Peaky Blinders: The Ballet? Creator Knight in secret talks with dance company
YAOU’VE seen Peaky Blinders the TV show, the box-sets, the clothes line, the beer and the booze.
Now you need to keep on your toes for... Peaky Blinders: The Ballet.
Birmingham-born show creator Steven Knight has revealed he is in secret talks with Britain’s oldest dance company, and he is hoping to take the Shelby series into a totally unexpected direction.
Rambert, which gave its first performance in 1926, has asked the prolific writer if it can turn the hit television drama into a ballet.
Knight says he welcomes the plan, which follows previous moves to use the Peaky Blinders brand for everything from beers and spirits to a leading fashion range.
Last week he met up with the company formerly known as Ballet Rambert to hold preliminary talks and give the idea his blessing.
The Oscar-nominated writer of Dirty Pretty Things said: “I had a meeting with Rambert because they said they were interested in turning Peaky Blinders into a ballet.
“I wasn’t supposed to say anything about it, but I don’t mind talking about things. That’s pretty much it, and all I know is that they want to turn it into dance.
“I don’t know where they would do it, but there was a view to premiering it here in Birmingham.”
Based at London’s South Bank, Rambert’s history dates back to former Ballet Russes dancer Marie Rambert arriving in London after fleeing the outbreak of the First World War.
In 1926, Rambert and her students presented the ballet Tragedy of Fashion by Frederick Ashton – an event at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith said to be the birth of British ballet. Now it could soon be even more famous for turning a gangster TV series into a Brummie ballet. Despite becoming one of the world’s leading screenwriters, and directing movies such as Locke with Tom Hardy and Serenity, starring Oscarwinning Matthew McConaughey and due to be released in September, Knight has admitted in the past that he is not a huge cinemagoer. But he has been to the ballet. “Yes I have, and although I’m not a massive ballet aficionado, I do know what it means,” he said. “I won’t dance myself, though. I haven’t got the legs for it, I’m afraid!”
He also revealed that he is confident the BBC will extend Peaky Blinders to a seventh series, even though the fifth series is not due to begin shooting until the autumn.
This will push back any plans to make a movie from the hit show, but he is still hopeful that more of the future episodes could be shot in and around Birmingham.
He admits that one of the things that has surprised him the most is that Brummies themselves have taken to Peaky Blinders.
“I wondered if it would be popular in Britain but not in Birmingham, because Brummies are like that,” he laughed. “Birmingham is not a place to bang its own drum – but the series has been a hit in places like Russia, Turkey, Mexico and the US.
“Even some of my heroes like Bob Dylan like it. And I spent three hours with Snoop Dogg in his London hotel room because he said it reminded him of gang culture.
“It’s a family story – and we have all got relatives we don’t like.”
There was a view to premiering it here in Birmingham Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight