Northern Ballet’s new show is both progressive and conventional. Progressive because this could be the first lesbian love story in a major ballet. It is based on the life of Anne Lister, the 19th-century Yorkshire landowner also known as Gentleman Jack. Conventional because, in terms of form, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa keeps a tight handle on narrative and plays into what ballet dancers can do – the long arabesques and fluency of motion. It’s an accessible, stylish production that happens to put the love between two women (three, actually) centre stage.
Gemma Coutts plays Lister in top hat, frock coat and flat ballet shoes. Like the choreography, she is strong and straightforward. She has a cocky motif, a flick of the hip and the leg, that brims with self-confidence. She raps her cane on the floor and men fall in line. But we also see her romantic side. There’s an erotically charged pas de deux on a dining table with her great love Mariana (Saeka Shirai). It’s not X-rated but has real heat and tenderness and desire. Lister holds up the bell she uses for bossing her staff around and weaves it around Mariana’s body without touching her: Mariana shivers. She brushes it down Mariana’s spine. This is some of the sexiest choreography I’ve seen in a while.
When, alas, Mariana bows to convention and marries a man, Lister’s muted heartbreak is one of the few things that doesn’t land, not helped by Peter Salem’s dirge-like music in that scene (whereas elsewhere the rhythmic score matches the clarity, momentum and drama of the movement). When Lister flirts with another woman, Ann Walker, dancer Rachael Gillespie vividly captures Walker’s surprise, delight and excited apprehension; just as Shirai telegraphs Mariana’s heart-dropping jealousy when she sees the new couple together.
The look and tone are fairly stark, although there’s wit too. Lopez Ochoa has devised a clear, sharp-angled language for the ballet that you could argue is quite limited, but it sets out a specific world and gives the audience legible visual hooks. The same is true of Christopher Ash’s effective set, moving bookcases that act as screens for glimpses of landscape and cityscape – a light-touch way of setting scenes. Lister’s famous coded diaries are represented by swirling dancers in costumes decorated with her mysterious script – what was once kept secret now celebrated.
At Leeds Grand theatre until 14 March. Then touring until 5 September
