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Northern Ballet, "Swan Lake", Leeds Grand Theatre, 12 March 19:30

The Leeds Grand Theatre was packed to the gunnels for the last performance of Northern Baller's Swan Lake on Saturday night and the applause at the end was deafening. Cheers, roars, ululations. The audience was almost delirious with excitement. I am sorry to say that I didn't join in with them. I clapped gently at the end of the performance out of respect for the dancers who gave their all.

Had this ballet been called something like Simon and Anthony I might have been a bit more tolerant but it was billed as Swan Lake for goodness sake and it bore as much resemblance to Petipa's masterpiece as the River Medlock does to the mighty Mississippi. Now David Nixon is a fine choreographer and I admire many of his works. I have called his Madame Butterfly a masterpiece and his Cinderella a triumph but I am afraid that his Swan Lake does nothing for me. I have now given it two chances. The first when it came out on 14 Feb 2004 which happened to be my birthday (see Don't Expect Petipa 5 Jan 2015) and the second last Saturday. I am not inclined to give it a third.

"But what didn't you like about it?" asked a classmate from my Over 55 ballet class this morning. "Oh it was so boring" I replied. "Where were Legnani's 32 fouettes?" I replied. "And the divertissements?" The Hungarian seemed to have morphed into a tango and the Neapolitan into a party piece. I found myself looking at my watch almost for the first time ever in over 50 years of ballet going. I didn't like the libretto, the orchestration or arrangement, the sets or even the costumes. It reminded me of the eighties fashions of erecting a Doric arch on a right-to-buy Thatcher house or installing a Rolls Royce grill on a beetle.

The evening was saved for me by the dancers who were good. Many of my favourite dancers were on stage. Jeremy Curnier as Anthony, Antoinette Brooks-Daw as Odette, Ashley Dixon as Simon, Ayami Miyata as Odilia, the magnificent Pippa Moore as Anthony's mother and the equally magnificent Hironaeo Takahashi as his father. There were some good albeit brief performances further down the batting order by Kevin Poeung as young Anthony and Gavin McCaig foundering on his bike.  Their performances would have excited the audience which would be why the show had such a good reception, For many in the audience Northern Ballet's production will have been the first Swan Lake they may have seen in a while. For some it may be the only one they know.

Tchaikovsky's music is of course uplifting and there is only so much one can do to spoil it. Though someone had a pretty good try with the outsize floaty blue textile thingee which you see in the trailer that reminded me of the bear in Wheeldon's The Winter's Tale. The last time I saw Nixon's Swan Lake I had to skedaddle down to Covent Garden to see the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake to get the former out of my system.  The Royal Ballet are not doing Swan Lake this year but English National are at the Albert Hall in the round in June and of course my beloved Scottish Ballet are bringing David Dawson's to Liverpool. The rehearsal on World Ballet Day looks really exciting.

Just because I don't like Northern's Swan Lake doesn't mean you won't. It's running in Sheffield until Saturday and then on to Norwich and Milton Keynes.  And then there's Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre to which I am looking forward very much. They usually run a triple bill in the Stanley and Audrey Burton in Spring which they take to the Linbury but of course the Linbury is closed this year and that is a pity because that is the best show they do. I'll probably give 1984 and Beauty and the Beast a miss this year (it's the bus that get's me) but I can recommend Jean-Christopher Maillot's Romeo and Juliet (see Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - Different but in a Good Way 8 March 2015).

1984 Second Time Round

Embedded pursuant to a standard YouTube licence

Northern Ballet, 1984, Palace Theatre, Manchester, 17 Oct 2015, 19:30

As I had expected, I liked Northern Ballet's 1984 very much more the second time around. There are two reasons for that. The first is that I knew what to look out for having seen the show in Leeds on 11 Sept 2015 (see My First Impressions of 1984 12 Sept 2915). The second is that Isaac Lee-Baker and Dreda Blow came very close to my picture of Winston Smith and Julia.

There is only so much that the senses can absorb when one attends the theatre.  The first time I saw the show I concentrated on the plot in order to understand the ballet rather than the sound and movement through which the story was expressed.  There was a lot of movement in this ballet - the choreography, of course, but also spectacular electronic displays on a massive "telescreen". Knowing the sequence of the ballet I was better able to appreciate Jonathan Watkins's choreography, Andrzej Goulding's telescreen, Simon Daw's sets and costumes, Alex Baranowski's score and some exquisite dancing.

Lee-Baker as Smith and Blow as Julia were perfect casting in my recollection of Orwell's novel. Smith is a young chap, very impressionable and somewhat naive - the sort who might have been turned by Stalin had he worked in the Foreign Office in the late 1940s rather than the Ministry of Truth in 1984. Such a role requires a young dancer but one with considerable ability. A role tailor made for Lee-Baker who had triumphed as Friar Lawrence in Maillot's Romeo and Juliet earlier in the year (see Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - different but in a good way 8 March 2015) and as Wilson in Gatsby last year (see Northern Ballet at its best: The Great Gatsby in Bradford 16 Nov 2014).

As I recall the novel, Julia is a temptress and I intend it as a compliment when I say that Blow was a very sexy lady. She is another dancer that I began to appreciate for the first time in Romeo and Juliet.  When I saw her as Juliet I wrote:

"Casting Blow for the role was an inspiration. She was a perfect Juliet. Playful and feisty. Loving but conflicted. Brave but fearful. Blow is elevated to my pantheon of favourites."

Julia is a very different role from Juliet but Blow was an excellent choice. She is perhaps Northern's best actor. She was sultry. She was seductive. She was my idea of Julia.

The third leading character in Watkins's ballet is O'Brien, the senior apparatchik who tricks Smith and Julia into dropping their guard and then betrays them. Javier Torres danced that role in September and he was excellent. He saved that show for me on that occasion.  Last Saturday it was Ashley Dixon who was a very different O'Brien but no less convincing. He projected menace and oiliness even in the privacy of his apartment when entertaining his young quaries with a silent telescreen.

It was good to see some of my favourites in the company - Hiranao Takehashi as Charrington, Jeremy Curnier as O'Brien's assistant, Victoria Sibson as the lead female prole and Rachael Gillespie, Abigail Prudames and Mlindi Kulashe who danced in the crowd scenes as party faithful and proles but still shone - as did all in the cast last Saturday night.

Orwell's satire is not an obvious choice for a ballet. In the Q & A that followed the show in Leeds on 11 Sept 2015 Watkins was asked why he had chosen that work as the subject of a ballet. He replied that

"he had read the book as a teenager and had been affected by it. He had contemplated how it could be translated into dance for some time. The same had happened with the Ken Loach film Kes which he first saw about the same time. That film resonated with him because it was set in the area in which he had spent his childhood. Last year he had the chance of stage it for The Crucible in Sheffield. By staging Kes and 1984 he had achieved two longstanding ambitions."

As you can see from the synopsis Watkins followed Orwell pretty faithfully. The sets, costumes, music, choreography, dancing came together beautifully. I don't think that this will ever be one of my favourite ballets but it it one that I now understand, appreciate and recommend.

The company will perform 1984 today in Sheffield for one last time in the North before they take it to the rest of the country. I had hoped to see it in Sheffield with Giuliano Contadini and Antoinette Brooks-Daw in the leading roles but they were dancing on the nights when Jane Tucker teaches the improvers and I was due to see Rambert at The Alhambra. Perhaps I can catch that cast at Sadler's Wells in May. Londoners tend to like Northern Ballet perhaps even more than we Mancunians and I am sure they will enjoy this show.