A Celebration of Dance: Wilis and More

 

Dance Studio Leeds, Powerhouse Ballet, Part of Giselle 19 Nov 2022, 15:00 Chroma Q Theatre, Leeds

By some fluke, I once accomplished a chassé, pas de bourrée, pirouettes single or double and pirouette dedans without everything going wrong. The delight on my teacher's countenance was a picture to behold.   I saw exactly the same expression on Saturday after  Powerhouse Ballet had danced the scene from act II of Giselle where Zulma and Moyna summon the wilis from their hidden forest graves to attend  Myrtha.

The reason for my teacher's delight is that the cast danced very well.  So well that I felt impelled to rise to my feet in standing ovation.  Our teacher, Jane Tucker, had taught us the choreography during a day-long workshop in July and rehearsed us almost every weekend since.  She had a cast with different levels of skill and experience and she adapted Coralli and Perrot's choreography in a way that enabled each and every one of them to shine. Christie Barnes excelled as Myrtha as did Lauren Savage and Esther Wilson as Moyna and Zulma.  They were supported by a polished corps consisting of Fiona Cheng, Jayne Johnston, Helen Peacock. Sue Pritchard, Helena Tarren, Lois Watters, Anne Williams and Bo Zhang. 

During our rehearsals, we discovered the talents of many of our members.  Christie Barnes not only danced Myrtha but also directed several of our rehearsals including one that was effectively a second workshop at York St John University.  We also discovered that she is an accomplished photographer and filmmaker as she chronicled our progress. Lauren Savage proved to be an excellent teacher leading one of our company classes and several warm-ups.  We found costuming and make-up skills and lots of practical tips such as the best place to park on a busy Saturday from different members.

Those discoveries have advanced one of the objectives of Powerhouse Ballet which is to provide opportunities for members to develop their theatre skills. That is why I invited Katherine Wong to lead our company class in Bolton last October`.  I have also asked Alicia Jolley to give a class in North Wales in the New Year, Holly Middleton to help rehearse future productions and drama student, Fiona Cheng, to teach us how to act.

Our 8-minute extract from Giselle was just one of many pieces performed at Dance Studio Leeds's Celebration of Dance on Saturday.  The show was staged to raise funds for Martin House children's hospice in Boston Spa.  At a health and safety briefing just before the show, the studio's director, Katie Geddes, announced that she had raised a very healthy profit for the charity,  Readers will be happy to learn that this publication contributed to that sum as one of the show's sponsors.

Because I wanted to assist our cast in any way I could I only saw the second half of the show.  However, everything that I did see was excellent.   Every style of dance was on display from Egyptian folkloric bellydance to West Side Story.  I enjoyed them all, particularly belly dancer Ya Habibi who entered the stalls inviting the audience to join her on stage, West Side Story and Afro Fusion's Rise 'N' Shine.  Some of the pieces that I would like to have seen but couldn't because they were in the first part were Indian classical dances.  Happily, at our last rehearsal, I asked the director to give us an exhibition class and some background information on the art form early in the new year.

Powerhouse Ballet hit a number of headwinds even before lockdown of which the biggest was scepticism.  When Covid 19 closed the studios and theatres I wondered how we could possibly survive.  Relief came from an unexpected source.  Maria Chugai, a soloist of the Dutch National Ballet and the best Myrtha I have ever seen in over 60 years of balletgoing, offered us an online class in April 2020 which was a spectacular success.  The success of that class encouraged me to invite other performers such as Krystal Lowe, Beth Meadway and Shannon Lilly as well as Jane Tucker, Annemarie Donoghue, Fiona Noonan and other teachers from our region to be online ballet mistresses.

Powerhouse Ballet is now on a roll.  We have found a new venue at Ballet Contours near Manchester city centre where we shall hold this Saturday's company class. We welcome dancers from Hull to Hollyhead.  If you can get to East Ordsall Lane by 15:00 do come and join us.  We have invited Heather Boulton, the director of the studio, to give us our first company class at that venue.  I visited the studio a few weeks ago and was most impressed.  It is fully equipped with a well sprung floor.  Above all, Heather is an excellent teacher.

Registration is open for Maria Chugai's Online Class

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Last year I featured Maria Chugai of the Dutch National Ballet.  You will see from my article that she is a very special dancer.   She trained at the Vaganova Academy which produced such greats as Pavlova, Karsavina, Nureyev and Makarova.  She must have been one of its best pupils for she was cast in the lead role of The Nutcracker at the age of 17, one year before her graduation.  She first came to my attention in a performance of Giselle where she danced the Queen of the Wilis (see Mooie 10 November 2018.  She was the best Myrtha that I have ever seen in over 60 years of ballet going.

Earlier today she offered Powerhouse Ballet an online class over Zoom on Tuesday, 21 April at 18:00.  Needless to say, I accepted with alacrity.  Anyone who wants to attend should register through Eventbrite immediately.   Those tickets are unlikely to remain for very long,

To attend this class you will need to download at least the free version of Zoom.   We shall have a rehearsal on Monday at 18:00. An hour before the rehearsal I shall send those who register a link and invite them to join the meeting.   Should there be any problems our chambers IT guru will be on hand to sort them out.

If you wish to join the class, here is the link to Eventbrite.   If you find you can't make it let me know as soon as possible.

Meet Maria Chugai of the Dutch National Ballet

Maria Chugai as Myrtha

Last November I witnessed a remarkable performance of Giselle by the Dutch National Ballet. I saw it not in Amsterdam but in Heerlen, a former mining town in the far southeast of the Netherlands that reminded me very much of Doncaster. I reviewed that show in Terpsichore (see Mooie 10 Nov 2018).

One of the dancers who had impressed me the most was Maria Chugai. She danced Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis. I described her as “a formidable Myrtha, one of the most chilling but also one of the most elegant I have ever seen.” I had also admired her performance in The Sleeping Beauty a year earlier (see The Dutch National Ballet's "The Sleeping Beauty" - I have waited nearly 50 years for this show 20 Dec 2017). I interviewed Ms Chugai while I was in Amsterdam at the end of February.

I started our conversation by discussing that performance in Heerlen. In my review I wrote:

“Tonight's performance of Giselle by the Dutch National Ballet was indeed beautiful but it was also so much more. It was outstanding. It was one of the best performances of that ballet that I have ever seen and I have attended a lot of performances of Giselle in my 50 years of regular ballet going. I have seen some of the world's best dancers and many of the world's greatest companies. The rest of the audience was aware of something special for we rose to our feet at the curtain call as one and clapped until our palms were raw.”

I wondered whether she was aware that something very special had happened that night so I asked her what had been in her mind. She spoke of the exhilaration of being on centre stage as the orchestra struck up and of the sublimity of being as one with the music. 

While researching for this article, I found that she had said something very similar in The Best Ballet School in the World. That was a programme on the Vaganova Ballet Academy that had been made by the English language television service RT when Ms Chugai was a student of the academy.  She had featured in that programme because she was to dance the lead role in the Vaganova’s production of The Nutcracker. The recording refers to that role as “Princess Masha”. “Masha” is a hypocorism of Maria or Marie in Russian. There the character known as “Clara” in productions of The Nutcracker in English speaking countries is often called “Marie”.  Marie or Masha also dances the role that is performed by "the Sugar Plum Fairy" in British productions (see Clara grows up- Grigorovich Nutcracker transmitted directly from Moscow 21 Dec 2014). 

Ms Chugai’s mother appeared on the programme. She said that her daughter’s passion for ballet had been sparked by a performance of The Nutcracker that she saw when she was 4 years old. The child’s enthusiasm could not be contained. Her mother recalls how she was constantly dancing the role of Princess Masha. Ballet lessons followed, of course, and she made remarkable progress going on pointe when she was only 9.

Her father, a civil engineer, had hoped that his daughter might follow him into his profession. She would certainly have had the aptitude as she was good at all her subjects and not just dance. She must have been particularly good at modern languages. Her written and spoken English is faultless. Her Dutch is obviously good because a waitress answered her question about an item on the restaurant menu in Dutch. That is a compliment that the Dutch rarely pay to foreigners because they find it easier to converse in English than suffer our contortions of their tongue. Before she started English and Dutch she had studied French. Ms Chugai told me that she had impressed her teachers with a presentation in that language, I could not help musing on the elegance of the bridges, dams and other structures that she might have built had she become an engineer.

Her mother, on the other hand, dreamt of her studying at the Vaganova (the successor to the Imperial Ballet School about which Tamara Karsavina reminisced in Theatre Street) and dancing with the Kirov as the Mariinsky was called until 1992. There were books on ballet in her home as well as photos of stars of the Kirov and Mariinsky, the teachers of the Vaganova and their illustrious alumni which sustained that ambition. Her mother inspired her with that dream and encouraged her through her studies. When the opportunity arose for her to be assessed by the Vaganova, her mother accompanied her on the 1,100-mile journey from their home in Donetsk to St. Petersburg. The examination must have been difficult for both of them. Her mother was not allowed to watch the audition but had to sit in a waiting room. Then there was a long wait for a decision followed by an interview and medical. It was so stressful that she passed out at one point.

Happily, for her fans, Ms Chugai was accepted into the Vaganova. She spoke about her first few weeks in St Petersburg. The intense cold of her first winter in the city had been a shock. Donetsk, not far from the Black Sea, has relatively mild winters. St Petersburg is on the same latitude as Shetland but without the benefit of the Gulf stream. Her mother had to stay with her in rented lodgings in St Petersburg for the remainder of the first term because a place could not be found for her in the academy’s boarding house until the Christmas holidays. The RT programme showed the room that she shared with three other girls, the refectory where they took their meals, the studios in which they attended class and rehearsed their show, the language lab where she had acquired her excellent English with a group of girls from an English class practising Jingle Bells.

Whenever I interview a dancer I ask about inspirations and influences at ballet school. Ms Chugai singled out Altynai Asylmuratova who became Artistic Director of the Vaganova. She had spotted the young Maria Chugai’s potential and cast her as Princess Masha a year before her graduation when she was only 17. She continued to mentor Ms Chugai after she had left the Vaganova. The teacher drew Ms Chugai’s attention to the Dutch National Ballet commending the quality of its productions, dancers and management, It was on the strength of that commendation that Ms Chugai applied to join the Dutch National Ballet. Other instructors who had inspired her included Olga Iskanderova-Baltacheeva, Alisa Strogaya and Liudmyla Kovaleva who had also taught Diana Vishneva. Despite the harsh winters and some difficulty in making friends when she first joined the course, Ms Chugai describes her days at the Vaganova as a “most bright and happy time.”

Ms Chugai graduated from the Vaganova with top marks and full honours. She was immediately accepted into the Mariinsky. She distinguished herself in international competitions winning the second prize in the Junior Group of the Talin International Ballet Competition in 2000 and coming joint second in the Vaganova Prix in St Petersburg in 2006. The jury for the Vaganova Prix (headed by Natalia Makarova) did not award a first prize that year so Ms Chugai and the other second prize winner were the best in the competition. Ms Chugai regards her performance in the Vaganova Prix as one of her career highlights.

When I asked her about others she referred me to her YouTube channel. One of the reasons why this feature has taken so long to appear is that there are some gorgeous clips in that channel and I have watched them all, some several times. They include a recording of an earlier performance as Myrtha, an extract from her graduation performance and my personal favourite, the second shade from La Bayadȅre. I love that dance and actually tried to learn it once (see La Bayadère Intensive Day 1: There's Life in the Old Girl Yet 16 Aug 2016).

We talked about the future. I asked her about choreographers whom she admires and with whom she would like to work. Intriguingly, they include Crystal Pite. Imagine what they could accomplish together. I discovered that Ms Chugai has a talent for choreography. She has already created a delightful, lyrical work for three dancers to Debussy’s Clair de Lune which she presented to the Dutch National Ballet’s New Moves programme in 2016. I look forward to more of her work.   For the longer term, she is training for a graduate qualification as a ballet mistress from the Vaganova Academy. She already does some teaching. Rather cheekily I invited her to give a masterclass in Manchester. Amazingly, she said “yes”.

I had a very pleasant trip to Amsterdam. I was there primarily to speak at a patent lawyers’ conference which I thoroughly enjoyed and I also saw David Dawson’s Requiem by the Dutch National Ballet. Unquestionably, the highlight of my visit was my interview with Maria Chugai. I learned a lot from her about ballet in general and the Vaganova Academy, the Mariinsky and Russian ballet in particular. This year I intend to see Theatre Street for myself. I enjoy the company of dancers and have met many over the years but few (if any) have been as affable or as personable as Maria Chugai.

Not just Christopher Hampson who makes onstage promotions: Michaela DePrince's Promotion to Soloist

On 28 May 2016 Graham Watts tweeted:

Congrats to @HampsonChris & @scottishballet 4 renewing tradition of onstage promotions & to @BalletCoco & @bethanykgarner 4 their elevation

— Graham Watts (@GWDanceWriter) May 28, 2016

It seems that Christopher Hampson is not the only artistic director who keeps the great ballet tradition to which Watts refers for Ted Brandsen has just posted the following message to Facebook:

"Michaela DePrince and Remi Wortmeyer, just after their second show of Coppelia- and Michaela' s promotion to Soloist ( Tweede soliste) !!! Congratulations!"

The post appears just below a photo of the two dancers which I hope Richard Heideman will license me to reproduce.   I should add that they were dancing in a matinee this very afternoon.

I am delighted for Ms DePrince and also for the company. I started to follow her even before she joined the Junior Company (see Michaela DePrince  4 March 2013) and I have reported regularly on her progress ever since. It was she who drew me to the Junior Company and it was the Junior Company that drew me to the Dutch National Ballet.

Ms DePrince is making more frequent appearances in London. She is due to dance Myrtha in English National Ballet's Giselle on the 13, 14, 17 and 20 Jan where I am sure she will be welcomed with great enthusiasm and considerable affection.