Leeds Playhouse
Phoenix Dance Theatre’s artistic director Marcus Jarrell Willis brings an urgency and groove to a tale of hunger, tenderness and sexual identity

In the centre of a minimal stage, set designer Jacob Hughes has placed a single room. It’s a cube, separated from the outside world; a refuge, an escape, or perhaps a trap. It effectively sucks your attention, just as it sucks in David, the protagonist in James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room, and what happens in here explodes his life.

Literary adaptations in dance are fraught with pitfalls, predominantly how to express the intricacy and specificity of thousands of words through movement only. “There are no mothers-in-law in ballet,” George Balanchine famously said. Here it is aunts: there’s no way you’d know the woman in red is David’s aunt (unless you read the synopsis, which is recommended) but perhaps it doesn’t matter. What dance can do is express Aunt Ellen’s disapproval though her superior gait and dismissive flick of the wrists.