Ballet Cymru's DUETS Programme and why it is important.

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The dancers in this film are students at Moorland Primary School in Cardiff and Ysgol Ty Ffynnon on Deeside. They participated in Ballet Cymru's DUETS programme. DUETS stands for "Delivering Unique and Exciting Training Strands".  It is a collaboration between Ballet Cymru, theatres, schools and community dance groups across Wales to bring ballet to children who would not otherwise have an opportunity to learn it.

I mentioned the programme in my review of Ballet Cymru's Giselle on 10 Nov 2021:

"Wales has a strong dance tradition as you can see from this grasshopper dance but it does not yet have a national ballet school or comprehensive nationwide facilities for developing balletic talen. There are good ballet teachers in the main towns and cities but most of Wales is rural. Ballet Cymru's Duets Programme goes some way to filling that lacuna."   

Before Giselle, children on the DUETS programme demonstrated what they had learnt in a very short time which earned them considerable applause from the Riverview Theatre audience.

I wrote about Ballet Cymru's work with local schools in Gwynedd in Ballet Cymru - Even Better than Last Year on 6 Dec 2019 and in How the Pontio Centre and M-SParc complement each other in the Social and Economic Development of Northwest Wales on 5 June 2020 in NIPC Wales.  My Welsh teacher from Nant Gwrtheyrn emailed me to say that her husband who is the headmaster of Llanllyfni School had appeared in that video, adding "Byd bach!!!" which means "small world."  

The dance authority that covers Llanllyfni and the Pontio Centre is Dawns i Bawb which means "Dance for Everyone".  It is one of Ballet Cymru's partners in DUETS.  Look up its YouTube channel for films like 'The Jungle' on refugees or "Dawnsio'r Degawdau" ("Dance the Decades") which addresses dementia as the companion film explains.  There are also some fun films like "Dosbarth Dawns i Bawb" ("Dance Class for All"), "Migldi Magldi Dolig" ("Christmas Migldi Magldi") and Dydd Mwsig Cymraeg 2021 (Welsh Music Day).

Some of the children from Llanllyfni, Cardiff or Deeside may be inspired to become performers or teachers but most will not.  However, their lives will be enriched by dance which is why DUETS is important.

Ballet Cymru's Giselle

Author Sian Trenberth Photography   © 2021 Ballet Cymru - all rights reserved

 

Ballet Cymru Giselle Riverfront Theatre, Newport 6 Nov 2021 19:30

On its home page Ballet Cymru proclaims:

"We are a ballet company who like to do things a bit differently. We enjoy finding new ways to make what we do exciting, innovative and relevant."

Nothing exemplifies that better than their new Giselle which was premiered at Lichfield cathedral and online on 8 July 2021 (see Giselle Reimagined 9  July 2021).  They are a small but important company which spends much of its time on the road.  Many of their venues are small auditoriums with limited ranges of stage equipment.  Ballet Cymru's artistic directors, Darius James and Amy Doughty, have taken the essentials of some of the world's great ballets and refashioned them for a small cast that is constantly travelling before audiences that may not see a lot of ballet.  They succeeded spectacularly with their Cinderella and Romeo a Juliet.  Their Giselle is a similar success.

Making such adaptations often requires adjustments to the libretto, characters and score.  For example, the mesmeric effect of rank upon rank of artists in white romantic tutus approaching each other in arabesque as the music reaches a crescendo is difficult to achieve with a small cast on a tiny stage playing recorded music.  Moreover, most modern audiences are unfamiliar with Rhineland folk tales about forest maidens who die before their wedding day.   Most of us have seen or at least heard of horror movies about the undead who crawl out of their tombs at night.  That is why there were zombies crawling about the stage instead of wilis en pointe in Act II.

If you replace wilis with zombies you probably need a new score.  James and Doughty commissioned Catrin Finch to adapt Adam's music. Finch had previously contributed the music for Celtic Concerto and The Light Princess and it was through those works that I first learned about her.  I have started to explore her other work. I was lucky enough to meet her at a reception at the Riverfront Theatre after the show.  I hope to write more about her work in this publication later.  Finch kept important parts of Adam's score such as the overture to Acts I and II and passages from the made scene but the greater part of the work was her own.  Some of it was very dramatic such as the percussion to indicate a heartbeat.

Apart from substituting zombies for wilis, James and Doughty kept the story more or less intact.   It unfolds with great clarity.  In keeping with their mission to make everything they do exciting, innovative and relevant James and Doughty set the ballet in contemporary Wales rather than the medieval Rhineland.  As there are not too many lords of the manor in Brexit Britain, Albrecht is no longer a noble, Merely a married man playing the field away from home.  He does not carry a sword but he does keep something in his wallet that enables Hilarion to denounce him.  The main character changes are the introduction of male as well as female zombies and Cerys, a besty for Giselle instead of an over solicitous mum,

I have now seen the ballet three times - once on-screen on 8 July, once live at the Stanley and Audrey Burton in Leeds on 4 Nov and again live in Newport on 6 Nov.   Each performance was a different experience. The company danced well in Lichfield and Leeds and must have made a lot of friends in both places but their performance in Newport before their home turf was of a different order of magnitude.  After a performance of TIR some years ago, their patron Cerys Matthews described them as "the pride of Newport and the pride of Wales".   She won a peel of polite applause for that remark.  On Saturday, it was palpable.  The crowd in the Riverfront have learnt to appreciate ballet and taken their home company to their hearts.  Just like the crowd in the Grand has adopted Nothern and the Hippodrome BRB.  Ballet Cymru has put down roots that may one day blossom into a mighty national company with its own school.

The cast was the same in all three shows.   Beth Meadway danced Giselle with grace and poise.  It was as if she was born for that role. Tall with an expressive countenance, there were instances when she was on pointe in Act II that reminded me of the lithographs of Grisi.  Andrea Battagia is a powerful athletic dancer but he is also a fine dance actor capable of expressing the subtleties of Albrecht's personality and his many emotions.  Isobel Holland, one of the most pleasant individuals one could ever hope to meet in real life, was a convincing personification of decay and evil as the lead female zombie.  So, too, was Robbie Moorcroft - again congeniality itself in real life - who created the new role of lead male zombie.  Two newcomers to the company impressed me particularly: Yasset Roldan as Hilarion and Hanna Lyn Hughes as Cerys.  I shall follow their careers with great interest. All the members of the company danced well in all three performances and I offer all of them my congratulations. 

James designed the sets and video projections.   These were ingenious and set each of the scenes effectively.   I particularly admired the churchyard scene just before dawn.  Ballet Cymru relies heavily on such projections but these were particularly good.   The opening scene of an ECG flashed onto the gauze together with the percussion and the cast's jumping like cardiac muscles warned the audience at the start that Giselle had a weak heart. James's designs were accompanied by skilful lighting design by Chris Illingworth and the imaginative costumes of Deryn Tudor.

Wales has a strong dance tradition as you can see from this grasshopper dance but it does not yet have a national ballet school or comprehensive nationwide facilities for developing balletic talent.  There are good ballet teachers in the main towns and cities but most of Wales is rural.   Ballet Cymru's Duets Programme goes some way to filling that lacuna.   Before Saturday's show, several young local schoolchildren on that programme presented a short demonstration of what they had learnt in a very short time.  They drew rapturous applause after which most of them watched Giselle in the row in front of me.  Ballet Cymru's investment in its nation's youth will create, at the very least, an eager and informed audience for dance and possibly even some of the next generation of the world's principals.

A Romeo and Juliet for our Times

Ballet Cymru, Romeo a Juliet, Riverfront Theatre, Newport, 5 Nov 2016, 19:30


Never has the story of Romeo and Juliet been more relevant to our times. Powerful aristocratic families may no longer brawl in Verona but, as Krzysztof Pastor showed in his version of Romeo and Juliet for Scottish Ballet, other forces have taken their place (see Scottish Ballet's Timeless Romeo and Juliet 18 May 2014). In Pastor's ballet the protagonists wore red shirts and black shirts and his message was reinforced by documentary footage from recent Italian history which was projected onto the backdrop. We see similar divisions in the bitter election campaign on the other side of the Atlantic  and, indeed, in our own country since the EU referendum. Shakespeare teaches us that hate kills. A lot of people die in his story - not just Romeo and Juliet but also Tybalt, Mercutio and Paris. However, there is also hope in Shakespeare's tale for the feuding families eventually come to their senses.

It is one thing for a theatrical work to be relevant to our times but quite another to transpose it to our times. It is sometimes said that ballet (like the other performing arts) needs to "get with it" (as folk used to say in the 1960s) if it is not to wither on the vine. It was the subject of the discussion between David Nixon and Luke Jennings on Front Row a few weeks ago which I mentioned in Of Bikes and Busses 25 Oct 2016. Pastor's colleague at the Dutch National Ballet, David Dawson, successfully brought  Swan Lake up to date for Scottish Ballet (see Empire Blanche: Dawson's Swan Lake 4 June 2016). It seems that Ted Brandsen may have pulled it off with Coppelia (see A Coppelia Makeover  5 Nov 2016). Other choreographers have been less successful. I fear that Akram Khan did not quite manage it with Giselle nor Nixon with Swan Lake I think Darius James and Amy Doughty succeeded in Romeo a Juliet.

Over the last few years, James and Doughty have produced one fine work after another - Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Tir to name just three. They have a company of dancers who in my view stand comparison with any similarly sized troupe in the world. They have rightly been nominated for the National Dance Awards for the second time year running, Why they do not get even more critical attention and indeed acclaim beats me. I may be a humble blogger but I have seen a lot of ballets in my time and in my book James and Doughty and their company are among the brightest stars in the balletic firmament just now.

I had seen Ballet Cymru's Romeo a Juliet in the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal in 2013 and loved it (see They're not from Chigwell - they're from a small Welsh Town called Newport 14 May 2013). On Saturday I saw the same ballet in the company's hometown and loved it even more. The show was presented in the Riverfront Arts Centre, a modern complex of galleries, studios and auditoriums on the banks of the Usk. The larger of the auditoriums seats 482 persons and has a big stage for dance. It was there that the show took place.

One of the reasons why I loved the show so much was Gwenllian Davies's remarkable performance as Juliet. Davies is in her first year with the company and this is her first job. Consequently, she is barely older than Shakespeare's Juliet. As I told her after the show, I have seen some of the world's greatest dancers in the role including Lynn Seymour and more recently Alina Cojocaru and Viktoria Tereshkina, but never have I seen a more convincing Juliet. Davies danced with passion and energy and, for a while, I saw in that talented young artist what Shakespeare must have imagined. Of course, Juliet is nothing without her Romeo. Andrea Battagia partnered Davies exquisitely.  Also young he has already achieved much in his career. He brought that experience and authority to the performance. He commands a stage in a way that few other dancers of his age can equal.

Another reason for the success of the ballet was Lydia Arnoux. She danced Cerys or Juliet's best friend. Because I am accused of double standards in not criticizing this innovation as "change for change's sake", I should explain that James and Doughty have set their ballet in modern Britain (indeed Newport) in which teenagers' nurses no longer exist but best friends do. Cerys more than makes up for the absence of the nurse. She introduces a new dynamic into the show. I had seen Arnoux in Kendal but she was even moredelightful on Saturday night.

Anther excellent young dancer whom Ballet Cymru has recruited as an apprentice just over a month ago is Ann Wall. As a member of the London Ballet Circle, I am proud to see that we have supported her. She danced Lady Capulet which is a demanding role for any dancer but particularly a very young one. She has to balance conflicting emotions of love and duty and acquire instantly the weight of years. She succeeded admirably.  In that role she was partnered deftly by Robbie Moorcroft as Lord Capulet. Moorcroft, another of the company's most experienced dancers and well liked by audiences, was impressive. He was magisterial in restraining Tybalt and rebuking Romeo after Romeo had gatecrashed the Capulets' party but tyrannical in his anger when confronted by a defiant daughter.

It was her father's blow that triggered the chain of events that led to the death of the lovers and Paris. Paris, danced by Mark Griffiths, yet another recent recruit by the company. Paris, an apparently decent man with seemingly sincere affection for Juliet, suffers not just her rejection but also death after lingering in the crypt for just a little bit too long. I have always had sympathy for him as I have for Hilarion in Giselle. He has even less cause to die.

The same cannot always be called for the headstrong Tybalt whom I have always regarded as a bit of a thug. Dylan Waddell portrayed him as a loyal brother zealous in defence of his sister's honour. Waddell, whom I had previously seen in MurleyDance, us a strong but sensitive dancer and a fine actor. Miguel Fernandes was a great choice for Mercutio. Another exciting dancer tp watch. So, too, was Anna Pujol, a convincing Benvolio.

One dancer I was particularly glad to see on stage was Krystal Lowe. She first impressed me in Kendal and my admiration for her work has increased with every performance. Her appearance in Tir at Sadler's Wellls last year a few weeks after the loss of Mandev Sokhi  was one of the most moving I have ever seen. She was the Friar on Saturday, a pivotal role but not the extended one created by Jean-Christophe Maillot for his version. Lowe was as magnificent as ever. If I had flowers I would gladly have tossed them on stage for her. On Saturday she performed as a guest artist. I understand that she is now at the University of South Wales and teaching Ballet Cymru's adult ballet class. I am sure all my readers join me in wishing her well in this latest stage of her career.

I said above that this was a Romeo and Juliet for our times. James and Doughty achieved this with only minimal changes to the libretto and only an abridgement of Prokofiev's score. The dancers wore modern dress and images of Newport flashed on stage. For instance, an image of the passage under the bridge across the Usk (which lies just yards away from the Riverfront) appeared in the riot scenes. The flashing light of a police vehicle appeared just at the point where the duke would arrive in other productions. Instead of swords the boys carried shillelaghs and knives. Nothing to suggest Verona.

Romeo a Juliet is James and Doughty's best work yet, It shows how a small company of young dancers with modest resources can stage a full-length ballet brilliantly.  It would not surprise me in the least if Ballet Cymru were nominated for a National Dance Award next year on the strength of this production.