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# Review: Birmingham Royal Ballet @ Crescent Theatre
- URL: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/review-birmingham-royal-ballet-crescent-theatre/
- Published: 2012-05-08T07:18:55.000Z
- Updated: 2012-05-08T07:18:55.000Z
- Author: Phil Preece
- Tags: Reviews, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-22 21:41

I haven’t visited Birmingham’s International Dance Festival before but I just couldn’t pass up the chance to see BRB’s contribution to a Festival whose international offerings aim at shall we say a rather specialist end of the dance spectrum.

The Crescent Theatre’s intimate and spruce 300 seater auditorium proved a perfect venue to showcase their many talents in a programme that featured three one-act works, two created specially for the Festival.

Their first offering, 9 – 5 by BRB dancer Kit Holder was an amusing take on the world of office politics featuring a love triangle around the photocopier – think office geek falling for pretty girl while being fancied by a Cruella de Vil-type office manager all set to a drum n’ bass score with flashes of stark fluorescent lighting. Busy, amusing, promising.

Lyric Pieces, next, brought a complete change of mood. Set to Grieg’s romantic piano music this piece specially commissioned for the Festival is American choreographer Jessica Lang’s first ballet for a major European Company. It showed an impressive sureness in its handling of a wide range of moods including the moving Phantom featuring the fluid Jenna Roberts and a splendidly athletic Iain Mackay. It also had some of the most extraordinary props I’ve ever seen, rolls and screens of black corrugated paper that by turns became walls, seats, hiding places, bridges. Fresh, subtle, and really beautiful.

But of course clever old David Bintley, master of the triple bill saved the best for last with his own Take Five set to the famously-cool music of the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Effortlessly sophisticated this high-fifties ballet was as New York-chic as its era yet entirely contemporary, the young men dressed seemingly by Top Man, the women sporting Mad Men glamour, and full of references to everything from classic to jive via Torville and Dean. The six musical sketches built to a joyously exuberant finale via a hair-raising pas de deux from Robert Parker at the very top of his most sparkling form partnering the ecstatically feminine Elisha Willis.

A perfectly judged programme and a fascinating journey showcasing new talent while demonstrating this great company’s many strengths.