an accident/a life; Northern Ballet: Romeo & Juliet review – a triumph of the spirit | Dance

Marc Brew was just beginning his career as a ballet dancer when a head-on accident left him paralyzed at the age of 20. This is the starting point of an astonishing, touching collaboration between him and the choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which paints an almost phantasmagoric picture of the event that changed his life.

Presented as part of the Norwich and Norfolk Festival, an accident/a life begins with Brew lying limp in front of a car, its headlights glowing. On screens on either side, his words are printed alongside images that both describe the scene and emphasize the significance of this life-changing event and its aftermath. As he crawls across the stage like a crab, the car is lifted high into the air, where it remains, hanging physically and metaphorically over the action like a bad dream.

Occasionally, two figures in crash dummy costumes appear, manipulating props and becoming mute participants – doctors, therapists – in the action. Video images, sometimes clear, sometimes distorted, flash by. At one moment, Brew’s mother is onscreen, worried but warmly supportive; there’s a tantalizing glimpse of him dancing before the actions of a drunk driver killed his three companions and dashed his hopes.

But the cleverness of Pepijn Van Looy’s set and Maxime Guislain’s imaginative imagery is that the focus is firmly on Brew himself. His voiceover is emotionless and expressionless. Yet his movements, directed by Cherkaoui, are eerily expressive, as he maneuvers his limp legs into different shapes or makes his prone body pulsate as he describes his cardiac arrest. His arms weave beautiful patterns. And finally, he races across the stage in a wheelchair in a solo of sudden, fleeting wonder. It is incredibly powerful, an exhilarating defiance of fate, an assertion of life.

The fate is much darker in Romeo & Julia, on tour in a revival of a Northern Ballet production directed by Christopher Gable and choreographed by Massimo Moricone, originally seen in 1991. It quickly became the company’s most popular production. Now it feels a bit like a period piece, a little too polite for its tragic plot, but attractive nonetheless.

The story is clearly told, and Lez Brotherston’s designs create an elegant Italianate setting of grey stone and elegant columns, filled with costumes that are both stylised and colourful. There are also some sharp characterisations: a comic nurse danced with flair by Heather Lehan, and a soaring, jester-like Mercutio, all splits and brio, portrayed with breathtaking gusto by Aaron Kok.

In fact, the whole troupe seems to be on top form, with Dominique Larose’s Juliet acting as a lodestar of emotions, conveying her hopes and fears in a dance of great naturalness and sincerity. The actual steps, however, are sometimes exaggerated and fall into ballet-like subtleties that limit the trajectory.

At times they also seem to work against Prokofiev’s score, which was played with great clarity by the Northern Ballet Sinfonia under the direction of Daniel Parkinson. The presence of live music adds immensely to the production. The greatest tragedy is that, due to Arts Council England funding cuts, the orchestra will not be present when the company tours the production.

Star ratings (out of five)
an accident/a life ★★★★
Romeo and Juliet ★★★