Ballet Black, Pioneers review: Isabela Coracy lights up the stage as Nina Simone

A danced biopic of Nina Simone is driven by a superb performance from its star

Ballet Black, Pioneers (Bill Cooper)

Isabela Coracy lights up Ballet Black’s new work, NINA: By Whatever Means. This danced biopic of Nina Simone is driven by Coracy’s superb presence, by the imposing strength and sweep of her movements. In the carriage of her head, the set of her mouth, she catches Simone’s poise and her searing awareness: of injustice, of her own mission to change, of the music that flows through her.

Created by company dancer Mthuthuzeli November, NINA: By Whatever Meansstarts with Simone’s famous appearance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, then loops back to her childhood. We see young Sienne Adotey taking her first piano lessons, with Sayaka Ichikawa as her inspiring teacher. As she grows up, the story turns from church celebrations to 1960s jazz clubs, on to protest and power.

November creates lively group sequences, but the biographical approach can plod. A flurry of waved placards tells us that we’ve reached the Civil Rights movement, but lacks dramatic weight.