Ballet in Lockdown

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Dutch National Ballet Ballet connects dancers in lockdown 21 April 2020 YouTube
This is the first new ballet that I have reviewed since lockdown.  It is on screen rather than a stage but it is fresh, relevant and eloquent.  It expresses the anxiety, frustration, isolation and tedium that each of us suffers whether artist or audience member during these miserable times.

Ballet in Lockdown is a very short work to the music of a Rotterdam band called Di-rect. The track is "Hold on" which Di-rect recorded about ten years ago.  It is certainly appropriate now.   As it is on YouTube I shall let my readers discover it for themselves.   All I will say is that the film begins with solitary dancers in their homes wearing expressions that are the epitome of gloom.  One by one they begin to bourée, to stretch, to turn, to lean or press against their walls as though in adjoining rooms.  Icons of the individual dancers are assembled in gallery view.  The very last frame of the dancers erect, facing the camera, their arms outstretched, their hands held high expresses hope and promise. An assurance that this plague will one day end,  If we only hold on,   I was moved by this piece.  I have played it several times.  Each time I have noticed something new.  It is a gem that deserves preservation.  I would love to see its transposition to a stage if that can be done.

This work was created by Milena Siderova who has an impressive portfolio of work. I had previously seen and admired Full Moon which she had created for Bert Engelen when he was in the Junior Company and Withdrawn for the company's New Moves in 2017, Full Moon was about those nights when it is hard to sleep where the bedclothes seem to have minds of their own, In that piece,  Engelen struggled with his pillow to the music of Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights.  Withdrawn was more reflective.  In my review I wrote:

"The finale was Milena Siderova's Withdrawn. Siderova had created Full Moon for Bart Engelen who is now with the Norwegian Ballet........... I expected much from her next work and I think that we got it. Withdrawn was a work for 10 dancers to the music of Emilie Satt's Butterfly. It appears to have been inspired by a passage from Carol Becker's essay Thinking in Place, Art, Action and Cultural Protection of a dystopian future in which human social interaction is replaced by the interaction of electronic devices. Each of the dancers carried a torch which I guess was reminiscent of the screen of a mobile phone. They seemed to wander in a sort of limber rather like the lost souls in surgical gowns in Tran-Phat's In Limbo that launched the show."

A work from her repertoire that I have never seen but would very much like to is The Spider which she crested in 2011.  Her observation of the animal's movements and behaviour is knife-sharp. Their translation into dance is the best I have seen  Petipa's Puss in Boots and White Cat duet in the last act of The Sleeping Beauty.

I wish more companies could attempt something like this.  Video streams of past performances are all very well but they lack something.  In another article, I compared it recently to encountering a stuffed animal in a museum.  Better than nothing I suppose but there is no life to it.

Manchester International Festival

Available Light                                                       Standard YouTube Licence


Manchester International Festival, our city's biennial arts festival, is in full swing. Between the 29 June and 16 July 2017, there will be a massive choice of events in the following fields:

• COMEDY
• DANCE
• DIGITAL
• FAMILY
• FILM
• FOOD
• FREE
• IMMERSIVE
• MUSIC
• RADIO
• TALKS/DEBATES
• THEATRE
• VISUAL ARTS

Albert Square has been transformed into a village of tents, pavilions and other temporary buildings and has been renamed "Festival Square" where almost every type of street food was on offer.  Gita and I checked out Festival Square last night and I can recommend Heathcote & Co. and Life Bakery (see  Five foodie questions: Heathcote & Co and Staff of Life Bakery on the Festival website).

One of several dance events is Available Light which takes place at The Palace between 6 and 8 July. This is a collaboration between the choreographer Lucinda Childs, the composer John Adams and architect, Frank Gehry. The work is described as "a perfect fusion of music, movement and art," and as "a landmark in American dance." According to the website:

"Available Light beautifully unites the distinct visions of its three creators. Gehry’s designs playfully subvert convention, setting a backdrop of chain-link fencing against a stage split over two levels. Adams’ hypnotic soundtrack pulses out in waves, subtly blending acoustic brass with synthesisers and electronics as it anchors the movements of a dozen dancers. And Childs’ intricate, mesmerising choreography, playing with notions of space and time, is a brilliant distillation of the minimalist aesthetic that has long kept her work at the cutting edge."

I found the clip of the work on  YouTube which appears above.

Wikipedia describes Childs as a post-modern dancer and choreographer whose compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions.  It adds:

"Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece. Her use of patterns, repetition, and dialect has caused her to have a unique style of choreography that is often imitated for its ability to experiment."

Adams's work includes Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer which has been the subject of considerable controversy because of its subject matter.

What can possibly follow Tindall? Nothing less than MacMillan

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I think everyone who was in the Leeds Grand Theatre on Saturday night would agree that Casanova was a great success (see Casanova - "it has been a long time since I enjoyed a show by Northern Ballet as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night" 12 March 2017). What could possibly follow a work like that? Nothing less than a master like Sir Kenneth MacMillan I would say.

Happily, that is exactly what we can expect for Northern Ballet will dance three of Sir Kenneth's works at the Bradford Alhambra between the 5 and 7 Oct 2017. An excellent venue for the Alhambra is arguably Yorkshire's finest theatre by a country mile. The ballets that the company will perform are:

• Concerto
• Las Hermanas, and
• Gloria.

Concerto and Las Hermanas were originally created for German companies though Las Hermanas found its way into the repertoires of Western Theatre Ballet (now Scottish Ballet) and The Royal Ballet where I first saw it.  Gloria was created for The Royal Ballet shortly after he had ceased to be that company's artistic director.

Nothern Ballet also plans to dance the triple bill in Leeds next year.

MOVE IT 2017

(c) 2017 Chantry Dance Company
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Move It, which takes place at the Excel Centre between the 10 and 12 March 2017, is billed as the UK's biggest dance event with "over 24,500 dancers – three days – performances, classes, career advice, celebrities, interviews and shopping!!"

I was there last year and described the day in MOVE IT 2016. My verdict on the day was:

"There are worse ways of spending a Sunday afternoon and I did pick up a free copy of The Stage and Dancing Times with a great article by Gavin McCaig in Talking Point which I read over an overpriced burrito but it was not a cheap afternoon out."

This may sound like damnation by faint praise but it is not really.  There was a lot to see and do.  The trouble was that almost everything I had most wanted to see had already happened by the time I arrived. Also, the open ballet class which was the only one that I felt able to do was fully booked.

Clearly, Friday and Saturday are the best days to come to MOVE IT.  Friday is out for me because it is a working day and even balletomanes have to eat.   I could not make Saturday last year because I was on my way to see the Chelmsford Ballet Company's The Sleeping Beauty. I regret that I won't be there on 11 March this year because that is the day Kenny Tindall's Casanova opens in Leeds.

One of the performances that I missed last year was a piece by Chantry Dance Company and Chantry Dance School.  I am a friend of the company and I like its work. A video of its performance appears in A Good Month for Chantry Dance 26 March 2016.  The company and school will be there again this year. Rae Piper will conduct a contemporary ballet workshop at 15:45 and members of the school and company will also be on the main stage at some time during that day. We wish them chookas, toi, toi, toi and anything else that does not offend theatrical superstition.

One person that I did get to meet at Move IT last year was Christopher Moore who directs Ballet Theatre UK. I am a big fan of his company for two reasons. First, I take my hat off to them for producing two or three full-length ballets every year and taking them to small town and suburban venues the length and breadth of the kingdom.  They provide a first taste of ballet for many people, including a lot of children.  I like to think that at least a few of those kids will find their way onto the stage one day.  The company has just finished Romeo and Juliet which I reviewed in Ballet Theatre UK's Romei and Juliet 15 Jan 2017 and it has already started another tour with a new production of Giselle.  Alice in Wonderland follows Giselle and The Nutcracker will follow Alice. The second reason I like Mr Moore is that he has given work to several graduates of Ballet West and any friend of Ballet West is a friend of mine.

Ballet Theatre UK now has a school and its students were also on stage at MOVE IT last year.  You will find a video of their performance on thefamousbelgian's YouTube channel. Wishing them all the best too.

National Dance Company of Wales's Spring Tour

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When I saw the National Dance Company of Wales in Huddersfield last year, I wrote in Cambriophilia 19 March 2016:

"One of the reasons I am a Cambriohile is that Wales has a great ballet company in Ballet Cymru. I am delighted to say that it also has a fine contemporary dance company in the National Dance Company Wales."

The NDCW is on the move again with a double bill consisting of Caroline Finn's The Green House and Roy Assaf's Profundis (see Spring Tour 2017).

Caroline Finn is the company's artistic director and I have reviewed two of her works:

• Bloom which she created for Phoenix Dance Theatre (see Phoenix in Huddersfield 27 Nov 2015); and
• Folk which I reviewed in Cambriophilia.

The company' website sets the scene on The Green House as follows:

"What happens when we prune ourselves to perfection? Caroline Finn takes us on a nostalgic journey, asking us to peer into The Green House. On a twisted TV set, characters discover the fine line between fantasy and reality."

It also has this to say about Profundis:

"Playful, vibrant and provocative. Profundis dares us to ask questions about what things are, and what they are not."

The Spring tour will cover just about every part of Wales but will make only two forays into England (Shrewsbury 21 Feb and Newcastle upon Tyne 18 March 2017) and one into Scotland (Dundee 13 May 2017).

ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble's UK Tour

ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble

(c) 2017 ŻfinMalta Dance EnsembleL all rights reserved
Reproduced wth kind permission of CAST on behalf of the company

We are likely to hear quite a lot from Malta over the next 6 months as it holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. It will be to the Maltese government that our ministers will deliver notice of this country's intention to leave the EU under art 50 (2) of the Treaty on European Union. Malta is one of our best and oldest friends having resisted gallantly ferocious attacks by Axis forces during the second world war for which the whole population was awarded the George Cross. An emblem that continues to appear on its national flag. That small island republic is an important partner in the Commonwealth as well as the EU - at least for the time being.

Even though it has a population of only 450,000 Malta has a rich culture. Its national language is Semitic though English is another official language and Italian is widely spoken. It is 50 miles south of Sicily and about 200 miles north of Libya and Tunisia. It has been influenced by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, Normans, Sicilians, Spanish, Knights of St. John, French and British, all of whom have occupied the country at one time or another.

That rich heritage which is both Mediterranean and European is alluded to by ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble, Mata's national contemporary dance company, on the "Company" page of its website:

"ŻMDE is the repertory national company of Malta that aims to thrive in the sharing and employment of a wide range of repertoire ranging from new works created in Malta by both local and international choreographers (upcoming and established) as well as the re-staging of renowned works from all over the world, thus creating a company of versatility, whilst maintaining a clear identity with its Euro-Mediterranean roots,"

The company is directed by Mavin Khoo who studied Bharata Natyam, the Cunningham technique in New York and classical ballet with various distinguished teachers around the world and has worked with Wayne McGregor, Akram Khan and Shobana Jeyasingh among others.  Its dancers come from Malta and many other countries.

ŻMDE is about to tour the UK with "five works designed to take the audience on a journey of discovery, passion and intricate choreography."  The tour starts in Swansea on 26 Jan 2017 and will move on to Birmingham on the 27, Doncaster on the 1 Feb, Derby on 2, Liverpool on the 3 and Sadler's Wells on the 9 and 10.

The performance in Doncaster will take place at CAST which I visited on 21 May 2015 to see Northern Ballet's Madame Butterfly (see Nixon's Masterpiece 22 May 2015) and Ballet Black last year (see Ballet Black in Doncaster 3 Nov 2016). The company will perform Home by Mavin Khoo and Kick the Bucket by the Spanish choreographer, Iván Pérez. Home is inspired by Spanish cinema and the films of Pedro Almodóvar. The dancers weave a cinematic narrative as the life of one man unravels on stage. Kick the Bucket is an emotional dance duet about life and death. Tickets for the performance in Doncaster will cost £16.50 (£14.50 concessions) each and may be ordered from the box office on 01302 303 959 or online at castindoncaster.com.

Rodolfo Barradas, Marketing and Communications Officer of CAST, has kindly brought this tour to my attention and supplied me with the photo that appears above. He has also sent me the text of an interview with Mavin Khoo which I plan to publish shortly before ŻMDE visits Doncaster. I also hope to find out more about dance in Malta generally. I have already discovered that there is a Russian ballet school in the republic and a dance department at the national university. I have also seen some impressive videos of some of the country's ballet students. For a place with a population not much bigger than the metropolitan borough of Doncaster occupying a very much smaller land area there appears to be a lot going on.

Vote for your Dance Teacher of the Year

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Voting for our Teacher of the Year competition closes TOMORROW!https://t.co/lGrfeTBleQ

— Dancing Times (@dancingtimes) January 5, 2017

I was just about to go to beddy byes when I spotted the above tweet from @dancingtimes.  I clicked the link and arrived at Dance Today Dance Teacher of the year. I read the first paragraph:

"So many of our readers love to dance, and love the teachers who have led, informed and inspired them. When magazine Dance Today, now incorporated into Dancing Times, launched the Teacher of the Year competition for social dance teachers, we were amazed and touched by our readers’ votes. You didn’t just vote for your teachers, you told us why they were wonderful – how they drew out skills people didn’t think they had, built up communities of dancers and opened doors to new levels of health, skill and fun."

I have excellent teachers in Leeds and Manchester and have attended some great classes in other parts of the world such as Huddersfield, Sheffield, London and even Budapest. I admire, love and respect them all. I have mentioned several of them more than once in this blog.

But there is one teacher for whom I have a particular regard. So I nominated her.   I won't mention her name but I think that one or two of my readers in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester may take an educated guess as to whom I have in mind:

"Everyone who had taken that intensive was transformed by it so her presence back stage lifted our morale to new heights. Mine particularly for I had taken her class ....... the previous [week] and by some fluke I had actually managed to pull off a pirouette more or less correctly. [She] had witnessed it and the expression on her face was a joy to behold. I think she was even more delighted than I had been."

Now I am sure I am not the only one to have a very special teacher.  Some of you may even have the same one as I do.  All I would ask is that you lodge your nominations before the deadline today.

According to Dancing Times  

"All you have to do to nominate your teacher is to get in touch by January 6, 2017, by post, email, or via Twitter or our Facebook page. Tell us about your teacher and why you’d love to see them win the Dance Today Teacher of the Year 2016. One of our favourite things has been hearing about the work of the teachers – heartfelt thanks and delightful descriptions, from praise of teacher’s sensitivity to happiness in new skills. So when you vote, tell us why your teacher should win, what makes them special and inspiring."

There are the contact addresses:

Email competitions@dancing-times.co.uk

Facebook You’ll find us under “Dancing Times”

witter @dancingtimes

And remember:

"CLOSING DATE JANUARY 6, 2017"

Shobana Jeyasingh's New Material

I first came across Shobana Jeyasingh Dance when I saw Bayadère – The Ninth Life at the Linbury last year (see La Bayadère - The Ninth Life 29 March 2015). That was a fascinating juxtaposition of an early Western perception of Indian dance and a modern Indian perception of one of the classics of Western dance. As I remarked at the time:

"I had come to the performance expecting a transposition of the story of the ballet into bharatha natyam or some other Indian dance idiom but it was nothing like that. That would have been too easy and it is clear from the list of her works on her company's website that Jeyasingh doesn't do easy. Instead, it compared and contrasted a modern Indian's perception of one of the classics of Western dance with Théophile Gautier's perception of Indian classical dance."

Shortly after Bayadere - The Ninth Life had completed its tour, the company launched Material Men which it described as "a virtuoso piece for two dazzling performers of the Indian diaspora" with "contrasts in style between classical Indian dance and hip hop, as well as a shared history rooted in colonial plantations, are the starting points for this absorbing dance work."

I did not see that work when it went on tour last Autumn because it did not come to the North but it appears to have gone down well with the press and public which is not surprising if you look at the pictures of the show on the company's website.

I received a newsletter from the company yesterday which announced that Material Men will tour again. This time it will come close as it will open at the Djanogly Theatre in Nottingham on 7 Feb 2017 before visiting Ipswich, Southampton, Birmingham and Glasgow. The work will be danced as part of a double bill with Strange Blooms which was launched in 2013.

Judging by the trailer and the little bit of Jeyasingh's work that I have seen already it will be gripping and absorbing but not easy. However, as I said when I reviewed Bayadere - The Ninth Life that artist does not do easy.

Ballet West's 2017 Tour

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Ballet West is a ballet school not far from Oban in the Western Highlands. It must be a very good school for several of my favourite young dancers trained there.  Sarah Mortimer is one.  Isaac Bowry is another.  Natasha Watson is yet another.  Some of the staff and students from Ballet West have recently toured Malaysia as I mentioned in Ballet West in Malaysia on 18 June 2016. You can download a video of two of the students with one of their Malaysian hosts from the Ballet West home page.

The school has a company which tours Scotland at the beginning of each year to give its students stage experience. A performance of The Nutcacker by that company in Pitlochry on 23 Feb 2013 was my very first post to this blog. The show was so good that I returned for Swan Lake the next year (see Swan Loch - Ballet West's Swan Lake, Pitlochry 1 March  2014) the subsequent year, Romeo and Juliet the year after that (see Ballet West's Romeo and Juliet  1 Feb 2015) and The Nutcracker again this year (see Thinking out Loud about Ballet West 8 Feb 2016).

Ballet West have announced their tour for 2017. They will dance Swan Lake again and they will dance it just the way I like it. No Simon. No Anthony. No Odilia. The same ballerina dancing Odette and Odile. No evil genius but a proper von Rothbart danced so impressively last time by my fellow Mancunian Isaac Bowry. And above all there will be no bikes. To get a flavour of their performance I have found this YouTube clip which shows Sara-Maria Barton's brilliance in the black act. That is my favourite part of the ballet for it is the act that contains all those fouettés not to mention the divertissements at the beginning.

The tour will start on 20 and 21 Jan 2017 at The McRobert Arts Centre on the campus of Stirling University. The McRobert Centre has a fair sized auditorium with what appears from the stalls to be a fairly danceable stage. There is a reasonably priced restaurant with a licensed bar and coffee shop in the lobby and plenty of free parking near the auditorium. It might be awkward to reach by public transport as the campus is a mile or so outside the town centre and I have never seen a bus there but there are probably taxis to be hired somewhere in the vicinity.

The company's itinerary is as follows:

• Stirling, Macrobert 20th & 21st January 2017
• Helensburgh, Tower Digital Arts Centre 27th January 2017
• Paisley, Paisley Town Hall 28th January 2017
• Oban, Corran Halls 9th February 2017
• Glasgow, SECC 11th February 2017
• Greenock, Beacon Arts Centre 12th February 2017
• Livingston, Howden Park Centre 16th February 2017
• Edinburgh, EICC, 18th February 2017

If Cinderella's fairy godmother were to appear right now and grant me three balletic wishes, one of them would be for Ballet West to make at least one appearance in the rest of the United Kingdom. I am pretty confident that audiences here would love them. I happen to know from conversations with members of the audience and posts to a ballet fans' forum to which I subscribe that I am by no means the only Sassenach who ventures North at the coldest time of the year to see these fine young artists.

And my second wish? Why it would be to see those same young dancers perform the purest and most beautiful of the Romantic ballets which like them is set in the Highlands.  Please, Mr Job, pretty please! Do consider La Sylphide one year. I have seen Danes dance it. Australians. Even an Italian in Trecate earlier this year. Why not Scots?

Somehow I have to get Vlad the Lad to Amsterdam Next April

If this video is anything to go by, the Dutch National Ballet's Little Big Chest is a delightful ballet. Vlad the Lad would love it. Choreographed by Ernst Meinser this work is created for young children between the ages of 4 and 6. Vlad has already seen Dogs don't do Ballet, Aladdin, My First Ballet Coppelia and two performances by his granny in Leeds (see The Dance DID go on - Northern Ballet Academy Show 2014 29 June 2016 and
Northern Ballet Academy's End of Year Show 9 June 2015) but I think this will be special.

The synopsis is intriguing:

"A girl is sitting alone in the attic. She’s bored. She has nobody to play with. She leans against a big chest. Suddenly, she hears strange noises. Two fantasy friends jump out of the chest. At first, they find each other strange. Then they become friends and want to play and dance together. They think up a plan. Where can you play? Where can you dance? Where can you be everything you want to be? Together, they make something very big. They make a… You’ll find out what they make in the performance of The little big chest."

The ballet is danced by two young women and one young man from the Junior Company.

It will next be performed in Amsterdam on the 21 and 22 April 2017,. The 22 is a Saturday and there's a convenient flight from Southend Airport.