Last Updated on March 20, 2026
UK premieres by Crystal Pite and Kameron N. Saunders
3.0 out of 5.0 starsEnglish National Ballet’s latest double bill, Body & Soul, now on at Sadler’s Wells, brings together two UK premieres by transatlantic choreographers: Canadian Crystal Pite, a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist, and American Kameron N. Saunders, a newcomer to these shores.
With her unique ability to move masses of people on stage, while also creating close-up dances of deeply affecting human intimacy, multi-award winning Crystal Pite is in great demand internationally – Body & Soul was originally created for Paris Opera Ballet in 2019 as a full evening work in three Acts. In its current bill English National Ballet dances Act I.
The palette is a stark monochrome, the grey stage bathed in Tom Visser’s subdued lighting, with a lantern suspended from above initially casting a yellowish light over two immobile figures, one lying down, the other standing. The soft voice of the unseen actress Marina Hands, speaking in French, describes the scene: one man paces up and down, left, right, left, right…
Her text will be repeated throughout the piece, at times clearly, at other times indistinct, providing a kind of rhythm later complemented by Owen Belton’s electronic score plus, towards the end, a few notes from Chopin piano compositions.
Throughout, duets are interspersed with ensemble dances, where large groups flood the stage moving like a powerful tide, their unisex costumes deliberately blurring the distinctions between men and women.
Crystal Pite brings in her consistent preoccupations with connection and conflict. The first duets are combative, Sangeun Lee and Rentaro Nakaaki feeding off each other’s strength, or deeply emotional, as when Ivana Bueno and Zac Calliste cling to each other, until the work goes full circle and Emma Hawes is left bereft, grieving over the body of a fallen Ken Saruhashi.
The ensemble sections, all those bodies so connected they move as one, are mesmerising. At one point two lines of dancers push against each other to create a powerful wave effect that sweeps the stage to the sound of an angry sea. Intimacy and crowd behaviour blend seamlessly in a continuum of movement that inexorably draws you in. It’s Pite at her very best, using all the instruments at her disposal – music, the human voice, movement – to create deep emotional complexity under a surface of simplicity.
Which is something Kameron N. Saunders, who works in contemporary as well commercial dance, could learn from. Proper Conduct, commissioned by ENB, is his first piece at this length, with a large cast and a live orchestra; and as is often the case with first works, he tried to throw a lot at it, including an fairly indigestible concept.
Proper Conduct also has a narrator on voice over, represented on stage by one dancer in a vaguely clownish white costume.
Conceived as a piece in three Acts, it starts with a jolly, carefree party atmosphere, where a series of couples in colourful street costumes dance merrily, with enthusiastic jumps and lifts, jogged along by an easy-listening musical score played live by the English National Ballet Philharmonic, conducted by Maria Seletskaja.
So far, so “uncatastrophic”, to quote the narrator… But, he goes on, underneath all that carefree jollity there is something very dark and corrupt. Cut to a scene reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno or any other representations of sin and hell your own cultural references might dictate. Effectively lit in dark orange tones by Josh Harriette, this is a scene of the underworld. People walk on backward as they undress; couples of all descriptions cling to each other. They are the damned.
In order to be saved from this, we can move onto a well-marshalled world, safer apparently, but deprived of individuality, as represented by a group of dancers in white costumes identical to that of the narrator, wearing metallic masks and moving with unnerving robotic precision.
Sadly, Proper Conduct again demonstrates the saying that less is more. Too much concept never works. And, as Pite so clearly shows, whispering is so much more effective than shouting.
Body & Soul is at Sadler’s Wells 19 – 28 March
Sadler’s Wells Angel
Rosebery Avenue
London EC1R 4TN
Leave a Reply