Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 29 February 2012

“MEN can be graceful…”, as Michael Marra sings (of football), but dance and ballet have been dominated for centuries by ballerinas, tutus and romance.

THERE have admittedly been all-male dance companies – the programme highlights Ted Shawn’s group in Massachusetts as long ago as the 1940s – and there are dance companies whose members are all very young, like NDT2. But an all-male dance company with mostly very young dancers largely lacking in dance training must have seemed like a massive gamble when Michael Nunn and William Trevitt came up with the idea a year or so ago.

BalletBoyz (photo Hugo Glendinning)

Selecting dancers for what Trevitt calls “ a compelling quality, something that made you … not want to tear your eyes away” (which is the difference between accomplishment and greatness) has proved a not-so-astonishing success. Each of the eight dancers has the eye-drawing, jawdropping quality that marks out the stars of the dance world, or in music separates the soloist from the orchestra player. You could call it ‘soul’. There’s something about them that recalls Black Watch – they’re a unit, a gang, a team, they’re mates on stage and off, as becomes apparent in the post show discussion where they are open, confident, and funny. The audience relaxes and the questions become increasingly frank till “Where are you staying tonight?” brings the house down.

They must be a choreographer’s dream. Russell Maliphant has re-worked the precision machinery of Torsion for them to open the show; a few minutes of this intricate , deceptively casual exploration of pure, athletic movement is all it takes to win the audience over. Impossible to believe from the sureness of their unison dancing and the grace of their turns that some of them haven’t been ballet-trained their entire lives. A series of what I can only describe as fouettes done on the knees is a rare bravura moment in a piece made all the more impressive by its lack of showiness.

Paul Roberts’ Alpha follows after a video diary which, with a nod to the title sequence of Bob Fosse’s wonderful All that Jazz, tells the dancers’ story and also gives them time to draw breath and change into their Waterworld/Pirates of the Caribbean outfits. Slightly higher light levels enable greater appreciation of gym- and class-honed torsos and their stunning leaps and catches.

The final piece, Void by Jarek Cemarek, has a hint of Robbins’ choreography for the rumble scene in West Side Story. All the drapes have gone, leaving a cavernous, industrial space enhanced by the theatre machinery visible on the Empire’s back wall. Hoodie clad dancers run, dart, throw themselves at the floor or each other and somehow are caught, lifted and thrown again – it’s rather like watching the London riots or the Arab Spring. Paradoxically, it’s impossible to create such a realistic appearance of chaos without real depths of control, and they are a credit to their Ballet Master, James McMenemy.

The Talent brings back something that’s been largely missing from the dance world since the 19th century, a much-needed celebration of what it is to be male. It’s a shame there aren’t more young males in the audience to see that dance is definitely not for cissies. If – when – BalletBoyz return, bring your sons, your fathers, your partners, your husbands. They’ll love it too.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

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