Heavy metal meets … ballet?
It’s a wacky match that was a smash hit in England, where “Black Sabbath — The Ballet” premiered in 2023. Now the Virginia Arts Festival is presenting the American premiere of the full-length dance.
The Birmingham Royal Ballet birthed this surprising work, and will perform it at Norfolk’s Chrysler Hall May 30 and 31. Virginia Symphony Orchestra and a rock combo will play in the pit, and a guitarist will appear on stage with the dancers.
The musicians will play Black Sabbath songs, but with some of the doom and gloom toned down. Orchestrator Christopher Austin composed the score, which was inspired by the band’s music. (Black Sabbath members will not attend or perform.)
Carlos Acosta, director of the touring ballet company based in Birmingham, England, came up with the tricky mix soon after he was hired in 2020.
“I wanted to do something out of the box so we could develop new audiences” for the company, he said in a recent interview. “Something forward-thinking, adventurous, bold.”
All performances sold out. Sixty percent of tickets were purchased by people who had never attended ballet, Acosta said. Chances are, those attendees knew all about Black Sabbath.
The band was formed in 1968 by four lads from Birmingham who were striving to escape dreary factory jobs. They soon began crafting what they called scary music, similar to what they heard in horror films, according to the rock music website Kerrang!. As Black Sabbath, the band released its first album in 1970.
Support quickly swelled. The group’s sound was spine-chilling, largely because of Tony Iommi’s ominous lead guitar riffs and singer Ozzy Osbourne’s blues-influenced belting and terrifying cries. The loud, aggressive music they pioneered came to be known as heavy metal.
Early on, Acosta landed the band’s permission. Iommi was seen at rehearsals and told one interviewer, “I love the idea of this. It’s something a lot of people didn’t expect, including me.”
Eight Sabbath songs, including fan favorites “Iron Man,” “Paranoid” and “War Pigs,” can be heard during the three-act dance.
Three choreographers were each assigned an act, which brought “this array of creativity” to the project, Acosta said.
Instead of telling the story of the band, the work has themes. Each choreographer has blended classical ballet technique with modern dance. Onstage, dances feature headbanging and pirouetting.
Act 1 is about the creation of the ballet. Acosta said the reason is to let audiences grasp “that what they are watching is a ballet,” with performers wearing black unitards and toe shoes.
Act 2 focuses on the band’s memories and features voice-overs from each of the original members, including drummer Bill Ward and bassist Geezer Butler.
Act 3 is about the fans and their reminiscences and evokes a concert atmosphere, aided by arena rock-style lighting. “I encourage the audience to join in,” Acosta said.
Iommi told him in 2023 regarding the expected audience, “You know they’re going to start singing the songs.” They did.
Clay Kilgore, 53, of Yorktown has all of Black Sabbath’s records, knows many of the words, and just might sing along at his first ballet.
“We’ll see what the crowd is like,” he said.
When he first heard about the Sabbath ballet, “I thought it was a great idea to meld those two worlds together,” he said. “Dark music with something beautiful, like the ballet.
“But if I see this and I like it, I may want to see a different ballet that doesn’t involve Black Sabbath music,” Kilgore said. “And it’s a way to get my wife to see Black Sabbath.”
Visit vafest.org or call 757-282-2822 for information and tickets.
WHRO’s CEO and President Bert Schmidt and Vice President of News Maurice Jones are members of the Virginia Arts Festival board. Schmidt and Jones are not involved in editorial decisions.
