REVIEW | Jane Eyre, Northern Ballet
Jane Eyre is without a doubt of literature's most well-known heroines. Within the year that marks the novel's author, Charlotte Bronte's 200th birthday, choreographer Cathy Marston creates a contemporary reworking of the classic novel in contemporary/ballet style with a well known and well-loved dance company, Northern Ballet.
Northern Ballet are based up in Leeds and have become the powerhouse of inventive dance. With bold and confident ways in their approach to engage and involve their audiences. I have loved scrolling through their website and seeing what productions they have coming up, I'm definitely intrigued by their performance of Beauty and The Beast so I will definitely check that out.
So when Curve provided me the opportunity to review another dance work in the same week I couldn't say no to the opportunity to watch some Ballet. It's not always my go to when it comes to watching dance but sometimes it's nice to watch something different and open your eyes to other areas of the theatre spectrum.
The story shows has themes of love, betrayal and belonging, the stage translates the story from the pages of the book. Every character of the piece completely undertook their character with every movement they made across the space. Dreda Blow played the leading woman of Jane Eyre so so so well, I actually couldn't keep my eyes off her throughout the whole performance. I also loved Javier Torres as Edward Rochester who honestly reminded me of an early Peter Andre (a couple of ladies behind me in the audience agreed too!)
The dancing was flawless, there wasn't a step wrong and they had complete control in every movement. I loved the diversity in lifts and levels that were used to add emphasis into the choreography. The choreographer did an absolutely awesome job of creating the work.
I could definitely see the combination of Ballet and Contemporary in the choreography and it definitely changed my perceptions on how Ballet is changing and it's technique is allowing elements of other styles within it. This is without even taking the Ballet formations and core away from it.
The music score performed by a live orchestra added to the whole atmosphere and emotion to the piece, adding a whole level of narrative to the work. The music also helped guide us through the piece with our emotions which is always good.
I loved how full the theatre was for this performance. It showed that The Curve have a really good reception for Ballet's within their audience and I'd be really intrigued to see some more performances by Northern Ballet after watching this one.
You can also check out all the many dance performances and more which are happening over at the Curve Theatre. There are all sorts of exciting things coming up in their Autumn 2016 programme!
