You have to hand it to BalletBoyz (Michael Nunn and William Trevitt) for sheer chutzpah. Spurred by Stephen Ellcock and Mat Osman’s book England on Fire – an incongruous yet undeniably alchemical collection of images and words conjuring “the psychic landscape of Albion” – they gathered no less than 40 artists, including nine choreographers, six composers, 14 dancers (one on film only), a rock band, an instrumental ensemble and a folk singer, to create a composite performance that might likewise invoke the inner life of this motley, many-faced and much-mythologised country – minus its surface pleasantries and its upright mask. All in about 80 minutes.
The connecting thread is the white blond figure of Artemis Stamouli, initially seen stretched on a dark couch as if asleep or aswoon. The couch metamorphoses into black-robed creatures who melt from beneath her as Stamouli, flop-limbed as a newborn calf, awakes into a fever dream of “Albion”. Here she will be watched by druids with animal heads, and join a raggle-taggle, multiracial troupe of merrymakers, tunicked, frocked and pantalooned in mismatched but not clashing outfits. Couples will spiral like sycamore seeds in the gusts of each other’s limbs, and bodies will pitch and roll like pebbles tugged by a tide.
Times change, moods change. Rock guitars bring a crowd to a pitch of savage tension, part wild (arms flying, torsos thrashing) and part ordered (it’s on the beat). A fly-by of television images – prime ministers, monarchs, protest marches, sporting and entertainment highlights – form a backdrop to a yobbish mob in loose underwear, melding up-yours attitude and in-sync motion. Throughout, a back projection of a red cross flags everything as English. Stamouli will plunge into these assorted scenes, and she will feel like flying from them, and she will end up in a feelgood folkdance that might, in reality, be good to wake up from.
At its best, England on Fire reaches towards an Alan Garner-ish melding of place, spirit and symbol, or taps a punk-rock energy, or – maybe most English of all, in one wry trio for dancers in shaggy-beast outfits with tinkly bells on – deflates its own seriousness. Perhaps inevitably, even rightly, it is a very patchwork piece, and while creative sparks certainly fly everywhere, they don’t quite catch fire, and take hold.
At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 11 November
