English National Ballet: Body & Soul

Sadler’s Wells, London
March 19, 2026

English National Ballet’s double bill Body & Soul, which takes its title from the opening work by Crystal Pite, takes us from the sublime (Crystal Pite) to, well, something rather different (Kameron N. Saunders).

Pite’s Body and Soul (Part 1), originally created for the Paris Opera Ballet, demonstrates all the depth and subtlety which we have come to expect from this most exciting of choreographers. However varied her work, the audience are always exposed to what it means to be human, sometimes in the abstract as here, and sometimes more literally.

The starting point for Body and Soul is text in French. The dancers at first appear to follow the ‘instructions’ as the ballet presents variations on a theme of conflict. As the text continues to swirl and loop, Pite’s choreography is incredibly beautiful, tactile duets mixing with surging ensemble crowds, the movement melting and melding like the clock in Dali’s Persistence of Memory or strings of gruyère cheese. And it’s just as delicious.

The simple device of dressing some dancers in black and some in white produces wave after wave of mesmerising patterns as if a piano keyboard were rippling like a bridge in an earthquake. Tom Visser’s lighting enhances the effects admirably. On paper, the mix of Chopin and a contemporary electronic score by Owen Belton shouldn’t work, but it is so skilfully combined that it creates a huge sense of anticipation as each familiar chord is anticipated.

Body and Soul (Part 1) is work that needs to be experienced and felt. Descriptions become merely reductionist. Nevertheless, one comes away with the very strong feeling that something both profound and beautiful has been created. What a shame the whole work is not being perfomed.

Kameron N. Saunders will be a new name to British balletgoers although he’s extremely well known in commercial dance, having worked with such as Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan. The elements in Proper Conduct are similar to those in Body and Soul: spoken word, abstract dance and an electronic score, this time newly composed by Brandon Finklea and Harold Walker III. But how differently they are used.

Here the music screeches and howls, rattling the metal seating with none of the quiet subtlety of that of the opening piece. Words are not spoken gently or whispered but distorted by the sort of device that criminals use to disguise their identity.

The work purports to explore the battle to discover our true selves in the face of society’s gaze. A messianic figure booms at us from centre stage, his words mere platitudes. We are told that superficially that the world is fine. We see dancers in colourful costumes galloping playfully in a circle like infants as the score pounds out a sickly string-heavy Hollywood-esque dance.

Then we are informed that underneath, all is corrupt. No kidding? This is a cue to fly in white walls and for white hazmat suited, masked figures to appear. They look for all the world like multiple Stigs who had taken time off from driving cars to dance. Presumably, this is all supposed to represent a technocratic, faceless world. It all disappoints greatly as it sort of loses its way. Nothing is resolved with little in the choreography really standing out.

For all Saunders’ efforts, at the end of the day, Crystal Pite tells us far more about the human condition. But what a shame that her Body and Soul in it’s full 100-minute form was not danced. Even so, in an evening that is very much one of the proverbial two halves, go see it for Part 1 alone. It will be well worth it.

Body & Soul by English National Ballet is at Sadler’s Wells to March 28, 2026.