Review: NORTHERN BALLET - JANE EYRE, Sadler’s Wells

The dance world is all the richer for having different kinds of storytellers - no doubt. But equally, audience members will inevitably gravitate towards makers they feel a connection with.

I should be clear - I don't connect with Cathy Marston’s take on narrative dance, or perhaps just Jane Eyre rather than her whole canon.

This production was first created on Northern Ballet in 2016, and has even crossed the Atlantic being performed by American Ballet Theatre in 2019. Considering the writer, Charlotte Brontë, was a woman, I find the female characters disappointingly predictable; cruel Aunt, stern Governess, indifferent Chambermaid, mad woman who has to be considered sexually promiscuous etc.

And the men don't fare much better either, in particular the love interest Mr Rochester. Who's the usual cold, arrogant aristocrat who only softens when broken physically. Snooze.

Marston can create cohesive productions, and uses the ensemble dancers well. In Jane Eyre they act as narrative bookends; emerging at the end of scenes to cleanse the environment or navigating as elegant stagehands - placing tombstones, engaging with workhouse tables or being human candelabras.

Marston has a lot of story to tell, and in order to get through it all, the 100 minute work can feel on the relentless side. The strongest moments are the pas de deux between Eyre and Rochester. Here the Philip Feeney score offers the most tangible melodies, and Marston the most lyrical dancing in the production.

Elsewhere I miss the inclusion of (conventional) mime and Mise-en-scène as storytelling tools, and find the narrative gesture, style language cold and oversaturated. Very often the port de bras feels like semaphore rather than a physical communication of emotion. And I think that's the sticking point for me.

Successful narrative work takes words and then transcends them through movement language. It doesn't necessarily require literalism to guide the story, and observer where they need to go, but instead uses phrasing full of intention and dynamic to communicate the happenings and emotions involved.

I didn't find or feel this in Jane Eyre. Perhaps momentarily in the main protagonists first pas de deux, but it was fleeting, and didn't return. 

Jane Eyre runs at Sadler’s Wells until 17 May

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