Touching Body and Soul by English National Ballet
at Sadler’s Wells, London, Friday 20 March 2026
Body and Soul Part 1 by Crystal Pite
The evening opens with two dancers in black suits and white shirts, bathed in a stark light. An unseen French woman barks instructions to touch the forehead, neck, chest, mouth, hip, head to chest, head to ground, march left right left right, left right. We are not told why. It is too early in the story to feel a context. The dancers respond to her automated commands, as if automaton themselves.
If this was not a Crystal Pite ballet, I might have regretted travelling far and late to the theatre in such a hectic week. Perhaps it would be form over substance. A large portion of the audience was very glamourous and modelesque, not the usual ballet devotees. The ‘Soul’ of the ballet title then appears and is so captivating, as if revealed by angels. The recitation of body parts will become clear at the end.
Touch as the expression of love frames this story. In this performance, we see only Body and Soul Part 1, the subject of parts 2 and 3 is not known (to me). Within this frame sits the truth of our existence as mere drops in a dark ocean, pre-human, absorbing our grief. I could never have imagined 40 or 50 dancers moving so convincingly as the sea at night, crests lit by the moon. Has a ballet scene ever been nominated for the Turner Prize?
The dancer obeys, touching his own body. The instruction is repeated, first to the two dancers from the first scene, then to a larger corps moving as one. Sweeping black cloaks, designed by Nancy Bryant, resemble a Bolshevik uprising or the forced stride of Lowry’s workers into the grind. The same French words echo and fade as part of the music. We are being hypnotised by repetition, sound and vision, brain to nerves to lure us in. The music is cinematic, it could be Max Richter or Hans Zimmer, but is composed by Owen Belton, a long-term collaborator with Crystal.
Gradually we are transported to the seashore. Men and women are all in white T-shirts over matt black trousers and shoes – no differentiation of the dance for men and women.
When the touch command is repeated, we see a shift has occurred. It is to the touch of another, not oneself. This is love. The movement is so fluid, soundless, that individual steps and dancers might not be noticed, but the dancing is flawless. A little Chopin is played. A man rests his beloved’s head gently back to the ground.
We hear waves crash and our eyes make out a stage filled with dancers. They link into undulating lines of waves, night sea, white horses, picked out by moonlight. Waves break and push onto the shore. The synchronicity and physical togetherness of the dancers is otherworldly. What started as 50 individuals has become our own familiar Channel or Irish Sea, reaching to the Atlantic and an horizon too far south.
A solo dancer checks a corpse for warmth, a pulse, a heartbeat, holds their lover’s head to their own chest, then gently lays them to rest. The left right left right march is a madness, disbelief; rejection of the pain. We love uniquely then unite in identical grief.
We are told this ballet is about connection and conflict. It is a twist on the familiar fairytale of emerging onto land to love, then lose and return to the water. It also highlights the fundamental role of touch by one person in the realm of another. Touch as our primary sense connecting with the world. What are we asking when we touch? Are you there? Do you feel me? The intention behind touch is understood without words or any of the other senses, simmering “almost below the horizon of consciousness.[i]”
When touch ends, human with another living being, or grounded to the earth, the brain unlearns all the way back to before our conception and the start to form. Cells do not renew and we cannot connect. We are returned to the sea as rolling, tiding, buffeted spirits, free of body, free from pain.
Proper Conduct by Kameron N. Saunders
After the interval, we see touch in a very unexpected light. Imagine a ballet that brings to life William Blake’s painting The Gambol of Ghosts, or a stroll with Virgil and Dante through Upper Hell, or the back rooms of the Moulin Rouge.
We begin in summer, the bright colours of an afternoon on the beach. Slicing the horizon is a lookout tower, barely visible, of Big Brother. Gradually, beachwear is removed and naked dancers walk backwards downstage. We have an orgy of the most beautiful bodies in the best possible taste! We laugh and get the point immediately. Censorship and state monitoring will spoil our most basic adult fun.
Staggering musicality and performance, especially by Jose Maria Lorca Menchon as Narrator. Some phrases were Olympic in their execution, illustrations for a famous manual. Against a disco backing of hip-hop, trip-hop, we are cautioned against the chaos of passion, rather to the ‘whiteness’ of order and safety as befits ‘Proper Conduct’. It was so good to see Kameron being urged onto stage for a bow at the end.
Body and Soul runs at Sadler’s Wells in London until 28 March 2026, then at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth until 2 May 2026. It is a great night, worth long journeys if you can still get a ticket.
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By Tracey Chippendale-Gammell
Picture by: Nick Victor
[i] From Wayne McGregor’s new book We are Movement – Unlocking Your Physical Intelligence, Chapter 7 Touch.
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