Ballet Black

photo: Bill Cooper

Cassa Pancho founded Ballet Black in 2001 when she was just 21 years old. Her aim was to introduce ballet to a more culturally diverse audience by celebrating black and Asian dancers. She has had strong support from the industry since the beginning, being associated with the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden as early as 2003 with an invitation to move the company's weekend classes and rehearsals there.

With just six dancers until 2011 - now expanded to eight - the company has never let its small size get in the way of taking on an ambitious repertoire. In the past it has worked with a host of big name choreographers including Richard Alston, Henri Oguike and Will Tuckett.

This season was no exception and I was intrigued to see the final piece by Arthur Pita – a choreographer well known for his catalogue of works with darkly twisting narratives that push boundaries and challenge perceptions. This was Pita’s first piece for Ballet Black also, somewhat unexpectedly, a first for the company to dance in tutus.

Pita’s A Dream Within A Midsummer Night’s Dream began with six dancers in traditional male/female pairings. As they moved in uniform precision to classical music by Handel on the dimly lit stage, the atmosphere already felt a little mysterious. For those familiar with Shakespeare’s tale from which Pita took inspiration, what happened next shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The arrival of Puck (Isabel Coracy), cross-dressed in a green scouts uniform and with a flowered beard, brought havoc to proceedings as he cast his magic dust across the scene.

photo: Bill Cooper

Accompanied by a fabulous soundtrack that kicked off with Eartha Kitt’s Let’s Do It, the dancers, after waking dazed and confused in the forest, were put through a series of skits by Puck. Pita sets this love story apart from the original by first having the two females Hermia (Kanika Carr) and Helena (Sayaka Ichikawa) fall in love. Disappointed that their attempts to woo the girls with some comical macho mambo dancing has fallen on deaf ears, a defiant lesbian kiss by the pair finally persuaded Lysander (Jacob Wye) and Demetrius (José Alves) to give up and slope off. It wasn't long though, before Puck returned to sprinkle a little more dust in their direction and behold, soon they too were dancing a romantic, if slightly naughty, duet.

Titania (Cira Robinson) was then left alone and confused to finally fall in love with Bottom (Alves), whose transformation into an ass was revealed in true magician form from behind a curtain centre stage.  Upon seeing him, Titania’s emotions were conveyed by Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered sung by Barbara Streisand and their duet was touching as she succumbed to the strangeness of it all.

In the end Puck restored order, returning the dancers to Handel once he'd had his fun. Although after this, they seemed more trance-like in ‘real life’. It appeared that the dream was actually a window on their true selves after all.

Two shorter works by returning choreographers Martin Lawrance (of Richard Alston Dance Company) and Christopher Marney (best known as part of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures) provided a thought-provoking first half. Lawrance’s Limbo explored the concept of death and the journey to the afterlife. Isabela Coracy took the lead to dance with Alves and Wye on the dark and misty stage, lit only with cutting beams of red. Marney’s Two Of A Kind was an extension of a previous work that explored the progression of a changing relationship through a series of romantic pas de deux to music by Tchaikovsky and Ravel.

The audience was certainly more culturally diverse which was great to see and all in all, this was a winning debut. Hopefully we will see Ballet Black return to Nottingham again soon.

Ballet Black performed at Nottingham Playhouse on Wednesday 2 July 2014.

Black Ballet website