Renewing Friendships

The Main Stage, The Royal Opera House

Source Wikipedia

When I was an undergraduate I practically lived at Covent Garden during the Christmas, Easter and start of the Summer vacations. The Royal Opera House sent bundles of ticket vouchers to Young Friends which could be exchanged for tickets for the upper slips or two thirds of the cost of the rows H to Q in the amphitheatre and I saw all the great stars - Fonteyn, Nureyev, Sibley, Dowell, Symour and all the other great names of the time. Those ticket vouchers enabled me to see great visiting companies such as American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi and even Dance Theatre of Harlem.

I maintained my membership of the Young Friends even when I was a graduate student in California. "You have such neat mail" my fellow students would say when About the House would arrive. And it was true, I did. It was a little reminder of home like "Ye Mucky Duck" and the "Brigadoon" at Santa Monica. I maintained my membership even after I ceased to qualify as a Young Friend at the age of 26. I kept it going even after I had moved to Yorkshire and made the acquaintance of Northern Ballet.

I let my membership lapse only when my late spouse was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. Somehow ballet no longer seemed to matter. In fact very few things did. There is nothing more distressing than watching someone you love shut down limb by limb and organ by organ.  Everything in my life went to seed.

But then a month after my spouse died I noticed a postcard on a notice board advertising "Ballercise" classes. I was told that a group of mums had asked the instructor who taught their little ones ballet to lay on a class for them. I was even more overweight than I am now and quite unfit but I joined the class and stuck with it. I struggled through pliés and tendus and goodness knows what. Eventually, my teacher invited me to a real ballet class in Huddersfield which led in turn to the over 55 class at Northern Ballet and ultimately Terpsichore.

Last Saturday I collected my tickets for the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company I impulsively asked whether I could rejoin the Friends. "Certainly" they replied and remarkably the House still retained my membership records.  Today my membership pack arrived and what a delight. My red membership card with the royal coat of arms, welcome letters from Susan Fisher, the new season guide, an invitation to attend the opening night of Carlos Acosta's Carmen on 26 Oct 2015 (the cheapest tickets being £1,000 per head) and the January and April copies of the Friends' magazine which appears to have superseded About the House. 

The January issue has a great picture of Ed Watson and Wendy Whelan on the cover as well as news of Wayne McGregor's Homage to Virginia Woolf and an essay on the genius of Jerome Robbins. The April issue has articles on Carlos Acosta, Cuba and transition and 50 years of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. When am I going to get round to reading all of that? But does it matter for I feel as though I have come home.

Although I have rejoined the Friends because I love the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet there are actually some tangible benefits of membership which are listed on the Friends page of the Royal Opera House website. This video explains what they are. I have derived so much pleasure from performances at the House over the years. I do hope this article encourages others to join the Friends too.

Giselle - Royal Ballet 18 Jan 2014

Why do we still watch Giselle?  Except for the occasional performance of La Sylphide and La Péri we don't see much of the romantic ballets of the 1830s and 1840s probably because we no longer believe in ghoulies, ghosties and lang-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. So why is it that Giselle with its wilis has remained so popular and is in the repertoire of just about every major ballet company in the world?

I think it is because the ballet still has a lot to to say to us not about wilis or prince charming in reverse but about human relationships, shock and the imaginings of a deluded mind. Arguably it has a feminist message though  I doubt that was ever in the minds of Perrot, Grisi or the audiences around the world who have filled the theatres night after night ever since it was first performed. Modern theatre goers do know what it is like to build up one's hopes unreasonably, to see them dashed suddenly, to suffer public humiliation crushingly and in a few cases extreme cases illnesses that can lead to self harm,

Everything is hunky dory for Giselle.  She's the prettiest girl in her village.  She attracts the hunky new kid with style who is so much more fun than nerdy old Hilarion who is in with her mum for slipping her the occasional rabbit or partridge. There she is - queen of some kind of harvest pageant the envy of all her friends - and then Hilarion spoils it all by exposing Albrecht as a two timer.  Suddenly from queen of the pageant she is a laughing stock. No wonder she goes out of her mind. And her mum yapping on about the spirits of girls who die before their wedding day can't have helped.

Giselle's mad scene is the key to the ballet which forms the link between the merry making and flirting of the first part of the first act and the world of the wilis of the second.  It takes a ballerina with extraordinary dramatic powers as well as great virtuosity to do it well. And she needs a credible partner with similar powers to accompany her. I have seen many versions of Giselle by many companies but I can only recall a couple of performances when I have been entirely satisfied. One of those performances was by Fonteyn with Nureyev and another by Sibley with Dowell. A third was last last Saturday night. Natalia Osipova who danced Giselle in the evening performance at the Royal Opera House on 18 Jan 2013 with Carlos Acosta has those powers. As for her partner, I would go so far as to say that Acosta, who dominates a stage like no other dancer, was the best Albrecht that I have ever seen, and that includes Nureyev.

Also impressive were Thomas Whitehead who danced Hilarion, Deidre Chapman Giselle's mum, Christina Arestis Albrecht's girlfriend, Hikaru Kobayashi queen of the wilis and Elizabeth Harrod one of her attendants. I have been following Harrod ever since I first saw her at a Yorkshire Ballet Summer School Gala and it is great to see how well she is coming on.  I loved everything about Peter Wright's production and also John Macfarlane's designs.

I used to go to the Royal Opera House frequently until it was refurbished.  I got out of the habit when it was closed for those works and I have only been back since though I kept up my membership of the Friends of Covent Garden for most of that time.  It must be over 30 years since I was last in the amphitheatre and how that has changed with its swanky bars and restaurants.  On the whole I welcome those changes but I do miss the old House with its stench of veg, the cut flowers tossed by the audience from the boxes, the liveried footmen and the ritual of the ballerina choosing her choicest bloom for her partner.

In Leeds of all Places - Pavlova, Ashton and Magic.

My mother told me that she had once seen Anna Pavlova on the stage. She said that it was a very special performance the like of which she had never seen before or since.  As Pavlova died when my mother was 21 and as my mother spent her childhood and adolescence in Leeds I could not see how that was possible especially as the First World War accounted for 4 of the years when my mother's life overlapped with Pavolva's.

But I now know more about Pavlova's life having read the report of a talk that Pavlova's biographer, Jane Pritchard, gave to the London Ballet Circle on 29 Oct 2012 which you can download from the "Reports" page of the Circle's website. Pavolva brought ballet to every corner of the British Isles, to small towns where ballet had never been performed and unless she was injured or ill, she danced at every performance. I googled "Pavlova" and "Leeds" and came up with a link to this advertisement for a special matinee at the Grand on the 17 Jan 1913,   As my mother would have been less than 3 on that day I doubt that that was the performance that she attended. Pavlova must have danced in Leeds again when my mother was older.

The reason I thought of Pavlova is that I came across this picture of Sir Frederick Ashton and the stars of the Royal Ballet when writing "Realizing Another Dream" 16 Sept 2913. Ashton, who was nearly 5 years older than my mother, had been inspired to dance after seeing Pavlova in Lima in 1917. That decision of Ashton's must have taken considerable courage for there were very few opportunities in the ballet for anybody at that time and dancing was not the sort of thing that well brought up English public schoolboys did.

That performance in Lima must have been special. One of those rare times in the theatre when audience and stage make magic. I have known only two such moments in my life. One was the show at which the picture of Ashton and the Royal Ballet was taken.  I was there standing throughout the entire performance in the upper slips of the Royal Opera House.  The other moment was on Saturday in Leeds of all places. I don't know what it is that produces such magic. I don't think it is in the gift of the performers. I have seen great performances since by many stars including Fonteyn and Nureyev and I have seen the stage of Covent Garden knee deep in flowers especially when there was a flower market next door to the House, but not the same magic as I saw on the 24 July 1970 and again last Saturday.

I wonder whether I shall live to see another.

From Bar to Barre

Although I have been a balletomane for over half a century I have always known my limitations when it comes to ballet.   I make my living from the law and even as a child that was my aspiration though I loved my trips to Covent Garden, the Colosseum and the Wells .

"What do the Bar and ballet have in common?"   I hear you say,   "More than one might suppose" is my reply.

For a start both ballet dancers and barristers perform in costume,  We wear wigs and gowns and they wear whatever the part demands.


We're also neighbours.   The Royal Opera House is just across Kingsway.   In fact, I discovered Lincoln's Inn while looking for a parking space near Covent Garden one matinee.   Sadlers Wells is just up the road from Gray's while the Peacock is on our door step.

They say that barristers are actors manqués but look how they perform in court.  The exaggerated courtesy to the judge - "May it please your Lordship" and opponents - "my learned friend" - remind me of the flourishes of the courtiers in Act 1 of Swan Lake.   A rough cross-examination reminds me of the denunciation of Albrecht in Giselle  and sadly can have similar consequences.

Like ballet the Bar is a very competitive profession.   You have to be good to get into chambers - any chambers - in the same way that you have to be good to get into a company - any company.

Both professions have their stars - ballerinas and premier danseurs nobles in ballet - and silks or Queen's Counsel in the law.

Despite having much in common the two professions seldom come together.   There are very few ballets that have a role for a lawyer.   At the top of my head I can only think of the attorney at the end of the last act in Fille tearing up Simone's settlement.   One occasion when the two worlds did meet is when Margot Fonteyn was a guest at Grand Night in Lincoln's Inn.   Normally the Bar and Students bow as each bencher exits Hall but Fonteyn's exit was marked with thunderous applause.   That was the first and only time something like that has ever happened in my recollection.   And Fonteyn rewarded us with her smile - the same smile that I had seen so many times on stage.