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Ebony Thomas and Marie Astrid Mence in Click! by Sophie Laplane.
Ebony Thomas and Marie Astrid Mence in Click! by Sophie Laplane. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Ebony Thomas and Marie Astrid Mence in Click! by Sophie Laplane. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

'We need to step up!' Five women pushing dance forward

This article is more than 4 years old

Their moves are fresh, funny and stylish; their subjects include the climate crisis, gender politics and poetry. These electrifying choreographers are on the rise

Ruth Brill

A Peter and the Wolf where Peter is a girl, the animals dress in streetwear and the pastoral setting becomes an urban playground: this is the world according to Ruth Brill. The 30-year-old has just made her second main-stage work for Birmingham Royal Ballet, the company she has danced with since 2012, and is now retiring as a dancer to concentrate on choreography.

Brill’s work has a sense of fun, fantasy and solid classical grounding. Her last piece, Arcadia, had nymphs and gods cavorting in the woods. In Peter and the Wolf – Prokofiev’s much-loved children’s piece, narrated here by poet Hollie McNish – the duck may be a hormonal teen in headphones, and the dancers wearing a mix of pointe shoes and trainers, but the steps are still steeped in classical tradition, just with character-driven inflections, diversions and quirks.

Fun and fantasy … Arcadia, choreographed by Ruth Brill. Photograph: Bill Cooper

Seeking to connect with her audience, Brill has made dance for the Rugby World Cup and Birmingham flash mobs. Her next projects include working with London Children’s Ballet, New English Ballet Theatre and National Youth Ballet. “Now is when my generation needs to step up and prepare to become the next wave of leaders,” Brill said recently. “We have different life experiences, different stories to tell. And it’s time to push ourselves forward to inherit roles from the generation before us.”

Charlotte Edmonds

With her bleach-blond bob, Charlotte Edmonds looks the epitome of cool, and you could say the same about the 22-year-old’s dance. Plucked out of the Rambert school to become the Royal Ballet’s first Young Choreographer, Edmonds impressed everyone during a three-year association with Covent Garden, where she was mentored by Wayne McGregor, made choreography for Selfridges, a film for the National Gallery and a ballet with basketball that was inspired by the legendary choreographer Kenneth MacMillan.

The epitome of cool … Charlotte Edmonds. Photograph: Alice Pennefather

Since going freelance, she’s made an underwater ballet about depression, featuring ballerina Francesca Hayward, and is keen to work more in digital platforms. She is doing post-production on a film she has directed about plastic pollution, is making a documentary series about dyslexia (a condition she has herself) and is working on a ballet about the climate crisis.

These might be serious subjects, but Edmonds is more and more drawn to fizzy, pop-culture-inspired choreography, closing the gap between the ballet stage and the dancefloor, such as a funky solo she made for the Royal Ballet’s Joseph Sissens and a new piece set to the music of Hot Chip.

Reece Clarke, Mica Bradbury and Gina Storm-Jensen in Meta by Charlotte Edmonds. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

A go-to choreographer for big ballet companies looking to make relevant work for their younger dancers, Edmonds has no fewer than three different works being performed at the forthcoming Young Talent festival, by the junior companies of Dutch National Ballet and Norwegian National Ballet, and the Rambert school.

Stina Quagebeur

Nancy Osbaldeston and Guilherme Menezes in English National Ballet’s Vera by Stina Quagebeur. Photograph: London News Pictures/Rex/Shutterstock

Belgian dancer Stina Quagebeur has been choreographing since she was inspired as a child by the ballets of Mats Ek and Maurice Béjart. She’s kept it up as a sideline throughout her career as a dancer with English National Ballet. At 34, she is making her mark as a dance-maker with a strong sense of her own voice.

ENB director Tamara Rojo has put her faith in Quagebeur and gave her a main stage debut as part of the company’s She Persisted show, highlighting female choreographers. In Nora, based on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Quagebeur showed her interest in emotionally driven narrative, and stripped-back literary adaptations – a territory pretty much owned by Cathy Marston at the moment. She created surging, spinning and circling movement, with the performers’ feet just skimming the floor, using a group of dancers as a chorus to amplify Nora’s thoughts and emotional state.

Stina Quagebeur prepares during a technical rehearsal of Akram Khan’s Giselle for ENB. Photograph: Ian Gavan/Getty Images

This is a choreographer interested in her characters’ psychology. Previous themes have included Edward Hopper’s love-hate marriage (A Room in New York), Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (Vera) and Philip Larkin’s poetry (Domna). A keen theatregoer, who particularly admires director Emma Rice, Quagebeur is interested in reimagining stories and the ways you might tell them. We’ll be watching her next moves with interest.

Sophie Laplane

Sophie Laplane’s Dextera, with Scottish Ballet. Photograph: Andy Ross

Another dancer turned choreographer nurtured within a company’s ranks, Sophie Laplane follows 13 years as a dancer with Scottish Ballet by becoming its artist in residence. About to turn 35, the Frenchwoman, who trained at the Paris Opera Ballet school, made her first one-act commission, Sibilo, in 2016.

Sibilo is sophisticated, classy choreography but has humour, too – molten duets, staccato gestures, elastic torsos and shimmying six-packs. Her piece Click!, for Ballet Black, saw the dancers in acid-bright suits, pointe shoes and shoulder pads, and the rhythm pinging through their bodies with some serious groove. It seemed as if it could take ballet in a fresh direction.

Laplane has experimented with film and 360-degree video. Her work Maze was adapted into a short film shot in a derelict swimming pool in Glasgow, all gitchy electro music and jerky bodies, looking like two long-legged birds courting. Her latest piece, Dextera, was created to mark Scottish Ballet’s 50th anniversary, and tackles gender politics with wit and cheek (to the sound of Mozart). She has also worked with New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute, is creating a new piece in the space of one week for Scottish Ballet’s Digital Season (it can be viewed on the company’s Facebook feed), and is about to graduate with an MA in choreography – not that Laplane needs a certificate to prove her credentials.

Arielle Smith

Rambert-trained Arielle Smith has had one of the best starts you can imagine, landing a gig as young associate choreographer with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures company, working alongside Bourne on his new production of Romeo and Juliet.

The Havana-born, British-raised 22-year-old created several pieces at the National Youth Ballet and has now set up her own company, with some excellent younger dancers.

Cordelia Braithwaite and Paris Fitzpatrick in Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet. Photograph: Johan Persson

Smith enjoys making abstract mass movement, as in the piece Storm, which she created while still at school. But she’s most interested in making dance that explores being human, not just dancing for dancing’s sake. Her short piece Lots of Varied Expectations addresses that old favourite, love, against a warm and whimsical backdrop of 1940s songs, with movement that is fun and quirky, and with playful use of rhythm, but always with an underlying emotion. Smith is expanding the piece into a full-length work and plans a national tour next year.

“Arielle’s a wonder,” says Bourne. “I really liked the choreography she’s done for National Youth Ballet. It stood out as being very contemporary, very different. She’s very mature for her age. We laugh a lot. I think she’s got a great future.”

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