Jonathan Gray sees Ballet Black’s double bill – If At First and The Waiting Game – and was won over by the “exceptional dancers, vivid, full of personality and strong technique”
Ballet Black: Heroes
26th May 2024
Reviewer: Jonathan Gray
You’ve got to hand it to Ballet Black. Under the direction of Cassa Pancho and now in its 22nd year, the company is consistently adventurous in its choice of repertoire, commissioning works from numerous emerging choreographers, as well as offering established dance makers the opportunity to collaborate with its amazing dancers. Its record is second to none, and if Ballet Black’s most recent programme is perhaps not its most noteworthy, it is still miles better than many of those presented by other leading UK dance ensembles.
Ballet Black itself has undergone a transformation during the past year, with several veteran dancers choosing to leave or retire, and so, with the exception of Isabela Coracy and Ebony Thomas, there were many new faces to become acquainted with when I saw the company at London’s Barbican Theatre during its spring tour. All are exceptional dancers, vivid, full of personality and strong technique, and I will certainly enjoy getting to know them better over the coming years.
New on the programme was Sophie Laplane’s If At First, a co-commission with the Barbican. Laplane, a former dancer with Scottish Ballet, where she is now choreographer in residence, was the creator of Ballet Black’s marvellous CLICK! a few years ago, a snazzy pure dance work that put the company through its paces. If At First is completely different, a kind of meditation on what it means to be “heroic”, although there appears to be no specific storyline. The music is a mixture that includes snippets by Beethoven, and the choreographer expresses her ideas through numerous danced episodes in which the cast chase after a paper crown, often held aloft as a kind of temptation or enticement, with the implication that the one eventually crowned becomes a kind of “hero” or “leader”.
Love Kotiya was like a young, delicate child wearing a crown, a boy king. Cradled by a woman who could be his mother, they perform a duet in which she lifts him tenderly across the stage, only for her to apparently expire at its end. Acaoã de Castro preens whilst wearing his crown, jumping and turning with alacrity, until he realises nobody is taking any notice of him and he tears it to pieces. Contained within a square of light, Isabela Coracy dances powerfully only to become trapped by a diminishing space in which to move. Eventually she is lifted up off the floor by the dancers and crowned, after which the entire cast crown themselves, a suggestion that anyone can become a “hero”. I liked many of the ideas Laplane expressed in her choreography, and the direct way in which it was conveyed by the cast, but I didn’t always understand their significance – it was simultaneously pleasurable and confusing to watch.
The second half of the programme was a reworking of Mthuthuzeli November’s The Waiting Game, first performed by Ballet Black in 2020 and inspired by the works of Samuel Beckett. November also composed the music. Ebony Thomas, at first dressed in a big overcoat, remains throughout the first section of the work in a kind of waiting room on the “other” side of an opaque glass door through which figures emerge or appear in silhouette. There, Thomas is enticed by an ensemble of Figments of His Imagination, led by Coracy, who always seem to manage to close the door on him before he can pass through.
What is on the other side of the door? Is he missing out on something? What is happening there? The first section of The Waiting Game is a metaphor for not knowing what lies ahead, of where life may take you if you change its course. In its earlier incarnation, November seemed to imply there was perhaps something more sinister there, but in this updated version he ends the ballet with Thomas passing through the door and becoming the lead in a kind of musical theatre routine, all sequins, sparkles, jazz hands and slick moves.
The Waiting Game is an odd work and, as with If At First, I wasn’t entirely sure of its meaning, but isn’t it always better to have something memorable to puzzle about afterwards than to watch a ballet that leaves absolutely no impression on your memory two minutes after it has finished? The great thing about Ballet Black is that the company is always memorable, whatever it performs, and the dancers are great.