Hackney Empire, London.
14 March 2025.
The mixed, lively auditorium is buzzing with a jazzy vibe; the ready-raised curtain exposing a dark stage with a single spotlight. Seating is rather compact and there is a relaxed start time.
Opening Ballet Black’s double-bill Shadows is A Shadow Work from award-winning Chanel DaSilva making her British choreographic debut, and this piece explores the power of shadows to reveal our true selves.
A single female dancer, dressed in white, dances on pointe. There is meaning and story in her gestures and eyeline. Repetitive movement such as beating hand against heart and reaching, pulsing arms. Reliving recurring trauma? A blackout and light flashes, as more dancers appear. They are dressed in black, and they lift and move her.
A single male dancer in black appeals to her – her shadow? He draws her into the light with him. She is uncertain but then finds joy in their dancing together, which quickly turns to dislike. This contemporary ballet duet has plenty of floorwork and imaginative lifts to follow.
The body of dancers in black are quickly established as the shadows of her life. And a box is brought on stage – the synthesized electronic music builds tension successfully. There is an effective lift section – in groups, in duets. Lots of ideas and different ways to move with one another.
She watches them from the corner; the box is opened – and like an old-fashioned film, the shadows act out scenes from her life. By her reactions; scenes she has emotionally shut away. They disappear when the box is shut. And she converses with her shadow again, palm to palm, a danced dialogue between them.
The audience have plenty of time to think as he encircles her with the box and eventually gets her to take it. What would be hidden in our own box that we would not want to face?
There’s a powerful silence as she tries to move the box across the floor. It has become extremely heavy, and her shadow has left her. Alone, she reopens the box and four female dancers enter, their hands beating behind their backs. One of them comes to her and they unite. She is more willing to engage but still finding it difficult.
She dances into a spotlight and runs! Tension builds with the music.
The ending is calm and strong. The shadows walk on to stage one at a time and stand facing her. She is handed the box once more, and she holds and accepts it.
A Shadow Work was very well received by the audience.
Act 2 has a very different flavour. An adaptation by Ballet Black’s founder and Artistic Director Cassa Pancho of the best-selling novel by Oyinkan Braithwaite My Sister, The Serial Killer.
There is a lot of dramatized movement in this piece, arguably more narrative than dance. It is engaging theatre, experienced and enjoyed expressively by the audience – plenty of audible gasps and laughs.
As the post-show talk with Pancho and two dancers Isabela Coracy and Ebony Thomas reveals, Ballet Black has a very strong, passionate and loyal following.
The piece follows the storyline of two sisters Ayoola and Korede. Ayoola is the serial killer and Korede the ever-suffering sister who is called in with bleach and rubber gloves to clean up after her sister strikes again.
This dark story is laced with humour in its presentation onstage. So much passes in eye contact between the two sisters that the audience is privy to. They set to work cleaning up the murder scene and removing the body.
The momentary confusion at the entrance of flowing dancers in baggy clothing was worth every second when it became clear they were the body of water into which the dead body was thrown. They receive him, lifting him overhead in a wave, and then sink him deep beneath the surface into darkness.
We are taken to the hospital where Korede works and is secretly in love with a doctor there. Again, humour is interlaced where dancers freeze and she imagines she is romantically dancing with him, which is played out onstage under pink/red lighting. Then an abrupt jump back to reality. The audience greatly enjoys this interjection. However, Ayoola enters and she and the doctor begin to fall for each other.
A lively party scene is set and Ayoola’s next victim lined up. She dances with him and takes him off to her bedroom, even though the doctor has also arrived at the party with flowers for her which she ignores.
The power in the duet between the sisters is breathtaking and beautiful. The party music fades away to a threatening hum as Ayoola confesses she needs help covering up her crime again. Korede is furious and horrified – yet her sister is selfish and uncaring. They both dance on pointe, the heavy beat in the music supporting their aggression towards each other and the dramatic dialogue.
Ultimately, Korede cleans up but alone suffers panic attacks – dramatized by masked dancers coming for her, the music wild and pulsing.
Ayoola moves confidently into a powerful and seductive duet with the doctor. They both try to impress each other, or perhaps she is drawing him in. She fully holds the power in this gorgeous modern ballet. There are many intricate clever moments of danced dialogue between characters here. When Ayoola produces a knife, the doctor tries to wrestle it from her, leading to blackout in a compromised position where it is unclear who has been stabbed.
Korede suffering in mental torment aides her stabbed sister, who is not dead. In a screaming twist of inevitable fate, the doctor is taken away by the police.
And the piece is brought to dramatic and darkly comedic conclusion with the entrance of a grinning, flamboyant new man who presents Ayoola with flowers. The audience laughs knowingly. They dance together, with a sharp blackout as Ayoola raises the knife over his neck.
Something for everyone here with wonderfully strong technical dancing, whether you preferred a narrative-led drama, or a more contemporary symbolic piece. Let’s see more!
By Louise Ryrie of Dance Informa.
