The Dante Project review — stunning choreography, shame about the designs

★★★☆☆
The journey of the soul in the afterlife — through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven — is the subject of Wayne McGregor’s The Dante Project, his three-act 2021 dance adaptation of Dante’s 14th-century masterpiece The Divine Comedy. It’s now revived by the Royal Ballet. The good news? McGregor’s choreography has moments of sublime invention and thrilling energy. And more good news: Thomas Adès’s fantastically coloured score (here conducted by Jonathan Lo) sounds even more intriguing, atmospheric and grandly emotive than it did the first time around.

The bad news? Seeing the ballet again after two years, I have changed my mind about Tacita Dean’s designs, now finding them to be ill judged and counterproductive. Her set for the opening Inferno, a giant monochrome