The other day I had the pleasure of going and watching "young men" by ballet boyz, in Saddlers wells theatre, London! Ballet boys is a well renowned company of predominantly male (as the name suggests) contemporary dancers.
The show I went to watch called "young men", a tribute to the thousands of young boys who lost their lives on D-day (ww2) which happened 70 years ago. This theme was evident in the performance, through the style of movement, formations and performance skills, which showed many different aspects of the war: pain, suffering, love, friendship and trust.
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| my ticket :) |
Act one showed us, how the young men were recruited, what they left behind, learning to fight, work as a team and the very start of the war. Whereas act two focused more on the war itself, the fights amongst the troops, and some going home injured or mentally unwell.
The emotions in this piece were very high there were certainly a few movement where I was close to tears watching the piece: not just when the men had to leave their families and loved ones behind but in the movements that they were doing particularly in some of the solos, even from quite a height I could feel the emotions that they were giving off, this was very closely linked to the accompaniment which was quite sorrowful, the live orchestra in this part used a lot of violins and contrasted this with the use of a deep drum. The music to choreography relationship for me was one of the strongest things about this performance I didn't spot any timing issues or slip ups, and found myself transfixed on the sheer elegance and grace of these dancers but also the effortless power that they sustained throughout the performance, while doing trick after trick.
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| different poses on different levels help add interest, dancing in very mutual clothing which would have been warn in the time period. |
Something I'd like to pick up on is that I find with a lot of companies they can perform the same tricks over and over again in the same layout and order that we saw them earlier, so for me seeing how the routines were choreographed with tricks repeated but in different orders or combined with something new, made it really captivating. It also left me wondering how they did it? which makes you interested in seeing more. One of the main foundations of dance, or even performing is to capture an audience, to make them inspired and to leave them awestruck, in some cases is very hard to do.
Having said this there were moments where I did loose attention and the performance didn't quite capture me as it should, I think this was because of the changed in soloists during the routine, who showed less emotion through their body. I found that a particular criticism that I personally would have is the moment in the second half where they started playing a card game, the idea behind it was to set the scene, which I understand but I feel it went too long, and I felt my attention start to go, maybe more so due to it being considerable less captivating that the dance before. It may have helped for something else to be happening at the time maybe music in the background or war sound effects like earlier in the piece, to set the scene, as they all formed a circle in centre stage under a spotlight but with some side lighting so the stage could all be seen as opposed to just the dancers which again if it had been darkness with just a single spotlight on the group it would have drawn my attention in for longer.
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| Shows use of levels and core strength, pose insinuates someone falling or being shot during battle. |
There was a solo that I found particularly interesting and it was a dancer contorting his body in a disjointed way, to give the effect of him being crippled by injury, he started the routine being able to do amazing tricks and balances with complete control and then slowly throughout the solo we saw him deteriorate into the floor by increasing the changes in levels as to portray the idea that his injuries and physical health got worse, which was hard to watch in terms of emotions. What I found quite touching was that the other dancers or "young men" came on stage when he was at his lowest and all helped to build him back up, showing the themes friendship and team work amongst the troops. This then developed into a well formatted group piece, where everyone would be dancing in unison and one by one they'd break away as to become injured and then re-join the rest of the group. This bit also flowed really well as the dancers swapped roles of who was injured they would stop and then start where the last member finished almost to show the continuation of ones injury.
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| Soloist bending his body in different ways. lack of clothes helps show venerability, but helps draw attention to muscles and ligaments in the body making his movements seem more strenuous as the light catches them |
Overall I enjoyed the performance its a very emotional piece and I would recommend it to someone else, I felt the choreography and live orchestra where the two overall highlights of the performance, and there's only certain things that I would change such as the scene with the card so as to maintain the attention of all the audience members!
By Emma Louise xx
