Steven Knight looked shocked, almost speechless. He just watched the scene from the first act of the contemporary dance company Rambert from their Peaky Blinders production ,
Watching the direct connection between the dancer’s movements and the audience was a revelation for Knight, who has collaborated on a full theatrical dance show filling the backstory of the gangster drama.
“I never liked to dance. Dance was never a thing to me. I certainly wouldn’t dance myself,” Knight said.
He was so impressed with the power of dance that he included ballet scenes in the show’s fifth season.
Recently Knight watched a rehearsal for several scenes of the stage show, Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby , with its world premiere at the Arena Birmingham on Tuesday before touring the UK
“I want other people to experience my experience and when you see it, it’s like you and it There are no barriers in between,” explained Knight, who wrote the script.
“It’s not like opera, I’m sure it’s great, but you don’t need to know opera, you don’t need to know or know the story or anything. It’s just humans doing what they do with the music It’s astonishingly straightforward.”
Rambert Art Director Benoit Swan Pouffer is directing and choreographing the production.
“( Knight) said to me, well, you delivered an idea in 30 seconds, and when I was in When doing this in the series, it took me hours to convey the idea. That’s the power of dance. Dance for me and everyone. You don’t need to learn the language. It’s the body,” Pouffer said. “We speak internationally, so it doesn’t matter where you’re from. You’ll get the story.”
This applies to never seen Peaky Blinders .
“We started with World War I, which is not what we see in the series. That explains why Peaky Blinders, Peaky Blinders,” he said . Boss Tommy Shelby and undercover spy Grace Burgess, portrayed on TV by Cillian Murphy and Annabelle Wallis.
“Tommy’s life was tough. He made a stick for his back. Of course he caused his own problems. He was very contradictory, he was the TV show all those things in,” Knight said.
The other form – is joy, and when there is joy, you see the joy of it. But even in tragedy, you can see its beauty. So it’s a very interesting way of telling a story. “
Tommy and Grace are played by two different groups of dancers, one of whom is Guillaume Quiau and Naya Lovell, who know them well Responsibility to the Peaky Blinders fan base.
They have no idea what Grace or Soup the character should be Michelby had certain expectations and I felt that also created an opportunity to find a middle ground between dance and Benoit’s vision and Lambert’s vision and Peaky Blinders ,” Quéau said.
version of the story. “
After the war, the Peaky Blinders ran Birmingham in their own way, using torture, shooting and stabbing as common methods of persuasion.
This violence permeates the dancers’ movements.
“I’m thinking, please stop because you’re going to hurt each other because it’s real.
“You feel the conflict and the violence strongly in the form of dance,” Knight said. “It was another revelation to me that fight scenes can be beautiful and well choreographed, but really fleshed out.”
