The Four Temperaments/Hofesh Shechter/Song of the Earth

Expectations have been running fever-high for Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter’s first work for the Royal Ballet. Just what would the bad boy of modern dance produce for the hallowed Royal Opera House stage? The answer is the surprisingly muted ‘Untouchable’, a 30-minute blast of what felt like Shechter-lite, working 20 Royal Ballet dancers from the lower ranks through his recognisable style – undulating, earthy martial-folk.

The theme is immigration and otherness; dancers break off from ranked Terracotta Warrior-style formation into pulsing, rippling disruption, powered by Shechter and Nell Catchpole’s throbbing score, which veers from Scandi noir soundtrack territory to an Egyptian pop take on ‘Bésame Mucho’ (and never quite fulfils it’s speaker-shaking potential). Middle Eastern folk moves and whirling dervish stances start to stud the choreography. Staccato, electric-shock movements stun the dancers into jittery flickers of classical poses, then it’s back to group writhings.

Lit enticingly by Lee Curran, with slanting, gilding light penetrating smoky gloom, ‘Untouchable’ frequently looks boldly beautiful; the trouble is it doesn’t really offer any progression either in its theme or its steps, and ends up feeling pretty repetitious. And it doesn’t really seem to make as much use of being created on classically trained bodies as you might have hoped for.

A masterclass in this is offered on either side of this triple bill. George Balanchine’s abstract, costume-free ‘The Four Temperaments’ sees Steven McRae unleashing a stage-embracing flamboyance in the Melancholic variation, while Edward Watson and Zenaida Yanowsky are imposing in their respective Phlegmatic and Choleric roles. Meanwhile, Kenneth MacMillan’s ‘Song Of The Earth’, his moving meditation on life and death set to Mahler, remains strikingly modern. Marianela Nuñez is exquisite as the Woman mourning lost love (Thiago Soares); Carlos Acosta is a thoughtfully inquisitive Messenger of Death, who pounces on Soares with relish.