Half a show is better than none

Stratford Circus Theatre

Author Andy Roberts
Licence Creative Commons 2.0 Generic

Ballet Central Black Swan et cetera  14 July 2018 19:30 Stratford Circus Theatre, Stratford, East London 

Ballet Central is the touring company of Central School of Ballet.  Its members are final year students on the degree course. Many of my favourite dancers and two of my favourite living British choreographers, Chris Marney and Kenneth Tindall, trained there.  Its tour of the UK during the second quarter of the year is one of the highlights of my calendar.

The lucky old South saw a lot of Ballet Central this year.  But their only appearance north of the Trent this year was in Leeds on 29 April and that was the day that Scottish Ballet danced Highland Fling in Gurn and Effie Land and the evening before I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to attend class with Ballet West in Taynuilt and the 50th anniversary gala of the St Andrew's Dance Club which I helped to found many years ago.  I couldn't possibly miss all that even for Ballet Central.

I had hoped to see Ballet Central in London but alas alack the last train north by our wonderful, renationalized railway now leaves King's Cross at 22:00.  I tried ticking them off on twitter and you can see where it got me:

Unfortunately we're limited in terms of the number of services we can run, as the majority of track and line maintenance takes place at night. I appreciate this is frustrating if you want to visit London and avoid staying the night. ^JC

— London North Eastern Railway (@LNER) July 15, 2018

The Stratford Circus Arts Centre is a delightful theatre which reminds me of the Linbury but it is at least half an hour's trek to King's Cross whether you take HS1 from Stratford International or the tube. The tube was particularly awkward on Saturday because Bank was closed.  I looked into minicabs and black cabs but they could have been help up in traffic.   The only safe way to make the rattling Donny Choo-Choo was to

leave the Circus at 20:29 

without the chance of a shine.

Never mind!  Half a show was better than none and the but of the show that I did see was well worth the journey.

Wendy McDermott described the show in an excellent review when it visited Leeds (see Ballet Central in Leeds 31 May 2018).  I saw Jenna Lee's Black Swan and the extracts from Wayne McGregor's FAR and Kenneth MacMillan's Valley of Shadows.   I missed Christopher Gable's Cinderella which is one of my favourites in Northern Ballet's repertoire that I long to see again.  I felt so cheated as I left the theatre during the interval.   I have never walked out of a show before. Not even a bad one. To leave a good show was nothing short of heartbreaking. Although I am not a big fan of Sir Matthew Bourne's The Sleeping Beauty - the curtain climbing baby gives me the creeps - I would have loved to have seen the fairies' prologue once more.  

I comforted myself with the thought that I had at least seen Jenna Lee's Black Swan.   I like Lee's work a lot. I had enjoyed her ballroom scene from Romeo and Juliet  last year (see Triumphant 1 May 2017).  Her Black Swan combining scenes from the film and the ballet is even more ambitious.  It opened with a bad tempered ballerina banging her pointe shoes on a table thereby interrupting Philip Feeney who was at the piano playing Tchaikovsky.  The ballet continues with rehearsals and performance and ends with the removal of yesterday's black swan by her successor.   An interesting touch which might be followed in other Swan Lakes is the presentation of a white feather.  Even more dramatic perhaps than the flickering Odette in the seduction scene.

Like Wendy I saw Ayca Anil as the black swan. Wendy was impressed by Anil's technique and I agree with everything that Wendy said about that.  However I also thought she was a pretty good dance actor as was her prince, Saul Kilcullen-Jarvis.  He represented a very complex character, a bit like the prince in David Dawson's version.  The action flashed back to the ballet with clips from act 1 and act 3.  Echoes of familiar choreography and music as well as some innovation.  The entrance of the black swans with their arms in open 5th was particularly effective.  

Dante Baylor's costume designs, especially the red headdress for the women and the geometric piping of the prince's doublet were impressive.   There was a lot - probably too much - for the senses to take in on seeing this ballet for the first time.  I would love to see it again.

 In FAR - Company Wayne McGregor - 2010 - Behind the Scenes McGregor explains how he drew inspiration from Diderot's Encyclopedia and, in particular, his drawings of the human nervous system. Diderot showed how it was the brain that made the body work.  The brain is represented in McGregor's piece by an array of tiny lamps representing neurons.  Those neurons control movements of the body which are sometimes convulsive.  Ballet Central showed two scenes from an hour long work.  There was a duet by Rita Lee and Aitor Viscarolasaga Lopez and a group scene with Rishan Benjamin, Aoibh Ní Riain Broin,  Hitomi Nishizawa,  Hikari Uemura, Olivia Van Niekerk, Harris Beattie, Thomas Harden and Kevin Memeti.  Not an easy piece to dance, I should have thought, particularly with Ben Frost's multilayered score.  Again, I need to see this work again - and perhaps more than once - to appreciate and understand it fully.

The extract from Valley of Shadows was a beautiful dance for four: Mical Klara Coxill, Saul Kilcullen-Jarvis, Jamie Wallis and Scot Baldie set to Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence. This scene shows the Finzi-Contini family in the seclusion of their garden before their lives are shattered by deportation to a concentration camp in Germany.  Wendy referred to sad and dark undertones and that is because we know what happened to the family.

Knowing that I would have to leave early to catch the rattling Donny choo-choo I booked a seat in the balcony which would have allowed me to slip out before the end of the performance with minimum noise and fuss.  It allowed me to spot who was in the audience and I spotted more than a few friends and acquaintances.  That made it even harder to leave the theatre.

Finally a message for Heidi Hall and Chris Marney.  There are approximately 25 million people who live north of the Trent and we can't all squeeze into the Stan and Audrey on a Sunday night.  We have some lovely theatres such as the Keys and Aldridge at the Lowry, the Atkinson at Southport, the Waterside in Sale, the Cast in Doncaster, the Library in Sheffield and indeed the Lawrence Batley here in Huddersfield.  Do stay with us a little longer when you go on tour next year.

Ballet Central in Leeds

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Wendy McDermott

Ballet Central  2018 Tour 29 April 2018, 19:30 Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds

It’s been a turbulent time for Ballet Central since their unimaginable announcement via social media that their tour vehicle and its contents had been stolen. The vehicle contained everything from their production equipment to over 100 unique handmade costumes. Being able to see the tour and how much work had gone into making this a professional production then to hear of their plight was pretty shocking. Since then those that follow Ballet Central will know that much of what was stolen had been retrieved and also, thanks to the generosity of many they’ve managed to raise several thousands to help pay for replacements.

I saw Ballet central perform, for the first time I might add, at the Stanley & Audrey Burton theatre in Leeds.

The show was made up of five pieces in two Acts: ‘Black Swan’ by Jenna Lee, ‘Far’ by Wayne McGregor, ‘Valley of Shadows’ by Kenneth MacMillan, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by Matthew Bourne and finally ‘Cinderella’ by Christopher Gable.

I think it’s fair to say that many will know of Swan Lake even if never having had the pleasure of seeing it. What Jenna Lee gave us in Black Swan was something very different, yet still referencing the classical ballet loved by so many with Tchaikovsky’s music and the beautiful swans (who looked marvellous in their black tutus). The mood was much darker, echoing the film The Black Swan. In this version however, it was not the ballerina that experienced the hallucinations, it was the Prince, confused and a little disoriented by what he was experiencing. Ayca Anil danced the principal role. Her technique seemed solid, the développés clean with extensions reaching the heights that we see in professional ballet companies of today. I thought her ports de bras were lovely, as were the swans' dancing in the corps, with their elegant swan arms, and I thought the acting of her character expressed the sultriness befitting of a temptress.

The second piece in the programme was a complete contrast of contemporary choreography. At times there was so much happening on the stage between the 10 dancers I didn’t know who to watch however there were dancers that stood out with their stage presence alone. As with most, if not all art, it’s subjective; contemporary is not a style that I personally favour, however if its premise is to showcase the movement of body and mind in fusion then this choreography does that. The Guardian (Luke Jennings to be precise) wrote of the piece when it appeared on stage:

“Muse too intently on notions of embodiment and you stop seeing the living bodies in front of you. They're the story, ultimately.”

It was a challenging piece for young dancers but on comparing clips from the original, they all performed with confidence and flare, speed and agility given that these students are on the cusp of their professional careers, potentially joining companies with both classical and contemporary repertoire, they need to be able to show their depth and breadth of skill in both styles. This choice of piece allowed them to do just that. There were three dancers that, for me anyway, particularly shone. Again, it was as much about their stage presence as their technique and quality of movement. Luckily one of those dancers has their photograph in the programme so easy to identify.

Act I closed with Valley of Shadows by MacMillan. Yet another personally unknown piece, though reading the synopsis it has very sad and dark undertones, the programme describing it as “the fate of an Italian Jewish family under fascism, Nazi occupation and the horrors of the death camps.”
Being a cast of four, the spotlight was on all the dancers. The cast had the fantastic fortune of being coached by Alessandra Ferri and Guy Niblett, who were original cast members when it was first performed at Covent Garden in March 1983. What a luxury for these dance students to inherit the experience and knowledge of these dancers to have it passed down to them. We had already seen Ayca Anil in the opening excerpt so her performance was assured, this time it allowed the male dancers the chance to show off their skills, in particular their partnering skills and they all performed with aplomb.

After the interval of 20 minutes, Act II opened with an excerpt of The Sleeping Beauty (Fairies Prologue). Gone were the tutus of the classic work, instead we saw costumes worthy of comic superheroes, of beautiful colour and imagination. It was a showcase indeed for the six dancers on stage and each deserved and duly received acknowledging applause from the audience, appreciative of the individual performances. Even the Princess Aurora as a baby in her cradle received applause in her own right as the crying baby which only added to the characterisation, humour and lightness of the whole piece.

The finale of the night was Christopher Gable's Cinderella and the audience were treated to a 30 minute shortened piece of this well known fairy tale. Despite the story depicting the ill treatment of Cinderella by her step mother and children, the performance felt just as much a celebration and in some ways echoed the journey that a dancer takes throughout their student life. The celebratory dance by the cast of apple pickers and wedding guests was light, airy and quite joyous to watch. In particular the green colour in the costumes reflecting the fresh apples that they had harvested that day expressed the emotion and worked well on stage, as if to say that the whole cast had now come of age in their early training careers and ready to advance into professional performers and spread their wings far and wide. Both the young and older Cinderella were emotive and expressive and i’m sure they, and all the touring company of 2018 will have careers to be proud of.

I’d like to give a mention to Rishan Benjamin and Harris Beattie as my own personal ones to follow in the future. There was another young woman in Far that unfortunately i’m unsure of her name. Looking at the cast list it was possibly Hikari Eumura (but perhaps Ballet Central would like to confirm?).

Finally, congratulations to all the performers and all those behind the scenes for making a thoroughly enjoyable evening of dance theatre.