Okevan Allen often choreographs for movie premieres, TV, musicals, vogue exhibits, company occasions and pop movies (Hear’Say’s Pure and Easy was considered one of his, 00s followers). However right here he’s along with his personal firm, revisiting a Nineteenth-century ballet. And it doesn’t seem like a lot else you’ll see on the dance stage.
As you’d count on from that CV, Allen is nice at power, immediacy and placing a populist spin on issues. Subtle, delicate choreography that reveals individuals’s interior worlds? Much less so. However that’s not the purpose. I don’t suppose this was made for po-faced dance critics, and it’s doing a laudable UK tour to locations that don’t typically see a lot dance.
The entire thing is a mashup: ballet, up to date, hip-hop, industrial dance, all piled on high of one another. The music, by Swedish composer Rickard Berg, takes Léo Delibes’ ballet rating and remixes it, throwing down a hip-hop beat (in a poor-sounding recording at this theatre). The setting has olde-worlde fairytale vibes but additionally dancers carrying headphones and bouncing basketballs, and the costumes are busy with layers and textures, frills, belts and patches (and all danced barefoot). It’s the “extra is extra” method – messy, however having fun with all of the incongruity.
The story – of an inventor, his lifelike mechanical doll and the younger man who falls in love with it – is the one factor that stays near the traditional ballet. There have been some nice up to date reinventions of Coppélia just lately, equivalent to Scottish Ballet turning it right into a story about AI, however this isn’t considered one of them. Though there’s a belated try on the finish to present Dr Coppélius some depth, there’s not a lot actual funding in character and plot. It’s principally about having enjoyable: broad characters with exaggerated facial expressions, plenty of stage enterprise and busyness.
Allen has gathered an brisk forged of all-rounders, together with Ellie Fergusson, the hyper-flexible winner of the primary sequence of The Biggest Dancer again when she was 14. Taz Hoesli’s hip-hop coaching shines by way of, and Laura Braid is powerful, though the choreography doesn’t actually stretch her. Just like the doll Coppélia, it’s not a totally convincing creation, but it surely’s animated with nice enthusiasm.
