Shadows, Ballet Black: What would you do if your sister kept killing people?
Such is the simple but strong premise of My Sister, The Serial Killer, one of two premieres that make up Ballet Black's brooding new double-bill, Shadows. About 50 pithy minutes straight through, the piece is an adaptation, by BB's founder and artistic director Cassa Pancho, of the gallows-humorous 2019 bestseller of the same name by Oyinkan Braithwaite, essentially an elaborate riff on the dictum that you may be able to choose your friends, but you sure can't choose your family.
With a little (ok, quite a bit) more money, Pancho might have been enjoyably able to preserve the book's bustling Lagos setting. As it is, the piece plays out in a present-day everytown, with lighting and a handful of props working hard to set the scene, along with a cinematic score by Tom Harrold.
Part neo-classical, part contemporary, it plunges us straight in medias res, with Korede (Isabela Coracy, dancing and acting her heart out) steeling herself for what she knows she's about to find: Ayoola (Helga Paris-Morales), in a blood-soaked nightdress, with a fresh cadaver just inches away. Out, yet again, comes the Cillit Bang...
That spirit of pithy, punchy storytelling continues, with the gentle romantic promise of Korede's lyrical little duet with the doctor Tade (Ebony Thomas) soon cruelly swept away by his and Ayoola's whiz-bang first meeting. Instantly, the potentially blood-soaked love triangle is set up, with Puerto Rico-born Paris-Morales displaying not only the come-hither physical slinkiness but also the looks to convince as this most fatale of femmes. (The work feels in many ways like a fusion-in-dance of the neo-noir film Basic Instinct and friendly-serial-killer telly series Dexter, which can only be a Good Thing.)
There's also an impeccably staged party scene, with Ayoola coolly poisoning a fellow in a boudoir while a clutch of revellers groove seductively in the room next door to Toots and the Maytals' 1968 reggae classic 54-46 That's My Number (a song I've particularly loved ever since winning a battle of the bands with it, though that's a story for another time). And Pancho also capitalises on her art form to serve up two melodramatic but still gripping nightmare scenes, which lay bare Korede's efforts to process her and Ayoola's actions.
Ultimately, it is the evident closeness of the two leads' relationship that carries this outlandish story plausibly along and keeps you hooked. It's enjoyable pulp fiction in the main, though there is a deeper point at its core: if a beloved family member did something horrific, what would you do? (Rating: * * * *)
The opening piece, A Shadow Work, is about the same length as My Sister... but feels longer. The British debut of New Yorker Chanel DaSilva, it delves into the titular works of 'shadow work', the Jungian practice of therapeutically laying bare the subconscious.
I enjoyed Taraja Hudson's lead, vividly exploiting DaSilva's protean choreography, and Acaoã de Castro as the psychological Virgil to her Dante; neat use, too, of an old-school document box as a metaphor for suppressed emotions. What it lacks is a sense of progress, of really going somewhere – by the end, the promise of the concept and earlier scenes has rather fizzled, however capable the collective performances. (* * *)
Still, treat it as a mood-darkening amuse-bouche for the knife-wielding main event, and you're likely to have a good evening. The Hackney Empire audience certainly did, never mind the fact that the entire bill was somehow cobbled together while the company was unenviably between bases. Not for the first time, hats off to BB.
At Hackney until March 15, then touring until July; balletblack.co.uk
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