This is where the Ariantella dream began. When Natasha, our founder and choreographer, was only 14 years old she started to imagine a dance show telling the legendary story of the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. Whilst the idea of a dark, historical, epic dance show based in the nineteenth century streets of old London town lived vivid in her imagination, she never really thought it would ever happen.
It wasn’t until nearly twenty years later, when she met her husband Peter he said that he’d help bring her vision to life. He contacted a friend of his and young composer, Alex Cannon, to see if he’d be interested in collaborating on the project. And so a show was born.
Over the period of 18 months, from the summer of 2016 until early 2018, fortnightly meetings and Alex’s brilliance began to bring the scenario laid out by Peter and Natasha to life. And at the end of the process Ariantella’s first feature length score, at just over an hour and a half, was completed.
Writing the music for Jack was as much a journey for me as the story itself. From the start, I wanted the score to mirror the characters, locations, and unfolding events—both musically and visually.
Working with Natasha and Peter, we spent time shaping the musical world of the piece together. Those conversations helped fix certain ideas while leaving room to adapt as the production evolved.
We decided that each character would be represented by a different instrument – victims, suspects, and Inspector Abberline. Jack himself is marked not by an instrument but by a recurring motif that threads through the entire score. Sometimes it appears unmistakably, other times it slips in almost invisibly, creating unease.
The music wasn’t written in sequence. I began by developing the main themes, which meant fragments surfaced before their full significance became clear. This gives the audience a sense of mystery, echoing the story’s gradual revelations.
To reflect the period, I wrote only for traditional orchestral instruments, weaving in string quartets, waltzes, and marches – Abberline’s theme, for instance, has a march-like character.
My influences came from horror and mystery cinema as well as late Romantic and contemporary classical traditions. In total, I wrote twenty-four pieces for the production. The work would not have been possible without Natasha and Peter’s vision, support, and creativity, which continually sharpened and expanded my own.