Factory International Hosts Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney

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Nederlands Dans Theater and Complicité  Figures in Extinction  Aviva Studios, Factory International, Manchester 21 Feb 2025, 19:30

I had been looking forward to a show like Nederlands Dans Theater's Figures in Extinction in Manchester's Factory International ever since 7 Dec 2014, when George Osborn announced a £78 million investment in a new arts venue for Manchester as part of the Coalition Government's Northern Powerhouse initiative (see Factory To Go Ahead  13 Jan 2017 and the posts linked to that article).   I had high hopes on 11 Dec 2014 when I wrote  Let's bring the Royal Ballet to The Factory, Manchester.  They were exceeded by the premiere of Requiem, the third part of Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney's collaboration at Factory International's Aviva Studios on 19 Feb 2025.

I attended the evening performance of Figures in Extinction on 21 Feb 2025.   It was my first visit to Factory International. According to Wikipedia, the venue can accommodate up to 7,000 people in its "5,000 flexible 'warehouse' space" and 2,000-seat auditorium.  There is no shortage of bars, merchandise outlets and other attractions to explore during intervals.  The show took place in the Avviva Studios auditorium.  Although I was in the back row, I had an excellent view of the stage, and the acoustics were excellent.   Even though my mobility is limited, I had no trouble accessing my seat.  There were plenty of lifts and escalators as well as helpful and courteous ushers.

Figures in Extinction started with the list or [1.0].  There was a dialogue on a screen between "Simon" and "Crystal", though I did not recognize the voices as those of McBurney and Pite. Dancers represented the animals, plants and glaciers that have disappeared as a result of climate change.  The animal that has stuck in my memory is the Pyrenean ibex with its distinctive curved horns.  The top photograph in  An Introduction to Figures in Extinction shows how the species was represented on stage.  A child asked plaintively whether the animals had gone away and whether any were ever coming back.   According to the online programme, the text was taken from Why Look at Animals? by John Berger.  The score was composed by Owen Belton, who has collaborated with Pite for many years.  There were also excerpts from Perfume Genius's Normal Song and Blick Bassy's Aké.   A flavour of the work can be savoured from NDT's YouTube video Figures in Extinction [1.0] - by Crystal Pite with Simon McBurney (NDT 1 | Dreams 360).

Figures in Extinction [2.0] but then it comes to the humans explored the possibility of the extinction of our species.  Suuited human beings in their offices were scrutinized just like the disappearing species in the list.   The music was by Benjamin Grant with fragments of Claude Debussy's La Mer, Dmitri Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, Johan Sebastian Bach's Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor, Nils Frahm's Less, Alfred Schnittke's Cello Sonata No. 1: I Largo, II Presto, Jim Perkins's The North Wind, Owen Belton's Extinction Crescendo and additional music by Josh Sneesby.   The work was inspired by Iain McGilchrist's The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, extracts of which were read during the performance.  Some idea of this part of the show can be obtained from the video Figures in Extinction [2.0] but then you come to the humans - Simon McBurney with Crystal Pite

For me, the most disturbing part of the show was Requiem.   A voice spoke about space and time and the relationship between the living and the dead.  It continued that the dead surround the living.   The dead experience timelessness, though, sometimes, so do the living in extreme circumstances, one of which could be dying.  There was a scene of a patient wired up on monitors.  A staff nurse and trainee changed the patient's bedding, almost manhandling him.  A family entered the patient's hospital room, squabbling with each other.  Somehow lifted the mood of an otherwise depressing theme was lifted by a luminous backdrop, a photograph of which appears in the online programme.   The score was by Owen Belton with fragments of Fauré and Mozart's Requiems as well as other works.   A sample of the piece is contained in Figures in Extinction [3.0] requiem,

This is a profound, multi-layered work which cannot be appreciated properly by watching a single performance  (if, indeed, any worthwhile show can).  Figures in Extinction will be performed at the Internationaal Theater in Amsterdam tonight, tomorrow and Saturday before proceeding to Helsinki in April and Luxembourg in June.  It is well worth seeing.

My Third Attendance at the Royal Ballet's "Onegin"

https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/onegin-details

 

Royal Ballet Onegin Royal Ballet and Opera House, 15 Feb 2025, 13:00

Cranko's Onegin is a compelling watch.   its subject is a man who toys with the emotions of two young women and their champion kills a man in a duel without any apparent legal or social consequences and attempts to seduce a married woman in her boudoir whom he had previously humiliated.   An utter rotter who deserves to be horsewhipped and yet his only punishment is to be sent packing.   My sense of justice was outraged.

I had seen the Royal Ballet's production twice before (see Onegin: the most enjoyable performance that I have seen at the House since Sibley and Dowell 21 Feb 2016 and The Royal Ballet's "Onegin" 8 March 2020).  The ballet is performed by many of the world's leading companies and I have published reviews of the Dutch National Ballet's version by Remco van Grevenstein (see Dutch National Ballet's Onegin 11 March 2017) and La Scala's by Helen McDonough (A Tale of Two Onegins 12 Nov 2017).  The aspects of the ballet that had impressed me in the past had been Cranko's choreography, Stolze's score and Rose's designs.  They impressed me again but on this occasion, I also had memories of Matthew Golding and Thiago Soares as Onegin to compare to Matthew Ball who danced the role yesterday.

Ball was a very convincing Onegin.  He is an excellent actor and his looks remind me very much of Alexander Pushkin's image of his creation.  I have learnt a lot about Onegin's character from each of the performances that I have attended but yesterday he came to life to me.  In fact, Ball reminded me of all the Onegins I have met in real life and raised my indignation to the point of anger.  On the train back to Wakefield I posted to Facebook a reflection that cads like Albrecht and Onegin seem to escape the consequences of their wrongdoing.  Sarah Lambert pointed out that Albrecht gets his comeuppance in Dada Masilo's version which I reviewed in A Brace of Giselles while Bo Zhang observed pertinently:

"I don’t see why ballet the artistic form, instead of the dubious ideology of the authors/writers of these stories, has to bear the blame."

Perhaps because he is the most recent Onegin that I have seen, Ball was the most memorable.  But then he must know the ballet like the back of his hand as he danced Lensky when I first saw the workin 2016.

The other leading characters resonated with me too.   Just as Ball had been Lensky 9 years ago Yasmine Naghdi who had been Olga in 2016 became Tatiana yesterday.  I think she was the most memorable Tatiana I have ever seen.   Again because she is a superb dance actor.   Osipova was a great princess and Itziar Mendizabal was a vulnerable and impressionable young woman but Naghdi was impressive both as the young Tatiana and the grown-up one.   Leo Dixon won the audience's hearts as Lensky.  We felt his ire as Onegin flirted with a playful Olga.   In previous reviews, I had overlooked Olga as simply Tataian's empty-headed sister but Olga had to grow up quickly when Onegin picked up Lensky's gauntlet. It is actually quite a substantial role and Anna Rose O’Sullivan who danced Olga explored every aspect of it. I had not previously noted Harris Bell but I shall follow him in future because of his impressive role as Prince Gremin.

I learnt a lot about Pushkin's work yesterday.  Possibly as much as anyone could short of learning Russian and reading the original text.

Hampson's Triumph

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Scottish Ballet The Nutcracker Theatre Royal Newcastle, 6 Feb 2025 19:30

I was so delighted with the first act of Christopher Hampson's production of The Nutcracker that I tweeted in the interval that the company that had brought me my favourite Swan Lake had also created my favourite Nutcracker.  Immediately after I had clicked the "post" button I reflected on my rashness as I had only seen half of the ballet.  I need not have worried because the second act was every bit as good as the first. 

Scottish Ballet already had a fine version of The Nutcracker that had been created by its founder Peter Darrell in 1972.  I saw it in Edinburgh just over 10 years ago and reviewed it in Like Meeting an Old Friend After So Many Years on 4 Jan 2015.  Hampson seems to have retained the best bits of Darrell's version such as Brotherston's designs while inserting a few innovations like casting Drosselmeyer as a woman.  At this point, I might explain that there is a difference between an innovation which adds a new dimension to a ballet and a gimmick which is simply change for change's sake.  In this production, a female Drosselmeyer brought extra magic and mystery and even a hint of menace to the role possibly because of humankind's inherent fear of witches.

According to the programme notes several of the dancers added to Hampson's choreography.  One of those contributors was Sophie Laplane who has created some unforgettable work for Ballet Black.  Her dialogue between patient and therapist in Click illustrates succinctly the difference between coincidence and causation so absent in contemporary transatlantic political discourse.  She contributed to the Russian divertissement presenting the dancers as playful and slightly chaotic wearing candy cane costumes rather than as slightly sinister Cossacks.  Other contributors were Javier Androu to the Spanish dance, Jessica Fyfe to the French (itself an innovation) and Nicholas Shesmith to the English dance which I think was another innovation.  Their contributions added to the freshness and the exuberance of the second act.

For some reason or other the Arabian dance was dropped from Act II though I think I recognized the music in Act I if my memory is not playing tricks on me. In other productions, it is one of my favourite divertissements.  It is not a long dance and I would love to have seen what Hampson and Co would have made of it.

Turning to last night's show, the Snow Queen was danced by the excellent Marge Hendrick who reminds me so much of the late and great Elaine McDonald.  Hendrick's performance at Northern Ballet's 50th Anniversary Celebration Gala was the high point of that evening for me.   Her performance at that gala moistened my eyes then and her dancing did so again yesterday.  

The other great female role in the traditional Nutcracker is Sugar Plum who is sometimes danced by Clara or Marie in some productions.  It was performed exquisitely by soloist Gina Scott.  

Evan Loudon, another of my favourites, was the gallant Nutcracker.  

I was awed by Madeleine Squire's magic as Madame Drosselmeyer.  She is a magnificent character dancer and I look forward to seeing her in other roles.  

Ava Morrison was a delightful Clara and a realistic one in that she was not all goody-goody unlike her counterpart in other productions, She was as much responsible for damaging the nutcracker as Jamie Drummond, her brother Fritz.  

 My one "bravo" of the evening was directed at Thomas Edwards after some amazing fouettés and sautés.  

I also enjoyed Ishan Mahabir-Stokes's performance as King Rat.   

All danced well in this performance and all deserve congratulations.  Northumbrians are not known for wearing their hearts on their sleeves and the standing ovation that the cast received attests to the excellence of last night's performance.  

The company will remain in Newcastle until tomorrow.   This is the last stop of its Scottish and Newcastle tour,   if you can lay your hands on one of the very scarce remaining tickets for the last few shows you will not be disappointed,

Carlos Acosta's Nutcracker in Havana

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Acosta Danza Nutcracker in Havana The Lowry, 27 Jan 2025, 19:30

Carlos Acosta's Nutcracker in Havana had been promoted as a reimagining of Ivanov's ballet.  That filled me with trepidation as I negotiated Manchester's rush hour traffic because reworking a well-known and well-loved ballet is not easy to do.  David Dawson pulled it off with his Swan Lake for Scottish Ballet as did Ted Brandsen with his Coppelia but I regret that I can't say the same for David Nixon's Swan Lake or the Coppelia of Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright.

Although the show started with projections of Havana and an ancient American convertible lumbering across the stage Nutcracker in Havana was not so very different from any other Nutcracker. While the Stahlbaums' Christmas party was set in Havana and the score was orchestrated with Latin American rhythms and harmonies using a lot of percussion and such instruments as the Cuban tres and lute, the story was followed faithfully even down to the snow scene and the children's choir. All the characters were recognizable and the choreography retained such highlights as Sugar Plum's pas de deux with her prince.

The Sugar Plum Fairy in this production was Laura Rodríguez a former principal of Camaguey Ballet,  She was partnered by Alejandro Silva, a former principal of the Cuban National Ballet.  The ballet revolves around the adventures of Clara and Drosselmeyer.  Clara was danced with vivacity and charm by Adria Dia. Drosselmeyer, who was referred to as Tío or Uncle Elías Drosselmeyer in the cast list, was danced by Alexander Verona.  According to the programme notes he had made his way to Miami 30 years earlier where he acquired his fortune.  He performed some spectacular conjuring tricks and it was those tricks that impressed one member of the audience who was otherwise critical of the show.

 

Brandy Martinez was Clara's naughty little brother Frirz who could not keep his fingers off her Christmas present.   He also took part in a very athletic Russian dance in Act II.  Denzel Francis was King Rat, Clara's grandfather, a cook and one of the very energetic and almost aggressive dancers in the Chinese dance.   The other dancer in that divertissement was Leandro Fernandez who was also one of the children.  Everyone in the show danced well and if I were to mention everyone who impressed me this review would look like a telephone directory.

I enjoyed the show and so it seemed did most of the audience who rewarded the cast with a standing ovation. Much of the success should be attributed to Nina Dunn's set designs and projections, Angelo Alberto's costumes and Pepe Gavilondo Péon's arrangements of the score.

I had previously seen Acosta Danza's 100% Cuban in 2022.  That was a mixed bill.  Staging a full-length classical ballet is a more complex proposition. It demonstrates how much the company has developed in the last three years.  Their UK base is the Acosta Dance Centre in Woolwich which I visited in 2023.  Though they are a Cuban company they are contributing much to dance and dance education in this country.  

The Other Christmas Carol

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Finnish National Ballet A Christmas Carol YouTube Arte Concert 23 Dec 2024

In this country, we hear much about the Royal Danish Ballet and the Royal Swedish Ballet, but not much about their neighbours across the Gulf of Bothnia.  One of the artists I saw on my recent visit to Tallinn was Francesca Loi who danced Cinders's stepmother in Cristiano Principato's Cinderella.  I looked her up and found that she was with the Finnish National Ballet.  I explored her company's website and discovered it was founded just over 100 years ago.  It performs in a beautiful modern opera house.  It has a very interesting repertoire and its Artistic Director is Javier Torres,  Mr Principato, a soloist with the Estonian Ballet, has urged me to break my journey in Helsinki and watch the Finnish National Ballet on stage the next time I am in his area. 

One of its productions that I would love to have seen is David Bintley's A Christmas Carol.  It was performed in Helsinki between 30 Nov and 30 Dec 2024.  The next best thing to a live performance is watching them on TV.  That has just become possible because a recording of their performance will be hosted on Arte Concdert's YouTube channel until 27 Feb 2925.  I watched the video last night less than a month after seeing Northern Ballet's production at the Leeds Grand Theatre.  As I said in A Christmas Carol - A Reflection of a Golden Age 19 J\n 2025, Northern Ballet's production is one of my favourite ballets.  It is impossible to compare a video with a work on stage but if I could see Bentley's work in a theatre I believe I would admire it just as much.

Apart from the similarities that are to be expected in a ballet that is inspired by the same novella and shares the same leading characters Bintley's ballet is quite different from Gable and Moriconi's.  The score is by Sally Beamish who also wrote the music for David Bintley's The Tempest and David Nixon's The Little Mermaid.  I described her score for The Tempest as "enchanting" in my review of that ballet and I think her score for The Little Mermaid is one of the reasons for my headline Nixon's Little Mermaid - Perhaps His Best Work Yet in my review of Nixon's work.  Beamish discusses her score for A Christmas Carol in From a Sinister Atmosphere to Joyful Christmas Sounds.  The sets, costumes and projection design were by Anna Fleischle and some of the scenes were arresting.  The Christmas Yet To Come scene was literally spine-chilling even on a flat-screen telly.  Mark Henderson designed the lighting which was mood-changing even in the recording and would have been even more so in the theatre,

Bentley followed Dickens's story faithfully but he introduced some additional scenes such as Ali Baba, Long John Silver and Dox Quixote from Scrooge's childhood imaginings.  In his flashbacks to Scrooge's childhood and youth, Bintely explains how Scrooge developed as he did.  Something that I never fully appreciated from the original text.  Bimntley weaves in interesting new characters like three Jack Tars who are introduced by Tiny Tim's "I Saw Three Ships,"   Bintley's divertissements are often the strongest features of his ballets and they certainly distinguished this ballet.

In the film, Paul Murphy of Birmingham Royal Ballet conducted the Finnish National Opera Orchestra but I think Aku Sorensen directed them most other nights,  Scrooge was danced by Johan Pakkanen, Young Scrooge by Martin Nudo, Belle by Abigail Sheppard, Bob Cratchit by Frans Valkama and Tiny Tim by Janne Kouhia. I surmise that he is a student at the National Opera and Ballet School.  He discharged a very demanding role for a young artist with flair.  It included singing the first lines of a traditional English carol and calling for a blessing in a foreign language,  No doubt that is why he warned one of the loudest cheers at the curtain call. 

I strongly recommend this recording to my readers and I hope that the powers that be will bring this interesting company to London one of these days. There are some great photos and videos on the National Ballet's website including a short talk by Bintley.  Bintley comes from the next village but one from mine in the Holme Valley and I have twice had the pleasure of meeting him at the London Ballet Circle.  I was a frequent visitor to the Hippodrome when he was the Birmingham Royal Ballet's Director, and I am probably one of his biggest fans.

Powerhouse Ballet on a Roll

The Cast of Elysian Moments at ChromaQ Theatre, Leeds 23 Nov 2024

 

Last year was Powerhouse Ballet's best ever.  We danced an extract from La Sylphide at KNT Danceworks' 15th-anniversary gala in July and contributed Emily Joy Smith Elysian Moments to Dance Studio Leeds's Celebration of Dance at ChromaQ Theatre in Leeds in November.  

We have now performed nine times in public, twice at the Manchester Dancehouse, 6 times at ChromaQ and once at York St John University.  We have held workshops on The Waltz of the Flowers with Jane Tucker,  The Fairy Variations with  Beth Meadway, Alex Hallas's Concerto Jenkins and Morning from Grieg's Peer Gynt with Yvonne Charlton,  We have hosted Ballet Cymru's workshops on Dylan Thomas and Giselle.  We have held company classes almost every month since we started including during the lockdown when we welcomed Maria Chugai, Shannon Lilly and Krystal Lowe as guest ballet mistresses.

Our next step is to hold our own show which will probably be a mixed bill or a complete act of one of the romantic ballets we have learned.   We shall probably need to do this in conjunction with one or more partners which could be a dance studio or even another small company.   That will require a lot of planning and corporate reorganization.   Right now the company is a group of friends who enjoy dancing but we shall put it on a more formal basis in the course of the year.   I am exploring the possibility of charitable status for the company and converting Terpsichore into a private limited company.

Up to now, the company has relied entirely on sponsorship.  That source of funding will not dry up but we need to supplement it with a Friends scheme whereby we shall invite the company's members and well-wishers around the country to make a modest annual contribution.  We shall also need to monetize some of our services which will include smartening the appearance of this blog, publishing a regular print version, reviving Stage Door and charging for workshops and some of our other activities.

In the longer term, we shall seek grant funding and commercial sponsorship.  I have already made contact with Arts Council England and the Arts Council of Wales.  While it is impractical to expect funding from that quarter in the medium term it is never too early to prepare the ground.   I have also put out feelers to organizations that already fund the arts to find out what we must do to qualify for their patronage.

Dancers need to train regularly with each other which is why every company in the world holds regular company classes.  However, our membership is spread over an area that stretches from Hull to Holyhead.  It is very difficult for members who have demanding professional and domestic commitments to travel long distances.  When I have tried to hold classes in outlying areas in venues like Bolton or Myndd Isa the response has been disappointing.   Obviously, the solution is to hold regular monthly classes in Leeds and Chester as well as in Manchester but these will have to rely on non-sponsorship funding.  If we get that right there is no reason why Powerhouse Ballet branded activities cannot take place anywhere in the UK or beyond and not just Manchester and Leeds.

A Christmas Carol - A Reflection of a Golden Age

John Leech Marley's Ghost

Source Wikimedia Commons

 Northern Ballet  A Christmas Carol Leeds Grand Theatre, 31 Dec 2024

Although I read in Dance and Dancers about a performance at the Royal Northern College of Music by a new company called Northern Dance Theatre when I was an undergraduate at St. Andrews, it was only in 1987 that I saw them for the first time.  I could not have had a better introduction because it was Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man with Christopher Gable as L S Lowry and Moira Shearer as the artist's mother.

They were two ballet heroes from my childhood.  Shearer had retired before I took an interest in ballet though clips and photos of her remained long afterwards.  Gable, on the other hand, was one of the biggest stars in the 1960s when I started to attend the ballet.  I saw him several times and admired him greatly.

At about the same time as I saw A Simple Man or perhaps shortly afterwards Gable was appointed Artistic Director of the company now known as Northern Ballet.  As I said in my review of Moriconi and Gable's Romeo and Juliet on 5 April 2024, "[s]ome of my favourite works were created while Gable was the Artistic Director of the company and I have always regarded that time as a golden age."  I added that it gave me great pleasure to see Romeo and Juliet again and that I very much looked forward to seeing A Christmas Carol again in November.

I actually saw it on the last day of the year and I was not disappointed.  We had an excellent cast:

• Jonathan Hanks was Scrooge
• Joseph Taylor was Young Scrooge
• Dominique Larose was Belle
• Harris Beattie was Bob Cratchit 
• Jun Ishii was Scrooge's nephew
• Sarah Chun was the nephew's wife
• Bruno Serraclara was Mr Fezziwig, and
• Amber Lewis was Mrs Dezziwig,

The rest of the cast and indeed the casts of the other performances in Leeds are here.   For those who do not know the ballet or even Dickens's novella, the role of each of those characters is introduced on the Christmas Carol Characters web page and the synopsis is on the Christmas Carol Story page,  There are some lovely videos and photos.   Lez Brotherston's designs were as fresh as ever as was Carl Davis's score.

I have waited a long time to see this show again.   The company danced to packed houses most nights in Leeds.   I hope it will keep its place in the repertoire.