Northern Ballet commits itself almost exclusively to dance as a storytelling medium, and its weakness historically has been to home in on surefire box-office titles such as A Streetcar named Desire, The Great Gatsby and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which lose more than they gain by being deprived of their words. But adapting the source of the popular BBC television series Gentleman Jack proves inspired: the result must rank as one of the best things the company has ever done.
Anne Lister was a real figure, a moneyed gentlewoman in early 19th-century Yorkshire whose masculine demeanour, dress and behaviour gave rise to the moniker Gentleman Jack. Her recently decoded diaries reveal a same-sex proclivity that has sent the LGBTQ brigade into a flat spin of excitement and provide the thread out of which Annabelle Lopez Ochoa has woven an elegantly entertaining ballet, fluently paced and shot through with witty touches.
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