“Alternatives to the gruff and bluff of traditional masculinity”
I was 7 in 2001 when Michael Nunn (now OBE) and William Trevitt (OBE) astounded the ballet world with their gamble-show Pointless at The Camden Roundhouse. That’s less of a flex and more of a statement on the legacy of these fellows, almost a whole lifetime of work, rightly celebrated.
After dramatically leaving the Royal Ballet in 1997 (and documenting it), then setting up their company, the last 25 years has been a revolution. Their uniquely symbiotic set-up: BalletBoyz (a name they, and I, hate) meant working with a range of choreographers and a male-presenting troupe of dancers (the Talent). Their back catalogue is a who’s who of dance’s greats and fresh young faces, always sharp, new and unpredictable – this evening is no different.
After a video section from their first film (both looking so young and Brit-pop coded), we start with Nunn and Trevitt performing a section of the piece that started it all: Russell Maliphant’s seminal work Critical Mass. The drum and bass blares, the men dagger their arms around one another, a mix of martial arts and dance, folding, snapping over foreheads. This led to many more collaborations with Maliphant. 2013’s Fallen is featured later, as dancers looking a little like Peter Pan frolic and collide together (fitting, as the two mentioned when they retired from the stage 10 years ago, hiring “young, fitter, more beautiful versions of ourselves”). It’s a triumphant closing of the circle, as the changing faces of the gents, like the many seasons, projected on the descending screen, really show the boyz becoming menz (couldn’t resist).
Like a child in a sweetshop, the sparkly wrappers of each performance dazzle me, as they would any dance fan. Ripple by Xie Xin (2020) has the expected pond-like patterns from Andrew Ellis, layers of fluttering silk, and spiralling, corkscrewing bodies upwards and outwards – like, you guessed it – while Jiang Shaofeng brings the ocean indoors auditorily.
Iván Pérez physicalises the First World War in Young Men (2015), originally one of the many filmed pieces of dance that set the company apart from their theatre-bound colleagues. It is harrowing from the jump. One dancer in thin underwear writhes, flaring his ribs out and his stomach in to almost emaciation; on (a little predictably) march gas-masked and booted figures, rolling and ducking, yet with a spark of connection and care amidst the violence and upheaval.
Liam Scarlett’s Serpent (2013) has the Talent in leggings, the nude illusion showing every undulation and supple twist of the dancers’ bodies. Any chance to highbrow nakedness – fluidity and arms snapping into darts of venom as the dancers tangle between each other.
Maxine Doyle’s piece explodes onto the stage. Bradley 4:18 (2020) is a man struggling to connect with the world around him at 4:18 am, as we see him peel layers off himself. Brighton Rock mixed with West Side Story – all suits, salmon shirts and bravado. Haven’t we all bumped into a Bradley in the early hours and regretted it? Taken from the lyrics of Kae Tempest’s album Let Them Eat Chaos, this piece more than many others speaks to the age of male loneliness and indoctrination. Ballet Boyz as always showing alternatives to the gruff and bluff of traditional masculinity.
New work is also premiered: Seirian Griffiths’s Motor Cortex has the dancers looking like shadowy samurai, falling flat on their faces in cubes of Ellis’s lighting design. Around they roll, almost hemmed in by the photosensitive corridors, the nipped-in waist and flowing black trousers zipping this way and that – like ants working away on some unknown but instinctive plan.
Some lovely and sombre duets in US (2017) by Christopher Wheeldon do not go unnoticed, and we even get a (fake) obituary for enfant terrible Javier de Frutos, read by Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton. His 2016 piece Fiction has dancers swing and fawn over a ballet barre in rehearsal garb, ending with a young dancer swaying around to a disco hit, leaping up into a death drop as the lights are snatched to black.
Who doesn’t love a greatest hits compilation? Yes, it has all the bangers, but also some that may have passed you by – little gems that sparkle anew when unearthed. To 25 more years, chaps – cheers!
Keep and eye on what the Boyz are cooking up next, click HERE!