DanceFeaturedLondonReview

Black Sabbath: The Ballet – Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London.

Reviewer: Chris Lilly

Choreographers: Raúl Reinoso, Cassi Abranches and Pontus Lidberg

Composer: Marko Nyberg, Christopher Austin and Sun Keting

Original Music: Black Sabbath

Conductor: Christopher Austin

Ballet aspires to flight. Everything is light, lifted, spun. There’s a term, ballon, indicating a dancer’s attempt to spring effortlessly, float in mid-air, and land softly like a balloon. Heavy Metal, in contrast, is all about the earthy, solid, head-down, no-nonsense boogie. The signature dance is the Rockers Stomp, a room full of celebrants trying to drive their motorcycle boots through the floor. One of the many intriguing aspects of Carlos Acosta’s project with the Birmingham Royal Ballet was seeing how these contradictory movements could be reconciled. The answer is; sometimes brilliantly, and sometimes disastrously.

The disastrous moments come when the dance attempts to do what Heavy Metal does. The attraction of Metal is how visceral it is, how compelling. Aficionados like sticking their heads in the bass bins, putting off concerns with tinnitus for later. It’s a powerful, dynamic, irresistible musical wave. What it isn’t is elegant, tripping, light on its toes. When the dancers try to emulate that dynamic, they just look daft.

The gentleman with the lead-less Gibson guitar who floats round the stage throwing rock star shapes and lead-guitarist grimaces is a regular feature of the first part and an unwelcome call-back in part three. Although playing live, the sound doesn’t have much bite. At the very end, a genuine lead guitarist, Tony Iommi himself, just for this performance, comes on, stands stock still centre stage, and owns it all. The dancing guitarist is just in the way.

Where the dance comes alive is in the second part, with Sun Keting’s delicate orchestration of some lesser-known Black Sabbath tracks, and glorious voiceovers from members of the band, particularly Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne, telling tales of the band’s history, of the guitarist’s industrial injury and of recording sessions in which the bill for recreational drugs was bigger than the bill for studio hire. And whilst the Birmingham voices fill the theatre, dancers fill the stage, in pairs, in ensembles, animating the music, floating on clouds of dry ice, offering a physical counterpoint to the band’s story that takes the breath away.

Cassi Abranches manages to make Sabbath Bloody Sabbath beautiful. It has always been a powerful, doomy, driving anthem. Abranches employs it to lift her dancers sky-high. Also notable in part two is the use of the finger-picked Orchid, showcasing Tony Iommi’s delicate side, and Lachlan Monaghan’s soaring operatic rendition of Planet Caravan. It doesn’t have the raw-throated power of an Ozzy vocal, but it is gorgeous and unexpected.

Carlos Acosta sets himself and the Birmingham Royal Ballet a tough task. It has attracted enormous interest and the audience at its London premiere are enthralled. It can be acclaimed as a triumph, and Acosta is now a bona fide Master of Reality.

Runs until 21 October 2023

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bostin’ Brummagem ballet

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