Birmingham Royal Ballet, Luna Review ★★★★★

Since becoming artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) in 2020, Carlos Acosta has worked towards tightening the links between the company and the city it calls home with stage works that showcase Birmingham, its history and its people.

First came City of A Thousand Trades (2021), which focused on the many immigrant workers from all parts of the Commonwealth who came to the city in the 19th century and whose labour contributed to make Birmingham prosper.

Then Black Sabbath - The Ballet (2023), a visual extravaganza where one of Birmingham’s greatest exports, BRB, showcased the work of another, the heavy metal band Black Sabbath

To complete the trilogy, we now have Luna.

It must have seemed a good idea: let’s pay homage to the resilient women of Birmingham, with a work assembling five female choreographers, one female composer, and an all-female technical team.

Further, let’s build in a social/educational element by recruiting 30 youngsters aged eight to 12 to perform as a children’s chorus in Luna, affording them the physical and mental health benefits of singing.

The trouble is that laudable intentions don’t necessarily translate into good art, and to put it bluntly, Luna is very far from good.

Not everything is disastrous, though a lot is. After a lustily delivered little song by the children’s chorus (they’ll return at regular intervals with tiresome ditties of positive affirmation), scene I of six is ‘Terra’, by the Dutch choreographer Wubkje Kuindersma. Against a projection of the moon - the female deity - eight couples dance a well-structured, harmonious piece, relying on lifts and waves of movement.


Artists of BRB in Wubkje Kuindersma's Terra. Photo: Katja Ogrin

This perfectly pleasant piece also introduces the singers that will pop up in later sections: the soprano Marianna Hovhanisyan and the impressive baritone Themba Mvula.

From then on it’s downhill all the way. Seeta Patel’s ‘Learning to Dream Big’ is a frankly ridiculous piece for five women predicated on the benefits of education. There’s much clutching of lit books, much gurning, prancing and enforced child-like jollity, the piece going nowhere but, alas, at great length.

‘Unwavering’ by the Cuban-born choreographer Thais Suarez, is supposed to be about women’s triumph over adversity, though why this should be set to a section from a Requiem (Fauré’s) is anybody’s guess. BRB principal Beatrice Parma gives a tour de force performance delivering a ghastly choreography that requires regular six- o’clock extensions and splayed legs in the air, crotch foremost.

She returns later in a another outlandish section, this one by the Spanish choreographer Iratxe Ansa. Entitled 'Overexposed', it’s that in more ways than one. Parma is joined by eight male dancers bandaged up like refugees from The Invisible Man (costume design Imaan Ashraf).


Beatrice Parma and artists of BRB in Overexposed by Iratxe Ansa. Photo: Katja Ogrin

And so it goes, though in Act II the gloom is somewhat relieved by Arielle Smith’s 'Empowerment '(pictured top). Smith is never less than interesting, and although not among her most memorable works, this section for eight women in flowing earth-coloured skirts is a no-nonsense, elegant piece of dance-making.

A word of unstinting praise must go to BRB dancers, all of whom performed this mostly questionable material with admirable skill and commitment. One of the stars of this rating belongs to them.