The Black ballet dancers taking on industry racism – Beyond The Screen in Lockdown
Press Archive
Black Dance Matters – A personal response from Ballet Black’s Cira Robinson
Cassa Pancho, the founder and director of Ballet Black, talks about the company’s first 20 years, the virus, trolls and Black Lives Matter
Mark Donne in relation to his piece ‘Mute’, a segment piece from wider film installation “Listening With Frontiersman” commissioned by Estuary Festival. Danced by Ballet Black senior artist, Cira Robinson.
Ingoma is really a dance about the strong women in mining communities. He could portray them because he knew their lives intimately through his mother.
There are palpable parallels to Kafka’s Metamorphosis and similar dystopias voiced by the oppressed working classes, particularly in Thomas’s frantic sequence that speaks to transformation and exorcism.
I highly recommend going to see Ballet Black. It’s unique, contemporary and addresses modern day issues, humorous, yet at points sad, empowering and inspiring to all. Overall, it was an outstanding performance.
Ingoma is such a beautiful though poignant piece of work which has been well received by the appreciative audience. It raises awareness of South Africa’s historic milestone and the courageous stand the miners made to fight for their rights.
Standout Performances of 2019: Ballet Black in “The Suit”
We try to explore these mine workers who lose their lives, for wanting to be paid better, and what the consequences are for those left alive. There’s a sense of continuity – the mine strike in 1946, and then many years later, in 2012, the same thing happens.
Within this company, ballet is finding new roots as dancers move seamlessly from pointes to deep plie and from a classical jeté into an articulated roll in an exciting evolution of the form.
[Washa] The piece is a triumphant fusion of classical and modern dance into the millennia-old African culture, which realises November’s aim to cause the inner fire of the dancers to suffuse through their audience.
Sayaka Ichikawa delivered a sensational performance as Matilda, from the sensual embrace with her lover – an erotic effect that was doubly impressive when they were lying on a “bed” assimilated from the side-slats of wooden chairs – to the panic of their discovery and on through her degrading humiliation. It was an exceptional dramatic tour de force.
..November’s truly unforgettable solo most epitomises resistance. To insistent rhythmic chanting, and with a Zulu warrior’s endurance and physical prowess, he relentlessly lunges into high kicks with raised arms, followed by stamps and jumps from squats, beating the ground with his feet, his body an explosive star.
You can almost feel the weight of hardship and injustice in November’s choreography, while the pas de deux for him and Cira Robinson brings the miners’ suffering and frustration into tender and intimate focus. It’s a visceral piece of dance and all the dancers shine.
Ballet Black’s Triple Bill is an outstanding exploration and celebration of varying aspects of African culture and history. The passion and commitment the company have for creating work that opens ballet up to more diverse and under-represented audiences is obvious.
…for November it is the very essence of his being, dancing till he has exorcised his anger and spent all his nervous energy—to the point of ritualistic collapse.
The applause at the end expressed not only our appreciation of the dancers’ technical mastery but also how deeply we were affected by what we had seen…Ballet Black were new to me: I will make sure I see them when next they come my way, and I urge you to do the same.
Rarely does such passion for a subject matter radiate from an entire ensemble as much as this.
A duet between one miner and his wife feels more poignant than any fairytale pas de deux, and every bit as graceful.