Last Updated on May 13, 2026

BalletBoyz’s Much Anticipated Return to the Stage

If BalletBoyz worried that a relatively long absence from the stage might have diminished their appeal, they needn’t have worried: their many supporters were out in force for the première of Pointless: BalletBoyz at 25, the show that marks the company’s 25th anniversary at Sadler’s Wells, where founder directors Michael Nunn and Billy Trevitt are Associate Artists.

A newly minted 10-strong company presented a selection of works with particular significance in the life of the company, plus one brand new piece, signalling Nunn and Trevitt’s determination to continue commissioning new work, tailor-made for the company.

The programme was cleverly assembled: live performance was interspersed with film clips that contextualised the works with Nunn and Trevitt’s trademark intelligence and self-deprecating humour. Film has been a key component of BalletBoyz’ shows from the very beginning.

In the beginning, then, was Critical Mass, danced in 2001 at the Roundhouse by Nunn and Trevitt, fresh out of The Royal Ballet and embarking on a radical change of course.

One dancer holds the hand of other who leans back on low bent knees — Still Pointless: BalletBoyz at 25. Critical Mass. Photo: Amber Hunt

Twenty-five years later the original BalletBoyz returned to the stage to perform an extract from Russell Maliphant’s demanding, push-and-pull piece, and show that they may be a quarter of a century older, but they remain enviably fit and haven’t lost the mutual understanding that has always characterised their performances and which they have been able to pass on to their company, made up, as tongue-in-cheek Trevitt put it on voice over, of “younger, fitter, more beautiful versions of ourselves.”

The new piece, Motor Cortex, came from BalletBoyz dancer and up-and-coming choreographer Seirian Griffiths.

A group of black-clad dancers form a human mass standing on low bent knees behind a dancer who lies on the ground — Still Pointless: BalletBoyz at 25. Motor Cortex. Photo: Amber Hunt

Set to an assertive score by Berwyn Cooper and atmospherically lit by Andrew Ellis, this is an absorbing piece for eight dancers, its grounded contemporary movement full of weight and intention, and drawing, too, from breakdancing, in which the multi-talented Griffiths is proficient. It’s a worthy addition to BalletBoyz’ repertoire, and I very much look forward to seeing it again.

Among the remaining seven pieces, an extract from choreographer Iván Pérez’s Young Men brought the first half of the programme to a powerful close. Taken from the 2015 work marking the centenary of World War I (and itself the subject of a BalletBoyz feature film), it depicts the horrors of war with graphic intensity, focused on the harrowing figure of a shell-shocked soldier (a deeply affecting Benji Knapper).

A single dancer with a haunted face leans forward, right leg lifted to form a 90 degree angle with his body — Still Pointless: BalletBoyz at 25. Young Men. Photo: Amber Hunt

It’s an emotional piece, which stands out powerfully against what went before, accomplished pieces such as Xie Xin’s Ripple, and Maliphant’s Fallen, both of which privilege form over emotion.

The second part brought another emotional moment: a film clip of the late choreographer Liam Scarlett rehearsing his piece Serpent and talking about the ‘sense of fluidity’ he instilled into the movement, its ‘animalistic quality’, inspired by the titular serpent, ‘beautiful with a deadly attack’.

A group od dancers lift one with a leg stretched up, watched by a crouching man — Still Pointless: BalletBoyz are 25. Serpent. Photo: Amber Hunt

Serpent poignantly demonstrated the great loss Scarlett’s tragic death at 35 represented for British ballet.

In Maxine Doyle’s Bradley 4:18 the stage was dense with testosterone, as six dancers in suits enacted the rituals of young men out on the tiles: aggression, fighting, challenges and camaraderie following in quick succession in a fast-moving, energetic piece set to a jazzy score by Cassie Kinoshi.

The short, but totally absorbing duet Us, by Christopher Wheeldon, has long been one of my favourite BalletBoyz pieces and it was good to see it again here, sensitively danced by Dylan Jones and Paris Fitzpatrick.

Two bare-chested dancers in an intense duet, one supporting the weight of the other as he leans back on low bent knees — Still Pointless: BalletBoyz at 25. Us. Photo: Amber Hunt

It is set to a yearning score by Keaton Henson and portrays an encounter between two men from their first tentative, electrifying fingertip touch to a fully fledged, very physical pas de deux. It really is a thing of beauty,

The programme ends with the inimitable, wacky humour of Javier de Frutos in Fiction. A piece for the whole company, set around a dance barre, it is performed to de Frutos’s own obituary (it IS fiction, after all), read in stop-start fashion by the plummy voice of actor Jim Carver (of Downton Abbey fame).