English National Opera's unlikely star revealed to be US street dancer

When the reviews for one of the year’s most keenly awaited new operas came in last weekend there was one recurring question: who was the dancer stealing the show as the Angel Gabriel?

Today it can be revealed that he is Banks-Artiste, 25, a street dancer from Brooklyn who until this month had never left the US, let alone appeared on a major opera stage.

Banks, whose real name is James Davis, did not even have a biography in the programme for English National Opera’s production of The Gospel According to the Other Mary – he became a Twitter enigma with audience members tweeting the question, who is he?

The Daily Telegraph critic Rupert Christianson wrote: “The outstanding performer of the evening is a marvellously expressive flex dancer, gnomically identified in the programme only as Banks”; the Independent said “he presented physical power and eloquence that was more than the equal of the singing”; and the Guardian’s Andrew Clements called him a remarkable dancer who “comes close to stealing the show”.

Banks is a krumper and flex dancer – forms of street dancing – and it is fair to say his CV is relatively short. He has danced for the rapper Lil’ Mama, done a photoshoot for Reebok, and auditioned for the US show So You Think You Can Dance.

Flex dancing emerged about 10 years ago in Brooklyn. It evolved from a Jamaican street dance called bruk-up and is an amalgam of styles, so a typical dance might feature “bone breaking” contortion, mime, gliding and dramatic incidents such as a gun battle or a romantic interlude.

To dance on one of the biggest opera stages in the world is a new experience. “I’m not the opera type,” Banks admitted. “This is the biggest thing I’ve done.”

Banks was brought to London by the opera’s director, Peter Sellars ,who spotted him in a workshop for a piece of theatre planned for the Park Avenue Armory next March and based around the US juvenile justice system.

There were 20 flex dancers. Sellars said: “I was knocked out by the power of the art form and the practitioners. I said to the ENO we just have to bring a bunch of flex dancers to London, but of course by then all the budgets had been made and it was a little late.”

They could get one over, though, and Banks stood out. “He is phenomenal and I’m so thrilled that this is the moment when the world will discover him – it is very exciting,” Sellars added.

“What is so powerful about krumping and now flexing is that these dancers are not on the surface, these dancers are about deeply rooted emotions, and what’s astonishing about what Banks is doing on stage is that he’s doing film acting most of the night and then suddenly it explodes into this amazing dance.”

Banks’s journey to the ENO is all the more remarkable since his career almost ended before it had started after he was, as an innocent party, caught up in a shooting five years ago while celebrating Halloween in Manhattan.

“There was a fight which broke out and someone threw a bottle that shattered right next to me,” he said. The next thing he knew was being shot twice through the knee.

“By the grace of God I’m still walking, dancing. The first bullet went through but the second one nipped the main vein in my leg so the pulse stopped for two minutes – if it had stopped for more than that my leg would have been amputated.”

At heart, Banks is a street dancer so he has been keeping his hand in by taking part in Saturday night krump battles in a subway near the Coliseum – “I won both.” On Saturday he plans to busk in Trafalgar Square.

“That’s where I came from. I used to dance in the street all the time, not even for money. I like entertaining people. And then I started getting money from it so I thought ‘hey, why not?’”

The Gospel According to the Other Mary, which completes its seven-performance run on Friday, is the latest collaboration between Sellars and the composer John Adams. First seen in a concert production in Los Angeles in 2012 and at the Barbican in London earlier this year, it retells the Passion story, set in a contemporary night shelter for homeless women.

Banks is freestyling for each performance so every one will be different. “Peter is such a good director, he has a brilliant mind and he works us so I remembered all the music.”

He loves being in the UK and staying with a friend in Seven Sisters and doing lots of sightseeing but is missing his family and four-year-old son, he said. “I was up to 4am talking to them for Thanksgiving.” Not that he would swap it for the world.

He added: “I feel blessed to come to London and do this. My dream always was to travel and to dance so hopefully this is the start.”