Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Black Sabbath – The Ballet is set to tour the UK later this year. Hot on the heels of Black Sabbath’s farewell concert, Back to the Beginning, which took place in Birmingham on July 5, music lovers and fans of the band will be able to continue to enjoy their music live across five venues.
The show will visit Birmingham, London, Plymouth, Edinburgh, and the Lowry, having previously graced stages in some of those locations during its sold-out 2023 tour.
Ahead of its 2025 UK outing, Lead Composer, Project Music Supervisor, and Conductor Christopher Austin, and guitarist Marc Hayward, who have both been involved with the show since its inception, have shared how working on this “unexpected ballet” has been “extraordinary”.
“It’s been a really extraordinary journey,” Austin says. “And it’s one of those things that, I mean, when I was first asked to become involved by Koen Kessels, he was the music director at Birmingham Royal Ballet as well as Covent Garden for The Royal Ballet at the time. It was one of those crazy things where he said, ‘You know, Carlos Acosta has got this amazing idea. He wants to do a whole evening ballet based around the music of Black Sabbath. Do you think it’s possible?’ And it’s like, right, okay, this wasn’t on my music bingo card for what my career is. And it sort of went from there.”
Austin adds, “It’s been the most unexpected gift to have this collaboration in my life, obviously with Birmingham Royal Ballet, who are really the most wonderful company. Really, it’s been an unending pleasure to be in the studio with the dancers and all the teams around. I mean, the spirit of Birmingham Royal Ballet is quite unlike any other company I’ve worked with. And across the whole institution, it’s not just the dancers, the repetiteurs, the music team and so on. As a whole company, its spirit is really special.”
Hayward, who shares the stage with the dancers playing live and is at times integrated into the choreography, has said that the experience has been nothing short of “absolutely incredible.”
“It’s always a real joy to take the production to new places because it goes down in so many different ways with different audiences,” Hayward notes. “And yeah, the crowds are fantastic. The devil horns were in the air as soon as the curtain went up [recently performing in Norfolk, Virginia, USA]. Very vocal. And you feed off it as well, you know.”
He continues, “No matter how many shows you do, leading up to each performance, you start getting the buzz, and then you hear the murmur of the audience. Then the curtain goes, the lights go down, and then you’re like, ‘Right, showtime.’ It’s great.”
Hayward is no stranger to working a crowd and performing live, but working with dancers for this production was a new experience. He shares, “I’d say it’s a challenge. And I’ve always loved challenges like that, from being in my own bands or playing in other people’s bands.”
Still playing in bands around the tour dates, it has been a case of swapping the mosh pit for presage lifts. “This is the funny thing,” Hayward says. “They were like, ‘Are you comfortable with this [being lifted]?’ You know, obviously it wasn’t just like [lifting me], they have to go through certain safety precautions. ‘You happy doing this?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah’. They said, ‘Are you sure?’ In a way, I’ve kind of done this, but you’re kind of jumping off the stage into the arms of people who aren’t necessarily trained to carry people. So actually, this is really safe, I’ve never been in such safe hands.”
He recounts that when he first drove up to Birmingham during the show’s early rehearsals after receiving a call from dramaturg Richard Thomas, with whom he had worked before: “And then before I knew it, yeah, just being carried around a room above a load of trained ballet dancers’ heads. And I thought, wow, this is something, you know, you don’t do every day.”
Working with the dancers has been a similarly enjoyable experience for Austin. “They were absolutely game for everything,” he says. “So, for example, the dancers sing in Act Three. And when I first introduced this idea that we might, because it’s a ballet, and this is an unexpected ballet. And I was thinking to myself, how far can we take the idea of what would be unexpected in this ballet? And I thought, why don’t we ask the dancers to sing? And initially, the ballet staff were saying, ‘Well, you know, they don’t have to. It’s not in their contracts. But give it a go, Chris.’ And we had a session in February. And gradually, you know, the trust developed. And now they give everything. And it’s not part of what you might think of. A lot of them have real karaoke confidence. And in fact, one of them, one of the principal dancers, Lachlan Monaghan, who is, in West End terms, you’d call him a triple threat because he’s an amazing dancer. He’s actually got a trained voice. He plays the piano, and acts. So he actually has a solo in Act Two.”
BRB Principal dancer Céline Gittens shares that the experience was just as much fun for the dancers and that Black Sabbath’s music had a “good beat” to dance to. On her favourite part, she says, “The second Act pas de deux was created on myself and Tyrone Singleton by Cassie Abranches. The partnering is intricate and quite advanced. In these instances, it takes an experienced partner and/or a lot of practice to make this pas de deux look easy and seamless. The choreography has a lot of off-balances and intertwined footwork, creating an effect of replacement and support. The dialogue is driven by Rockey Sunketing’s adapted score where we hear personal accounts of the band, and it gives substance to the reality of their experiences in and outside of the band.”
Gittens also mentions that the audience would leave empowered and dancing themselves. “Audience members can expect to be (and are allowed to be) up on their feet at the end of this show. It’s really a celebration of Birmingham’s greatest contribution to music, which is Black Sabbath and the creation of heavy metal music. This has influenced and inspired so many musicians around the world. An inspiring story of humble beginnings in Aston, Birmingham, to worldwide fame.”
“The positivity of the dancers has been one of the most inspiring things about the whole project,” Austin concludes. “I’ve been lucky to have many happy collaborations in my life. But every time I go back into BRB, into the studio, and I’m working with those people, it’s a pleasure from beginning to end. I mean, you couldn’t hope for more wonderful collaborators.”
Visit www.brb.org.uk for full tour details and bookings.
By Jamie Body of Dance Informa.
