Ballet Black at 25
Festival Theatre, 19/6/26
Ballet Black, Artistic Director: Cassa Pancho
Founded in 2001, Ballet Black is Europe’s first professional Black and Asian neoclassical ballet company. 25 years of risk-taking and experimentation has seen it commissioning over 70 new and exciting works and creating a junior school to encourage new generations of dancers. Ballet Black’s latest visit to Edinburgh featured two pieces, one brand new and one from 2019. In both pieces the 11 dancers used strictly classical steps melded with contemporary, free movement to tell extraordinary stories.
… all towards hope (2026) is choreographer Hope Boykin’s first commission for the company, celebrating Ballet Black’s 25th anniversary. The seven sections (A Community … Running Towards What? … A Collage of Thoughts … Now Wisdom … We Can … All of Me … Together We) were danced to a recorded soundtrack composed by Bill Laurance. One section was danced in silence, with the only rhythm the movement of the dancers’ bodies. Another featured a solo piano with slow, laid-back jazz variations. Later there were Latin American rhythms and echoing percussion. The soundtrack also featured text written and spoken by Boykin: “pushing back” and “moving together” proclaiming the purpose of the company. Her rhythms of speech combined with the insistent pulsing beat and the flowing dance to produce a perpetual motion of groups forming, moving separately and together, creating different shapes and breaking apart to form new ones. The loose, unstructured costumes in various shades of red and ochre were designed by Jessica Cabassa and the tenebrous lighting by David Plater added to the blurring of lines between movement, music, and message.
The second piece was Ingoma, an Olivier Award winning piece created in 2019 by former company member and choreographer Mthuthuzeli November. It was inspired by a massacre in Marikana in 2012 during the South African miners’ strike when 34 miners were killed by police. It encapsulated not just the events of the massacre, but dug deep beneath the surface to the raw emotions of the miners, their wives, mothers, sisters, and communities.
The strong recorded soundtrack by composer Peter Johnson incorporated African songs and rhythms, with the latter often beaten out on the dancers’ bodies. The slow drumbeat and dirge-like, dragging, ragged notes of the cello and double bass added to the sense of impending doom. David Plater’s lighting was dark, menacing and dramatic, with the miners’ head lamps emphasising the darkness, and the costumes by Yann Seabra were simple and workmanlike.
The group of miners was complemented by a group of women, a tragic chorus. But unlike a tragic chorus they were also part of the action, drawing strength from and supporting each other, showing defiance, and finally mourning their lost husbands, brothers, and sons. The dancers grouped and fractured, narrating the events and deeper relationships with their bodies. Finally, with the music rising to a crescendo, propulsive percussion, and a disembodied voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Xhosa, the dancers left the stage in procession like mourners at a funeral.
What Ballet Black is doing is unique. It is ballet with a message. We are all celebrating 25 years of their unique contribution to dance, and looking forward to the next 25.
Photo credit: Bill Cooper
