A GATHERING Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering opens the mixed programme. Set to some of Fryderyk Chopin’s most familiar piano melodies, Robbins’s buoyant choreography from 1969 underpins a series of plotless dances, each a portrait of human connection and together a joyful kaleidoscope of shifting moods. Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering was brought into the repertory of The Royal Ballet in October 1970 by Principal Choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, who was then Director of the Company. SONG OF THE EARTH MacMillan’s Song of the Earth completes this programme. In this 1965 work of sculptural beauty, MacMillan’s elegiac and earthbound choreography expresses metaphysical themes in Gustav Mahler’s score, such as the transience of life and the imminence of death, drawing on 8th-century Chinese poems that inspired both composer and choreographer.