Ballet Black founder Cassa Pancho on growing an inclusive dance company and bringing it to Nottingham's Theatre Royal

Tell us about the Shadows show. It’s a double-bill of two shows; My Sister, The Serial Killer and A Shadow Work. What can audiences expect from each of these?

Well, if it’s not too conceited to say about my own company, I think audiences are in for a treat! We have two very different ballets on the bill; the show opens with A Shadow Work, by Chanel DaSilva, a visceral exploration of the emotions and memories we often try to conceal; whether that’s grief, unhappy family dynamics or fear, Chanel’s choreography reveals the beauty and struggles we all face in our inner lives. After the interval, audiences will see my adaptation of the best-selling novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer, written by Oyinkan Braithwaite, a story of two sisters entangled in love, loyalty and murderous secrets. I hope very much the audience find it gripping, funny and maybe a bit unsettling…

What was it about My Sister, The Serial Killer that made you think it would make a good ballet? I’ve read a piece by Oyinkan Braithwaite in The Guardian where, despite being a former ballet student herself, she says “Not once did I consider it as a ballet production.”

I obviously disagree! Oyinkan’s brilliant book has all the ingredients for a great ballet: romance, drama, loyalty and betrayal it is a great story and would make an excellent film or theatre production, and it gets people talking about what they might do if they found themselves in the same position as one of the lead characters, Korede. Ballet Black is also a relatively small company – just eleven dancers, so one of the things that made this story perfect to translate to the stage was the number of characters: three main players but still plenty for the whole company to get their teeth into, as nurses, ghosts, party goers and murder victims.

Does it feel good to bring over Chanel DaSilva to the UK for her debut? 

Chanel is a really exciting choreographer, and her beliefs and goals align with a lot of mine, so it made sense to offer her a commission. I am so pleased Ballet Black was the company to be able to commission her UK choreographic debut; not only is the ballet excellent, but Chanel was a lot of fun to work with, and the dancers and I really enjoyed our time with her.

This show is Ballet Black’s first time at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal (although you’ve put on several performances over the years at Nottingham Playhouse). How excited are you to perform at this historic 160 year-old venue?

We are very excited! It’s such a beautiful building, and we always enjoyed visiting Nottingham – I hope our audiences that we built up there before the pandemic will be coming to Theatre Royal to see this show.

Tell us about the team you have around you. How many people are part of the company in total? How has that team grown since the early days?

In the early days it was really just me and the dancers. Over the years, as we’ve grown more financially stable, I’ve been very lucky to have been able to hire actual staff so we are now eleven dancers and six full time administrative staff, including myself, who look after fundraising, our Junior Ballet School, and our touring.

The company and yourself have won quite a few awards over the years including an Olivier, Critics’ Circle and you yourself were awarded the Freedom of the City of London award in 2018. What do these awards mean to you? Are there any that stand out in particular as proud moments?

All the awards we’ve won are much appreciated, particularly when they acknowledge our dancers – my two favourite and proudest awards moments so far have been when Isabela Coracy won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance, and when Ebony Thomas won Best Performer at the Black British Theatre Awards, both in 2024.

In 2021, partly in response to the covid pandemic, you launched the online video platform BBOnFilm (at the very accessible price of £5 per film). How is that going? Is there anything you would particularly recommend people should watch on there?

My top recommendation at the moment is Burn From The Inside, a short film choreographed by former BB dancer, Mthuthuzeli November, which recently won a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Best Film. It’s brilliant, but also short, in case you don’t have a lot of time!

You also run a Junior School and Junior Associate Programme for young people aged 3-18. Can you tell us a bit about those? Have many people from those graduated to careers in the dance world?

I am very pleased to say that several of our graduates are either in professional training or have gone on to dance professionally, including Ruby Runham who recently joined Ballet Black, having been a student in our Junior Associate Programme and training at Rambert School of Dance.

October is quite a big month for dance in Nottingham. As well as your performance TRCH also have on a couple of other dance shows (Northern Ballet’s Merlin & Riverdance) and then there’s a whole month-long festival of dance called nottdance (see nottdance.com) happening at dozens of other venues across the city. Are you aware of that? Any thoughts on it?

We are friends of Northern Ballet so know that they also tour to Theatre Royal. In my opinion, you can never have too much dance! I’m happy to see Yinka Esi Graves on the bill at nottdance, and hope that the people of Nottingham will come and see everything on offer this month.

Shadows by Ballet Black is at Theatre Royal Nottingham on Friday 24 October. 

There's also a free Black British Ballet Panel event at West Bridgford Library on 13 November at West Bridgford Library.