Matter on DePrince

Michaela DePrince at Danceworks ib 7 July 2015

Photographer Jordan Matter

Copyright 2015 Jordan Matter

All rights reserved

On 7 July 2015, Michaela DePrince, now a coryphée with the Dutch National Ballet, gave a master class at Danceworks. Ciara Sturrock attended the class and wrote a note of her experience which I incorporated into my article Michaela's Masterclass 8 July 2015.

The well known American photographer Jordan Matter was in the studio and he photographed Michaela as she taught. Yesterday Danceworks sent me one of his photos and gave me permission to reproduce it in this post. I must stress that copyright subsists in the photo and no other person may reproduce it without Jordan Matter or Danceworks's consent. I am very grateful to Lesley Osman, general manager of Danceworks, and Jordan Matter for allowing me to publish this work.

If you visit his website you will see that Jordan Matter specializes in photographing dancers. Much of his work is published in book form. Dancers among Us was published by The New York Times last year. It includes my very favourite picture of DePrince. Matter has photographed her in the air wearing cut off jeans and yellow chequered top with her dog in a woodland clearing. Dancers After Dark will be on sale next year. Tiny Dancers Among Us, a portfolio of photographs of younger dancers, will be published in 2017.

Since the master class Michaela DePrince has danced in Cinderella at the Coliseum (see my review Wheeldon's Cinderella 13 July 2015 and Gita's Bend it Like Cinders 18 July 2015). DePrince has also been elevated to coryphée. This is a meteoric rise in that she joined the Junior Company only two years ago. I congratulate her on her promotion and wish her well for the future. 

Many of DePrince's contemporaries in the Junior Company have also done well and I mentioned their successes in The Junior Company One Year On 18 July 2015. Ernst Meisner, the artistic co-ordinator of the Junior Company spoke to the London Ballet Circle on 20 July 2015. As a consequence of Ernst Meisner's visit plans are being drawn up to set up a British Friends of the Dutch National Ballet . I hope it will lead to even more opportunities to bring DePrince and the Company's other beautiful dancers to this country. 

My next opportunity to see DePrince and those other dancers on stage will come with the opening gala on 8 Sept. 

I have written a lot of articles on DePrince over the last two years and you will find links to most of them at Michaela DePrince at TEDx Amsterdam 28 Nov 2014.

"Taking Flight" in more ways than one

Michaela DePrince, Dutch National Ballet

Photo Robin de Puy

(c) 2014 Dutch National Ballet
All rights reserved

According to Richard Heideman, press manager of the Dutch National Ballet, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina by Michaela and Elaine DePrince is to be made into a film. He reports that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has acquired the film rights and will make a full length feature film with Alloy Entertainment. Elysa Dutton and Les Morgenstein of Alloy will produce the film with Matt Dines of MGM.

Closer to home, First Position, a film in which DePrince already appears, will be shown at Cafe 164 in Leeds on 2 April 2015 (see Cafe 164 to screen "First Position" 2 March 2015) and she will take a master class at Danceworks on 7 July 2015 (Dance with DePrince 20 Jan 2015).

DePrince joined the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet in 2013 and the main company as an apprentice in 2014. She is expected to be promoted to coryphée shortly. One of our best young choreographers told me recently that he hopes to work with her.

I am a great fan of this remarkable young woman for two reasons. First,she is thrilling to watch. Secondly, I also have close connections with Sierra Leone.

If anyone wants to read more about her there is a list of links to my other posts in Michaela DePrince at TEDx Amsterdam 28 Nov 2014,

Dance with DePrince

On 7 July 2015 between 10:30 and 12:00 Michaela DePrince will give a master class at Danceworks. The class is for intermediates and above aged 14 or over. The cost is £21.50 and one can book on-line. If I were 50 years younger and a lot better at ballet I would have booked my place like a shot.

I have written a lot about Michaela DePrince over the last two years. You will find links to my articles about her at Michaela DePrince at TEDx Amsterdam 28 Nov 2014. I took an interest in that dancer long before she crossed the Atlantic for two reasons.

The first is that she comes from Sierra Leone and I was married to a Sierra Leonean for nearly 28 years. My late spouse and I never had any children but we did take care of a young woman from Sierra Leone whose parents sent her here just as violence in Liberia was beginning to spread across the Mano River. That young woman is the nearest I have to a daughter.  We sent her to school in Huddersfield where she did well. After three years in Cambridge where she read economics she married a lovely man from Ghana. They have a beautiful little boy with the most expressive face who can run like the wind and jump like a frog.  It was she and her husband who gave me the copy of Hope in a Ballet Shoe in the photograph above for my 66th birthday just before  we saw Ballet Black's Triple Bill where they gave the performance of their lives. I don't think I have ever received a better birthday present or spent a happier birthday.

The other reason for my interest in DePrince is that

"She is quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while."

I wrote those words in  The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013 25 Nov 2013 after I had seen her dance for the first time. I saw her again when the Junior Company came to London and she was even better (see And can they fly! The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company at Covent Garden 30 May 2014).  I saw that show with my daughter manquée and sister in law who is, of course, also Sierra Leonean and the pride with which they left the theatre was palpable.

I read somewhere that DePrince plans a ballet school in Freetown. I don't know whether that is true but I hope it is. Or if not DePrince then someone. There is a ballet school in Kenya that is doing wonderful things for kids in one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Nairobi (see Back to Africa 7 Jan 2015 and What can be achieved by a good teacher 3 March 2013). Not all of those students - possibly none of them - will perform at Covent Garden or the Met but through their exercises at the barre they have been given the physical and mental skills, confidence and pride that will make them much more likely to qualify as the doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, managers and entrepreneurs who will lead their nation out of poverty. I'd love to see something like that Kenyan school in Kroo Town or Kissy. After a vicious civil war that killed and mutilated thousands and the ebola epidemic that is killing thousands more that beautiful country that combines the grandeur of Argyll and  the charm of Cornwall in an almost perfect climate deserves a break.