Marianela Nuñez is certainly one of the most perfect ballerinas around. At 44, she still has superlative technique and absolute command in her first solo show, Timeless, at the Royal Opera House, London. She can reel off a fiendish string of fouettés, whipping her leg in circles, and then come to a gentle standstill with the smoothest brakes. It is absolutely frictionless; beauty and capability and egoless self-possession.
A Showcase of Repertoire and Company
Timeless is not truly solo, but Nuñez is the star, chooses the repertoire, and does everything “just right”. She pays tribute to the Royal Ballet, the company she joined at 16, and its choreographers: Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor. She also offers an amazing showcase of the company’s dancers, allowing them to shine. Matthew Ball and Mayara Magri dancing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet is an absolute highlight, with Magri giddy as she watches her Romeo swoop manfully around the stage. Akane Takada and Calvin Richardson are tender in a duet from McGregor’s Infra, and Fumi Kaneko and Lukas Brændsrød dance Wheeldon’s serene After the Rain, although they cannot fill the long phrases in the exquisite way Nuñez once did with Thiago Soares.
Nuñez's Own Performances
For herself, Nuñez chooses first Jerome Robbins' In the Night, set to Chopin’s Nocturnes. It is a very grownup piece for three couples, full of simple, breath-holding elegance. Nuñez dances with Ball, all super-smooth take-offs into jumps and lifts and tortuous indecision about their relationship status. It is subtle and gorgeous. Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand is the opposite, quite the melodrama, not least Nuñez’s TB-stricken courtesan, coughing on the chaise longue. But Nuñez has a level of reserve and containment that makes this a dance of resistance and surrender rather than passion and fire.
Her textbook classical and neo-classical pas de deux are in some ways the most arresting. As well as Le Corsaire, there is Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with the Royal’s new principal Patricio Revé, a promising partnership for the future. You could ask for more, but you cannot fault her. Timeless runs at the Royal Opera House, London, until 2 August.
