Carmen review – stripped-back ballet focuses on the femicide

Who is Carmen? A free-spirited lover, a woman bent on destruction, or a pragmatist using the only currency she has to get what she wants? In Johan Inger’s ballet, given its UK premiere by English National Ballet, it’s hard to say. She flirts (and more) with every man she passes, but merely for sport it seems. And it turns out this is not really Carmen’s ballet – she doesn’t even get a solo – and the story belongs to Don José (Rentaro Nakaaki), a man so tortured by the fantasy of a woman who will never love him that it leads him to murder her.

The bleakness only comes later though. It all starts out much warmer, with Bizet’s perky overture and the lively impulse and attack of the choreography. You feel a rush of energy as the women arrive, storming the stage with ruffled dresses and self-possession. Swedish choreographer Inger gives us limbs angled like arrows; deep, squat plies in second position followed by bodies zipped up on the vertical. There’s levity too and lots of floorwork, all handled easily by ENB’s agile dancers – not en pointe, but on point.

View image in fullscreen