Bintley's Best

David Bintley

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Birmingham Royal Ballet, Cinderella Lowry, 1 March 2017, 19L30

This will be a very short post because I have just driven across the Tops through a snowstorm and I have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to attend a conference and site view somewhere just outside Preston. However, I could not go to bed tonight without congratulating Birmingham Royal Ballet for their performance of Cinderella at the Lowry this evening.

I've followed this company from the time it was known as the Touring Company and I have seen many of its shows. Its dancers always dance well but never have I seen them dance better than they did tonight. Mancunians don't often stand up for anyone - especially not Brummies who have the effrontery to call themselves the second city - but they did tonight. That ovation was richly deserved.

I like everything I have ever seen of Bintley's choreography but I think Cinderella is the work I like best. I might add that I am a bit of a connoisseur of Cinderellas having seen many different versions but this is definitely one of the best. It opens on the funeral of Cinderella's mother. Her father tries to console her with a mighty hug but they are separated by the woman who is soon to be his second wife. Cinderella is left sobbing at the graveside. Poignant or what!

The new wife, danced by the magnificent Marion Tait has two grown-up daughters of her own. One is all skin and bones (Samara Downs) and the other is fat and greedy (Laura Purkiss), Skinny and Dumpy bully Cinderella (Jenna Roberts) mercilessly. Happily, the girl's got spirit and would only stand so much. At one point she set about her tormentors with a broom handle and put them to flight. I started clapping and was surprised that nobody joined me. She held her own again when Skinny and Dumpy tried to grab her little box of mementoes. Of course, the two bullies were backed up by their mother who was as cruel as Aunt Reed in Jane Eyre. If the first scene was a study of grief, the second was a study of child abuse lightened only by the hilarious dance lesson and the sisters' ridiculous antics.

As everyone knows, Cinderella gets to the ball despite her stepmother's and sisters' meanness in withholding her invitation. As she is being kitted out there is a gorgeous divertissement from four of my favourite ladies in ballet. Miki Mizutani as Spring, Céline Gittens as Summer. Maureya Lebowitz as Autumn and Delia Matthews as Winter. Her Cindersmobile appears and what a set of wheels.  I was impressed by Northern Ballet's (see Northern Ballet's Cinderella - a Triumph 27 Dec 2013) but these are so much better. Off she goes to the ball attended by her frogs and mice.  Jane, if you are reading this, Isabella Chandler was delightful as were all the kids.

The ball continued after the interval. Dumpy and Skinny made complete idiots of themselves and had to be ticked off by their mum. The prince, William Brancewell, arrived. He fended off the attentions of the two sisters but then spotted Cinderella and the rest, as they say, is fairy tale. The whole cast was good but I need to say a special word about Yvette Knight who was a beautiful fairy godmother and Valentin Olovyannikov who doubled as the hairdresser and major domo.  Tzu-Chao Chou was a great ballet teacher.

I should also mention John Macfarlane's designs which were among the bestI have ever seen.

The company will perform the ballet in the Lowry until Saturday. Thereafter it moves to Plymouth and Sunderland and other major towns.  If you live near any of those cities then you should go.

Tribute to Moira Shearer

Author Ballerinaonlina
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Every performance of Sir Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes at Sadler's Wells is sold out.  Having seen the show twice at the Lowry (see Red Shoes Bourne Again 3 Dec 2016 and The Red Shoes Second Time Round 4 Dec 2016) I am not surprised, The show was inspired by the film The Red Shoes which I reviewed on the 15 Nov 2015. The star of that film was Moira Shearer who danced from 1938 until 1987. Through that film she probably did more to inspire children to learn to dance, and the public generally to take an interest in dance, than any other artist, Margot Fonteyn not excepted. She certainly inspired me and by all accounts, she also inspired Sir Matthew.

Shearer was born in Dunfermline in 1926. She made her first professional appearance at Cambridge in Mona Inglesby's Endymion in 1938 when she would have been only 12 and it was Inglesby who gave Shearer her first job in Inglesby's newly formed International Ballet in 1941 at the age of 15. Shearer's last performance was in Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man for Northern Ballet Theatre in which she danced Lowry's mother (see Northern Ballet's A Simple Man 14 Sept 2013). I saw the ballet shortly after I had returned to Manchester. It was the first time that I saw the company (although I had followed it in the dance press since its formation) and it is the first and remains the main reason for my support of the company.

It is, of course, The Red Shoes for which Shearer is best known and its two short ballet sequences. The first is the extract from Swan Lake at the Mercury Theatre where Vicky Page is discovered by the impresario Lermontov (see  The Red Shoes (1948) ~My Favourite Movie YouTube). The second is the premiere of Lermontov's The Red Shoes at Monte Carlo (see The Red Shoes (1948) - Ballet Sequence YouTube).

Shearer retired as a dancer in 1953 but continued her career as an actor for many years. She married the journalist and broadcaster, Sir Ludovic Kennedy, in 1950 in the chapel of Hampton Court palace. Their wedding seems to have generated enormous attention (see the newsreel clip on YouTube). She and Sir Ludovic had four children. She died in Oxford in 2006.  She was a distinguished artist of two mediums, loved by many and greatly missed.

As this article appears on 25 Dec, I should like to wish all my readers around the world a very merry Christmas.

As Fresh as Ever: Ballet Black's Dogs Don't Do Ballet in Sale

Waterside Arts Centre

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Ballet Black, Dogs Don't Do Ballet, Waterside Arts Centre, Sale, 7 May 2016

I was charmed by Christopher Marney's Dogs Don't Do Ballet ever since I saw its first performance in Harlow on 11 Oct 2014 (see Woof 12 Oct 2014). I enjoyed it again when  I saw it twice in Leeds last year (see Not Just a Children's Ballet 19 April 2015 and Le chien mal gardé 21 April 2015), I wondered whether I would still like it as much as I crossed the Pennines on the way to the theatre.

The answer was an emphatic "yes". It was as fresh as ever. I am not sure whether that is because of new choreography or because I noticed things that I had missed before. It may be because of cast changes since I had last seen the show. Sayaka Ichikawa was a delightful Anna and Mthuthuzeli November brought his panache and style to the ballet. While I liked Marie-Astrid Mence and Christopher Renfurm well enough it is always good to see another interpretation.

Loosely based on Anna Kemp's children's story, the ballet is about a ballet mad little girl called Anna and her pet dog Bif danced by Cira Robinson. Anyone who has ever kept a dog will be amazed by Robinson's performance because she has every canine mannerism down to a tee.  Anna takes her dog to ballet class kept by the slightly ridiculous Miss Polly. Bif wants to join in the class and after a few faltering steps at the barre proves to be rather good at it. Her mistress encourages that interest and during the night a storm breaks out. As it is whining and shaking Anna comforts the dog and they both watch a scene from The Nutcracker. They fall asleep and Bif dreams of dancing a pas de deux with a handsome dalmatian. The next day the children meet in the park with their dogs where they come across their teacher fast asleep with a hip flask by her side. There is a hilarious scene where they make fun of her. Miss Polly wakes up suddenly by the dogs licking her face, In the last scene Anna's father produces two tickets to the ballet. The dog wants to come but. of course, dogs are not allowed.  Nevertheless Bif gets into the auditorium somehow which is just as well for when Madame Kanikova jams her head in a French horn Bif is ready to jump on stage and dance the principal role.

It may be my imagination but I think there has been some new choreography to show Bif's progress at ballet. When the children do the centre exercises in front of the mirror she shows that she can perform the adagio quite as well as any of them. The audience is treated to two delightful duets between Bif and the dalmatian and Bif with the male principal.

If it was Marney's intention to inspire it worked.  As I left the theatre one small child asked her mother when she could start ballet.  Alarmingly another, who could not be aged more than 7, was on pointe in trainers. Several other kids were practising port de bras.  

As a Mancunian it was good to see one of my favourite companies in my native city. Well, almost, for I was born in Didsbury just the other side of the Mersey. They are dancing again at the Waterside Arts Centre tomorrow at 11:00 and 14:00 and if you can get to see them you should. They are also coming back to our metropolis on the 19 June to dance their triple bill which David Murley reviewed at The Lowry.

The Bolshoi's Encore

Last Sunday I took another butcher's at The Bolshoi's performance of The Nutcracker of 21 Dec 2014. I reviewed it last year in Clara grows up- Grigorovitch's Nutcracker transmitted directly from Moscow 21 Dec 2015 so this was literally a case of déjà vu. The company is actually dancing The Nutcracker on Sunday with Semyon Chudin in the title role. So why could we not see that performance in England? My guess is that the cinemas think they can make more money from showing the latest Star Wars and if that is the case they are almost certainly right. Love a duck! So much for popular taste. May the force be with us!

I enjoyed the show a bit more second time round as I knew what to watch for. Having seen Rodkin on the stage in St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's production of La Bayadere in September (see Blown Away - St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's La Bayadere 24 Aug 2015) I expected fireworks and that was what we got -  particularly in the final pas de deux with Nikulina, Russian ballerinas can be rather grand, remote if not slightly frosty ladies. Nikulina is sweet and sparkly. She is as exciting to watch as any other Russian principal dancer but she can also act. She looked genuinely frightened in the fight between the Nutcracker and King Mouse. She looked as though she needed a hug and a cuddle.

I saw the video at the Pictureville cinema at the Bradford Media Museum. It was quite full for a Sunday afternoon screening. On leaving the cinema I overheard one of the denizens of Bramhope or Huby remark to her companion "I'm seeing The Nutcracker again you know.  By the "Royal" Northern Ballet" (sic). Now there's a thought.