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# Review: Birmingham Royal Ballet triple bill @ Birmingham Hippodrome
- URL: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/review-birmingham-royal-ballet-triple-bill-birmingham-hippodrome/
- Published: 2014-02-23T18:28:07.000Z
- Updated: 2014-02-23T18:30:21.000Z
- Author: Phil Preece
- Tags: Reviews, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-22 20:48

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s triple bills always have an added excitement because they give us the chance to see works from the Royal Ballet’s rich heritage, some familiar, others not at all. In short, you never know quite what you’re getting, but it’s always an education and this glorious evening ran true to form.

The first offering, John Cranko’s Card Game was new to me but showed all the hallmarks of this prestigious company’s constant search for new ways of making ballet within the great tradition.

Cranko died lamentably young but his amusing Pineapple Poll is still a favourite with audiences. Card Game showed just how inventive a choreographer he was in this witty work which gives the men movements based very much on athleticism in a way that seems now to have been well ahead of its time. Fast-paced, gravity defying and relying on split-second teamwork, this is a work which only the highly trained dancers of a great company could safely bring off.

The evening’s second offering Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was no less athletic or amusing.

Set in a ‘twenties speakeasy, its cast of strippers, spivs and tarts act out a story of love,death and tapdancing through Balanchine’s endlessly inventive choreography to a smooth as silk jazz age score by Richard Rogers.

Highlights included a chorus line of cops and a dangerously explosive encounter between the Hoofer (an incredibly athletic Tyrone Singleton) and the sinuous Celine Gittens as a very sexy stripper.

But for me it was the final piece that really hit the spot. Kenneth Macmillan’s New Orleans ballet Elite Syncopations set to a Scott Joplin-era ragtime score seemed better than ever with its on-stage jazz orchestra and massive cast of young, exuberant dancers clad in day-glo leotards. The charm and pleasure simply never let up.

For me the chance to see this explosively witty piece, by turns playful, thoughtful and funny is worth the price of a ticket alone.

Next week sees David Bintley unveiling his exotic new work The Prince of the Pagodas before a home crowd. All I can say is, bring it on, BRB.