Black Ballet in 25 Reviews – A dazzling double bill brings resistance and hope | Dance

IIt’s been 25 years since the indomitable Ballet Black company was founded, and to mark the occasion they’re treating us to a very good double bill. The company generally commissions works from outside choreographers, but here it blows its own trumpet by bringing to life a great score by one of their own – Ingoma (2019) by Mthuthuzile November, who has since continued to work on an international scale.

It doesn’t take long to figure out why this piece was hacked. The film’s subject is the 2012 Marikana strike in South Africa, in which police killed 34 miners, and what initially seems like a spectacle—dark figures in overalls and headlights, one man center stage (Ebony Thomas), joined by his wife (Isabella Corasi) in a pleading duet—soon gives way to rings of thundering force, the miners’ rhythmic dance building to relentless lift and powerful thrust. the job. The focus then shifts to their women, whose pained gestures and crude movements speak of their anger and struggle. Driven by relentless drumming and soaring strings, the two groups coalesced in a flurry of rebellion, registering its aftershock in the winding, isolated solos of Helga Paris Morales and Taraja Hudson. Throughout November he keeps the physical and emotional dynamics high, but always human.

Preceding this dense social drama is All Toward Hope, an abstract and utterly stunning new dance by American choreographer Hope Boykin that speaks – often literally, in voiceover – of idealism, warmth, openness and community. If the words mark the territory, sometimes didactically, the choreography has an eloquence of its own, deftly combining individuality and togetherness in beautiful lines of movement: lines that ripple and straighten, sudden sprints that draw others into the wind, easy walks and heart-lifting sways that the dancers share with each other without affectation.

As the mood shifts from serious to playful, or cold to warm, one character (Kurasi) weaves like a bright thread through the scenes, a point of identification that occasionally falls out of the flow, whether to attend to a wordless self-portrait another dancer is offering her, or to cast smiling eyes at the audience so that we understand that we, too, are in this work together.

Resistance and hope in one evening of dancing – for now, that’s a gift.