Ballet Black's Best Programme Ever

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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.

Beautiful Ballet Black's 2020 Season

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Beautiful Ballet Black has been so successful that it sold every seat in the house for its performances at Stratford and Leeds.  I am on the waiting list at the Stan and Audrey but at #13 I am not holding out much hope of getting one for their show next week. 

I shouldn't grumble because I saw their wonderful performance of The Suit at Sadler's Wells on 30 Oct and the triple bill at The Barbican in March which I described as "stunning".  Moreover, I have just received an email which I believe to have been sent to all Friends of Ballet Black alerting me to the sale of tickets for the launch of the company's new season at The Barbican between the 26 and 29 March 2020. Two new ballets will be presented by the company's Mthuthuzeli November and the Royal Ballet's Will Tuckett.  November created Ingoma which is one of the works on the current tour while Tuckett has contributed Depouillement which attracted me to Ballet Black in the first place.

I also note from the email that Ballet Black has acquired a new dancer, namely Alexander Fadayiro.  I am not sure whether I have had the opportunity to see him dance.  I do not remember him in The Suit but I could well be mistaken.  However, I see that he has danced with New Adventures and that he trained at the Central School of Ballet.

If you love Ballet Black as much as I do I would strongly recommend its Friends Circle.  The subscription is only £40 a year which is about the cost of an extra theatre ticket.  Friends are invited to rehearsals and often have an opportunity to discuss the work with the artists after the show.  I cannot attend many of those events as they take place in London but it is a practical way to support the company, acknowledge its work in the past and promote its values and aspirations.

Finally, there is the merchandise page.  I bought the "I ❤ Ballet Black" tee-shirt the first time I saw the company at the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham in 2013 and I have worn it proudly everywhere there are balletomanes from Taynuilt in Argyll to Trecate in Piedmont.  I have made it my business to make folk aware of the beauty in many senses and at many levels of Ballet Black.

Stunning - Ballet Black's Triple Bill

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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.