Ballet Black: Heroes at the Barbican review: less heroic, more socially anxious

Are you still holding out for a hero? Ballet Black may help, with an engaging new double bill about finding heroism in the everyday. Although performed with oomph, it says a lot about life in 2024 that both pieces seem less stirringly heroic than speaking to an era of social anxiety.

A crown hangs spotlit in midair as Sophie Laplane’s If At First kicks off. It’s an almost childlike symbol of glory, and the score includes recurring blasts of Beethoven grandeur. Isabela Coracy reaches for the prize, while other dancers surround her with mirrored discs offering distorted reflections. She seems to attain the crown, only for it to be snatched away, prompting an impish tussle for possession.

Laplane (a French choreographer attached to Scottish Ballet) creates a work of fluid movement, abrupt transitions and mood-shifting changes of light (strikingly designed by David Plater). An exultant man (Acaoã de Castro) takes the crown, all preening leaps and marching across peoples’ backs. He’s held aloft, only for the fickle crowd to wander off, their attention lost. Coracy, held in a box of light, continues her quest as the walls close in. Only a closing, slinky female duet offers new possibilities – a vision of enjoyment rather than ego.

Ballet Black is a small company, and a new generation of dancers have joined recently. Isabela Coracy, once the company’s puckish newbie, is now its Olivier-winning grande dame. Notable among the new hires is Indian-born Love Kotiya, incisive and unpredictable. The pieces in Heroes aren’t the most audacious in Ballet Black’s repertoire – but these dancers are unceasingly eye-catching.

Punchier is a reworked version of Mthuthuzeli November’s The Waiting Game from 2020. Last time it ended with an ecstatic communal groove to Etta James – now all the music is by November and Alex Wilson. It’s still a mildly absurdist fable about coming to terms with the mundane everyday – how to keep on keeping on.

A man in an overcoat (the excellent Ebony Thomas) battles the voices in his head and tries to make it through a door. What’s on the other side? Good time vibes or the same old? The ensemble moves in a tight scrabble, like the agitation in the pit of your stomach. Thomas, daunted by stadium lights in lime green, crests the swell of the score as if fearful he’ll sink.

The piece ends with him being coaxed to perform by an insistent colleague, taking everything “two minutes at a time.” Slipping into his spangled jacket, Thomas becomes a tush-waggling jazzcat, leading a tireless chorus line. Is he faking it till he makes it – or just searching for the hero inside himself?

The Barbican, to May 19; barbican.org.uk