World Ballet Day Highlights #1: The Royal Academy of Dance

World Ballet Day Trailer  -  Standard YouTube Licence

World Ballet Day came just as theatres and studios across the UK were emerging from a 7-month hibernation.  It was a day of optimism.  Sadly that optimism has been dampened by the announcement on Saturday of another lockdown in England.  The sudden closure of studios and theatres is devastating; It is therefore all the more vital to hang on to that optimism. One way to do that is to remember the highlights of World Ballet Day. Over the next few days, I shall recall some of my most memorable moments.  

I begin with the Royal Academy of Dance.  The RAD is an institution that educates students at all levels, of all ages in all parts of the world.  Its contribution to World Ballet Day summarized its work exactly.  The Academy's Artistic Director, Gerard Charles, and its President, Darcey Bussell, opened the clip. The first half featured the work of three RAD teachers in Peru, Kenya and Australia while in the second Dame Darcy coached Anya Mercer, a student at the English National Ballet School and a finalist in last year's Genée in the second female solo of the pas de trois in Act 1 of Swan Lake.

When I first started blogging about dance I mentioned the work of Mike Wamaya who teaches ballet in Kibera, one of the most impoverished neighbourhoods of Nairobi (see What can be achieved by a good teacher 3 March 2013). In Recognition for the Kibera Ballet Class  9 Jan 2017 I noted that some of those students had been accepted for training at the Dance Centre Kenya with Ms Cooper Rust.  In the video, Ms Rust taught a class of boys who showed considerable enthusiasm as well as aptitude for their art.

Nairobi is a conurbation of over 9 million people where there is the possibility of exposure to the performing arts through the press and broadcasting.  Such a possibility is much less in the upper reaches of the Amazon where the Nevada Building Hope Foundation operates.  One of its teachers is Barbara Land.  In the video, Ms Land explains how she introduced ballet to local children. They were enchanted and wanted to learn. 

As an RAD teacher, Ms Land was able to train the Peruvian kids to the same exacting standards as the young  Sydneysiders in Hilary Kaplan's class at the Alegria Dance Studios in Australia.  Australia has given the world some of its greatest dancers from Sir Robert Helpmann and Elaine Fifield to Alexander Campbell who was my male dancer of the year for 2019.  After watching Ms Kappan's class for a few minutes, I think we can understand why.  Excellence is baked into ballet at the very earliest opportunity.

Dame Darcey's session with Anya Mercer was a masterclass for her audience as well as for that promising young dancer.   It is a thrilling solo particularly the turns at the end.   Dame Darcey discerned details that I had never noticed before. Her pupil has shown considerable promise to reach this point.  I wish her well with her studies and subsequent career.

My next article will feature the Royal New Zealand Ballet's company class and preparation for the opening performance of The Sleeping Beauty in an apparently coronavirus fee Wellington.

Recognition for the Kibera Ballet Class

Standard YouTube Licence


I first wrote about Mike Wamaya's ballet class in Nairobi in What can be achieved by a good teacher 3 March 2013:

"In many ways the kids in this class have had the worst possible start in life but in one very important respect they could not have had a better one. Look at the teacher, Mike Wamaya. He is good. I googled for some more information on Mike and I found an even better clip from CNN and this article in The Daily Nation. These films show what can be achieved from the discipline not only in the studio but also in the class room and in life generally. Something that I and most readers of this blog in many walks of life are likely to have found out for ourselves."

I mentioned them again in Back to Africa 7 Jan 2015, Revisiting Kenya with Obama 25 July 2015 and Al Jazeera features the Ballet Class in the Nairobi Slums 19 Oct 2016.

In the last of those posts, I mentioned that students from Kibera were taking classes at the Dance Centre Kenya which is directed by the US dancer Cooper Rust. On 3 and 4 Dec 2016, some of those dancers took part in the Dance Centre Kenya's performance of The Nutcracker at the Kenya National Theatre (see Dance Performance: The Nutcracker by Dance Centre Kenya, Dec. 3 & 4 2016 @ the Kenya National Theatre 2 Dev 2016 Nairobi Now :: arts, culture and events). Those performances were, of course, big news in Kenya (see Billy Odidi Holiday season starts with ‘The Nutcracker’ dance 1 Dec 2016 Business Daily) but the class was noticed internationally.   The Huffington Post featured the artists in  Striking Photos Of The Ballet Program Bringing Strength To One Of Africa’s Biggest Slums 14 Dec 2016 and now The Guardian has added a film about them to its Facebook page.

Now that this remarkable initiative has been discovered it is important not to forget it. These kids need encouragement and resources and it is important to build on what has already been achieved.

Al Jazeera features the Ballet Class in the Nairobi Slums

Kibera, Nairobi

Author Shreibkraft

Source Wikipedia

Creative Commons Licence

One of the first posts that I published was What can be achieved by a good teacher 3 March 2013. At the time it was my most popular article clocking up 434 hits almost overnight. It featured a remarkable ballet class in Kibera, a district of Nairobi described by Wikipedia as "the largest slum in Nairobi, and the largest urban slum in Africa," taught by a remarkable teacher, Mike Wamaya.

As I think that Africans will make an enormous contribution to ballet (and indeed all the performing arts as well as the humanities, sciences and civilisation generally) I have revisited the topic several times (see Back to Africa 7 Jan 2015 and Revisiting Kenya with Obama 25 July 2015 and Ballet in Sub-Saharan Africa 30 April 2016). I am glad to see that the Qatari news broadcaster Al-Jazeera has also taken an interest in that class. It posted a video entitled Ballet in Kenya is a beautiful thing to its Facebook page on 15 Oct 2016 which has already attracted nearly a million hits, 12,000 "loves" or "likes" and over 16,000 shares.

Al-Jazeera has also published an article by Fredrik Lerneryd entitled Kenyan children learn ballet at Kibera slum 14 Sep 2016 Al-Jazeera. It contains pictures of Mr. Wamaya's class in Kibera and also at a school in Karen, a rather more affluent neighbourhood, where some of Mr. Wamaya's older students take lessons. In the article Mr Lerneryd refers to Cooper Rust, a US dancer who is artistic director of Dance Centre Kenya. She says that the children from Kibera prove to be just as good as those from Karen despite their lack of resources and facilities.

Most of the comments on Al-Jazeera's Facebook page are favourable but there are exceptions. One lady asks:

"To what use exactly? The charity should instead teach them practical skills that will be useful later in life"

A  gentleman opines:

"Ballerina? Very good dream but it must be stopped! Kenya is an ancient land with a rich and colourful past, there are many aspects of Kenyan culture that can be embraced by Kenyan youths. Why are Africans still living like colonial subjects? Helping sustain European language, religion, culture, economy at the expense of Africa and African culture! Stop"

Try telling a boy or girl from any country or social background who feels compelled to dance to stop? Fat chance! The Kenyan TV station K24TV has a posted the video Ballet dance slowly gaining popularity among children in Kenya which shows that ballet is beginning to gain traction at all levels of Kenyan society. Another station KTN News shows Kenyan students training in Norway.

Ballet is no longer European. Look at the dancers from South America, East Asia and, increasingly, from South Africa in the companies of the world. Kenyans will soon be as proud of their dancers as they are of their long distance runners.