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The Game is On

Move over, Matthew Bourne, there is a new voice in theatrical dance plays. Choreographer Penny Saunders' bespoke production of “Sherlock,” performed by Grand Rapids Ballet, was not only a triumph in bringing literature’s favorite super sleuth to the stage in dance form, but is an early contender as one of the 2025-26 dance season’s very best.

Performance

Grand Rapids Ballet: “Diablo Rojo” by James Sofranco, “While Away“ by Jennifer Archibald, “Sherlock” by Penny Saunders

Place

Peter Martin Wege Theatre, Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 24, 2025

Words

Steve Sucato

Nigel Tau of Grand Rapids Ballet in “Sherlock” by Penny Saunders. Photograph by Ray Nard

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The headliner in GRB’s box office record-setting triple bill, “Sherlock,” was preceded by GRB artistic director James Sofranko’s “Diablo Rojo,” which opened the production with a bang. 

Danced to lively music by the Mexican acoustic guitar duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela, the work for two men and two women was a Spanish-flavored celebration of showy, technical dancing. Playful banter between the dancers gave rise to machismo-driven jumps and leaps by the men and flirtatious, powerhouse turns by the women. The brief but brilliant contemporary ballet work left the audience wanting more.

Grand Rapids Ballet in “Diablo Rojo” by James Sofranco. Photograph by Ray Nard

Next came a reprise of choreographer Jennifer Archibald's 2024 ballet for GRB,  “While Away.” One of the most talented dance makers working today, Archibald showcased her ample choreographic skills with perhaps her most balletic and sumptuous dance work to date.

Themed around sailors “whiling away time” during extended deployments, and set to composer Edvard Grieg's "Holberg Suite," the ballet unfolded in a succession of five male-female couples that moved on and off the stage in expansive, free-flowing, contemporary ballet movement. Hand and arm gestures, leans into one another, and gentle caresses, accompanied by broad smiles on the dancers’ faces, suggested new courtships and reunions of lovers. 

While the entire cast was marvelous in the ballet, the pairing of veteran GRB dancers Yuka Oba-Muschiana and Nathan Young stood out with a warmth and intimacy in their dancing, as did dancers James Cunningham and Ahna Lipchik, whose large, swaying movements and intense, close-quartered partnering were nothing short of visual splendor.

Grand Rapids Ballet in Jennifer Archibald's “While Away.” Photograph by Ray Nard

Then, the game was afoot from the get-go in GRB resident choreographer Saunders’ “Sherlock.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, was brilliantly brought to life in the one-act, hour-long murder mystery that drew on story snippets from the 1940s and '50s radio show "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and from Sherlock films to form a script for the work, as well as create its soundtrack, along with music by composers Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, and Sarasate. 

A co-production with Ballet Idaho and Nashville Ballet, “Sherlock” is set in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, featuring period costumes and sets. Told through the eyes of Irene Adler (Lipchik), the only character in the Holmes stories to ever stump him, the beautifully crafted dance work was delivered in rapid-fire interweaving vignettes referencing several of the detective’s well-known cases from his very first to his last. 

Much like a visit to twenty-first-century Sherlock’s “mind palace,” as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC TV series Sherlock, echoes of friends and foes, memories of past cases and events, and Holmes’ great intellectual powers of observation were gathered together in the work in a cacophony of visual and auditory elements that proved quite magical.

Grand Rapids Ballet in “Sherlock” by Penny Saunders. Photograph by Ray Nard

Nigel Tau brought a sense of gravitas and intrigue to the role of Sherlock, while Young, as Dr. John Watson, was delightfully animated in his characterization. The pair transitioned from vignette to vignette in a movement language Saunders described as a form of exaggerated speech and body language. 

With each new vignette came another murder mystery, along with a plethora of characters from the Sherlock universe, including Mary Watson (Oba-Muschiana), Mycroft Holmes (Sam Epstein), Inspector Lestrade (William Wisnesky), and multiple other incarnations of Sherlock, representing his various skill sets and past portrayals.

Part lip-synching, slapstick, sketch comedy, part Broadway-esque drama, this uber-entertaining new age ballet had something to captivate everyone from the novice dancegoer to the balletomane. 

The most memorable of its vignettes was that of a contentious suffragette rally, complete with musical number and song, and Sherlock’s final duel with arch nemesis Professor Moriarty -portrayed with menace by Josué Justiz- that ended the ballet. It took place on a bridge overlooking a river, where a gathering of apparitions, possibly the victims in Sherlock’s many cases, performed a mournfully beautiful dance in unison as the two men were locked in a smoothly executed struggle to the death that ended with Moriarty tumbling off the bridge and pulling Holmes along with him into the waiting arms of the apparitions below. 

Steve Sucato


Steve Sucato is a former dancer turned arts writer/critic living in Cleveland, Ohio. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer, Buffalo News, Erie Times-News, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance International, and web publications Critical Dance, DanceTabs (London), and Fjord Review. Steve is chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association and the creator of the arts website artsair.art

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