Huddersfield University's Graduate Costume Show

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University of Huddersfield  Graduate Costume Show 15 June 2018 17:00 Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield

I am often asked by friends who regard balletomania as an addiction how I came to be hooked. Even  though I saw a lot of theatre, attended a lot of concerts and visited a lot of art galleries and museums as I was growing up, I never had much to do with ballet.  That was largely because my father, a kindly and erudite man of letters, regarded it as slightly disreputable owing to its association with the Soviet Union and the tendency of the classical tutu and male dancers' tights to reveal more than many considered decent.

My interest in ballet was sparked by an exhibition of early 20th century Russian art at the Victoria and Albert Museum or possibly Royal Academy when I was about 16 or 17.  There I saw some of the work of Leon Bakst and was quite bowled over. I learned of his work with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. I found that he was just one of many great artists who had been commissioned to design for the ballet.  When I should have been revising for "A" levels and Oxbridge scholarships in Hammersmith Library I was pouring over its massive collection of reference books on theatre design and ballet.  I watched what I could on television and became an early fan of Peter Darrell's Western Theatre Ballet. Eventually the London Festival Ballet staged a triple bill at The Coliseum that included the The Firebird, widely regarded as Bakst's masterpiece.

On the pretext of treating an elderly aunt I persuaded my parents to pay for me to see the show. It was better than I had ever imagined. The music, the colour, the movement and the drama absorbed all my senses.  It was the most thrilling experience that I had ever known.  The auditorium exploded at the curtain call.  The cheering, whooping and growling from the crowd, the thunderous applause, the mountains of flowers were theatre in themselves. Nobody with any soul could fail to have been moved by that experience.  Although I had to wait till I got to St Andrews with an independent income before I could afford another show or ballet lessons my passion for dance had been ignited.

I experienced a similar frisson  of excitement last night when I saw another costume for The Firebird .  That garment had been designed by Amelia Sierevogel who has just graduated from the University of Huddersfield with a bachelor's degree in Costume with Textiles. The costume was modelled by Erin Phillips who also reads Costume with Textiles at Huddersfield.  As soon as she came on stage I recognized her as a fellow adult ballet student. Erin did not simply display that costume. She danced in it.  Much of her performance was on pointe.  It was - or rather costume and dancing were - spell binding.

Amelia's costume was just one of several excellent works that I saw last night at the Graduate Costume Show at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield.   The students on that course learn to design costumes for theatres around the world as can be seen from the placements.  Amelia's were with the Australian Ballet and the Australian Opera last year.  Students pick characters from theatre, literature, film or television and create costumes for them. Last night we saw costumes for Cinderella and Ophelia as well as The Firebird and many other characters.  There were several designs for the ballet. Erin was not the only model on pointe last night.  The show opened spectacularly with a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream with a splendid Bottom dressed as an ass.

Although last night's show was filmed, it is likely to be some time before any of it is posted to YouTube.  Happily one can get some idea of its format from the above recording of Rhianna Lister's designs for characters from A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the 2016 show.

As I said above, I was led to ballet by Leon Bakst so I cannot stress too much the importance of theatre design. Over the years I have been impressed by other designers such as Nicholas Georgiadis, Osbert Lancaster and more recently Lez Brotherston   The course at Huddersfield is described in Costume with Textiles at the University of Huddersfield - Natalie Day. It is clearly an important resource for the theatre and thus for all of us.

Although it has nothing to do with costume design or fashion I must report another find.  On my way back to my car I passed an eatery called Rostyk Kitchen that advertised jollof rice. It is a delicacy from West Africa that my late spouse used to cook and I miss it so.  West African food requires a lot of preparation and the ingredients are not always readily available. I can cook simple dishes like plantains and sweet potatoes but not plasas, pepper chicken or groundnut stew. Now I no longer need to mither Vlad the Lad's mum and dad, my sisters in law in London or my relations by marriage in Freetown when I get a craving.  My feast of jollof rice and chicken completed a perfect day.

Doing the Spits

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This is the time of the year when the Birmingham Royal Ballet splits into two. One lot goes to Durham, York and Nottingham while the other goes to Cheltenham, Poole and Truro. I like to see both shows whenever I can but Cheltenham clashed with my only chance to see Northern Ballet's Casanova again before it goes to London. Also, the show in the southern tour's repertoire that I most want to see is Ruth Brill's Arcadia and that will come back to Birmingham as part of Three Short Story Ballets between the 21 and 24 June 2017.

For once I think the North will get the better end of the deal because it brings Pineapple Poll by John Cranko, my all time favourite choreographer ever, and 5 Tangos by Hans van Manen, my favourite living choreographer as well as Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Solitaire.

Pineapple Poll, created for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1951 as part of the celebrations for the Festival of Britain when Cranko was only 24, shows the genius of the man. With the possible exception of Graduation Ball (see Please, pretty please, will somebody revive this lovely ballet 2 Jan 2016) it is the happiest, jolliest, prettiest one act ballet ever and a personal favourite. I have only seen it twice. Once quite recently by the Chelmsford Ballet as part of their double bill with Marney's Carnival of the Animals (see A Delight Indeed 24 March 2015). And once at Sadler's Wells with what was then the Royal Ballet Touring Company in the late 1960s and 1970s.

The first occasion was the one and only time my mother and I could ever persuade my father to attend the ballet. An erudite and urbane Mancunian and a fine economist he regarded the ballet with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. Suspicion because he regarded it as an instrument of Soviet soft power which was certainly one of the reasons for the Bolshoi's first tour of London in 1956 and contempt because he regarded the classical tutu and gentlemen's tights as bordering on the indecent. He sat very quietly through the show with a half benign and half sarcastic grin. At the end of the performance, my aunt asked him whether he had enjoyed it. "Up to a point", he replied. With Union Jacks everywhere Pineapple Poll was far subversive and there are no tutus in sight. He admitted to a certain admiration for the athletic prowess and nimbleness of the dancers and indeed the beauty of the women but he was less kind about the middle-aged matrons who made up the audience. "I should like to see them try to do some of the jumps that those girls cam do" he added.

Like Graduation Ball, Pineapple Poll is a wonderful period piece with sets and costumes by Osbert Lancaster and music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Enjoy the YouTube clip which would have been made not long after the ballet was created with such stars as Merle Park, David Blair, Stanley Holden, BrendaTaylor and Gerd Larsen. Birmingham Royal Ballet will dance it at the Theatre Royal York this Friday and Saturday and then in Nottingham on the 16 and 17 May. It really is a treasure.

Leon Bakst

Scheherazade

Leon Bakst

One of the magnets that attracted me to ballet was the work of the artists whom Sergei Diaghilev commissioned to design sets and costumes for his productions. The artist who has impressed me most is Leon Bakst. He was born in Russia in 1866 and died in France in 1924. He created the designs for some of the most lavish productions of the Ballet Russes including Michel Fokine's Scheherazade which appears above.

We are fortunate in this country to enjoy convenient access to much of Bakst's work through the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum. If you are new to this artist a good place to start would be the Leon Bakst page on the V & A's website. This leads on to a short biography which explains his importance in the history of art generally and theatre design in particular. There is an excellent page on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes which "revolutionized early 20th-century arts and continue to influence cultural activity today." The nature of that revolution and its continued influence is explained with some gorgeous photographs in The 20th Century Ballet Revolution.  The V & A has an extensive collection of set and costume designs, photographs, scores and other materials in its Theatre and Performance section and there is a splendid Ballet web page with links to all sorts of other articles on the subject.

To understand how all this influences the ballets that we see today it is good to read the chapter on Serge Diaghilev and The Ballets Russes on the Royal Ballet School's website which I introduced in A New Interactive Resource: Royal Ballet School's Ballet History Timeline on Saturday. Diaghilev aroused a curiosity and appetite for dance throughout Western Europe including the United Kingdom and Bakst's work contributed much to that appeal.

Though her resources were limited particularly in the early years Ninette de Valois commissioned set and theatre designs from the best available artists when she set up her own company. Sir Frederick continued that that tradition continued with Osbert Lancaster's magnificent sets for La Fille mal gardée (see Danielle Buckley's How La Fille mal gardée creates pastoral magic through 'Marmite' cartoons 7 Oct 2016 on the Royal Opera House's website) and Nicholas Georgiadis's for Romeo and Juliet. I could be wrong for I am no expert on the topic. but it seems to me that Georgiadis was strongly influenced by Bakst particularly in his use of colour.

In so far as it is possible to express in words reasons for my love of ballet one would be that ballet is a fusion of several arts - music, painting, drama as well as choreography - and that, of course, always leads me back to Bakst.

Fille is to us what Napoli is to the Danes - but other countries love Fille too

La Fille mal gardée is to us what Napoli is to the Danes. Napoli. is their national ballet by their most famous choreographer even though it is set in Southern Italy.  Fille is English even though it is set in Normandy. How could it be otherwise with choreography by Ashton, music by Lanchberry and sets by Osbert Lancaster?

But wait. It is also very French as Brigitte Lefèvre explains in the clip above.   The very first production was in Bordeaux on the eve of the storming of the Bastille.  On the anniversary of that insurrection this year the Ballet of the Paris Opera are dancing Ashton's ballet at the Palais Garnier. If this film is anything to go by they can reclaim it for themselves. Quelle joie! Quelle delice. Here are the details if you want to see it.

But Fille is also Russian.  Ashton drew heavily on the experience of Tamara Karsavina who had danced the ballet in St Petersburg.  And now the compliment has been returned for Ashton's version was danced last year at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St Petersburg.

And the Americans love Fille too for it is in American Ballet Theatre's repertoire.