Just as my hope of ever seeing quality contemporary dance again in Cardiff faded along swaggers Rambert’s just fabulous Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby. This is deliriously delicious, delightfully dangerous dance. Not to mention scintillating stylish, sensuous, and just so sexy.
I have never seen the TV series Peaky Blinders and so this was all new to me and while fans of the show will probably have gained even more than I did it was all subtly narrated story telling through fabulous red-blooded dance. When it comes to getting the pulse racing there is nothing quite like a bit of toxic masculinity in the form of gorgeous dancers with elegant, athletic choreography. The strength and darkness were not confined to the men as the fierce, proud women dance and fought alongside their first world war shocked, damaged, near walking-dead men. Add to that the most exquisite dance from the lithe Seren Williams and you have a celebration of perfect dance.
The story opens with the horrors of trench warfare as our tunnelers sink into the rank despair and grime of battle and then we are in an almost as brutal 1920’s Birmingham. To the uninitiated it could have been an industrial American mob ruled town with the gangsters, their cabaret bar molls and dancing girlies and some near burlesque characters.
If this is what the Steven Knight drama is like I will do my usual trick and come late to the party.
The show is a rock ballet and the first half of the production from Rambert’s Artistic Director Benoit Swan Pouffer is loud, raw, throat grabbingly gripping, and sweeps along at a febrile pace.
The music is a combination of creations from composer Roman Gianarthur, heavily rhythmic guitar, strong percussion, and wonderfully evocative singing, along with songs from Radiohead, Anna Calvi, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Nick Cave. Caps off to musicians Yaron Engler, Henry Thomas and The Last Morrell. Even if this is not your passion you will not fail to get absorbed into the show. It is gloriously addictive. The Nick Cave song is so cool we have it twice! Along the way we have a sort of narration from Birmingham’s dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah.
Speaking of which, the second half of the show slows as our anti-hero copes, or does not cope, with tragedy and opium takes over his brain – and the choreography. The opiate-induced sequences are just mesmerising, blood curdling in their horror and otherworldly ethereal dystopian nightmare.
The set designer Moi Tran enables the dancers to appear on several levels, including, actually and symbolically, in a versatile trench in and out of which they slide, leap and sink. There is a large array of scenes from a wonderful stylised races and carousel ride to the nightclub scenes that ooze a cross between Chicago and Cabaret, inhabited by beautiful creatures dressed by costume designer Richard Gellar.
Joseph Kudra is testosterone fuelled, powerful and graceful in the central role, matched by a ravishing partner and the other members of the Shelby clan, Arthur (Dylan Tedaldi) and Polly (Caití Carpenter). The cast members are at the peak of their art, portraying refined characterisations, transforming from street fighters to policemen with their hounds (splendid stuff) to speakeasy spivs and their broads (whatever the Birmingham equivalent may be).
Thomas’s companions, and their family members are played by red hot dancers Jonathan Wade, Musa Motha, Archie White, Cali Hollister, Antonello Sangiradi, Angélique Blasco and Guillaume Quéau the Factory Foreman. The Rambert troupe are all dancers of superlative quality and team members, Alex Soulliere, Simone Damberg Würtz, Aishwarya Raut, Conor Kerrigan, Naya Lovell, Adél Bálint, Max Day and Tristan Carter never cease to engage their audience as the time races by.
I just wanted it to start all over again. It was just that fabulous. If only our dance companies could produce anything remotely as satisfying and accomplished as this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-mflgHmOMI
Until March 25
https://www.wmc.org.uk/en/whats-on/2023/rambert-peaky-blinders
Images: Credit: Johan Persson