Sadler’s Wells, London
This ‘psychic landscape of Albion’ deploys a huge ensemble to send its dancers spinning through a patchwork of national mythology
You have to hand it to BalletBoyz (Michael Nunn and William Trevitt) for sheer chutzpah. Spurred by Stephen Ellcock and Mat Osman’s book England on Fire – an incongruous yet undeniably alchemical collection of images and words conjuring “the psychic landscape of Albion” – they gathered no less than 40 artists, including nine choreographers, six composers, 14 dancers (one on film only), a rock band, an instrumental ensemble and a folk singer, to create a composite performance that might likewise invoke the inner life of this motley, many-faced and much-mythologised country – minus its surface pleasantries and its upright mask. All in about 80 minutes.
The connecting thread is the white blond figure of Artemis Stamouli, initially seen stretched on a dark couch as if asleep or aswoon. The couch metamorphoses into black-robed creatures who melt from beneath her as Stamouli, flop-limbed as a newborn calf, awakes into a fever dream of “Albion”. Here she will be watched by druids with animal heads, and join a raggle-taggle, multiracial troupe of merrymakers, tunicked, frocked and pantalooned in mismatched but not clashing outfits. Couples will spiral like sycamore seeds in the gusts of each other’s limbs, and bodies will pitch and roll like pebbles tugged by a tide.
At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 11 November
