A new ballet score from Jeremy Birchall, choreographed by Andrew McNicol and for his Ballet Collective, toured in March and April 2025, appearing at Hull City Hall, the Royal Academy of Music, and Leeds’ Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre. Liquid Life is a 30-minute work scored for string quartet – present onstage throughout – and electronics, incorporating various diegetic sounds such as sirens and radio static. Its premiere is the capstone of the Ballet Collective’s fifth anniversary Here and Now programme.
McNicol and Birchall were inspired by the work of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, whose work examines the ambivalent experiences entailed in a modernity that can be both liberating and alienating in its capacity to uproot. The ballet explores the ebb and flow of human experience, capturing the fluidity, and resilience we need to navigate life's everchanging currents. Though we enter and leave this world alone, our story is dependent on the connections we forge along the way. Echoing with memories of the past while uplifted by the presence of those around us, we seek solace and strength in the bonds that connect us as we navigate the cyclical nature of life and towards what lies ahead.
Birchall provided an intriguing original score for the final ballet of the evening Liquid Life that seamlessly mixed a live string quartet, with recorded music incorporating sounds from everyday life such as muffled emergency sirens.
Bachtrack (Alexander Simpkins) 8 April 2025
…[a] brilliant soundtrack by Jeremy Birchall…
The Reviews Hub (Christopher Holmes) 30 March 2025 *****
Dancers interpret Birchall’s new musical commission…a blend of synthesiser and classical (lovely strings), and for some reason it seems familiar. There are American voices in this reverberating soundscape, a film score… Beats kick in, funky beats, and the moves become formation, more spontaneous. Lights change to only sidelights, the floor clears and the dancers let go. Dance for dance’s sake. The past and the present seem to commune in no man’s land.
British Theatre Guide (Vera Liber) 5 April 2025
The premiere piece… airs a new composition by Jeremy Birchall especially commissioned… which melds those same classical notes, full of big strings, with more technological and digital sounds comprised of fuzzy radio vocals, beeps and clicks that give the choreographer scope to create a broad-ranging piece about human connection with its moments of isolation, togetherness and support that evolve across the 30-minute dance.
The Reviews Hub (Maryam Philpott) 5 April 2025 ****
There were four musicians on the stage (two violins, a viola and a cello) and their interaction with the taped music was clever and worked very well. They complemented each other perfectly.
BalletcoForum (Simonetta Dixon) 1 April 2025 ****
A celebrated composer for the dance stage, Birchall’s Hungry Ghosts – an exploration of opioid addiction – premiered in February 2024 as part of Joffrey Ballet’s triple-bill Studies in Blue at Chicago’s Lyric Opera, choreographed by Stina Quagebeur, and was lauded by critics. Birchall’s 40-minute score is a blend of live orchestral performance and recorded tracks. It was his Birchall’s third collaboration with the choreographer; their previous projects were Nostalgia for Northern Ballet, performed at the Royal Opera House in 2022, and Catching Colour, a collaboration between English National Ballet and The Line, which debuted in 2022.