Torres

One of the highlights of Northern Ballet's 40th anniversary gala last year was Javier Torres's Dying Swan (see Sapphire 15 March 2015). Here is what I wrote about it:

"So there was a lot of emotion welling up inside me before Torres took to the stage. At first I was in despair because the cello was almost drowned by sound effects but then it shone through and so did Torres. He was as beautiful and as moving as Glurdjidze. And indeed as Pavlova so far as I can tell from my mother's description and the film. Again I was moved to tears. Now I am a hard nosed barrister specializing in patents and I don't cry easily but I couldn't help myself yesterday. Some of those tears were prompted by my associations with Pavlova and my mother's story but most sprung from Torres's dancing. And when the auditorium exploded with applause at the end of his piece I felt sure it was the latter."

Torres is my favourite male dancer with Northern Ballet by a country mile and with Batley and Leebolt's recent announcement he appears to be the company's only remaining male premier dancer for the time being.

He trained in Havana and joined Northern Ballet after a glittering career in Cuba.  In the words of the London Ballet Circle:

"Javier joined Northern Ballet in 2010 as Premier Dancer. He has performed leading roles in The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Ondine, Beauty & the Beast, Hamlet, Madame Butterfly, Cleopatra, The Great Gatsby and Hans van Manen's Concertante. His performance as Caesar in Cleopatra was voted one of the top hundred favourite performances by the UK dance critics in Dance Europe Magazine for the 2010-2011 season."

Tonight Torres will be the guest of the London Ballet Circle  at the Civil Service Club, 13-15 Great Scotland Yard, London, SW1A 2HJ 19:30 where he will be interviewed by Susan Johnson.  Members of the public will be admitted to his interview upon payment of an £8 admission fee (£5 for Circle members).

The Circle's next guest. Jonathan Watkins, also has a connection with Northern Ballet in that he created the delightful Northern Trilogy for the Sapphire gala as well as 1984 for the company. He will be interviewed by Allison Potts at the Civil Service Club at 19:30 on the 6 June 2016.

Maya Plisetskaya

Maya Plisetskaya 31 Oct 2011

Copyright: www.kremlin.ru
 Creative Commons Licence 

A lot of good things happened on 2 May 2015 for me personally in that I saw an outstanding performance by Ballet Central in Leeds (see Dazzled 3 May 2015) and for the public in general in that the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a daughter. But for me it was all overshadowed by the sad news from Moscow that the prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya had died in Germany.

Though I never met her I felt the loss deeply.  When I first took an interest in ballet in the 1960s there were two great names: Dame Margot Fonteyn in this country and Maya Plisetskaya in the Soviet Union. Of the two I found Plisetskaya by far the more interesting,

Here is a film about Plisetskaya and her art made at about that time I first heard of her.  It shows her at her peak dancing in some of her most famous roles: Odile, Juliet, the Dying Swan and above all Phrygia.  It also has some shots of her as a young student,

  

I admired her as an artist but also as a human being. She had an old fashioned loyalty to her country (which siome would say was misplaced as she lost her father in one of Stalin's purges) but she was not afraid of asserting herself from time to time.

In 1958 Plisetskaya married the composer Rodion Shchedrin who composed the score to The Little Humpbacked Horse and arranged several other works for her. Their marriage continued until the day she died.

She was a ravishingly beautiful woman even in her eighties as the photograph shows. Like Fonteyn she continued to perform long after the age most dancers have retired.

Nobody can live for ever. She had a very good innings. But that does not stop me from feeling very, very sad at her passing.

Sapphire

This year marks the sapphire anniversary of the formation of Northern Ballet so the company celebrated yesterday with a magnificent gala at the Grand Theatre in Leeds. Four new works were premièred by the company and dancers came from Australia, Germany, Russia and London. There have been only three other occasions when I have seen such an array of talent from around the world. They were the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School gala at Sadler's Wells on 29 Sept 2013, the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School gala at the Grand Opera House in York on 30 July 2007 (when incidentally I saw Xander Parish and his sister Demelza for the first time) and a gala for Sir Frederick Ashton's retirement on 24 July 1970. Artistically it was a glorious evening to which the audience duly paid homage by rising  as one at the end.

We saw 13 works last night:

• Sapphire by David Nixon danced by Giuliano Contadini, Kevin Poeung, Nicola Gervasi, Sean Bates, Joseph Taylor, Matthew Koon, Mlindi Kulashe, Filippo Di Vilio, Luke Francis and Riku Ito;
• Fatal Kiss by Daniel de Andrade danced by Lucia Solari and Javier Torres;
• Shift by Christopher Bruce danced by Sandrine Monin, Carmen Vasquez-Marfil, Vanessa Vince- Pang, Andreas Grimaldier, Ben Mitchell and Sam Vaherlehto of Phoenix Dance Theatre;
• A Northern Trilogy by Jonathan Watkins danced by Martha Leebolt, Hannah Bateman, Dreda Blow, Kevin Poeung and Isaac Lee-Baker;
• A Dying Swan by Michel Descombey danced by Javier Torres
• The final pas de deux from Alexei Ratmnsky's Cinderella danced by Lana Jones and Adam Bull of The Australian Ballet;
• The pas de deux in The Great Gatsby by David Nixon danced by Tobias Batley and Martha Leebolt;
• Little Monsters by Demis Volpi danced by Dreda Blow and Joseph Taylor;
• The final pas de deux from John Neumeier's version of The Nutcracker danced by Alexander Trusch of the Hamburg Ballet and Lucia Solari;
• Kenneth Tindall's We Never Said by Martha Leebolt and Tobias Batley;
• Ballet 101 by Eric Gauthier danced by Xander Parish of The Mariinsky Ballet; 
• The pas de deux of Siegfried and Odette in Anthony Dowell's Swan Lake danced by Daria Klimentova and Vadim Muntagirov of the Royal Ballet; and
• The Charleston scene from The Great Gatsby by the whole company led by Hannah Bateman and Giuliano Contadini.

They were all good but for me there were three highlights.  

The first was seeing Klimentova and Muntagirov together again. I never thought I would ever see that beautiful ballerina again especially after her last performance at the Royal Albert Hall and certainly not with Muntagirov after he left English National Ballet for The Royal Ballet. The last time I had seen then was in The Nutcracker at the Coliseum just before Muntagirov announced his departure (see Cracking! 14 Dec 2013). Theirs was one of the great partnerships of ballet and seeing them again together in my own county was like a miracle. That pas de deux  alone made the evening for me.

Next was Torres's A Dying Swan and there's a story behind that. I inherited my love of ballet from my mother. My father, a highly educated, urbane and kindly man, didn't care for it at all. He regarded men's tights and women's tutus as bordering on indecency and the whole art form an instrument of Soviet propaganda. Don't forget I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s when we scrambled the V-bombers on more than one occasion. The Bolshoi arrived in London immediately after Khrushchev had crushed the Hungarian uprising. But my mother had seen Pavlova dance the Dying Swan at the Grand Theatre in Leeds when she must have been a very little girl (see In Leeds of all Places - Pavlova, Ashton and Magic 18 Sept 2013), It made such an impression upon her that she could describe the choreography in every detail.  I have seen Pavlova's performance on flickering film and I know my mother's recollection was accurate. I had longed to see a modern ballerina perform that dance and I did at the Gala for Ghana 4 Feb 2014 when Elena Glurdjidze danced the piece. It was as beautiful as my mother had described and I wept. A few days later I actually met the great ballerina at the London Ballet Circle and told her the story and she seemed to be moved too.

So there was a lot of emotion welling up inside me before Torres took to the stage. At first I was in despair because the cello was almost drowned by sound effects but then it shone through and so did Torres. He was as beautiful and as moving as Glurdjidze. And indeed as Pavlova so far as I can tell from my mother's description and the film. Again I was moved to tears. Now I am a hard nosed barrister specializing in patents and I don't cry easily but I couldn't help myself yesterday. Some of those tears were prompted by my associations with Pavlova and my mother's story but most sprung from Torres's dancing. And when the auditorium exploded with applause at the end of his piece I felt sure it was the latter.

My third highlight was Jonathan Watkins's A Northern Trilogy. Do watch his video for so long as it remains on YouTube. He set three ballets to Stanley Holloway's monologues - Yorkshire Pudding, One Each a Piece All Round and The Lion and Albert. For this Leeds audience it was mother's milk and it was for me too because I had heard those monologues from both parents while growing up in Surrey. Neither my Yorkshire mother nor my Lancashire father ever allowed me to forget that I had been born in Manchester and if ever I inserted an "r" into "grass" or "bath" I was met with a contemptuous "Oh you cockney clod." Bateman, Blow and Leebolt were beautiful  (especially the angel). Lee-Baker made a great Albert and Poeung can do no wrong in my book. I think I liked Yorkshire Pudding best. Why? No reason except my friend Gita, who has joined me in turning Terpsichore into a business and is as Yorkshire as my mum, published a recipe for Yorkshire pudding in Milan, Happy Birthday 3 June 2013 Gita Mistry Food. Gita's first name means Heaven in one of the Indian languages and her Yorkshire pudding really is heavenly.

As this post is already long I will try to canter through the rest but I must say a few words about Kenneth Tindall and Xander Parish.

Tindall is one of the best young choreographers we have and I love everything he has created including the ballet we saw last night. His work appeals to the brain as well as the heart. We Never Said depicts two mannequins in jeans and jackets who come to life to music by The XX, In the programme notes Tindall quotes an anonymous poem:

"My love for you is statuesque, come let us dance like we're made of stone."

Batley and Leebolt were magnificent.  As it happens I met Tindall in the foyer before the show and he said a few words about his plans which are exciting.  I shall be featuring him and his work later this year.

Xander Parish is not only a great dancer he is also a very kind man. I saw him dance Romeo when the Mariinsky visited London (see Reet Gradely: Romeo and Juliet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House 29 July 2014 31 July 2014) and Joanna Goodman and I were lucky enough to meet him at the London Ballet Circle a few days later. Because proceedings take place under something like the Chatham House Rule I can't say anything about his talk but I think I can give two instances of his kindness.  First, he lifted one of his younger admirers as I had seen him lift Tereshkina a few days earlier. That young girl who is a promising dance student was thrilled to bits. Secondly, he signed a birthday card for my ballet teacher's younger daughter. I had offered him two cards to sign - one from the shop at Covent Garden for his old company and the other of Martha Leebolt as Cleopatra from our shop at Quarry Hill. And guess what! He chose Martha. My ballet teacher's daughter was as thrilled as the young student he had lifted in London.

Now for Xander Parish's performance. It is always a thrill to see him. He and his sister shone in 2007 and he also shone last night but I do wish he had been given something like Balanchine's Apollo in which role he dazzled London last year. Now don't get me wrong. I had seen Daniel Montero of the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company dance Ballet 101 in Amsterdam and London and I like it very much. Parish performed it beautifully though it ended with him flat on his back from his exertions rather than in little pieces as in the Dutch version. But having seen Parish's Romeo I wanted more. So I guess I must save my kopeks and go to Russia after all.

I'm afraid I won't do justice to the rest in this post but hopefully others will follow. Nixon's Sapphire showed off our excellent young men. Lean, sleek and muscular like greyhounds. Do watch this YouTube video. De Andrade's A Fatal Kiss reminded me of Tango and Buenos Aires and the novels of Luis Borges. Shift was Bruce at his best. Jones and Bull were magnificent. Australians are perfectionists as I know from personal experience having been taught by one. It was great to see a bit more of Gatsby again both the Charleston and the pas de deux. Little Monsters to the music of Elvis Presely oozed sexiness and menace. Blow's Juliet wowed me last Saturday and now I am yet another of her devoted fans.  And having seen just a little of Neumeier's The Nutcracker and Trusch I want to see more.

There is just one thing that worried me about last night and that is that there were empty seats even in the front stalls. Gita managed to get a good seat at a good price towards the rear of the stalls a few hours before the show. Also it was not the usual ballet going crowd. There were some faces I recognized such as students from my Over 55 class and, of course, Janet McNulty of Balletco Forum from Liverpool but not many. I felt I was one of the younger ones and as I was at Ashton's retirement gala I am no stripling.

That and the fact that there were rows of empty seats on Thursday for the last night of Romeo and Juliet troubles me about Leeds. According to the authoritative Globalization and World Cities Research Network Leeds is only a gamma city on its classification of cities whereas even Manchester where Northern Ballet began is a beta and London together with New York is an alpha plus. How long can this mid-size town support a company of the quality of Northern Ballet? in his speech before the show Nixon mentioned that all the shows in London are fully booked whereas yesterday's gala and next week's Wuthering Heights are certainly not. Had the gala taken place at The Wells, The Coliseum or even The Albert Hall it would have been sold out for months. It makes me wonder for how much longer Northern Ballet can afford to remain Northern?

Further Reading

Nick Ahad   Dancing to music of time 15 March 2015 Yorkshire Post

Ballet in Ireland

My interest in Ireland was stimulated by an email from Northern Ballet about the "Big Ballet" series on Channel 4 which started last Thursday.  I missed last week's programme because it clashed with "Inside Science" and "In Our Time" and I am going to miss next week's because a friend is taking me to see "Coriolanus" for a birthday treat. I love ballet but I am also interested in science, history and drama. As my time, like everybody's, is limited I judged I might get more satisfaction from Radio 4 than Channel 4 on the Jeremy Bentham measure. I might also add that as a somewhat unpromising and over mature ballet student I do not see anything weird or even unusual about people who are less or more than the optimum shape and size for a career in ballet getting as much enjoyment as they can from the art, as I do, and I wish them all well.

The email explained that while the programme was not about Northern Ballet, much of the filming takes place in Quarry Hill and the Northern Ballet Sinfonia will accompany the live performances at the end of the series.  The bit that startled me however was the reference to Wayne Sleep and "prima ballerina Monica Loughman". Now I have seen Wayne Sleep many times and I remember his Neapolitan dance with particular affection but I had not heard of Monica Loughman. Now although I do not know everything about ballet I do get to about 20 shows a year and I read the ballet columns of The Guardian, Independent and FT as well as Dancing Times and dip into Ballet News and the other blogs. Even though I have not seen every ballerina or even every prima ballerina I have usually heard of them and the name Monica Loughman did not ring any bells.

So I googled her. The first five results were:

• Monica Loughman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Irish ballet starlet Monica Loughman found love at Tesco checkout ...
• Big Ballet: Wayne Sleep & Monica Loughman stage Swan Lake using only plus-size dancers
Big Ballet's plus-size swans step out to prove dance suits all shapes, and 
• Monica Loughman Ballet - Ireland's Ballet Company

I had a look at her Wikipedia entry and found:

"Monica Loughman is now best known in Ireland for establishing a National ballet company. Ireland was one of the only countries in the world (apart from Liechtenstein) that did not have a full-time professional ballet company."

 Now I found that rather surprising because I spent my honeymoon in Ireland in 1982 and I remember an evening at either the Gate or the Abbey when my late spouse and I watched a very polished performance by a company that called itself the National Ballet of Ireland. Moreover, my teacher comes from Ireland though she trained in Brisbane, and Dame Ninette de Valois who founded the Royal Ballet came from the Emerald Isle.

So I checked out YouTube and found the footage of The Dying Swan from RTE above. Now although I was initially put off by the Tesco checkout story, Big Ballet and another TV show in Ireland called Ballet Chancers it is clear from this footage that Monica Loughman knows what she is doing.  So I scrolled down to the entry for Monica Loughman Ballet.

It appears that the company has four ballets in its repertoire:  The Nutcracker, La Sylphide, Giselle and Masterpieces of World Opera and Ballet. It has just finished touring the Irish Republic with The Nutcracker and it is planning to dance Swan Lake this year. I searched YouTube again and found these clips of Part I and Part II of La Sylphide from 2012 which I would gladly have crossed the Irish Sea to see had I been aware of those performances.  I should add that I much prefer La Sylphide to Giselle because it is set in Scotland which is still part of the United Kingdom (at least for now) and not in the Vosges or Black Forest and there is no monkeying about with the spirit world which gives me the creeps (see "Reflections on Gisellle" 29 Jan 2014).

Incidentally, while carrying out my searches I found the website for the National Ballet of Ireland which shows that I wasn't imagining things. It will dance Carmen in Limerick on 29 and 30 May 2014 and with tickets priced between 10 and 20 euros it seems very good value even after taking account of the Ryanair fair to get there.

Now a limerick

"Now there once was a Scotsman called James
With whom Madge had some fun and some games.
She gave him a scarf
For the sylph for a laugh.
Who died and Gurn took Effie back hame." 

"Hame" I think is how they pronounce home in Scotland (see The Steamie by Tony Roper).  Yeah I know it's terrible but you try and find a better rhyme for "James" and "games".

Post Script 9 Feb 2014

There will be a chance to see Monica Loughman's company, if not Loughman herself, as it will dance Giselle at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast on 4 or 5 April 2014, As I am curious and will qualify for a concessionary ticket I think I may just slip over.

Gala for Ghana

Last Sunday some of our finest performers gave up their evening (and no doubt a lot more rehearsal time) to dance, sing and make music at a gala at the Britten Theatre for Ashanti Development. This is a charity set up by Ghanaians living in London to raise money for development in the Ashanti region of Ghana. It has done some remarkable work in health care, sanitation, education and income generation. It was a wonderful evening and I for one am doubly grateful to the artists not only for their magnificent performances but also for supporting a very worthwhile cause.

The evening consisted of 14 items introduced by Harriet Thorpe.  Though now an actor Thorpe said that she had studied at the Royal Ballet School. "That training never leaves you" said Thorpe and she offered to stand in for any dancer who might be indisposed. Happily, nobody was indisposed  but I have no reason to doubt that she would have risen to the occasion had she been put to the test.

The works were as follows:

• Chroma by Dawid Trzensimiech, Paul Kay and Luca Acri choreographed by Wayne McGregor to Joby Talbot's music;
• The Dying Swan by Elena Glurdjidze
• In Treibhaus sung by Maria Jones;
• Improvisation Andante Cantabile from Richard Straus's Violin Concerto in E Flat Op 18 by Robert Gibbs on the violin and Oliver Davies on the piano;
• Avant La Haine by Camille Bracher and Thomas Whitehead choreographed by Ludovic Ondiviela to Ólafur Arnalds's music;
• Unfinished Business by Elly Braund and James Muller choreographed by Richard Alston to Mozart;
• Requiem Pie Jesu by Lauren Cuthbertson to MacMillan's choreography and Fauré's music;
• Yuhui Choe dancing Aurora's Act 1 variation from The Sleeping Beauty;
• Polyphonia by Beatriz Stix Brunell and Nicol Edwards choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon to  György Ligeti's music;
• the Duett and Finale from Schumann's Phantasierstuecke Op 88 by Gibbs and Davies joined by Adrian Bradbury on the cello;
• Volver, Volver by Edward Watson choreographed by Arthur Pita from MEN IN MOTION;
• Clair de Lune by Gina Sturm Jensen and Reece Clarke choreographed by Valentino Zuchetti to Debussy's music;
• Ceremony of Innocence by Marcelino Sambé choreographed by Valentino Zucchetti to Benjamin Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Op 10; and
• Ashton's Rhapsody Pas de Deux by Yuhui Choe and Zucchetti to Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. 

Two ballets were premièred on Sunday - Avant la Haine and Clair de Lune - and we saw Volver, Volver only a few days after MEN IN MOTION's première and these were three of the works that impressed me most. It was the first time I had seen choreography by Ondiviela and Zucchetti and I am certainly looking froward to seeing more.

Avant la Haine means Before the Hatred and if I understood the ballet correctly it tracks the breakup of a relationship. I had last seen Whitehead in Giselle (see "Giselle - Royal Ballet 18 Jan 2014" 20 Jan 2014) and I may be biased because he comes from Bradford but Whitehead has become one of my favourite dancers. In this ballet he appears to fight with Bracher actually delivering what seemed to be a rabbit punch. Far worse than just spilling the beans about a philanderer but don't get me started on Giselle because I know my views are unpopular.

Zucchetti's Clair de Lune was one of the most delightful new ballets I have seen for some time. Part of the credit must go to Debussy whose music like Aaron Copland's is particularly apt for ballet but much must got to the lyrical choreography and the elegance by which it was interpreted by the dancers. I hope to see this work again.

Watson was, of course, magnificent. It devolved in a fascinating way which I won't reveal from those who are to see MEN IN MOTION. I was urged to go by Susan Dalgetty who pressed a flyer into my hands at the London Ballet Circle AGM. I did not buy a ticket largely because one can't see everything, especially if it means trekking to London but I think I made the wrong choice. When I see a dancer like Watson I am reminded of the remark attributed to Einstein about dancers being "the athletes of God."

And what of the rest? I had decided not to go to this gala until I saw Dave Wilson's post on BalletcoForum that Glurdjidze was to dance the Dying Swan. This was a ballet that I had always wanted to see but have never managed to catch. When she was a little girl my mother saw Pavlova dance it in Leeds and the impression never left her.  I have seen some flickering footage of Pavlova many times but I have always wanted to see it on stage (see "In Leeds of All Places" 18 Sept 2013). Owing to a problem with the Royal College's e-commerce system I feared I would not get a ticket for the show but thanks to Josephine and Bangor Ballet Boy they put me in touch with a lady who had a ticket to sell. It was a good seat too right in the centre of the dress circle. I am so grateful to all concerned.  Well Dying Swan lived up to my expectations. It was danced beautifully. I became pretty emotional earlier in the day when I saw Antoinette Sibley again for the first time in decades. Tears do not come to me easily but I felt the tears welling up when I saw this ballet. It was good that we had Wagner and Strauss before more dancing.

But my favourite work of the evening was Cuthbertson's Requiem.  I admire her greatly.  More perhaps than any ballerina in the Royal Ballet since Sibley. Indeed she reminds me a little of Sibley. She shows the same grace. In this work she danced to a voice that complemented her movement remarkably. I long to see this work again and preferably with the same artists.

The evening was over too quickly. But the show did not exactly end there. On the way out there was more music and dance from two Ghanaian ladies with collection buckets rattling their containers to a rhythm and chant "Thank you! God bless you!" My only surprise and slight regret was that there were no Ghanaians on stage and few even in the audience. Well it was a sell out and ballet is only beginning to establish itself in Sub-Saharan Africa. But it is taking root there as I have mentioned elsewhere (see "Michaela dePrince" 4 April 2013 and "What can be achieved by a good teacher" 3 March 2013). I hope to see a Ghanaian ballerina or premier danseur noble step out on stage in my lifetime. There is already a Sierra Leonean on her way to the Linbury on the 28 and 29 May 2014.