Ballet Black's HEROES: supremely well danced double bill

I will yield to no one in my admiration for Ballet Black, a small company that I have followed closely for most of its 23 years, during which time I would submit that it has presented more new repertoire than any other UK-based company. Some of it has been of award-winning excellence, and most of it has been outstanding but, as we recall many of those past works with fondness, I suspect that the two works on this bill will just as readily be forgotten.

That is not to say that there was not much to admire in both works, which seemed to me to reflect the programme’s generic title by showing that the hero resides in all of us, and heroic actions need not be related to feats of action and adventure but could equally be the achievement of small personal gains and goals.

This was very much in the nature of Sophie Laplane’s If At First, with the identification of heroism represented by the possession of a white crown, passed between the protagonists but also then worn by them all. In one anguished scene a dancer gradually disintegrates his crumbling crown by squeezing chunks out of it. Jessica Cabassa’s minimalist costumes were an attractive element of the work’s imagery and David Plater’s lighting design included the innovation of the dancers themselves holding reflective, circular discs that added a human and interactive dimension to the work’s creativity.

Understandably, over 23 years the BB dancing ensemble has had more regenerations than Doctor Who. In many small companies the loss of star dancers could be a problem but under the continued leadership of Cassa Pancho throughout Ballet Black’s life, new dancers seamlessly slot in while their predecessors just as smoothly move on up to be the headlining performers.

Pancho’s virtuous circle always delivers excellence and in If At First, all nine performers formed a great team. Isabela Coracy – who joined BB in 2013 – is now the company’s only female Senior Artist and it is her solo that begins this work (surrounded by dancers holding those reflective discs), opening with her silent roar, as if a lioness, which seemed an apt metaphor for Coracy’s obvious feminine power and leadership.

Where the work struggles, I fear, is in its regular abrupt transitions both choreographically and musically. It seems as if the audience is being presented with a clutch of brief and very separate ballets, connected only by those crowns; the recorded music ranging from extracts of Beethoven (from the Eroica symphony, which was Laplane’s original inspiration for the piece) to a selection of bespoke compositions by Tom Harrold. Despite the permanent presence of those crowns, it was all too fragmented, and the abrupt switches of mood and music were often grating.

Mthuthuzeli November’s The Waiting Game has had to deal with the challenge of its own fragmented development. Its creation was subject to a brief BBC documentary in the Danceworks series, back in 2020, but subsequent live performances were cut short by the pandemic. This version of the work is so far removed from the original that it might have been better to call it The Waiting Game 2.0, since I spent the first few minutes wondering whether I had actually seen it before.

The proposition of individual heroism in The Waiting Game relates existentially to the process of performance. Ebony Thomas – another stalwart of the company, having joined in 2017 – is the work’s unwilling star, overcoming a reluctance to perform (whether through indifference to the project or from stage fright is unclear) and Coracy represented the Voice in His Head (his “other side”). Taraja Hudson – one of the dancers new to me – performed as The Presenter. A moveable cubicle provided a doorway to the stage that was utilised throughout the work, together with spangly jackets, to represent the conduit from reality to theatricality. It also brought the interesting theatrical element of silhouette to Plater’s lighting palette.

As in If At First the abstract choreography often seemed disconnected from any overall theme but in both works it was nonetheless diverse in an imaginative use of the relatively small space and the fluid interaction between dancers. In terms of the aforementioned regeneration, it is worth noting that eight of the company’s ten dancers have joined since 2022 (one, Elijah Peterkin, so recently that his bio was an insert to the printed programme). They are all a credit to the company, but I must single out Megan Chu who produced commanding performances in both works with quicksilver dancing of elegant lightness and sophistication. It is testament to the leadership of Pancho and the coaching of Charlotte Broom and senior company dancers that continued excellence in performance is so obviously maintained despite this significant turnover.