Sadler’s Wells, London
Alina Cojocaru astonishes in John Neumeier’s Ghost Light, an ethereal meditation on time, while Glen Tetley’s Firebird has much to cherish
A ghost light is the name for a single lamp left on stage when a theatre is dark, and one glows throughout John Neumeier’s ballet Ghost Light. Also never not glowing is Alina Cojocaru, superlative ballerina and guest dancer with London City Ballet, who has a longtime working relationship with Neumeier and his Hamburg Ballet – with whom this work was originally created in 2020.
When Cojocaru materialises onstage in silence, so ethereal it’s almost mystical, she is like a ghost of Swan Lake’s Odette, wings fluttering, eyes half closed, lost in a memory. Cojocaru’s divine delicacy embodies all of the romance of ballet, until suddenly her steps glitch, she stumbles over a chair and comes to. The stage is a place of dreams, for all the dancers who have crossed its boards and will continue to do so (superstition says that ghost lamps also allow spirits of former dancers to return to the stage). Neumeier evokes some of these dances in this piece, from a stray sylph upstage, to earnest solos, sparky allegro and two young men in a tender duet, passing each other sometimes in parallel worlds, sometimes in moments of connection.
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