Boys Doing Ballet

While I am aristocratic enough to regard anything that spells a plural with the letter Z as hopelessly gauche and slightly concerned about the amount of dance that emphasises the masculine (yes, it gets me hits on the blog and the audience just love seeing the boys stand on their heads, but...), Balletboyz: The Talent 2013 is something I cannot ignore. It's the perfect combination: the high art polish of ballet, which my mother and sister still insist is the most perfect performance art and a gang of lads strutting their stuff.

Frankly, if every company had a name this evocative, critics could retire from previewing and stick to abusive reviews. 

Luckily, The Telegraph did provide me with a bit more of the critical detail. 

‘The company challenged every dance stereotype going. Their work was hip and sexy and, above all, it was accessible. Now we have Balletboyz II, the Talent, in which Nunn and Trevitt pass the performance baton to a new generation... it is a clever ploy, a good way of shaking up the company image, and certainly the dancers who comprise 'the Talent’ have a fearless, crunching physicality’

Apart from the ugliness of "every dance stereotype going," The Telegraph has a point. I am checking out the company biographies, and I think they are informative.

Taylor Benjamin has worked with 2Faced Dance. I am assuming he was part of the company when they wowed the Fringe by dancing with their tops off and showed that dynamic moves could be integrated in a contemporary choreographic framework. Think tough swagger, and sudden pounces.

Andrea Carrucciu  has danced for Ballet Jeune de Geneve (Switzerland), and for acclaimed artist Penny Arcade at the Arcola Tent in London. Swiss Ballet and anarchic live artist: I have an image of a very technical dancer who suddenly takes off his clothes and shouts at the audience. He won't, but that is an intriguing pedigree.

Flavien Esmieu trained at the National Conservatoire in Lyon before joining the Jeune Ballet de Lyon. Adam Kirkham trained at Arts Ed,and performed as a soloist for the Peter Schaufuss Ballet in Denmark. Okay, that's straight up ballet action from these two.

Jordan Olpherts completed a foundation course at Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds and graduated from Rambert School this year. He has performed in Resolution! at The Place and has worked with Liam Steel at Opera Holland Park. Edward Pearce trained at Elmhurst and then at Rambert School and also performed alongside Rambert in A Linha Curva by Itzik Galili. 

That's the contemporary angle covered. This line up hits plenty of tick boxes.


Leon Poulton performed for Will Tuckett as part of the summer programme at ROH2 after graduating from Laban. He has also worked with Brazilian choreographer Jean Abreu.  And Abreu is another one who likes the manly man dancer. Contemporary and tough, I guess.

Matthew Rees has no formal training; he was introduced to dance at Brockhill Park School and prior to being accepted into BalletBoyz worked with numerous youth dance groups in Kent. Had he not been selected to join the company, Matt had completed his first stage application to join The Royal Marines. This is his fourth season with BalletBoyz.

That one is my favourite. And I am not making any smart comments about someone who could have been in The Marines.

Matthew Sandiford graduated from Laban this year. He has performed with Charlie Dixon Dance Company and at The Place as part of Resolution! In August 2012 he was a featured dancer in the London 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony. 

So - a diverse bunch. They are doing works by Liam Scarlett,  and Russell Maliphant, the multi-award-winning choreographer and an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells. I am hoping that neither work will explore the nature of masculinity, because that theme is really worked out in dance. Equally, male dancers don't represent men in any meaningful way:  they are fit, beautiful and dynamic, often elegant and frequently capable of doing things I'd dream about achieving. The only thing they really share with most men is a set of organs and the habitual advantages given to them by the patriarchy. 

Having said that, I do think this will be a spectacle - not so much hip (seriously, if The Telegraph thinks something is hip, it's safe to assume it isn't) but polished and precise, with sudden bursts of ferocious energy. It might be sexy, too:  I am not the one to judge this....

Mon 18 February 2013, 7.30pm

Festival Theatre

Bill T Jones Kicks Ass

Seeing Rambert Dance Company and a documentary about Bill T Jones in one night is a tough call. The slight dissatisfaction I felt after Rambert became a raging resentment once I’d watched A Good Man. There’s nothing wrong with Rambert, apart from the strange dishonesty that has a company made up mostly of ballet dancers still avoid the word in their name. The triple bill is a little weak – the final piece seems to have an oddly outdated notion of childhood, despite the company having an in-house scientist to help with child psychology – but they get their legs and the acrobatics in the right places. 

But in the light of Bill T Jones, caught in the process of choreographing a commission about Abraham Lincoln, they come across as the polite and slightly boring kid at the big wild party.

Jones is an anachronism: he is in that very American mode of the artist who wants to make a big statement. At one point he stands in the middle of his dancers, stripped to the waist, apologising for his earlier anger in the same way that a Glaswegian hard-man argues over the latest increase in the bus fare. He’s a determined modernist, a romantic, striving like Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac, all those tough guys who dare audiences to call them sissies for being sensitive.

So, he is even a stereotype. Luckily, he addresses this: admitting that he has faith in art, faith in the great man, he surprises himself. He knows that he is arrogant – he moans at one point that he doesn’t want to be a saint – but his physical excellence lends him a charisma that his temper doesn’t deserve. And he is certainly all man, all power. The end of the film sees him going mad for the biggest sound he can get out of the musicians, before being told that he would need to warn an audience about the volume in case someone has a heart-attack.

But by God, he’s exciting. Apart from one scene, when the company perform some ritual before going on stage, there’s no sentimentality, no special pleading. Listening to Jones find the hidden racism in the Great Emancipator’s speeches is thrillingly taboo: his arguments with the musicians and dancers reveal the passion that binds them in this difficult relationship. Best of all, the look of fear on his audience’s faces. I may be unkind, but that will teach them to think a night at the dance is the emotional equivalent of a champagne picnic.

The more I think about that documentary, the deeper it gets. It reminds that dance is the most appropriate art for philosophical discussion: what other performance could explore Lincoln without turning it all history detail or windy rhetoric? Where else can the personal and the political mesh so elegantly, as when Jones uses the lives of his dancers to reflect on the USA’s horrible domestic history? And there, at the centre, Jones himself. Battling age, inspiration, expectation. He mocks those who commissioned him for tokenism, then moans that audiences are lazy. He is picture book perfect.

Secret Codes Beneath the Nutcracker's Cover

Nutcrackers are Christmas ballet fare, and Scottish Ballet has had one in its repertoire for decades. Ashley Page's version, which replaced an earlier, more sentimental version, has become one of the triumphs from his time as artistic director: as in his Sleeping Beauty, the contemporary ballet skills of the company are used without losing touch with the original ballet's classicism.

This year's revival comes on the back of Page's replacement as artistic director by Christopher Hampson, and the lively energy of the corps de ballet is, delightfully complemented by a more precise geometry. Although many of the previous Christmas shows have been undermined by some ragged group work, there is a new sense of line and order in the corps.

Lev Ivanov's original choreography to Tchaikovsky's magical score ensured, however, that the centre-piece of the performance will always be the grand pas de deux. If Page allows the narrative to slide into an almost Freudian journey through the heroine's subconscious - and there is a sense that this Nutcracker teeters on the edge of adolescent maturity - the final dance between the Prince and Marie blends the sensual and spectacular. Even the nervous, excited energy of Marie's earlier dances with Drosselmyer - mad professor and designer of the titular toy - gives way to a passionate bonding with her Prince.

Much of the power of Page's choreography comes from his willingness to both refer to earlier, classical versions and integrate a wry, post-modern wit. Yet his Nutcracker plays less with the possible meanings of the story than follows the lead of Tchaikovsky's score. Shifting the scene from the family Christmas party into the fantastic world of the Nutcracker Prince and his mortal enemies, the movement captures the sudden new depth of the orchestration. Leaving behind the chaotic world of her parents - the party has undertows of infidelity and drunken misadventures - Maria is cast into the vigorous war between the Prince's hussars and the Mice. Using Tchaikovsky's darker passages to colour the conflict, Page makes this brief battle brutal enough to off-set the potential sentimentality of the subsequent Snowflakes scene. This balance makes the second act, which emphasises the charming over the dramatic, a welcome relief.

If Page's Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are Christmas shows with more bite - in the latter, the Ugly Sisters end up properly punished - The Nutcracker is the one where Page manages most effectively the expectations of a Christmas audience. Lightly alluding to Marie's burgeoning maturity, Page avoids being too obvious. Only the appearance of Tchaikovsky's face at the window, and the surreal appearance of Drosselmeyer in a watch, are blunt suggestions of a subtext. Very subtly, Marie is transformed from awkward, lonely child to elegant young woman. Even the Prince's journey, from wooden mannequin to romantic lead, is nuanced.

Yet The Nutcracker is, above all, a celebration of pure dance. Only through the renewed precision of the corps de ballet and the strength of the leads - Sophie Martin embodies Marie's journey, and Adam Blythe is a solid partner as her Prince - can the lightweight variations of the second act be successful. Unless the company radically changes in the next years, this Nutcracker is a strong showcase for their talents, a fine mesh of ability and choreographic intention, and will hopefully remain in the repetoire.