The two works on Ballet Black’s new double bill, HEROES, can be viewed as having a common theme — the desire to honour the unsung heroism of those who struggle to get through the challenges of everyday life. This is vague enough to cover all eventualities, which it does here.
In If at First Sophie Laplane takes inspiration from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting Eroica and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony to ask what it means to be a hero. The soundtrack includes excerpts from the symphony along with 21st-century compositions of a less classical and more nervy disposition. The balletic choreography for nine dancers (in unflattering white underwear) features vignettes that highlight life’s struggles while, as Laplane says, “celebrating the persistence and perseverance of the human spirit”.
