I suppose I should just get this out in the open.
The fact is, I love ballet. In the same way I love musicals, the same way I love plays, the same way I love any kind of stage show.
I’m a fiend for spectacle, raw talent mere feet from my own talentless face, something unfolding live in that moment that seems like magic but is amazingly real. Ballet is magic. Doubt me? Take a look at the dancers in Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Grey holding their own bodies straight as blades by their upper body muscles alone. While suspending themselves five foot off the floor on a metal frame. Now take a look at your own arms and do a little compare and contrast. Go on, it’s magic, isn’t it?
I went to see Dorian Grey yesterday and fell in love all over again. It’s not quite ballet, in fact I’m not sure what I’d call it (unless I used the phrase “…through the medium of dance” which is an insult to all producers/directors/choreographers everywhere and should only ever be applied to New Age women in spandex perfoming to a crowd of six at the local village fete).
I think Oscar would have been proud of this. No, it’s not the original story, yes, there is more overt homosexuality, yes, it is modern, but by being modern it doesn’t in any way lose the concept or the relevance of the original story – in fact I think our world demands Dorian Grey, it knows him, it sees him everywhere and tries to make him anew every day out of the young and the clueless. It is indeed “an ugly story about beauty”.
Entire show (and I do mean entire, my apologies Richard Winsor) passionately and comprehensively stolen by the wonderful Aaron Sillis, dancing the doomed photographer Basil Hallward. Such dynamism. Such control. Such acting. Special mention also to Christopher Marney, dancing Cyril Vane, for the “stage-door” costume which had to be a nod to Nureyev, and the sharp, concise portrayal of shallow vanity.
Beautiful pictures of Aaron (he’s the one in black with the camera: all of my close friends will instantly say “Oh, no wonder she liked him”) and the rest of the sterling cast here.
