Flight Pattern

External video
Flight Pattern – Crystal Pite (Kristen McNally, Marcelino Sambé; The Royal Ballet), YouTube video

Flight Pattern is a one-act ballet performed in 30 minutes.[1] The music inspired the structure of the choreography, with a long and slow crescendo that transitions to a single voice. Pite mimicked this structure in the creative process, focusing first on the large scale of the crisis, then on a singular story. Pite felt that an emotional connection with a single story would be more impactful to the audience than many dancers on stage.[2]

Marcelino Sambé, pictured here in 2010, was one of the soloists in the original performance of this piece.

The piece begins with 36 dancers arranged in three equal rows, standing in profile to the audience and staring at a light while rocking in packed rows.[3][4][5] Vignettes of choreography are then performed by various dancers who break away from the ensemble to perform solos, duets, or small group choreography.[6][7] These include dancers who fight with each other and perform frantically in couples,[4] a body that is left on the ground as the other dancers move forward, a man that frantically moves over the other dancers,[8] an energetic duet with two men, and the reunion of a romantic couple.[6] Often these vignettes contained motifs of suspensions of weight or unbalanced spins.[7] The set opens at the back of the stage, mimicking the entrance to a holding area for the dancers. The dancers enter the holding area and try to find a place to sleep.[3]

The dance transitions to a pas de deux originated by Marcelino Sambé and Kristen McNally. The choreography suggests that the couple has lost a child.[3][1] During the couple's dance, the other performers place their coats on the female dancer, causing her to collapse. The performers enter a doorway, but the weight of the jackets prevents the female dancer from joining them and she remains on the ground, shivering. The male performer stays with her, dancing in frustration.[4] The ballet ends with the two dancers performing together while snow falls around them,[9] and the closing scene is the male soloist turning away from a closing door as the other dancers are seen darting through the opening.[5]

Crystal Pite, pictured here in 2010, was the choreographer of Flight Pattern

The Royal Ballet commissioned what would become Flight Pattern in 2014, which was Pite's first piece for the company.[2][10] While listening to possible music selections, focusing on contemporary classical music, she was thinking about the ongoing European migrant crisis.[11] She chose to choreograph to the first movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No.3, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.[2][3] The symphony is believed to be Górecki's response to the Holocaust, which he had denied.[2] Pite associated the music with the migrant crisis, for which she was "disappointed" with the international response, and on choreographing a ballet about the crisis, she said it was her "way of coping with the world at the moment".[2][3] The theme and music were selected approximately one and a half years before the rehearsal process started.[10]

Pite chose to work with a large ensemble for this piece to showcase complex choreography with simpler movement.[10] At the beginning of the creation process, Pite created movement phrases before the rehearsals and taught them to the dancers; Lucía Piquero Álvarez speculated that the motif sequence in the piece was taught during this time.[10]

The dancers wear identical grey costumes in the performance;[4] the dancers begin wearing grey coats,[1] but these are later taken off to reveal grey vests and loose trousers underneath.[4][12][13] Nancy Bryant designed the costumes.[12] Jay Gower Taylor designed the sets,[12] with dark panels that open and close throughout the performance[9] and manipulate the shape of the stage.[14] Tom Visser was the lighting designer for the ballet.[15]

Flight Pattern premiered on 16 March 2017 at the Royal Opera House, London. The piece was performed as the first ballet of a triple bill that also consisted of The Human Seasons by David Dawson and After the Rain by Christopher Wheeldon.[4][2] It finished its original run on 24 March.[8]

Flight Pattern was revived in May 2019, with McNally and Sambé reprising their roles. It was performed as the third act in a triple bill, succeeding Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Medusa and Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour.[16] A performance was recorded and published on the Royal Ballet website, and available for purchase until December 2020.[5]

After finishing choreographing Flight Pattern, Pite was invited by Kevin O'Hare, the director of the Royal Ballet, to choreograph other new works for the company. Instead, Pite stated that she wanted to extend Flight Pattern by choreographing to the rest of Górecki’s symphony.[17] In 2022, this extended work premiered as Light of Passage, with Flight Pattern incorporated as the first part of the ballet. This was Pite's first full-length work for The Royal Ballet.[1]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Evening Standard	[8]
The Guardian (2017 review)	[6]
The Guardian (2020 review)	[4]
The Independent	[12]
The Telegraph	[3]

Flight Pattern received mostly positive reviews. Her choreography of the 36 dancers was described by reviewers as beautiful[18] and a masterful showcase of ensemble choreography.[7] Reviewers differed on the emotional impact of the piece: some thought it was impactful[14][16] and avoided abstract and metaphorical movement to a positive effect.[7] Others felt the choreography was simplistic and sanitised,[12] melodramatic,[6] or lacked the depth of her previous work.[5] Sambé and McNally's performances were positively highlighted by reviewers.[3][19] Sambé's performance was called emotionally powerful[1][8][9] while reviewers noted the decision to cast McNally as a soloist, especially because she was an experienced performer.[4][18]

Reviewers highlighted the 18-year gap since the Royal Ballet commissioned work from a female choreographer.[4][6][8] They also pointed out that Flight Pattern's contemporary ballet style is different from the classical ballet that the company often performs in their repertoire and from the other dances performed in the same program.[4][7] Luke Jennings, when writing for the The Guardian, stated that Flight Pattern had an inquiry and feeling that was missing from the other, classical pieces.[4] Kat Lister stated in The Independent that the performance at Royal Opera House, a location considered a classical venue, made the piece more impactful to the audience.[17] The subject matter of the choreography, highlighting the European migrant crisis, was also questioned by some reviewers. They felt that the topic negatively distracted them from the artistic achievements of the ballet.[9]

The emotions displayed in the piece are developed from tension that itself is created by the story, movement quality, and music and spacing between the dancers.[20] The theme of the piece was the plight of displaced persons as they travelled between locations.[21]

The movement used in the piece incorporates a loose torso and grounded movement, which are atypical in ballet choreography.[13] A fluid, slow-moving motif sequence is repeated throughout the piece, becoming more elaborate in each reiteration. The choreography becomes faster towards the middle of the work, incorporating dabbing and thrusting movements.[10]

• Royal Opera House website