In May 2025 Keaton Henson’s Us (duet) featured at the Royal Ballet as part of a four-part showcase of the work of Royal Ballet Artistic Associate Christopher Wheeldon – Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works. Critics have praised the male pas deux, set to Keaton’s intense orchestral score, conducted by RBO Music Director Koen Kessels.
…using the grounded language of contemporary dance and the music of Keaton Henson…this male-bonding duet [was] an affecting look at friendship and intimacy.
The Sunday Times (Debora Craine) 11 May 2025 ****
Joseph Sissens and Matthew Ball made the most of this sensitive, 10-minute study in tender touch. The bare-chested pair folded into each other, rolling away in spirals, always drawing back together for contact head to head, back to arching back or via upside-down carrying or gentle hip lifts. This was dancing of both quality and equality, rounded, strong and resonant with human beauty.
The Stage (Donald Hutera) May 12 2025 ****
…a male duet built on chemistry and balance. Matthew Ball and Joseph Sissens dig into the steps, taking each other’s weight, grasping hands or pulling away. With a strong contemporary dance influence, the movement is fluent and grounded.
The Independent (Zoe Anderson) 10 May 2025 ****
…made by Wheeldon…to the folk/rock/classical hybrid music of Keaton Henson…a tour de force for Matthew Ball and Joseph Sissens who performed the complex, challenging and sensual choreography with exceptional skill, mutual strength and sensitivity.
Bachtrack (Graham Watts) 11 May 2025
…[Us] explores facets of masculinity in emotionally-charged sequences, where the dancers never lose touch with each other’s bodies. They alternate between supporting and interrogating each other, coming together and pulling apart…It’s about so much: love, friendship, tenderness and above all connection.. a moving, totally engaging piece.
BalletPosition (Teresa Guerreriro) 10 May 2025
Us originally formed part of a double-bill Them/Us and was commissioned by BalletBoyz and debuted at Sadler's Wells in 2017, originally conceived as a duet and then later expanded to incorporate the entire BalletBoyz dance corps. Interviewed in the The Times in April, Wheeldon said of the piece:
Us is an exploration, without being overt, of various connections between men. In some cases, [these are] romantic connections, in others brotherly connections, in others connections that can come from a more macho antagonistic culture, men trying to alpha each other.
Them/Us, for six dancers, opens with the suggestion of a cruel and unfeeling regime of regimented movements, from which its principal soloist is excluded; it then resolves into the (aforementioned) passionate duet, with two bodies coming together to combat the lonely atmosphere. Acclaim for the production resulted in an immediate two-week transfer to the West End, where it played at the Vaudeville Theatre. It was revived in 2019.
Henson’s ballet roots are firmly established – his mother was a principal ballerina in The Royal Ballet – and he has worked with choreographers a numbers of times previously. One of the most significant of these collaborations was in early 2015, when he composed the score for Young Men, a feature-length dance film from BalletBoyz, which went on to win the 2017 Rose d’Or and Golden Prague awards -watch Henson discuss the score here. Shot on location in France, the film stars the BalletBoyz dancers as soldiers experiencing the brutality of the First World War in a captivating hybrid of drama and dance, combined with Keaton’s strikingly haunting music and the eloquent choreography of Iván Pérez.