This is repertory that any large company would be happy to own. And the heroic Ballet Black have managed it on a shoestring.
Press Archive
IN TWELVE short years, Ballet Black has made quite a name for itself, winning prestigious awards and forging an enviable link with the Royal Opera House. What it hasn’t done however, is visit Scotland – until now.
Ballet Black is the black diamond in the crown of modern ballet and once again has pushed the boundaries. Catch them touring if you can.
Sitting within sweat sniffing distance, I still couldn’t consider these dancers as human beings not too unlike myself. Their lean lengthy limbs, sheathed in firm hairless, healthy flesh, musculature prominent. A faint outline of occasionally provoked nipples being one of the only features reminding you that these dancers have real bodily functions and juices.
A whistle-stop trip to Russia immediately after this show has allowed the rare luxury of the overall scope and flavour of an ambitious quadruple bill of new work to simmer in my consciousness before writing this review. To begin with let’s consider the rarity of that brief statement – a “quadruple bill of new work”: We may not experience such a programme that often
The opening half of the show is fun-time for the dancers, a trio of short works giving them a chance to shine. Ludovic Ondiviela’s frothy love duet Dopamine (You Make My Levels Go Silly) is the pick, a hyperactive fizz of first love, but Robert Binet’s Egal and The One Played Twice by Javier de Frutos aren’t far behind, the pure joy of dance spilling out from every step.
Ballet Black, the award-winning company founded to provide role models for black and Asian ballet dancers, is now 12 years old. It has established its own identity, which is as much about new work as it is about the colour of the dancers’ skin. It’s a small, sparky company with plenty of ambition and swagger.
The award-winning company of black and Asian dancers founded by Cassa Pancho in 2001 comes storming back onto the Linbury stage with a toothsome quartet of works. A brace of duets, an amuse-yeux from dance jester Javier de Frutos and a full-blooded narrative contribute to an immensely varied and satisfying programme.
There should be no need for a company called Ballet Black, just as there should be no need for all-female political party shortlists. But there is, and for two reasons: to offer a platform for classically trained dancers of colour, particularly women, conspicuously absent from Britain’s big ballet companies; and to provide role models for a rising generation of talented kids. But in the 12 years of Ballet Black’s existence, it has found itself a third raison d’être. It’s hard to think of another small company that even comes close to its turnover of new work.
Perhaps the most impressive of Pancho’s achievements is that over the years she has commissioned more than 30 danceworks.
Ballet Black may struggle against an inexplicable lack of state funding, yet it continues to make a heroic investment in new choreography. This season its adventurous policies pay dividends with Javier de Frutos’s new piece, The One Played Twice.
My admiration for Cassa Pancho and her company knows no bounds. Embarking on its eleventh year, Ballet Black opened its 2012 season with four world premieres by “Premier League” choreographers with these – now traditional – curtain-raising performances at The Royal Opera House. This season at Covent Garden is longer than in previous years and the company has doubled its performance dates for the year, which will also see it venture overseas, in a first visit to Italy…
Ballet Black, Linbury Studio Theatre, London Zoë Anderson Now eleven years old, Ballet Black has a confidence and spark. Initially founded to promote black dancers in classical ballet, the company has become an end in itself. This is a taut evening of new work by rising and established choreographers, fluently…
Ballet Black – review Royal Opera House, London by Judith Mackrell Sex and corruption … Storyville, performed by Black Ballet at the Royal Opera House Ballet Black may have been founded as a platform for black and Asian classical dancers, but you have to love it, too, for the opportunities…
Short Dance Works/Ballet Black – review by Clifford Bishop – 02 March 2012 Now over ten years old, Ballet Black showcases four energetic and inspired new dances at the Royal opera House Six decades after George Balanchine first cast the black dancer Arthur Mitchell opposite a white ballerina, and in…
Ballet Black – review Linbury Studio theatre, London by Luke Jennings, The Observer, Sunday 4 March 2012 Creating repertoire for a chamber ballet company is tricky. How do you ring the changes, given sparse resources and a mere handful of dancers? Ballet Black, now in their 11th year, have had…
“Ballet Black is a small miracle of a company..”
“Ballet Black’s vivid choreography experiments with the delicate paradoxes of the orchestrated and the discordant…”
“… the company evoked classical ballet with plenty of piroutes, pas de deux, and stunning point work, without the formality and stuffiness of traditional ballet…”
“the brand-new work of the season, Orpheus, by Will Tuckett – the first narrative work Ballet Black have staged – is a triumph.”