The Red Room

There are almost as many styles of dance as there are companies, but most western theatrical dance has at least tenuous links with ballet. George Balanchine stripped ballet of its courtly trappings, creating abstract neoclassical pieces to showcase honed, leotard-clad physiques, often using Baroque music. With The Red Room, choreographer David Hughes and director Al Seed have also deconstructed dance, taking it back to basics in an entirely different way, by exposing its decadent courtly origins.

The Red Room is set in the court of a fictional prince. The dancers are clothed in period costume, and allusions to Louis XIV, in whose court ballet originated, are reinforced by bastardized baroque dance and choreographic in-jokes, with Prince Prospero performing an entrechat battu to the delight of his courtiers - a beaten step also known as a ‘royale’ because, as legend has it, Louis’ own technique became so weak he was unable to execute an entrechat quatre. Drawing on baroque, ballet, contemporary, hip hop and breakdance, and by turns funny, crude, and disturbing, The Red Room is perhaps as far removed from Balanchine as it is possible to get without losing the heart of dance. It is this heart that makes this production stand out.