Review: 1984 Northern Ballet

Northern Ballet are the winner's of Best Company at the Taglioni European Ballet Awards and this innovative company are considered by some to be Europe's best dance company. It is with these and many other dance credentials that they are currently touring and wowing audiences with their new work 1984. This week they are at Theatre Royal Nottingham.

For a fan of Orwell's bleak novel with its central themes around disallowed thoughts and the crushing of anti Party sentiments embodied in the hero, Winston Smith, the idea of a ballet work being capable of expressing 1984 solely through dance may seem unlikely. Not so in the superbly capable hands of choreographer and director Jonathan Watkins and through the original score created by Alex Baranowski.

Orwell's story of Winston and Julia's ultimately doomed love story; his secret diary recording his anti Big Brother sentiments; the robotic workers at the Ministry of Truth; the Thought Police and the Proles all come terrifyingly to life through Northern Ballet electric dance forms. Winston (Tobias Batley) and Julia's (Martha Leebolt) pas de deux is at once joyful and yet sorrowful, sexy and yet has an edge of yearning sadness.

Both the choreography and direction create rich tapestries of a dark dystopian life and the constantly changing sets include startling media design and telescreen graphics dominated by Big Brother's constant stare. Befitting the calibre of Northern Ballet's well earned reputation in the dance world the 1984 company's dance standards are exemplary.

Especially good are the dance sections expressing the daily conditioning of 'two minutes hate'. Here the dancers let loose their emotions as dictated by the Party in order to demonstrate their utter distaste against the enemy. Orwell's book has stood the test of time and resonates with readers all around the world. It is truly a book that makes you think about how we live today and Northern Ballet's brilliant dance adaptation brings all those challenges alive on stage in a 101 different ways.

Originally written for Nottingham Post October 1st 2015

BalletBoyz - The Talent at Nottingham P!ayhouse

If you are considering booking for Balletboyz -The Talent at Nottingham Playhouse tonight, I would highly recommend a visit.

I saw them at Derby Theatre in November 2013 and wrote this review. http://philloweactor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/review-balletboyz-talent-derby-theatre.html.

Review of Swan Lake at The Theatre Royal Nottingham

Matthew Bourne's ground breaking and provocative re-imagining of the classical ballet piece Swan Lake was first staged at Sadlers Wells theatre in London in 1995. Historically it is the longest running ballet in the West End and on Broadway when it moved across the Atlantic and premièred to massive acclaim in 1998 in the USA. Since then the production has been shown on stages all around the world including, Turkey, Greece,  other major countries in Europe and in Australia, Japan and Los Angeles. The ballet has won over thirty international awards including three Tony's in the USA. It is now well documented that Matthew Bourne's main innovation was taking the female swans away as the corps de ballet and replacing them with aggressive, bare chested and powerful male swans in feathery breeches. It still works supremely well and one could say, has improved with age. The story has strong echoes of the traditional ballet and on one occasion Bourne has amusement by re-working a particularly difficult dance section usually performed by the tutu clad female corps as a frantic male dance. The whole ensemble works through this fresh and still new style Swan Lake with seemingly consummate ease. But then the grace of swans always shows as they glide effortlessly across the surface of the water with years and years of dedication and training powering them into action. As with swans so it is with this stunning ballet brought bang up to date.

This ballet demands extreme physical endurance and faultless technique and the dancers must be able to show a range of emotions that would easily grace a complex play like Hamlet. Because of the now famous male corps de ballet the work is sometimes mistaken for being all male. This is not the case. Bourne's ballet benefits from the top notch talents of both sexes. Swan Lake is about a prince who has lived a very restricted life bound up with unwanted royal duties and royal expectations and very little love – especially from his emotionally distant mother – the Queen. We assume the father figure is missing, particularly as the Queen openly flirts with the younger male members of the royal entourage. A superb performance from dancer Madelaine Brennan that moves from icy and distracted Queen to joyous then distraught throughout the evening.

When the prince (Simon Williams in a very moving and sympathetic portrayal) meets the main swan for the first time the flock are aggressive to him and, as swans are, very territorial. The emotional trigger for the story is that the swans are the same sex as the prince and psychologically represent qualities that he desperately wants to attain to. The prince character carries the ballet from beginning to end and his is the story of someone who is restricted in his life and needs love, not necessarily sexual love or even homosexual love but love that truly warms his heart and holds him tenderly in a tight embrace. A love that supports and encourages his needs. He is one confused prince, emotionally and sexually. These emotional needs are things he certainly doesn't get from his frosty mother or from his rather fake and fatuous girlfriend (Anjali Mehra – superb comic timing with a fine range of expression in dance and character) who thinks she has indeed met her prince. By the end of act one the audience are fully invested in caring about this lonely prince existing in his dull and repetitive royal world. To his mother, the erotically charged ice maiden Queen he is a major disappointment. But is she a villain? I think not as her character is just as entrapped as her unacknowledged son she constantly pushes away.

Bringing them both out of their tightly shut shells is the dynamic dancer Chris Trenfield as The Swan/Stranger. He is equally seductive in each role and the confusion that leads to madness in the prince's mind is well portrayed through the powerful music and dance especially at the superbly dramatic end. This re-working of a classic tale is the kind of ballet that you never want to stop. Matthew Bourne's touring production of Swan Lake is utterly flawless all the way through with surprise after choreographically dramatic surprise. The live orchestra is thrilling, the set design by Lez Brotherston is breathtakingly dreamlike and nightmarish in parts and Rick Fisher's lighting design and implementation is just astonishing in creating diverse mood after mood. No wonder New Adventures Swan Lake has won so many awards and one may wonder what Tchaikovsky would make of this jolting modern interpretation that began in 1875 as a small project to encourage small children to dance to some music about The Lake of Swans. I think he would very well approve – rather heartily. The Nottingham audience certainly totally appreciated the creative skills that  made Swan Lake such a triumph and demonstrated this with a standing ovation and several curtain calls.

Review: Balletboyz – the Talent. Derby Theatre. November 5th 2013

Co-produced by Sadlers Wells – Balletboyz-the Talent (ten very impressive professional male ballet dancers) electrified the Derby Theatre stage with two challenging ballet works. The fine attention to detail to every single body position, move and extension, the juxtapositions, the incredible balancing acts of male body against male body – still – gliding or in flight – held the mainly youthful audience in rapture. Once the lights went down and we were presented with a short film and the first dance sequence nary a sweet wrapper rustled across the auditorium. Such was the respect and admiration for this company.

Each of the two dance pieces is announced by a short film about the Balletboyz company's inner workings and rehearsals plus the two choreographers ideas and inspirations. The first work is called Serpent with music by Max Richter. It is choreographed by Liam Scarlett.The supine dancers create the abstract world of gliding and linked/unlinked serpents with utter fluidity, visual poetry, coiling and striking rivals through the medium of ballet. Throughout the dance and Richter's music amplified water drops punctuate the movement and the lighting by Michael Hulls works well with the near bare dancers. The over all effect is stunningly beautiful.

 

The second ballet work, Fallen, choreographed by Russell Maliphant is a completely different artistic animal. This piece is densely industrial in feel. The music by Armand Amar rises and falls to a dull beat and the dancers, clothed in quasi fatigues spiral from without a scrum and the bodies pulse and dive and spin like elastic crouching dervishes in green pools of light. The dancing becomes more and more animated and is impressive (perhaps an understatement) as bodies begin to fly across the stage as if light as feathers. Then the Balletboyz use balance to an extraordinary degree throughout manner of acute body angling and brave falls and catches. This is certainly a brave dance company and are acclaimed throughout the world for their depiction of forms old and new in ballet.

 

The Derby Theatre audience rose as one and gave the guys a well deserved standing ovation. Catch them if you can! 'Real men wear tights' as their t-shirts say.

Phil Lowe

www.balletboyz.com