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Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Thembus hate the Hlubis and the Hlubis hate the Thembus. Caught between them, two young star-crossed lovers have their lives blighted by this mindless tribal conflict. Ring any bells? Fools, by Mthuthuzeli November, is a one-act work inspired by RL Peteni’s 1976 novel Hill of Fools which transplanted Shakespeare’s tragedy to rural South Africa. The 45-minute piece had its London premiere this week, finale to a new triple bill by Northern Ballet.The Leeds-based company’s bread-and-butter repertoire has mostly consisted of full-evening narratives but once in a while they allow themselves the luxury of a mixed bill. The latest, selected by former Royal Ballet star Federico Bonelli, director since 2022, combines a modern classic with two commissioned works. It opened at the Royal Opera House’s 400-seater Linbury Theatre on Tuesday, performed by the company’s polished and expressive dancers.The programme began with Rudi van Dantzig’s response to Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. The 1977 piece, restaged by Sonja Marchiolli, features four couples and an Angel who appears between duets, part magus, part balletmaster. The nine dancers, performing to a recording, are dressed in chalky shades of olive, ochre and saffron by Toer van Schayk, who also supplied the shifting skyscape on the backcloth.Tuesday’s Angel, Bruno Serraclara, felt heavy-footed and underpowered but there was smooth-flowing pairwork from all four couples. Junior soloist Harris Beattie caught the eye in the first song, “Frühling”, with his light jump and ardent partnering of Saeka Shirai. The revival gives the cast a fine chance to show off their skill but they can’t save the piece from feeling dated. The big emotions — love, death, and all points in between — seem ersatz and stagy, just a pretext for some pretty steps.Kristen McNally’s snack-sized Victory Dance was a five-minute male trio set to a perky Afro-Latin score by the Mercury Prize-winning jazz quintet Ezra Collective. McNally’s steps respond to the party mood of the score, Archie Sherman and Yu Wakizuka whizzing virtuosically around Joseph Powell-Main’s pirouetting wheelchair.November’s Fools supplied the big finish. The action takes place in a grubby shanty town thriftily suggested by a few slabs of corrugated iron, some empty beer crates and a washing line. The shabbily dressed inhabitants flirt, fight and fidget but once the forbidden love affair is discovered the two sides crystallise — half in blue, half in green — ready for the extended punch-up. The ensembles owe an obvious debt to Jerome Robbins’ Sharks and Jets but November deploys his 17-strong cast with verve, roughening the edges of their classical technique, refreshing its rhythms and supplementing it with angry stamps and wriggles. He takes care to delineate each key character: twitchy rage for Antoni Cañellas Artigues (aka Tybalt); smoother moves for Harris Beattie’s eager, puppyish hero. Beattie’s lovestruck duets with Sarah Chun (the only pair of pointe shoes on the budget) are fluently written and danced: nuzzling embraces; rapturous lifts. The fight scenes — much floor-slapping with canes and willow switches — drag slightly, but build (spoiler alert) to the ballet’s sad and bloody climax.★★★★☆To January 31, rbo.org.uk

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