Tony Iommi has given his verdict on the forthcoming Black Sabbath ballet after going to see the rehearsals.
Iommi has had a hand in the creation of the ballet, working with Birmingham Royal Ballet director Carlos Acosta. The show will include eight of the band’s tracks plus new music inspired by them, all performed live by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.
Having watched the rehearsals, the guitarist in the pioneering heavy metal band told Channel 4 News he “loved” the production. “It’s so different, and it’s something that a lot of people didn’t expect, including me.”
He admitted to the broadcaster, however that he had never been to a ballet in his life. “But to come in, and working with these guys, and seeing it, it’s just fantastic. And the work that they put in is just amazing,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iommi told BirminghamWorld that the ballet had made him “look at our music differently now” because it had been “interpreted in a different way.”
“It’s still got the basic things, but then it did have in the different orchestral things coming in. And then I never thought for a minute we would have people dancing to ‘Black Sabbath’ and ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Iron Man’,” he said.
Asked whether he thinks the ballet could inspire metal fans to become ballet fans, and vice versa, Iommi answered: “I certainly hope so. I mean, it is a strange combination, but you’ve got to push the boat out. And, you know, hopefully, we can get everybody together.”
The eight Black Sabbath songs that will be used in the ballet are ‘Paranoid’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘Black Sabbath’, ‘Solitude’, ‘Orchid’, ‘Laguna Sunrise’ and ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’.
The ballet will arrive at the Birmingham Hippodrome from September 23 to 30, before moving on to Plymouth’s Theatre Royal and Sadler’s Wells in London. Tickets can be booked here.