‘Yes, there were letters. And people played games’, said a booming voice from the orchestra pit as the curtain fell on the stage of Leeds Playhouse. The Northern Ballet recently performed David Nixon’s Dangerous Liaisons – a ballet based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s scandalous novel. This Autumn marks Nixon’s final season as the Artistic Director of Northern Ballet after 20 years in the role. Set to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, played live by Northern Ballet Sinfonia, the dancers and the music were stunning. The period costuming added a level of decadent beauty that captured the aristocratic glamour of pre-Revolutionary France. Even though it is a tale of seduction full of explicit sexual encounters, the dancers remained fully clothed for every scene. But from the heavier lace-edged gowns to barely-there skirts, shirts and bodices, the costumes brought the piece alive. The simple staging, a result of pandemic measures, consisted of an entirely black background, a writing desk, a sofa, and a chaise longue. As the furniture remained in place until the final moments of the second act, five chandeliers were moved up and down to indicate when the location had changed from private quarters, to a grand ballroom. Although limited, the static set allowed the complex plot of Laclos’s epistolary novel to shine through the dancers.

The exchange of letters in Les Liaisons Dangereuses was not lost in its translation to the stage. Different coloured letters were exchanged at an increasingly rapid pace. Letters were written, read, swapped, stolen, and destroyed throughout the performance––becoming more than mere props. Dealing in the secrets of the court, the Marquise de Merteuil (Minju Kang) collects most of the correspondence. She sweeps around the stage amassing letters from the other dancers, hiding them in her writing desk instead of delivering them to their intended recipients. Meanwhile, the villainous libertine Vicomte de Valmont (Mlindi Kulashe) opens the second act by physically bending the Courtesan Emillie (Alessandra Bramante) over and using her as a human desk to write a love note to the married and supposedly virtuous Madame de Tourvel (Sarah Chun).  

The Marquise de Merteuil managed to show her elegance and poise, but also her physical and emotional presence with every move. The audio narration introduced her as a woman who could dominate men and this was reiterated by her power on stage. The narration, the voice of an elderly, hunched woman who is rummaging for letters (and is later revealed to be the Marquise), is used for just a few seconds at the beginning and the end of the show. The only other character who gets an introduction is Valmont, but the focus of the narration is to draw the audience’s attention to the letters and the Marquise’s love of them.

At some points the repeated motif of her acting as a puppeteer to the human marionettes of the characters became a little too on the nose, but did not distract from Kang’s presence as a dancer. Having her stand behind each actor and pulling their limbs by an imaginary string lowered the subtlety of her schemes, which are otherwise artfully executed. Act one begins as the Marquise unveils her plan for Valmont to seduce her ex-lover’s new virginal fiancée, Cécile de Volanges (Aerys Merrill). However, Valmont has already set his sights upon Tourvel. The Marquise decides to challenge Valmont, agreeing to sleep with him if he can successfully debauch Tourvel and obtain a letter from her confirming this.

While Valmont pursues Tourvel, the Marquise introduces Cécile to Chevalier Danceny (Lorenzo Trossello). The physical comedy of Cécile’s mother (Harriet Marden) being twisted away and knocked down by the Marquise to ensure that the young couple have time to bond and form an attachment offered some comic relief to the audience. Later in the play, as her mother discovers the letters between the pair, she removes Cécile to the countryside. The young woman enlists Valmont’s help in transporting letters to Danceny. Using the intimacy granted by secretly carrying her letters, Valmont coerces Cécile into sleeping with him.

This was the standout scene of the performance. Kulashe’s Valmont was extremely nuanced, rather than being a one-note villain. The choreography of the rape was uncomfortably disturbing to watch. The audience was on the edge of their seat with Merrill’s emotional performance as she goes through a whole world of voiceless emotions. Almost immediately after, in a completely different routine, Tourvel succumbs to Valmont’s charms and falls madly in love with him. The tenderness of this encounter made the violent feats of the earlier scene with Cécile all the more harrowing. It also reiterated the complexity of Laclos’s epistolary style as Valmont moves from extremely tender with Tourvel, playful with the Marquise and the courtesan, to brutal with Cécile. Valmont’s personality changes so much with each encounter that by the end of the story, the audience does not know which, if any, are the real Valmont.

However, when the Marquise receives Valmont’s promised letter, written with Tourvel as they began their relationship, she loses her poise and becomes inflamed with jealousy. When he returns to collect his prize of a night with the Marquise, she says that he must end his relationship with Tourvel first. After an emotional breakup, he returns to the Marquise once again to demand his reward and discovers Danceny is her new lover. Valmont convinces Danceny to return to his true love Cécile. Instead of uniting Valmont and the Marquise, this leads her to declare war upon him, telling Danceny that Valmont had raped Cécile by giving him Valmont’s letter.

Danceny then challenges Valmont to a duel. In the ensuing chaos of each character coming on stage to prevent the fight from occurring, the furniture is removed, leaving the stage entirely empty. The two men did not use props and instead the lighting, designed by Alastair West, kept score as they fought. This was a particularly interesting move as the performance had introduced items that were not integral to the plot, such as bags of money, embroidery hoops, shawls, and books throughout, so the use of imaginary swords was a deliberate artistic choice. The fight to the death was to avenge Danceny’s injured masculinity as much as it was to defend Cécile, and so through removing their weapons, the staging of the fight emphasised the tangible and intangible power of pens and swords. The ballet ended with Valmont dead, and the Marquise embroiled in shame and scandal. The powerful dancer is united with her hunched, older self from the opening of the show. No longer a powerful and elegant puppeteer but a social outcast who spends her days rummaging through old letters.

This was my first ballet, and I thought it was beautiful. It was a complex emotional and sensual performance that was matched with equally beautiful music. The diversity of the cast was also something that should be celebrated as each dancer brought out the intricacy of their characters. But most of all, it was wonderful to be back in a theatre, in a safe and socially-distanced way.