\n<\/p>\n
As the crowds filed out of Sadler\u2019s Wells theater on Friday, I approached a bushy-bearded man in a leather jacket and Black Sabbath T-shirt. Was he a die-hard aficionado of the heavy metal band? He was. What had he thought of the show we had just seen, \u201cBlack Sabbath: The Ballet\u201d? \u201cFantastic!\u201d he said, beaming. \u201cBut I\u2019m also a big ballet fan. I was at \u2018Don Quixote\u2019 at the Royal Opera House last week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bravo to London\u2019s robust dance-going public, which has been packing houses at season openings in the last few weeks, culminating in the Birmingham Royal Ballet\u2019s much talked-about Black Sabbath production. The improbable heavy-metal-meets-classical-dance premise came from the company\u2019s director, Carlos Acosta, who has described the band, founded in Birmingham in 1968, as one of the city\u2019s jewels<\/a>.<\/p>\n Acosta was on to something. The show had its premiere in Birmingham in September, and tickets for that run and later performances in Plymouth and London sold out almost immediately.<\/p>\n The ballet doesn\u2019t attempt a narrative about the band, which found fame with its self-titled debut album in 1970, and kept going through several decades of tours, drugs and bad behavior. Instead, each act offers a theme: the creation of the ballet; the band\u2019s memories; fans and legacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The first act, \u201cHeavy Metal Ballet,\u201d choreographed by Raul Reinoso, has the dancers in black leotards and tights, moving through austere ballet sequences to some of the band\u2019s best-known songs \u2014 \u201cWar Pigs,\u201d<\/a> \u201cSolitude,\u201d \u201cParanoid\u201d \u2014 punctuated by the appearances of an onstage guitarist (Marc Hayward). In Act 2, \u201cThe Band,\u201d Cassi Abranches\u2019s more contemporary, off-pointe, grounded movement is overlaid by the voices of band members, reminiscing about the glory days. (\u201cThe cocaine bill was more than the recording bill.\u201d)<\/p>\n For the final act, \u201cEverybody Is a Fan,\u201d Pontus Lidberg (credited as lead choreographer) employs an academic formality reminiscent of William Forsythe\u2019s recent work to pop music. It all feels a bit same-y, although there is a fine, twisty, curving solo for Riku Ito, and a concert finale finish in front of a winged devil on an upturned metal car.<\/p>\n If each section is enjoyable enough, the overall effect is curiously generic \u2014 all dry ice, dramatic lighting (by K.J.) and pumping motion. What\u2019s missing is the raw, provocative tension and originality of Black Sabbath\u2019s music.<\/p>\n THE LONDON SEASON STARTED<\/strong> at the end of September with English National Ballet presenting its first program under the leadership of Aaron Watkin, the Canadian director who succeeded Tamara Rojo, who departed for the San Francisco Ballet<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Watkin arrives after 17 years as the artistic director of the Semperoper Ballett in Dresden, where he programmed a mix of new work, contemporary ballet and traditional 19th-century pieces. His opening triple bill for English National Ballet suggested his tastes, with Balanchine\u2019s \u201cTheme and Variations\u201d; a new \u201cLes Noces\u201d from Andrea Miller; and \u201cFour Last Songs\u201d from David Dawson, a British choreographer<\/a> championed by Watkin in Dresden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was an ambitious start and a musical treat, with a full orchestra, 36 singers from the Opera Holland Park Chorus for Stravinsky\u2019s \u201cNoces,\u201d and the marvelous soprano Madeleine Pierard performing Richard Strauss\u2019s \u201cFour Last Songs.\u201d It was also a commendable stretch for the dancers, who had to move from Balanchine\u2019s sparkling essay in grand classicism to Miller\u2019s contemporary, grounded urgency, and then to Dawson\u2019s punishingly hard, balletic extremes.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t all successful. \u201cTheme,\u201d famous for its technical difficulty, was what the French call \u201ccorrect\u201d without being dynamically or musically exciting. Sangeun Lee and Gareth Haw, making their debuts in the lead roles, got through the steps but looked tentative rather than commanding.<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s \u201cLes Noces,\u201d commissioned by Rojo to commemorate the centenary of the original \u201cLes Noces\u201d by Bronislava Nijinska<\/a>, was simply puzzling. I had no idea what was going on as the dancers rushed around, enveloping one another with lengths of fabric, looking very anxious. Only later, after reading the program notes, did I discover that Miller had completely departed from the original story of an arranged peasant wedding to a \u201cRite of Spring\u201d sequel involving a community debate about whether the sacrifice of a Chosen One was a good idea. Clearly not, but then neither was this concept despite the impressively decayed-looking set by the sculptor Phyllida Barlow, who died<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n \u201cFour Last Songs\u201d was more successful, featuring 12 dancers in flesh-tone body tights, in constant swooping, circling, flying motion beneath images of clouds, their limbs always extending dynamically into space. Dawson is a fine craftsman, good at pas de deux full of hair-raisingly difficult and beautiful lifts, but the piece felt monotonous after a while, with no perceptible emotional connection to Strauss\u2019s music and its contemplation of mortality.<\/p>\n Even if these individual works had flaws, the program was an energized, strong start for Watkin and the dancers that bodes well for English National Ballet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A few nights later came the opening of the Royal Ballet season, featuring a much safer bet: Acosta\u2019s production of \u201cDon Quixote,\u201d with Vadim Muntagirov and the company\u2019s senior ballerina, Marianela Nunez, in the leading roles.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t expect to be excited by this campy war horse of a ballet, with its broad-stroke narrative and slapstick comedy. But I was. The dancers tackle Acosta\u2019s production<\/a> with far more gusto than they displayed when it debuted in 2013, inhabiting the storybook d\u00e9cor with charm, vigor and the nuanced crowd-scene acting that the Royal is particularly good at.<\/p>\n And Nunez, who can be annoyingly grand-ballerina in manner, was sensational as a sexy, flirty Kitri, uninhibitedly enjoying herself in effortless balances and head-kicking jet\u00e9s. Muntagirov, boyishly charming, is a bit too elegant for the rough and ready Basilio, but I\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n Beyond these big-ticket shows, Pam Tanowitz showed her beautiful \u201cSong of Songs\u201d at the Barbican, and the Dance Umbrella festival filled smaller spaces with emerging choreographers. Those audiences were smaller, but no less rapt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n