Dance
Ballet Black
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan
four stars
Click! And in a snap of the fingers there’s a creative connection between Ballet Black (BB) and our own national company. The link is Sophie Laplane: resident choreographer with Scottish Ballet, her new work for BB is part of the company’s touring triple bill. Click! isn’t just the title. It’s the sound that echoes through Laplane’s choice of music and it’s the insouciant gesture - as vocalised by The Mudlarks in Just the Snap of Your Fingers (1962) - that can be come hither or dismissive. The five dancers - three women, two men, all in sharp acid-bright suits - are across such shifts in mood as they hip-sway into a cool dude groove or couple up in contrasting duets where one pair has snap and crackle in their bones, the other is smooch-close and slippery-sensual with it. Witty - as we’ve come to expect from Lapalane - and sassy. In short, finger clickin’ good!
The programme opens with Pendulum, Martin Lawrance’s two-handed calligraphy of oppositions with Sayaka Ichikawa and Mthuthuzeli November by turns athletic or balletically poised as they distance themselves in bravura solos or reunite in elegant duets where balances, lifts and exquisite pointe-work echo the dancers’ strengths. November’s own choreography, Ingoma, closes the evening with an intensity that clearly comes from the heart. With only six dancers in the ensemble he nonetheless evokes the erupting tensions of the 1946 miners’ strike that helped foster the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. He references the rhythmic, percussive stomp of the miners’ welly-boot dance, but offsets it with the wrenching, rebellious male solo (Jose Alves) that speaks of sweat-drenched exploitation before the women come centre-stage with their own expressive witness to brutal times. Arms stretch out in a mix of grief, loss, the ache of yearning love but also defiance. Pointe-work and African rhythms come together - it’s a potent gesture of how cultures can connect.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here