Ballet Black's Best Programme Ever

Standard YouTube Licence


Ballet Black (Triple Bill (Pendulum, Click! Ingoma) Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds 16 Nov 2019 19:30

I suppose that a company that has danced at Glastonbury is pretty well made. There is not much that a blogger or even a critic can say that could be of much consequence.  It does not, however, hurt to repeat what I said to Cassa Pancho, the company's founder and artistic director, as I was leaving the auditorium.  This year's triple bill is the company's best programme ever.

Last Saturday's programme was the same as the one that I had described as "stunning" in March.  As I described the three works in some detail in my review pf that performance it is unnecessary for me to do so again.  However, there was one important difference between the show in March and Saturday's.  The Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre is very much smaller and more intimate than The Barbican.  There is no gap or barrier between the front row and stage. When the seats are removed the theatre becomes a rehearsal studio. The audience is very close to the dancers. Having twice danced on the Stanley and Audrey Burton's stage, I can say that the dancers are very aware of the audience's proximity.

Mthuthzeli November took advantage of that intimacy in leading the audience to the coalface as his dancers slowly approached stage left with the house lights still lit.  As those house lights dimmed the beams of light from the lamps on the miners' helmets focused on the audience.  Trapped!  The danger, the darkness, the monotony, the pain of the mine was palpable.  Heightened, of course, by the cruelty of apartheid on the surface as well as under the ground.   Ingoma is an impressive work. November had already captured our hearts as the rakish wolf spinning his tail in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Little Red Riding Hood.  He has now captured our minds with his choreography.  Nobody will be surprised that he has been commissioned to create a new baller for the company's next season at The Barbican (see Beautiful Ballet Black's 2020 Season 8 Nov 2019).

Seeing Martin Lawrence's Pendulum for a second time, I noticed similarities and parallels with Ingoma, particularly with the score which resembled a heartbeat.  It was opened by two of the company's strong young dancers, Ebony Thomas and Marie Astrid Mence.  Mence spent a year with Phoenix Dance Theatre where she became an audience favourite. We still miss her.  Their pace and the complexity of their movements increase as the heartbeats quicken.  It is an almost mesmeric experience.

Click! by Scottish Ballet's Sophie Laplane is just pure joy.  Each of the dancers in different brightly coloured suits performs solos or duets to Snapping Fingers and other snappy music carefully arranged by Kenny Inglis.  All the company's dancers except Alexander Fadayiro were in the piece.  Cira Robinson, magnificent in red, Isabela Coracey resplendent in yellow et cetera et cetera.  In many ways, this work displays the essence of Ballet Black,  its exuberance, its energy and its diversity.

In my preview of the new season, I mentioned the recruitment of Fadayiro, his training and career with New Adventures. On Saturday I saw him for the first time. He appeared only in Ingoma as one of the miners and it was possible to see him properly only at the reverence but he performed well.  He appears to be very strong and cuts an impressive figure on stage. I look forward to seeing more of him in future.

I was very lucky to get a ticket for Saturday's show. I was #13 on the waiting list and held out very little hope of seeing the company again this year.   Their performances in Stratford and Leeds were sold out weeks ago.  That may be because of their appearance at Glastonbury - though I have to say that Saturday's crowd did not strike me as the sort of folk who go to Glasto - or it may be because they gave fewer performances this evening.  Either way, it is good to see that they have developed a very loyal following not just in London and with one ethnic group but among the whole population and across the nation.

Stunning - Ballet Black's Triple Bill

Standard YouTube Licence

Ballet Black, Triple Bill (Pendulum, Click! Ingoma) Barbican Theatre, 17 March 2019 15:00

I see a lot of dance every year and one of my highlights every year is Ballet Black.  I usually see them in London (whenever I can get a ticket because they perform to packed houses) and again when they go on tour.  I have come to expect a lot from them and they have never failed to meet my expectations.

Their matinee at the Barbican last Sunday was stunning.  I mean that quite literally and I was not the only one.  Neither the family to my left nor the one to my right could get up after the performance.  We just sat still coming to terms with what we had seen on stage.  When we found the strength to move I clambered up the stairs and slumped into the first unoccupied chair.  There I stayed for a couple of hours until I was forced to sprint to the Circle Line to avoid being marooned in London.

I had brought my Chromebook with me with a view to reviewing the triple bill while it was still fresh in my mind but when I tried to write it I found it was just too soon.  The words would not flow.  However, I did make notes. I wrote that Mthuthzeli November's Ingoma was the most impressive new work that I had seen in a while. It is a work of considerable substance. It is all the more remarkable in that it was created by one so young.

According to the programme, Ingoma means "prayer" in Xhosa. In this case the Lord's Prayer though I had guessed that before I read the note. The performance began with the house lights burning.  Two miners came on stage carrying their equipment. They were joined shortly by the rest of the cast dressed identically irrespective of gender.  November mentioned two strikes in his programme note: one in the 1940s that had been suppressed brutally by the authorities and a more recent one at Marikana in post-apartheid South Africa which was also put down violently.  While I think there was more to the ballet than that there was a scene where Ebony Thomas seemed to fall to a rat-tat-tat that reminded me of automatic gunfire.

For me, the most moving part was the women's dance in the last phase of the piece.  It was danced with considerable energy by the company's four female members dressed identically in light blue smocks and head ties.  Having lived through the 1984-1985 miners strike 7 miles from Barnsley I can attest how it was the women who kept the coalfield communities intact - and indeed still do even though the mines are long gone. Having been married to an African for 27 years I was reminded of my sisters in law, strong, fierce women. Just as in the choreography.  It took a lot of courage to be a miner and perhaps, even more, to be married to one. There were always threats of accidents. pneumoconiosis and poverty even when the men were not on strike.  All of that fierceness and passion came through in that dance.

The piece was greeted enthusiastically even in London which never had mining and has now lost its heavy industry.  I think ti will strike a chord when it goes on tour.  It may have been set in South Africa but it will speak to folk here in a way that few other works can.  This is not the first time Ballet Black has moved me. It did so the first time I saw Chris Marney's War Letters at the Bernie Grant Centre and it did again last year with Cathy Marston's Suit.  But I don't think the impact of those ballets was anything like as great or as longlasting as Ingoma.

Because he had created and staged Ingoma we did not see much of November this year. That was a shame because he has the habit of stealing shows as he did with Little Red Riding Hood (see Ballet Black Triumphant 7 March 2017). I have been following him since 2015 when he was with Ballet Central (see Dazzled 3 May 2016).  He appeared in Pendulum, the first ballet of the evening, with Sayaka Ichikawa. With music by Steve Reich this was a revival of a work that Martin Lawrence had created for the company in 2009. The work starts in silence and then a gentle heartbeat cuts in.  It gathers pace until it becomes compelling.  This is a thrilling work amplified by those dancers' vigour.

The middle work was Click! by Scottish Ballet's Sophie Lapllane whom I have long admired. It shows her sense of fun. Jose Alves, Isabela Coracy, Marie Astrid Mence, Cira Robinson and Ebony Thomas are in primary colours. The piece opens with some dialogue:

"Eddie consulted his therapist because he could not stop clicking his fingers,
The therapist asked Eddie why he thought he was clicking his fingers,
'To keep the tigers away' he replied.
'But Eddie there are no tigers here within 6,000 miles of here.'
'I know' he replied, 'It works pretty good.'"

Ballet Black can make us laugh just as easily as it can make us cry,  This was our chance to laugh before Ingoma.

A sixth star of Click! was David Plater, the company's lighting designer.  I have never mentioned him before and I should have done because he is a genius.  Nowhere did his genius shine more brightly than in Click!  I love that piece and can't wait to see it again.

The company will tour Cambridge, Northampton and Bristol next month before venturing to Cambridge, Derby and Birmingham in May and Edinburgh in June (see Upcoming Performances on its website). It has not announced a date just yet but it usually comes to Leeds in November.   I shall see the company at least a couple more times this year.  This will be a season we shall long remember.

Ballet Black's Standing Ovation at the Nottingham Playhouse

Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror outside Nottingham Playhouse

Author  Superhasn
Licence reproduced with kind permission of the copyright owner
Source Wikipedia

Ballet Black  Double Bill (The Suit and A Dream within a Midsummer Night's Dream) 16 May 2018 19:30 Nottingham Playhouse

Ballet Black received a well deserved standing ovation last night.  Such appreciation is commonplace in many parts of the world but not in this country - at least not outside political party conferences.  There were whoops and cheers from the audience as well as claps.  Ballet Black are obviously doing something right.

Yesterday's performance was very polished.  As I said in my review of the company's performance  at the Barbican, I had been worried that Damian Johnson might be irreplaceable but José Alves has performed the male lead roles in both The Suit and A Dream within A Midsummer Night's Dream admirably.  Like Johnson he dances with authority but he does so in his own way and just as impressively.

I particularly admired his performance as Philemon in The Suit.  Returning home to pick up his briefcase he finds his wife in bed with Simon. His countenance is like a book. First the disbelief.  "Is this actually happening?" The the shock as he collapses to the floor. The surge of anger that leads to the cruel humiliation of Matilda.  The role of Philemon was created for Alves and it is hard to imagine anyone else dancing it as well.

The wife was danced by Cira Robinson who is truly a ballerina in the traditional sense  and I think this is her finest role.  It would be impertinent of me to compliment her on her virtuosity or her dramatic skills for, as I say, she is a ballerina.  What do I mean by that?  The best way of putting it is that in most performances the artists portray their character but a truly fine artist - a ballerina - can become that character.  And so it was last night as Tilly was pushed beyond endurance.  My body shook as that beautiful woman in a simple blue dress convulsed and then hung still. Tears were welling up uncontrollably even though I knew she would snap back smiling and full or life for the curtsy just seconds away.

Seeing The Suit for a second time I noticed some interesting touches that I had missed before like dancers representing mirrors, wash basins or items of furniture.  By focusing on details such as old lady crossing the street and bumping into passers by, Marston seemed to conjure a crowd.  Mthuthuzeli November danced Simon, the owner of the suit. The rest of the company danced the chorus, commuters and passers by.

The Suit was a chilling but compelling work that left our emotions raw.  Pita's Dream applied the balm.  Yesterday must have been the sixth or maybe seventh time that I had seen that work and it never fails to charm me.   I always find something new.   Whereas The Suit focuses on Philemon and Tilly, everyone has an important role in Dream.  Robinson was Titania, of course, and Alves became Obron. Isabela Coracy amused us as Puck in her scouts uniform and green beard liberally scattering her glitter and dragging dancers by their legs around the stage. Sayaka Ichikawa and Marie-Astrid Mence charmed us as Helena and Hermia. Their Demetrius and Lysander were November and Ebony Thomas. Grunting and swaggering small wonder the girls preferred each other. November also played the one role that Shakespeare never envisaged, namely Salvador Dali in the quest for his missing moustache.

Ballet Black are about to visit Scotland where I took my first ballet class and was introduced to what is now Scottish Ballet.  One of their venues is Dundee Repertory Theatre which is just 12 miles from St Andrews where there is a Dance Club of over 100 members that I helped to found nearly 50 years ago (see St Andrews University Dance Club's 50th Anniversary Gala 5 May 2018). Should any of those students still be in town on 6 June 2018 I strongly recommend their crossing the Tay to see this show.

Fifty years after that first class at St Andrews, I attended class with the undergraduates of Ballet West (see Visiting Taynuilt 4 May 2018). A few days before my visit Scottish Ballet held a workshop at Taynuilt when they visited Oban to dance Highland Fling. Taynuilt is quite a trek from any of the venues where Ballet Black are to perform but I do hope that at least a few of the excellent young men and women I met last month can make it to Dundee, Inverness or Glasgow.

My next opportunity to see Ballet Black will be on 19 Nov when they will return to The Lowry.  They can expect a very warm welcome there

Visiting Friends - Ballet Black at Home

The View from outside the Feathers

Author Geoffrey Skelsey
Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Source Wikipedia

The day before I left for Amsterdam while the Beast form the East was still stalking its lair I visited Ballet Black for a rehearsal of extracts from Arthur Pita's  A Dream Within a Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cathy Marston's The Suit which the company will present at the Barbican between 15 and 17 March 2018. Every performance of that show is now sold out but the company will take it on tour to Newbury, Hatfield, Bristol, Nottingham, Inverness, Dundee and Exeter in Spring and no doubt Leeds and other venues in the North in the Autumn (see the Performances page of Ballet Black's website).

Pita's Dream is already a favourite with audiences and critics. I raved about it in 2014 when I saw it no less than 4 times in London, Southport, Nottingham and Leeds (see Extra Special - Ballet Black at the Linbury 26 Feb 2014  27 Feb 2014 and the links to other reviews and articles). The Suit also promises much with music by Philip Feeney and designs by Jane Heather.  As I don't want to spoil the anticipation of either ballet, all I will say at this stage is that Cira Robinson delighted me again as a regal Titania and Isabela Coracy as a playful Puck, Marston's work is dramatic and I was reminded of Jane Eyre and Rochester in the duet and the demons from Marston's work for Northern Ballet in the extract that was performed for us.

The rehearsal took place in Ballet Black's new studios at The Feathers Association in Lisson Grove. That's not a part of London that I know well and as Hull Trains delivered me to King's Cross with a couple of hours to spare I explored the neighbourhood.  It is largely residential with few places to eat though I managed to find a cafe a few hundred yards from the studios that served some excellent Moroccan specialities for a very reasonable price. The Feathers is positioned on a bridge above the railway tracks leading to Marylebone station from which the above photo must have been taken.

The visit was a special event for Friends of the company.  If you are not already a Friend, Thandie Newton, the company's patron, lists some of the benefits of membership:

"Internationally recognised for its vital message of giving black and Asian dancers the professional opportunities they merit based solely on their talent and dedication, Ballet Black continues to amaze. As a Friend, you will be making a valuable contribution to the sustainability of this small yet hugely significant company and will support its ongoing commitment to aspiring dancers and to its ever increasing and loyal audience. In return, Ballet Black will welcome you behind the scenes to watch Company rehearsals under the exceptional eye of Artistic Director, Cassa Pancho as well as with acclaimed guest choreographers. You will receive quarterly newsletters to keep you up-to-date about news, events and performances so you will never miss out."

After the show, the company invited us for tea and biscuits in their office where the dancers joined us. It was very pleasant to see them all again.  The only one I did not already know was Ebony Thomas who had impressed me in Leeds in November and I took the opportunity to introduce myself to him.

I am confident that this year's tour will be Ballet Black's most successful yet.  I shall watch the show on Friday 16 after which there will be a post show talk.   The next day there will be an open rehearsal and workshop as part of the Barbican OpenFest.  According to the blurb:

"Cassa Pancho (Artistic Director of Ballet Black) will conduct a Ballet Class for all ages on the Barbican Freestage, prior to Ballet Black's open rehearsal and performance on Saturday evening in the Barbican Theatre. This workshop is free and open to all, no prior experience necessary."

I can hardly wait.