Ballet Black double bill review: Bold, chaotic, hypnotic and challenging

Ballet Black may have been created 17 years ago to give opportunities to black and Asian dancers, but it’s the diversity of its works that has long made this company shine. With the big tutu set pieces out of bounds (BB has just seven members – dozens fewer than are needed for a Swan Lake or Nutcracker), artistic director Cassa Pancho has instead focused on commissioning works by choreographers such as Richard Alston and Javier De Frutos. The result is bold, brave programming that consistently challenges – if not always satisfies – audiences.

Arthur Pita’s A Dream Within a Midsummer Night’s Dream is as bold and brave as you can get. The curtain opens on a traditional ballet scene: three couples in tutus and tights, dancing to Handel’s Sarabande in D Minor. It all gets weird very quickly. First Puck (the excellent Isabela Coracy) arrives in a scout uniform; then, to Yma Sumac’s Malambo No 1, the dancers are transported to a moon-dappled forest of chirping crickets and heavy rain.

Strangeness piles upon strangeness: Helena snorts a line of fairydust; Oberon runs around under netting; Salvador Dali makes a cameo. It’s chaotic, hypnotic – and captures the spirit of Shakespeare’s play perfectly.

Cathy Marston’s The Suit is a darker affair. A man finds his wife in bed with her lover; the lover flees, leaving his suit behind. The husband, consumed by bitterness, conceives of a unique punishment: the suit will become the third person in the couple’s marriage. Suffice to say it doesn’t end well.

Cira Robinson is an engaging Matilda, wrapping sleek limbs around lover Simon at one moment; feet fluttering with panic as she begs Philemon for forgiveness in another. But the piece is missing the real cruelty that lies at the narrative’s core and instead of being horrifying it left me strangely unmoved.