black sabbath ballet review and complaints 2023

A Dark Vision Comes to Life: Experiencing Black Sabbath’s Music Through Ballet

On May 20, 2012, music and ballet fans alike were treated to a truly unique experience – Black Sabbath: The Ballet, a one-night-only performance that brought the dark musical visions of the legendary heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath to life through dance. Staged at the Ahmanson Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, this one-of-a-kind collaborative work showcased the talents of internationally acclaimed choreographer Wayne McGregor and sets/costumes designer Es Devlin, set to three of Black Sabbath’s most iconic songs performed live.

While an unconventional pairing on the surface, Black Sabbath’s music proved remarkably well-suited to interpretation through ballet. Under McGregor’s masterful direction, the dancers of the New York City Ballet were able to channel the raw emotional power and ominous textures of Sabbath’s songs in vivid and often chilling fashion. From the opening notes of the curtains rising on “Black Sabbath” to the closing scenes of devastation in “War Pigs,” this ballet transported audiences to a realm of darkness and drama unlike anything previously witnessed on the stage.

Over a decade later, Black Sabbath: The Ballet remains an unparalleled achievement that proved heavy metal and ballet could fuse in alchemy. Let’s take a deeper look back on this groundbreaking performance that opened new doors for both artforms.

Dark Forces Emerge: “Black Sabbath”

From the get-go, Wayne McGregor’s vision came across with striking clarity. As the opening piano cues of the eponymous song sinisterly emerged from the pit, shadows began to materialize on Devlin’s immense backdrop depicting a hellish moonscape. Slowly but assuredly, dancers emerged like specters from the ether, movements deliberately slow and probing to match the ominous build.

Glowing eyes peering from faces shrouded in tattered garb, their languid yet probing movements captured the unsettling spirit of the song’s opening investigation into netherworldly territories. Step by calculated step, a ritualistic ceremony of dread and morbidity unfurled before the rapt audience. By the time Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals kicked in, a full coven of black-clad figures swirled in mystic rites along the proscenium, drawing all witness under their dark spell.

The climax saw the entire company transformed into a raving horde drowned in a cascading tide of noise and light. Flailing limbs and debauched gestures manically conveyed the hellish visions within, dragging spectators to the abyss alongside them. As the final notes dimmed and dancers collapsed exhausted, a thunderous ovation erupted in recognition of a singularly haunting opening act unlike anything most ballet patrons had ever witnessed before. McGregor had succeeded in using physical form to fully embody the ominous essence of Sabbath’s primal work, a taste of even darker forces still to emerge over the performance’s unfolding saga.

Madness Runs Rampant: “Paranoid”

Following the bleak desolation of the opening scene, a lighter yet no less unsettling sequence emerged with “Paranoid.” Opening with lone figures dancing chairs in robotic, twitching patterns against Devlin’s design of a crumbling industrial cityscape, insanity gradually seeped into the proceeding prologue.

As Tony Iommi’s iconic riff kicked in, a riot of movement broke out that captured the frenetic nature of the track’s lyrics. Dancers sprinted, spun and thrashed their limbs against one another in abstract acts of violence and derangement, as though possessed by raving demons. McGregor brilliantly communicated the sensory overload metaphor at the song’s core – waves of dancers undulating and crashing into each other like a turbulent sea.

Standouts included solos that portrayed paranoia manifesting in unique and pitiful characters, from a tap-dancing manic pursued by imagined persecutors to a trembling figure repeatedly glancing over their shoulder in terror at threats unseen. By the finale, the entire company devolved into a maddened mob hellbent on mayhem and self-destruction, flinging themselves across the stage with controlled yet unhinged abandon.

Order transformed to anarchy, reason surrendered to irrational delusions – “Paranoid” was brought vivdly to throbbing life through McGregor’s masterful dissection and reinterpretation of its themes through corporeal drama. Sanity had well and truly shattered by the dance’s manic climax, setting an even darker tone for the ballet’s grand finale.

War’s Gruesome Reality Laid Bare

After the unsettling textures of the opening pieces, McGregor saved perhaps his most powerful work for last in interpreting Black Sabbath’s signature anti-war anthem “War Pigs.” From the chilling opening notes of Geezer Butler’s bass, a gripping narrative began to unfold across Devlin’s sets that brought the grim realities of battle into chilling focus.

ranks of uniformed soldiers marched in lockstep across the battlefield, bayonets glinting as an faceless foe emerged on the opposite ridge. Suddenly violence erupted, dancers grappling and flinging one another across the stage in raw displays of hand-to-hand combat. Limbs flailed, torsos writhed and heads lolled at unnatural angles to portray the brutal carnage of close-quarters battle.

Soon the stage became strewn with fallen forms, scarlet pools blossoming across pristine uniforms. Remaining troops dragged away their wounded, faces contorted in agony, as the fray intensified around them. Iommi’s searing leads swelled to a crescendo matched by a final push, troops toppling in waves under an onslaught of flailing limbs.

At last, an eerie silence fell but for the sound of ragged breathing from dancers sprawled motionless across the reddened field. A sobering end drew thunderous applause for its unvarnished yet poignant message against the futility of armed conflict. McGregor’s haunting finale brought Black Sabbath’s protest anthem to vivid and disturbing life, leaving the audience deeply moved.

A Groundbreaking Achievement

In retrospect, Black Sabbath: The Ballet stands as a pioneering work that expanded notions of what dance and music could achieve together. Under Wayne McGregor’s visionary direction, three of Black Sabbath’s most iconic early compositions were reimagined through ballet in a manner truly faithful to their essence yet distinctive from their original forms.

Meanwhile, Es Devlin’s production design transported audiences to vividly realized worlds that married darkness and beauty. Her richly detailed backdrops and costumes brought McGregor’s choreography to vibrant life while enhancing the ballet’s overarching atmospheres of doom, madness and destruction.

Most remarkably, this one-night-only collaboration between heavy metal, dance and design proved that genres popularly seen as incompatible in fact possessed startling synergies when explored with vision and skill. Black Sabbath’s music, long associated with rebellious nonconformity, was gifted new depth and nuance through the physical language of ballet.

A decade later, Black Sabbath: The Ballet remains a landmark that expanded artistic boundaries and demonstrated heavy metal need not be confined to albums and concerts, but could unfold in limitless forms when guided by masterful creative hands. Its impact still reverberates creatively, inspiring future hybrid projects at the intersections of artforms once thought disparate. Most of all, it was a mesmerizing theatrical experience that stirred audience members on profound emotional levels, a true testament to music and movement’s shared power to move the human spirit.