Ballet Black: Heroes
16th May 2024
Reviewer: Chris Lilly
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cassa Pancho founded Ballet Black in 2002 to improve the representation of black dancers in the world of ballet, to provide opportunities for choreographers of colour, and to persuade Freed of London that ‘flesh coloured’ when applied to pointe shoes didn’t necessarily mean blancmange pink.
Ballet Black has brought a new programme to the Barbican, with two contrasting pieces: If At First, with choreography by Sophie Laplane and lighting design by David Plater, and The Waiting Game with choreography by Mthuthzeli November. The lighting for this is again designed by David Plater. Both pieces take place on an open stage, within areas defined by the throw of Plater’s lights, but the pieces have a radically different tone.
If At First is about crowns and kingship, about power struggles and the loneliness of command. Dance isn’t necessarily the best medium for questioning power structures, but this piece has a very good go at it; the power relationships are clearly presented, the abject loneliness of one small dancer left in a puddle of light while the rest of the company go off to offer reverence to a powerful monarch (danced by Isabela Coracy) is vivid and telling. A despondent monarch ripping his crown to shreds speaks loudly, and there’s a magical democratising moment when all the dancers produce a crown (from where? Mystifying) and become an entire company of monarchs.
The lighting makes mood changes and colours the company in a warm honey glow. It is absolutely integral to the tone of the piece and exquisitely achieved by David Plater. The one caveat is the use of a big blobby follow spot, which privileges the principal dancer in a way that contradicts the move to equality in the choreography; and worse, it spills boring flat white light onto the textured, well-toned lighting states that illuminate all the other dancers. Weird flashes of limbs in the spill disrupt the stage picture, and keeping one dancer in light while the rest of the company move in and out of shadows makes a jarring visual impact.
The second piece, The Waiting Game, in two halves, offers a sort of Kafka nightmare, a single individual (danced by Ebony Thomas) tormented by a host of floaty manifestations of the every day, of habit, of tedious work. There is a moving door frame with a dramatically translucent door that his tormentors enter and exit freely, but which he can’t get through. Plater’s lighting makes powerful statements by framing the other dancers, particularly Isabela Coracy with her dramatic upswept hair, in the panel of the door. It all looks amazing.
The second half is a sort of backstage drama, the company preparing to go on stage, Ebony Thomas having to be cajoled out of a depressive hissy fit. All is resolved in a dazzling display of formation jazz dance complete with the glitteriest frock coats there ever were. It isn’t a solemn piece. It also uses a follow spot, brilliantly, to isolate the principal dancer, and give his presence a radically different tone and presence. Two dance pieces, one an object lesson in how not to employ a follow spot, the other a masterclass in its use.
The company dances with a power and a physicality that is hugely impressive. They inhabit dramatically structured pieces with grace and commitment, and they make gorgeous stage pictures. The prevalence of strong elements makes the rationed appearance of delicate and graceful routines especially valuable. Strong dramatic statements, beautiful stage pictures, well-deployed technique: Ballet Black is a seriously impressive company doing important, radical, entertaining work.