Review: English National Ballet’s double bill Body and Soul – commentaries on the state of the contemporary world
Jonathan Gray sees English National Ballet in a new double bill, Body and Soul, which the company dances to perfection.
| Title | Body and Soul (Part 1) | Proper Conduct |
| Company | English National Ballet |
| Venue | Sadler’s Wells, London |
| Date | 19 March 2026 |
| Reviewer | Jonathan Gray |
If you are looking for an evening of light-hearted dance, then English National Ballet‘s latest mixed bill at Sadler’s Wells is not the one for you. Titled Body and Soul and comprising the British premiere of Crystal Pite‘s Body and Soul (Part 1), created for the Paris Opéra Ballet in 2019, and the world premiere of Proper Conduct by Kameron N Saunders, the works are danced commentaries on the state of the contemporary world and are bleak in tone and atmosphere.
According to Saunders, a prominent figure in the commercial dance world, Proper Conduct is the “first work I’ve done that is this length, with this many dancers,” and I felt this inexperience, in a ballet full of interesting ideas, showed. I took it to be a condemnation of Trump’s America, with its increasingly draconian restrictions on the population, as the ballet centres around a Narrator figure (danced by Jose María Lorca Menchón) who acts as a monstrous authoritarian MC. At the start, he shows the audience a carefree world, with the dancers wearing Kimie Nakano’s bright costumes as they skip about the stage in a happy gush of movement (I almost had a flashback to the Age of Aquarius). They form chains and circles of dances within their happy community.
This, according to the Narrator, is a world where “beneath lies rot”, which he wants to expose to the audience. To a gasping, panting soundtrack composed by Brandon Finklea Harold Walker III and orchestrated by Gavin Sutherland, the lights dim and the dancers disrobe in a suggestion of forbidden sex. The choreography incorporates some interesting dance imagery here, such as a procession of women held up high on the shoulders of a group of men, and a pile-up of female bodies on the floor, but it is all quite mild, and almost puritanical in the suggestion that pleasure in sex is a bad thing.
Pronouncing that “Progress is not progress, it’s poison,” in the final section, the Narrator presents to the audience a vision of his ideal world. A nightmare enclosed within white walls and floor, the people have become automatons, their bodies covered in all-enveloping white suits, their faces hidden by visors, their dancing repetitious and machine-like, their personalities eradicated. It should disturb, and yet, somehow, I wasn’t, and I did wonder why. Saunders has produced lots of ideas, and an interesting vocabulary of movements for his dancers, but the work is too simplistic and lacks the incisive edge I believe he intends to convey.
Perhaps Proper Conduct seemed underpowered because it was seen in comparison to the Crystal Pite work that preceded it. She is a skilled and highly experienced dance maker, and Body and Soul (Part 1) is the perfect demonstration of the way she can brilliantly use spoken word for the basis of dance. Whether moving as a huge ensemble or as individuals, the dancers’ actions correspond exactly to the words of Pite’s recorded text (spoken in French by Marina Hands of the Comédie-Française), which are then repeated and fractured into a score by her long-time collaborator Owen Belton. Although Pite offers moments of tenderness and hope, her choreography for Body and Soul suggests anxiety, antagonism, aggression, and an unsettling undercurrent of nihilism. Nancy Bryant’s uniform costumes, which range from greatcoats to black trousers and white vests, add to the sense of despondency.
In one remarkable sequence, Pite uses the ensemble of dancers to represent the waves of the ocean, their bodies undulating and rippling en masse to the sound of the sea, then transforms them into a crowd of angry protestors who eventually separate to reveal the prone body of a man on the floor. The choreography is suggestive of a breakdown in society, and as the ballet ends the lights dim on the desolate image of a woman grieving and cradling the fallen man in a Pietà-like pose.
Like Proper Conduct, Body and Soul is essentially an ensemble work that English National Ballet dances to perfection. It also offers the audience tantalising glimpses of fine artists such as Ivana Bueno, Zai Calliste, Gareth Haw, Emmas Hawes, Sangeun Lee, Rentaro Nakaaki, Fabian Reimair and Ken Saruhashi. All of them are marvellous and serve their choreographer magnificently.
Jonathan Gray was editor of Dancing Times from 2008 to 2022.
He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. He was on the Curatorial Staff of the Theatre Museum, London, from 1989 to 2005, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet’s productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty.
Jonathan Gray has also contributed to the Financial Times and The Guardian, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005. He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
