Perfectly in tune and en pointe: ‘Black Sabbath – The Ballet’
Sparks fly as the heavy metal band provides the soundtrack to a ballet that celebrates the birth of heavy metal.
Spot the odd one out: “Ozempic, the Cookbook”; “Trappist Monks Sing the Hits”; “From Cicero to Starmer, a Guide to Oratory”; “Black Sabbath – The Ballet.” Yes, they’re all completely insane but the final one – a choreographed musical drama that mixes plié, demi-pointe and the heavy-metal legends behind “Paranoid” and “War Pigs” – is actually real. What fresh hell is this? Well, a devilishly good one.
On Wednesday evening, I attended the first night of a short London run of the Black Sabbath ballet at Sadler’s Wells before it heads to the Edinburgh Festival. I love Sadler’s Wells and warmed to this broadened church even more.
Usually I’d see some well put-together ballet students peering bright-eyed into the auditorium, while men named Hilary listen with performative rapture to women named Hillary over white burgundy in the foyer. But on Wednesday, there were long-haired, black-clad metal fans rubbing shoulders with corduroy and amber necklaces. What a joy to hear snakebite and black being ordered – the ingredients for which had been purchased specifically for this run (Pina Bausch fans being more inclined to lemon kombucha). And then? Let’s relevé and let’s rock!
Black Sabbath – The Ballet is a joint effort between Birmingham Royal Ballet’s director, the great Carlos Acosta, and that other magus of the stage who you might not have expected to see in the same room, Black Sabbath’s lead guitarist and main songwriter, Tony Iommi. On stage, it’s a fruitful and beguiling mix of young dancers – in sheer black leotards or 1970s-style denim streetwear – and a Tony Iommi-alike leather-clad guitarist (charmingly played by Marc Hayward), who pierces the excellent contemporary classical score by Sun Keting with his Black Sab riffs. The ballet hangs together by virtue of the virtuosity and wholehearted performances of the sinfonia, guitarist and – pick of the lot – the dancers.
The piece is at its best plotting Sabbath’s formative period in a very industrial early-1970s Birmingham, in which Iommi and fellow bandmates Geezer Butler and Bill Ward are gainfully, painfully employed in jobs noisy, dangerous and factory-related; while Ozzy Osbourne, after working in an abattoir, is doing a little jail time for burglary. The score is repetitive, loud and percussive – echoing the pounding rhythms of the metalworking machine that would deny Iommi, already an excellent guitarist, of the tips of two of his fingers. It’s true: no Black Sabbath, no heavy metal. The choreography is stark, precise, hypnotic and the dancers phenomenal. Later, there’s a black swan leitmotif, a likely portent to excess and addiction. “Paranoid”, moi?!
You get the classics – “Paranoid”, again, “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, “Black Sabbath” – but it’s not a jukebox ballet. It’s a strange beast, that, like the possibly apocryphal bat whose head Osbourne was said to have bitten off on stage, is not quite all there but definitely contains a lot of blood and guts – and can certainly fly. That evening, Iommi slinked on stage for the encore of “Paranoid” and the house erupted, enraptured. The quiet man of the world’s once-loudest band, blinking happily behind his blue-tinged shades. Perfectly in tune and somehow en pointe.
