Showed at The Blue Room Theatre as a part of Summer Nights, The Last Ballet, is a humorous search through the history and collapse of ballet as a way of finding something new. From the origins in the Sun King to classical practice, to modern commercial reproductions The Last Ballet tries to find something meaningful in the swan song of ballet.
The opening scene gorgeously lures the audience into a sense of some kind of classic ballet, slow melodic movements, with a calming soundscape while our three performers set the stage with myriad props. Their movements are gorgeous to watch, this is true for the whole show, Izzy Leclezio, Tom Mullane, and Estelle Brown are absolutely stunning performers and jump between gracious, tantalising movements, to perfectly timed breaks of comedy. Their physical comedy is down to a tee, nailing timings of movements and the off handed sarcastic glances to the audience. We travel through a few scenes, ultimately collapsing into some kind of explosion of expression at the culmination of the practice of ballet.
The Last Ballet. Photography by Phoebe Eames.
The design highlights the strong beats in this show, the lighting design by Matthew Erren, bringing the gaze into the striking beautiful tableaus and poses. David Stewart entices on the sound design, perfectly jumping between cartoonish generic ballet orchestral pieces to an extended rave dance breakdown without batting an eyelid.
When satire is done right it is absolutely stunning to watch, sometimes you aren’t sure if they are taking themselves too seriously or not, but, you get it. You don’t need to know the technicalities of ballet to enjoy something like this show, it is a clear story presenting an idea around ballet and done incredibly well. I really hope to see another, grander iteration of this show.