Ballet Black at 25 Festival Theatre Edinburgh 19th June 2026 Review
Ballet Black at 25 was at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh for one date only so, sadly, by the time that you are reading this review, it is too late to catch two very different but powerful works.
As you would expect from the title of the show, Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black is celebrating 25 years of creativity and bringing bold and new ballets to stages in the UK and across the world. Tonight, hope was very much the theme of the evening, but a hope to be strived for under very different circumstances.
Opening tonight's programme of dance was a new work, "...all towards hope" by choreographer Hope Boykin, a creative talent with many awards during her distinguished career.
This work is many things, and is in part inspired by Hope's own name and what expectations people around her have placed upon this name. Is this name a burden or a gift? Clearly, Hope Boykin has come to accept her name as a gift. There is of course, much more to this work than just a name, and here hope is something to strive for both on a personal and collective level in society. Here is a vision of a world of many different voices and opinions, and yes there may be differences, but the hope is always there to strive for that the end goal is a better world for everyone to live in.
There is an expressive fluidity to every movement in this work, a graceful line that celebrates the dancers’ movements and inner spirits both individually and collectively. There is a lightness, a brightness to Hope Boykin's choreography here and that is augmented by lighting (David Plater) and design (Jessica Cabassa). An original, and at times wonderfully jazz themed, score by composer Bill Laurance is the perfect match to Hope Boykin's choreography.
If I have one small negative here though, it is that a lot of "...all towards hope" is performed to a spoken narrative. Words are clearly important here and it would have been nice to have these incorporated into the printed programme, or even just projected on the back of the set.
The second work, after the interval, was “Ingoma” by choreographer Mthuthuzeli November. This is a work that I first saw performed by Ballet Black in 2019 when it was then Mthuthuzeli November's first choreographed work, and I have been waiting since then to see it performed again as it left such an impression upon me.
"Ingoma" was co-commissioned in 2019 by the Barbican and was inspired by Gerard Sekoto's painting, Song of the Pick (1947). This is the story of African mineworkers and their wildcat strike in Marikina 2012. Here hope is still a theme, but is the hope born out of a struggle that working conditions and wages can be improved for the miners. Unlike the brightness of "...all towards hope", this is a very much darker work as the miners’ demands were met with swift brutality when police opened fire killing 34 miners. This was the South African security force’s most lethal use of force against civilians since the Soweto Uprising in 1976.
What gives this work so much of its power though is not this incident alone, or the politics of the strike itself, but Mthuthuzeli November's wise choice to also concentrate on the effects that all of this violence had on the women and children of the miners. Here we share through instinctive choreography their hopes, fears, courage and will to simply carry on. In contrast to the first work, "Ingoma's" lighting design (David Plater) and costume design (Yann Seabra) are working with far more sombre colour tones to great visual effect, highlighting just how physical and powerful this work is.
There is a spoken word element to this work too, and this time it is in the programme notes...the lord’s prayer, "Our Father who art in Heaven" spoken in Xhosa.
Review by Tom King (C) 2026
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
As you would expect from the title of the show, Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black is celebrating 25 years of creativity and bringing bold and new ballets to stages in the UK and across the world. Tonight, hope was very much the theme of the evening, but a hope to be strived for under very different circumstances.
Opening tonight's programme of dance was a new work, "...all towards hope" by choreographer Hope Boykin, a creative talent with many awards during her distinguished career.
This work is many things, and is in part inspired by Hope's own name and what expectations people around her have placed upon this name. Is this name a burden or a gift? Clearly, Hope Boykin has come to accept her name as a gift. There is of course, much more to this work than just a name, and here hope is something to strive for both on a personal and collective level in society. Here is a vision of a world of many different voices and opinions, and yes there may be differences, but the hope is always there to strive for that the end goal is a better world for everyone to live in.
There is an expressive fluidity to every movement in this work, a graceful line that celebrates the dancers’ movements and inner spirits both individually and collectively. There is a lightness, a brightness to Hope Boykin's choreography here and that is augmented by lighting (David Plater) and design (Jessica Cabassa). An original, and at times wonderfully jazz themed, score by composer Bill Laurance is the perfect match to Hope Boykin's choreography.
If I have one small negative here though, it is that a lot of "...all towards hope" is performed to a spoken narrative. Words are clearly important here and it would have been nice to have these incorporated into the printed programme, or even just projected on the back of the set.
The second work, after the interval, was “Ingoma” by choreographer Mthuthuzeli November. This is a work that I first saw performed by Ballet Black in 2019 when it was then Mthuthuzeli November's first choreographed work, and I have been waiting since then to see it performed again as it left such an impression upon me.
"Ingoma" was co-commissioned in 2019 by the Barbican and was inspired by Gerard Sekoto's painting, Song of the Pick (1947). This is the story of African mineworkers and their wildcat strike in Marikina 2012. Here hope is still a theme, but is the hope born out of a struggle that working conditions and wages can be improved for the miners. Unlike the brightness of "...all towards hope", this is a very much darker work as the miners’ demands were met with swift brutality when police opened fire killing 34 miners. This was the South African security force’s most lethal use of force against civilians since the Soweto Uprising in 1976.
What gives this work so much of its power though is not this incident alone, or the politics of the strike itself, but Mthuthuzeli November's wise choice to also concentrate on the effects that all of this violence had on the women and children of the miners. Here we share through instinctive choreography their hopes, fears, courage and will to simply carry on. In contrast to the first work, "Ingoma's" lighting design (David Plater) and costume design (Yann Seabra) are working with far more sombre colour tones to great visual effect, highlighting just how physical and powerful this work is.
There is a spoken word element to this work too, and this time it is in the programme notes...the lord’s prayer, "Our Father who art in Heaven" spoken in Xhosa.
Review by Tom King (C) 2026
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com