Light of Passage review: Crystal Pite’s new work is haunting and powerful

The Canadian choreographer has turned her award-winning short work ‘Flight Pattern’ into a full-length work for the Royal Ballet

Madison Bailey and Calvin Richardson in ‘Light Of Passage' (Tristram Kenton)

★★★★☆

Choreographer Crystal Pite can make dancers move like a murmuration of starlings, motion pulsing and rippling through a group of bodies. In Light of Passage, her new work for The Royal Ballet, those big blocks of movement evoke a community or a whole human society, from cradle to grave.

One of the world’s most in-demand choreographers, the Canadian Pite is known both for her sharp works with speech and for her gift with massed movement. In both, she has a political edge, a concern for how people treat each other.