REVIEW: Ballet Black Heroes

© ASH

Award-winning dance company Ballet Black showcases a poetic double-bill that celebrates humanity and asks fundamental questions about the purpose of life.

Ballet Black Heroes is now playing at the Birmingham Rep theatre.

Dancer Cassa Pancho founded Ballet Black in 2001 with the core aim of transforming the world of ballet and providing a platform for Black and Asian performers, and giving opportunities to artists from communities that are often ignored and marginalised by cultural institutions.  

Pancho, who comes from a British-Trinidadian background, hopes that one day ballet dancers from all racial and cultural backgrounds will be granted equal opportunities and be received with open arms by theatre and arts companies around the UK.

After graduating from Durham University, Cassa founded Ballet black in 2001, and in the years since the company was formed Cassa has commissioned 48 choreographers to create over 65 new ballet works which have delighted audiences and won awards. Ballet Black shows have been performed at The Barbican and Covent Garden in London, and now the latest material – entitled Heroes – is being unveiled at the Birmingham Rep with a double-bill that takes invigorates the ballet form.

The first ballet work is called If At First is choreographed by Sophie Laplane. The thought-provoking narrative shows a world where people run headlong in the pursuit of material success. The golden crown of success proves to be a brittle and hollow crown that offers little warmth or comfort to the wearer. The message at the heart of this imaginative ballet is that the real treasure is letting go of the rat race and self-loathing, and instead pursuing love and being part of a shared humanity.

Dancer Mthuthuzeli November choreographs a work called The Waiting Game which explores the complex meaning of the purpose of this temporal existence.

The dancers explore the nature of life and move to a soundtrack woven from the voices of Ballet Black performers.

The minimalist set design is poetic and offers multiple interpretations to the audience. A door, designed by Phil Cristodolou and Richard Bolton with lighting by David Plater, is used to open up a multitude of metaphorical readings. The wandering protagonist, walking through the trials and tribulations of life, has the option of walking through the door and embracing the glitzy and sequined delights and temptations being offered by nightmarish shadows, or simply continue through the same rut as before and go round-and-round until life is extinguished.

Both ballets in the double-bill ask metaphysical questions about the state of the human soul and humanity’s place in the vastness of the cosmos.

The Ballet Black performers flow from classical style to contemporary dance, pushing and contorting their bodies, weaving melodic and hypnotic movements that require serious levels of stamina and grit.

Ballet is an incredible dance form, and in the hands of Ballet Black the format will continue to thrive and evolve for generations to come as more and more dancers from diverse backgrounds join the ranks and enrich the style and format.

Ballet Black Heroes is an exhilarating show that uses the human body to write dance poetry upon the stage.

Verdict: ★★★★★

Ballet Black Heroes is playing at the Birmingham Rep theatre on Friday 14 June