TV Hit ‘Peaky Blinders’ Expands Story With Dance Show – FOX13 News Memphis

LONDON — (AP) — Steven Knight looked shocked, almost speechless. He had just watched a scene from the first act of “Peaky Blinders” produced by contemporary dance company Rambert based on the hit TV show he wrote and created.

Watching the direct connection between the dancers’ movements and the audience was a revelation for Knight, who teamed up to produce a full-blown theatrical dance show filling in some of the backstory of the 1920s gangster drama.

“I never liked dancing. 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 wrote a ballet scene in the show’s fifth season.

Knight recently watched rehearsals for several scenes of the stage play Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, which will have 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 there’s no barrier between you and it,” explained Knight, who wrote the script for the show.

“It’s not like opera, and I’m sure it’s great, but you don’t need to know opera or know or understand the story or anything. It’s just humans doing what they do with music. And it’s pretty straight forward.”

Rambert Art Director Benoit Swan Pouffer is directing and choreographing the production.

“(Nate) said to me, well, you convey an idea in 30 seconds, and when I do that on the series, it takes me hours to convey that idea. That’s the power of dance. For me and Everyone dances. 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 is for people who have never watched “Peaky Blinders.”

“We started the way World War I did, which is not what we saw in the series. That explains why Peaky Blinders is Peaky Blinders,” he said.

Fans of the BBC series will surely be familiar with the love story between crime boss Tommy Shelby and undercover spy Grace Burgess, portrayed on TV by Cillian Murphy and Annabelle Wallis.

“Tommy had a tough life. He made a stick for his back. Of course, he caused his own problems. He was very contradictory, he was all those things on TV,” Knight said.

“But I think dance—maybe you don’t see it in other forms—is joy, and when there is joy, you see the joy of it. But even in tragedy, you see the beauty of it. So It’s a very interesting way of telling a story.”

Tommy and Grace are played by two different groups of dancers, and one couple, Guillaume Quiao and Naya Lovell, are very aware of their responsibilities to the “Peaky Blinders” fan base.

“If fans watch the show, they might have certain expectations for the characters of Grace or Tommy Shelby, and I feel like that also creates an opportunity to be able to play in dance and Benoit’s vision and Rambert’s vision and ‘Peaky’ The Blinders “find a middle ground between them,” Quiao said.

“It has an essence, but it’s also, I wouldn’t say a modernized version of it, but it’s our version of the story.”

After the war, Peaky Blinders ran Birmingham on their own terms, often using torture, shooting and stabbing to persuade.

This violence permeates the dancers’ movements.

“I was thinking, please stop because you’re going to hurt each other because it’s true.

“You feel conflict and violence very strongly in the dance form,” Knight said. “It was another revelation to me that fight scenes can be beautiful, choreographed, and very fulfilling.”



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