Chanel daSilva (choreography & direction), Cristina Spinei (original score), David Plater (lighting design) Natalie Pryce (costume design).
My Sister, the Serial Killer
Cassa Pancho (choreography & direction), Jacob Wye (assistant choreogrpher), Tom Harrold (original score), David Plater (lighting design), Jessica Cabassa (costume design), Richard Bolton (set design).
Additional music by Toots & The Maytals & Fela Anikulapo Kuti
Founded in 2001, this vibrant company of black and Asian dancers aims to promote diversity, exploring themes of identity and culture in neoclassical and contemporary dance works.
The Double Bill begins with ‘A Shadow Work,’ based on Carl Jung’s study of the hidden parts of our personality and is an exploration of Chanel DaSilva’s own emotional journey. The American choreographer’s style has been described as technique meets humanity and this dance was created to deal with her personal loss she suffered aged 19 on the death of her mother:“So I packed up that grief, put it in a little box, and pushed it down deep. And it stayed there for about 10 years until I was finally brave enough to reckon with it.”
A solo dancer, Taraja Hudson, dressed in white stands cowering, surrounded by a large ensemble like a swarm of black buzzing mosquitos which she tries to swat away; vulnerable, isolated and alone, immersed in her own thoughts, does she want to confront them or escape her hidden dark emotions.?
The dancers swirl and swagger across the stage in a monochromatic world of shimmering shadows, light and dark, the pulsating movement echoing the tone and tempo of Cristina Spinei’s clashing, crashing, discordant, electronic score. The protagonist is presented with a large box which she holds aloft, tentative, terrified, like Pandora, whether to open it and reveal her true self. According to the classical myth, Pandora’s box contained the evil and hardships of the world, but also hope.
When Cassa Pancho, Artistic Director of Ballet Black, read the bestselling debut novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, a dark satirical thriller set in Nigeria, she knew it was ‘the perfect story for BB to tell.’
The ‘perfect story’ is about two sisters, Korede, a nurse and her younger sister Ayoola, a fashion designer whose boyfriends most unfortunately keep winding up dead; one from food poisoning and another was stabbed in cold blood, which she claims is self-defence.
Scottish composer Tom Harrold is renowned for orchestral concertos as well as thumpingly rhythmical TV and film soundtracks on themes of horror and fantasy. Just like Bernard Herrmann’s chilling chords for the movie, Psycho, Harrold evokes the menacing mood of a Hitchcockian film-noir, drawing us into the surreal scenario of murder most foul.
‘I stand up and rinse the gloves in the sink. Ayoola is looking at my reflection in the mirror. “We need to move the body,” I tell her. “Are you angry at me?” Perhaps a normal person would be angry, but what I feel now is a pressing need to dispose of the body.’ Oyinkan Braithwaite, from ‘My Sister, the Serial Killer’
Ayoola may indeed by a psychopathic, killer queen, but how can Korede betray her sister? – blood is thicker than water and she is, once again, ready with the bleach. In a frantic, frenetic scene, the girls wearing yellow marigolds, scrub the blood-stained floor clean, then wrap the corpse in a sheet to carry down to the river - a fast-flowing current washes the body away in a visually inventive scene.
No text or words are required as the music drives the storyline which centres on the close bond between the sisters, portrayed, respectively, with such emotional sensitivity by Isabela Coracy and femme fatale charisma by Helga Paris-Morales.
Intimate vignettes move from home to hospital and a Reggae party where Korede tries to catch the eye of Tade, a handsome doctor she fancies; but her jealous sister swiftly steps in for a seductive pas de deux, a pretty young girl in a summer dress, pirouetting en pointe with graceful, yet vindictive, glee. Caught in this deadly love triangle, Korede’s simmering conflict between loyalty and betrayal is portrayed with sinister effect by a haunting group of ghostly demons.
Cassa Pancho’s slick, sleek choreography switches in an instant from beautiful, balletic elegance to brutal murder on the dance floor, precisely in tune with the strident rhythm of Harrold's spine-tingling, atmospheric score.
Imaginatively translating the wickedly witty humour of the novel into dramatic dance, ‘My Sister, the Serial Killer’ by Ballet Black is deliciously, thrillingly macabre.
Showtimes:
Performance on 21st May, 2025
Tour dates