Men at Work

It’s been 25 years since William Trevitt and Michael Nunn swapped the Royal Ballet for the contemporary scene, building an imaginative portfolio across the stage and screen in step with choreographers like Russell Maliphant, William Forsythe and Christopher Wheeldon. Somewhere along the way the Boyz became men. It’s no longer just the two of them, and hasn’t been for quite a while—around 2014 the pair ceded the spotlight to an all-male-presenting ensemble, the Talent—but the boyish charm that fuelled their backstage exploits at the Royal (captured on video with a Channel 4 broadcast ahead of their breakout show at the Roundhouse, “Pointless,” in 2000) persists. This anniversary bill leans into their cheeky boyband image at every turn, from the knowing title (“Still Pointless”) to the programme insert (a commercial poster of Trevitt and Nunn, taut and topless, circa early 2000s).

Performance

BalletBoyz: “Still Pointless”

Place

Sadler's Wells, London, UK, May 13, 2026

Words

Sara Veale

BalletBoyz, photograph by Amber Hunt

The show presents eight excerpts from the BalletBoyz back catalogue, plus a new commission from troupe member Seirian Griffiths, interspersed with some brilliant film footage, including snippets from the documentary preceding their Roundhouse debut, which cutely casts them as handsome Billy and cheeky Michael. The pair are terrific storytellers, offering clever metacommentary and playful backwards glances via interstitial voiceovers created for the bill.

The self-referential comes full circle when Trevitt and Nunn themselves take to the stage to perform Russell Maliphant’s “Critical Mass,” the piece that kicked everything off a quarter century ago. Working in near-constant touch, they swoop their way through a series of port de bras sculpted in Maliphant’s signature style, slicing across planes and levels with careful precision. Their partnering is smooth and fluent, accompanied by a whooshing, tinging score that wouldn’t sound out of place in a video game.

The rest of the programme is ceded to the Talent, who look superb in Xie Xin’s “Ripple,” greeting its twanging violin and unnerving percussion with a mesmeric roil that surges outward like a groundswell. There’s a yearning to the dancing, with its twisted bodywork and swaying use of space. The troupe handle Xin’s ripples, alternations and contractions with care, treating her choreography like a precious thing.

BalletBoyz, photograph by Amber Hunt

Maxine’s Doyle’s stylish “Bradley 4:18” whisks them to a spikier, more erratic place. The jangling piece unleashes jazzy cymbals and chaotic antics, the dancers dressed in suits as they jaunt, fling and jive. The energy is manic, like a scrap brewing in the parking lot of a bar, and there’s immediate force to the clomping way they take up space, especially Benji Knapper and Luigi Nardone. Heads in hand, the two bring a charismatic I-don’t-wanna-but-I-gotta slant that softens the pulsing tableaux and quicksilver jumps into blackout.

A duet from Christopher Wheeldon’s “Us” is the most balletic offering of the night, a tender, muscular tussle in half-light to a gliding score from Keaton Henson. Legs draw into passé, and arms cut to first. Paris Fitzpatrick and Dylan Jones press their bare torsos together, hands glancing each other’s cheeks, waists, feet and forearms. It’s erotic, affectionate and vulnerable at once. More duets feature in a second Maliphant work, “Fallen,” tense partnerships with a combat flavour—think kicks and cuffs doled out across tidy diagonals. It’s got all of the silkiness of “Us” with none of the zen, especially when Luigi Nardone and Joshua Attwood square off, each pilfering the negative space left by the other.

BalletBoyz in Javier de Frutos’s “Fiction.” Photograph by Amber Hunt

“Young Men,” from Iván Pérez, is introduced with clips from the like-titled dance film Trevitt and Nunn created with Perez in France in 2015, an emotive ode to the First World War that treks trenches, camps, forests and battlefields. The stagework here isolates a portrait of shell shock, Benji Knapper caving their stomach and contorting their feet as they fall, recover and fall again. Their staggering solo—a compassionate comment on the ugliness of violence—is a fine complement to the choppy currents of Liam Scarlett’s “Serpent,” which doesn’t present the snaking undulations you might guess from the title but a rougher, more fitful fluidity that courses along to strings from Max Richter. Crawling in like primordial creatures from the deep, the ensemble plunges into a series of ambitious, striking lifts—some of the best partnering of the programme. The final phrase closes on their arms cocked to form swan’s heads—“the deadly attack underneath the supple,” in Scarlett’s own words.

A choreographic commission from troupe member Seirian Griffiths is the lone premiere of the night: “Motor Cortex,” inspired by fatalism and the complexity of memory. Flashing lights reveal jumps and falls like sparking synapses; the dancers embrace and disconnect in a show of friction. I found the phrasing a little drawn-out, but the shape-shifting is interesting, especially when the dancers arrange themselves into an eye-catching double helix.

Ending with Javier de Frutos’s “Fiction” is a wink to a programme steeped in self-awareness. Set at a backstage barre, framed by a narration that imagines the choreographer’s death before a premiere—including an obituary that extols his fondness for provocation and “theatrical excess”—the piece tasks the dancers with spooling and unspooling threads of languid choreography. They slide, dive, lean and bounce, rewinding often to start again. Snippets from Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” play twice, including in the closing scene, but the effect is more of an ellipsis than a full stop—meta to the final (or is it?) moment.

Sara Veale

Sara Veale is a London-based writer and editor. She's a member of the UK Dance Critics' Circle and has written about dance for the Observer, the Spectator, Harper's Bazaar, Auditorium, Gramophone and more. Her book, Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance, was published by Faber in 2025.

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Men at Work

Sara Veale

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