Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London.
12 May 2026.
Twenty-five years in any career is a milestone to celebrate, let alone one that demands constant physical and mental effort, pushing your body and creativity to their limits.
Michael Nunn and William Trevitt’s Still Pointless: BalletBoyz at 25 is a remarkable dance down memory lane, showcasing some of the company’s best and boldest pieces.
Twenty-five years after their debut performance, Pointless, at the Roundhouse, Still Pointless: Ballet Boyz at 25 brings together pieces from as far back as 1998: Critical Mass, which was a springboard for their 2001 debut show, right up to a piece of work premiering at the show on May 12th, Motor Cortex by Seirian Griffiths.
The audience was packed with fans, new and old, and ballet lovers, and from the whispers and interval chatter, many had seen these works when they first premiered.
Intertwining of video and live performance was the backbone of this production, which shows how ahead of their time they were: filming rehearsals back in 2001 on a handheld camcorder when videography was considered new and unexplored, to documenting subsequent rehearsals. Now, video is a key part of culture, so the fact the company has this wonderful backcatalogue to pull from gave a real retro home movie element to the production and not only that, it gave the audience a lovely behind-the-scenes look at the company. Providing a before and after for many pieces with early incarnations projected on a screen before the final product seen danced on stage live.
Taking your seat, the audience was treated to their first look behind the curtain, with what was cleverly disguised as a blooper. Nunn and Trevitt’s microphones had been turned on backstage early with you hearing them running lines and how to make housekeeping announcements. Immediately, this let the crowd know what they were in for: a night not only of dance but also of fun, with a company not afraid to make fun of itself and show the inner workings of its processes.
Following a throwback video of the pair learning Russell Maliphant’s Critical Mass, Nunn and Trevitt appeared on stage, entrancing the audience with their intricate movements, draped in a pool of light to highlight the surface area they would dance on. The original lighting design for these pieces was Michael Hulls, with down lighting foreshadowing a feature of the night, repackaged in glorious ways by additional lighting designers.
Griffiths’ premiere piece, Motor Cortex, was exceptional. Set against a prior video focused on finding new talent both in and out of the company, his choreography built and built as parallel lights created a square catwalk for the dancers to explore. A solo soon turned into a duet, which turned into a quartet and beyond. Each time a new dancer was added, the previous choreography was developed, progressing that much further through the sequence before it reset.
Maliphant’s second piece of the night, Fallen, was a dynamic performance that showcased a lot of risk and reward in its movement followed by Xie Xin’s 2020 Ripple, a masterful exercise in fluidity.
Narrative-driven Young Men was cinematic. Setting the tone, a short video extract of Iván Pérez’s creative process and concept were broadcast before Benji Knapper entered the stage, bringing to life the visceral pain, anguish, and agony of a young man ruined by war. The way in which he contorted his body and fought the dancer’s natural impulse to turn out and invert leg positioning was like nothing I had seen before; a true artist.
Act Two opened with Serpent by Liam Scarlett, followed by the quirky, West Side Story-meets-nightlife-meets-dance piece Bradley 4:18 by Maxine Doyle.
Christopher Wheeldon’s 2013 uncomplicated yet moving US is brought to life again by Paris Fitzpatrick and Dylan Jones. Andrew Ellis’ lighting design almost provides a third to this duet, with the pair dancing in and out of the light as they explore the space around one another.
There was something poetic about ending the night with Javier de Frutos’ Fiction. With composition by Ben Foskett featuring Donna Summer, words by Ismene Brown read by Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton and original lighting design by James Farncombe, the dancers gather around a ballet barre; home for dancers and the centre of where dance begins.
Dancing to a monologue about the choreography of an imagined world where the choreographer meets his demise before his final piece debuts – the show must go on. Coming full circle from the opening humour, the dancers stop and rewind phrases as the readers stumble eventually ramping up to a playful and cheeky piece.
Costumes by designer Katherine Watt showed form and physicality, allowing effortless, quick changes as each dancer featured in multiple pieces throughout the night, often back-to-back, with the only real break coming in the form of the interval.
Still Pointless: Ballet Boyz at 25 is a true testament to hard work, dedication, trust, and vision, and symbolically with the curtain and gaze lowering and lifting before every new dance, it was as if each sequence was viewed through a prolonged blink of the eye, looking both to the past and the present.
By Jamie Body of Dance Informa.
