England on Fire is a bit of a mess – and that’s when it’s at its best. BalletBoyz, the bold company led by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, gather over 40 varied creatives to make an 80-minute pilgrimage through England’s gnarly past and doubtful future. It’s an engaging, if bumpy ride – this England frets and fidgets more than it bursts into flame. Nunn and Trevitt draw on Stephen Ellcock’s book with the same title, an absorbing collection of weird found images – unnerving pastoral scenes and glinting figures from the English folk memory. Its questing mysticism prompts a fitful odyssey through similar territory. A woman (feelingly danced by Artemis Stamouli, with long grey socks and wondering round eyes) fetches up like a beached mermaid, floundering to her feet. She’s met by a cowled committee in inky headdresses, canine or antlered – welcome to uncanny Albion. Ten segments loosely follow her journey through a bifurcated musical landscape. A band directed by Charlotte Harding offers eerie strings and juddering rhythms, while the band Gag Salon’s gobshite art-rock is all throb and jangle. In a ragtag wardrobe of jerkins, pantaloons and puffball skirts, the cast twerk and twirl like figures on the margins. BalletBoyz are best known for all-male works, thrumming with testosterone, but here the cast splits evenly between men and women, including top flight talents like Harry Alexander and Oxana Panchenko. The dancers undoubtedly bring it, and the staging is always arresting – especially under the glint and shadow of Andrew Ellis’ crepuscular lighting – but the choreography often looks less distinctive. The choreographers aren’t short of flair: they include Holly Blakey, Russell Maliphant, Vidya Patel and theatre director Ola Ince. So many creatives might lead to cacophony – in fact, too much is smoothed out, and the best sections leap gleefully into chaos. Blakey makes the dancers an unpredictable, yapping crew; Edd Arnold sends them out like a cadre of the defeated, floppy-limbed zombies against Harding’s lamenting vocal. The sharpest slap around the chops is Rebellion, a bracing snarl of a sequence by Thick & Tight. It opens with projections of a giddy shuttle of dubious British icons (Blair and Branson, Ant, Dec and Theresa May’s dancing). The dancers caper, Gag Salon yelp “I’m having the time of my life,” a crowned Pavchenko trails the St George flag like a coronation cape but is left thrashing in a spotlight. Distraction and defiance gleam through. Theatre choreographer Shelley Maxwell leads the evening to its close – a chain of broken spirits, a quivering stomp on the edge of time, a throwback flare of clappity communal dance. Is this England flickering with torched remnants of its glories, or warmed with hope to come?
Sadler's Wells, to November 11; sadlerswells.com
