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.

Swan Lake from Tatarstan

Last Monday I mentioned Jakop Ahlbom's Swan Lake at the Meervaart Theatre in Amsterdam (see Jakop Ahlbom's Swan Lake 2 May 2016). On 24 Jan 2017 the same theatre will stage a more conventional Swan Lake by the Ballet of the State Opera of Tatarstan. The video of the cygnets land pas de deux from the white act ooks good so I thought I would find out something about this company and its homeland.

I regret to say that my only thing I knew about Tatars up to now had been that were once known for the swiftness of their arrows. When I was a small child my father's reply to my mother complained of procrastination whether it was visiting in-laws, home improvements or anything else he did not enjoy doing was:

"I go, I go; look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow."

 A quotation from Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream.  However there is a great deal more to Tatarstan than that.

The first thing to note is that they do have a State Opera House with a ballet company that looks pretty good judging by its soloists and repertoire. They seem to have all the 19th century classics and Soviet staples and a few of their own one of which is Carmina Burana  that may or may not have anything to do with David Bintley's.

So what and where is Tatarstan? According to Wikipedia it is a landlocked republic in South West Russia. Its map bears a remarkable similarity to that of Switzerland though its land area is somewhat larger (26,000 square miles compared to Switzerland's 15,940 square miles) and its population is very much smaller (3.8 million compared to Switzerland's 8.2 million). Unlike Switzerland it is relatively flat. Its highest point is only 1,125 feet compared to mighty Mt Rosa's 15,203. It also has lakes (though the biggest, Lake Kubyshew and Lower Kama, appear to be reservoirs) and rivers that are as great as the Rhine and the Rhone. It has a splendid red and green flag and its motto is  Bez Buldırabız! which means "Yes we can".

Turning back to ballet the State Opera House holds an International Festival of Classic Ballet named after Rudolf Nureyev from time to time. According to its website:

"The "Nutcracker" ballet, performed on May 21, 1992 was not only the highlight of the program, but also a sensation, as legendary Rudolf Nuriyev conducted the orchestra. After the performance, which was a great success, outstanding ballet dancer agreed to give his name to the festival."

Last year the festival attracted Matthew Golding as well as principals from other companies (see Nureyev International Ballet Festival in Kazan to conclude with two galas 28 May 2015). So in my view the Tatarstan State Opera dancers are definitely worth a dekko.

If anybody wants to see the Tatar ballet in Amsterdam tickets cost between 12.50 and 35 euros and can be bought on-line.

Manchester's Favourite Ballet Company

Manchester Town Hall

Source Wikipedia

Creative Commons Licence

English National Ballet, Romeo and Juliet, Palace Theatre, 28 Nov 2015

Last night was the 46th anniversary of the first performance by Northern Dance Theatre (later known as Northern Ballet) at the University Theatre in Manchester. Northern Ballet crossed the Pennines many years ago leaving our city without our own major ballet company. Or did it?  I think Manchester has a special relationship with English National Ballet which goes back a very long way. The company gave its first performance at the Opera House on 5 Feb 1951 (see Our History) and it has chosen Manchester for the première of Akram Khan's Giselle on  27 Sept 2016. Last night and on Tuesday English National Ballet pulled out all the stops for us. I don't think I have ever seen English National Ballet dance better since I started following it in 1955.

On Tuesday the company performed Lest we forget (see Lest we Forget 25 Nov 2015). For the rest of the week it has been dancing Nureyev's production of Romeo and Juliet. Yesterday was the first time I had seen that version and I liked it a lot. It has a lot of imaginative and original features some of which, such as the unfolding of Friar Lawrence's cunning plan, seem to have been borrowed from the cinema. It is tense and tight and packed with action. There are lots of colourful touches from the dropping of the black and red cloth in the prologue to the Montagues' flag dance in Act II. There are whole new scenes such as Mercutio's death scene when Romeo and his mates think he is play acting or Juliet's solo with the dagger after Romeo has gone into exile and her parents are trying to force her to marry Paris. The shock when Romeo realizes that Mercutio is dead explains the rush of blood that goaded him to pick up a sword even better than the play. Having said that it is much closer to its source material than either Jean-Christophe Maillot's for Northern Ballet with its focus on Friar Lawrence or Krzysztof Pastor's for Scottish Ballet with its potted history of Italy even though I must add that I liked both versions well enough at the time (see Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - different but in a good way 8 March 2015 and Scottish Ballet's Timeless Romeo and Juliet 18 May 2015).

Though I admired Nureyev's choreography, the orchestration of Prokofiev's magnificent score and Ezio Frigerio's designs it was the dancing that made the evening for me. The casting of Max Westwell and. in particular, Lauretta Summerscales in the title roles was inspired. On her web page she mentions Juliet as the role she would love to dance. The company gave her the chance to dance that role and she grabbed that chance with both hands. I don't think I have ever seen a better Juliet although I have seen some of the world's greatest ballerinas in that role. The quality that she brought to that role was her youth. When playing with her nurse and girl friends in Act I she looked as though she might actually be 13. She grew into a mature woman before our eyes. Westwell was an excellent partner for her.  I can quite see how he became a finalist of the emerging dancer contest. His web page says that Romeo and Juliet is his favourite production too and he also made the most of his opportunity to dance the leading role.

All the cast did well and it is perhaps unfair to single any of them for special praise but Fernando Bufalá was a great Mercutio. He was the life and soul of every party (even the one he gate crashed) and clowning even as he died. Fabian Reimair was a seething Tybalt, Jeanette Kakareka a delightful Rosaline and Daniele Silingardi a decent Paris. He seems to have loved Juliet and would have been quite a catch for almost every other young woman. I felt really sorry that he had to die in the tomb.

But the casting that delighted me most was to see Sarah Kundi as Lady Capulet. I have followed that dancer ever since she danced in Leeds. It was she who led me to Ballet Black and through MurleyDance to Richard Chappell. She is tall and elegant with the most expressive face. An actor as much as a dancer, yesterday's role was perfect for her. It is an important one in Nureyev's production for it is Lady Capulet who forces her daughter to take desperate measurers. How I clapped at the curtain call.  I fear my "brava" roared from the middle of the stalls would have been drowned out by everyone else's applause by the time it reached the stage. Had this show been in London I could have tossed flowers at her. She and everyone on stage would have deserved them.

So farewell to English National Ballet until its next season in our city.  Heartfelt thanks for two magnificent shows. Now that we are to build our fine new £78 million arts centre (see The Factory begins to take Shape 26 Nov 2015) maybe we can tempt it back more often and to stay with us a little longer each time it returns.

And talking of Pirouettes .......

English National Ballet's newsletter Ready to Dance arrived earlier today with with a link to Osiel Gouneo's pirouettes in Don Quixote which the newsletter described as "jaw dropping". He will be joining the company as a guest artist this season.

The newsletter also has details of ENB's latest productions: Lest We Forget, Romeo and Juliet  and Le Corsaire, They are bringing Lest We Forget to Manchester on 24 Nov for one night only and also Romeo and Juliet from the 26 to 28. Le Corsaire is coming to Liverpool between 18 and 21 November.  Interestingly, Le Corsaire is also to be staged in Oman, one of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, next year.

The newsletter links to Liam Scarlett's video on No Man's Land and the article What you didn’t know about Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet in the company's blog.

Finally there are full details on the company's adult ballet classes which seem very similar to Northern Ballet's. Good to know that I shall be able to keep up my ballet if my work takes me permanently to London.

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.