The Great Gatsby

“He’s just a man named Gatsby’- but this isn’t just any ballet. In fact it claims to be ‘the must see ballet for 2013’. On the 2^nd March, the Northern Ballet opened the World Premiere of the Great Gatsby at the Leeds Grand Theatre, bringing the roaring twenties and flapper dresses back to twenty-first century Britain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izlpce4Fkaw Choreographed and directed by David Nixon, with Patricia Doyle as the co-director, the Northern Ballet has sought to bring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic to the stage. By making use of the recent ‘Gatsby craze’, they are hoping to bring new audiences into the world of dance. Indeed, Nixon’s adaptation of the Great Gatsby comes just before the scheduled opening, at the Cannes Film Festival (May 2013), of Baz Luhmann’s much anticipated film; starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke. The bookshops are currently filled with copies of Fitzgerald’s epic novel, so why shouldn’t our stages be filled with Art Deco and Jazz Music? If nothing else the Northern Ballet’s depiction of Nick’s venture into Gatsby’s world is full of glitz and glamour. Put to the music of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, who famously produced the film score for Four Weddings and a Funeral and using Jerôme Kaplan’s set designs it captures the fast paced world of the upper classes in 1920s America. So far however, the Great Gatsby has produced mixed reviews. While the dancing cannot be criticised, the Independent described Tobais Batley as ‘an elegant Gatsby, with smooth lines and a high easy jump’, there are those who are wondering whether transposing The Great Gatsby to another medium is ‘as near-impossible as writing a novel based on Swan Lake’.

The show is currently on at the Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, and is then scheduled to visit Edinburgh, Hull, Belfast, Milton Keynes, Cardiff, and Norwich, before ending in London at the Sadler’s Well on the 18^th May. There will therefore be plenty of opportunities for the Northern Ballet to prove these purist critics wrong. Already the audience’s responses tell another story proclaiming it a ‘Wonderful evening at the ballet! Never thought Gatsby could work so well as dance but it did!’. It seems that we will just have to find out for ourselves whether or not it really is ‘the must see ballet of 2013’ and here at Dancewear Central we are desperate to see it!