Powerhouse Ballet's First Class with Karen Lester-Sant since Lockdown

Powerhouse Ballet takes its name from the Coalition Government's proposal to rebalance the British economy by integrating and expanding the economic, social and cultural resources of the North of England, The company was always intended to be a Transpennine one and for the first two years our classes, workshops and other activities alternated between the studios of Northern Ballet School and Dance Studio Leeds. 

At some time during lockdown, there was a change of ownership at Northern Ballet School.  Its new management stopped letting its studios to members of the public.  We had to find a new venue in Northwest England as did the dance schools and teachers who also used to train and rehearse there.  We held classes in Bolton, Mold and Ballet Contours.   I am very grateful to all those studios for hosting us.

Last Summer Karen Lester-Sant, the Principal of KNT Danceworks, opened new studios at 114 Chapel Street.  I attended the pre-intermediate class there shortly after the studios opened.  I described the experience in My First Class in KNT's New Studios on 12 July 2023.  Karen has always been a great friend of our company.  She gave us our first opportunity to dance in public at KNT's 10th-anniversary gala in May 2019.  Before lockdown, she was also one of our most popular ballet mistresses.  She delivered a particularly memorable company class a few weeks later with the great David Plumpton as her accompanist.

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On 17 Feb 2024, Karen Lester-Sant gave us another memorable class in her new premises.  This class took place just a few days after my 75th birthday and I was particularly touched that many members travelled long distances to attend.   Joanna Goodman travelled all the way from London and Sarah Lambert drove up from Birmingham.  Several others came from York and Ripon.

Karen gave us a very thorough class as usual.   A brisk barre.  A beautiful adagio.  The usual centre exercises.   A joyous grand allegro to finish.  I did my best to keep up but age and infirmity have greatly reduced my capabilities.  However, the other members danced beautifully.

After class, we adjourned to the Black Lion  where we drank a toast to Po Ling Katherine Wong on her recent wedding and birthday and my dear friends and acquaintances kindly toasted me.  As you can see  from the photo I received a beautiful calendar, some lovely roses, excellent wine and a delicious birthday cake,

I was also given a card signed by members of the company which I shall keep forever -  just as I have kept similar mementoes from the cast members of La Sylphide, Giselle and Aria.   I am very grateful to the members of the company who have contributed many hours of their time to our classes, workshops, rehearsals and performances.  I hope they have enjoyed our activities as much as I did.

Next Saturday we welcome back Fiona Noonan.  She is another very popular teacher.  She trained in Brisbane and danced with the Queensland Ballet.  She stepped in at very short notice last January when the ballet mistress who was expected to take that class was indisposed.   Fiona gave us a very demanding but also very enjoyable class.

Fiona's class will take place at Dance Studio Leeds on 30 March 2024 between 14:00 and 15:30.  I shall be sponsoring the class also it is free for those who attend.   For those who do not know the studios they are in Mabgate Mill about a mile from Leeds Central Station and half a mile from the main bus station and Northern Ballet.  There are several bus routes from the city centre.   The nearest bus stop is "Lincon Green,"   Those coming by car can park free of charge in the mill yard.

Never have I been more proud of Powerhouse Ballet

© 2020 Powerhouse Ballet

 

I had booked a studio at Yorkshire Dance for our September company class because it has a piano. Throughout lockdown, I had promised our members that Jane Tucker would one day lead triumphantly back to the studio with David Plumpton at the piano.  

It was, therefore, something of a blow to learn that we were limited to 12 in the studio including our teacher.  The increasing numbers of coronavirus cases across the country as a whole and in the North of England, in particular, was a further blow.  The sudden imposition of restrictions in Leeds on the very day of the class felt like the last straw.     

And yet today turned into a triumph - not a disappointment - thanks entirely to Jane Tucker's inspired teaching and Sarah Lambert's technical genius.  Just over half of us attended the class in the studio while the rest of us joined in from home over Zoom.  We had tried a hybrid class last month with Sophie Richardson and several dancers in Birmingham and others at home.  It was a partial success despite Sophie's brilliant teaching because those of us at home had problems with the sound which made us feel more like spectators than participants.  

This time Jane and Sarah made us fee;l a single integrated class.  We felt the energy radiating from Leeds and iI got the impression that we were energizing them in return.   Never have I seen the dancers in the studio and online look happier, more confident or more capable.  Never have I been more proud of our company. 

Our July company class will be given by Lynne Reucroft-Croome in Studio 3 at Dance Studio Leeds on 24 Oct 2020 between 16:15  and 17:45. We hope to acquire a portable microphone for the teacher which should improve sound quality even more.   We shall also return to Manchester just as soon as the Dancehouse becomes available for hire.   If anyone can suggest an alternative venue in Manchester, Liverpool or elsewhere in the Northwest please let me know. 

Double Dutch Delights

The Stopera, Home of the Dutch National Ballet

Photo: A J Haverkamp

Source Wikipedia

Creative Commons Licence

As well as seeing Mata Hari and Ballet Bubbles on Saturday and Sunday (see Ballet Bubbles 16 Feb 2016 and Brandsen's Masterpiece 14 Feb 2016) I attended a presentation on the new opera and ballet season on the 13 Feb 2016 and a tour of the Dutch National Ballet's premises the following morning. Both events were arranged for the Friends of the Dutch National Ballet.

The presentation took place on Saturday afternoon and consisted of interviews with officials from both companies and performances of scenes from the forthcoming shows.  The ballet season starts with an opening gala on 7 Sept 2016 and consists of excerpts from the company's repertoire followed by a party. I was there last year (see The best evening I have ever spent at the ballet 13 Sept 2015) and I certainly hope to be there this year.  A list of the forthcoming productions has now been published on the Dutch National Ballet's website and they include some real treats:

• Dutch Masters to mark Toer van Schayk's 80th birthday with works by Hans van Manen and Rudi van Dantzig as well as by van Schayk himself between 14 and 25 Sept 2016;
• Makarova's La Bayadère between the 5 Oct and 13 Nov 2016;
• Ted Brandsen's Coppelia which was last produced in 2008 with modern decor and costumes between 10 Dec 2016 and 1 Jan 2017;
• Made in Amsterdam with a new work by Ernst Meisner as well as ballets by Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Krzysztof Pastor, David Dawson and others between 11 Feb  and 4 March 2017;
• Onegin from the 29 March to 16 April 2017; and
• Best of Ballanchine from the 2 to 20 May 2017.

Also, the Junior Company which should have some new members by next year will tour the Netherlands with Juniors Go Dutch and Ernst Meisner's The Little Big Chest.  No plans have been announced for a visit to England but we live in hope. The ballet interludes included pas de deux from the last act of La Bayadere with Anna Ol as Nikiya and Young Gyu Choi as Solor and from Apollon Musagete with Sasha Mukhamedov and Artur Shesterikov.

La Bayadere is one of my favourite ballets. I have actually had a go at the descent of the shades in class at Northern Ballet with Jean Tucker. It is not performed all that often here though I did catch the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's production in London last summer with Denis Rodkin as Solor (see Blown Away - St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's La Bayadere 24 Aug 2015). I long to see it done by a great national company. I am now Mr Brandsen's #1 fan so there is no question of my missing his Coppelia and as I have now been Mr Meisner's #1 fan for some time wild horses won't keep me from Made in Amsterdam. The same is true of Onegin especially if Matthew Golding dances the title role as he did last year in London (see Onegin: the most enjoyable performance that I have seen at the House since Sibley and Dowell 21 Feb 2015). The airlines, railway companies and Amsterdam hoteliers will get a lot of business from me next year.

I missed the start of the Stopera tour because I had to polish off my review of Mata Hari and was then directed to the wrong place. I caught up with the crocodile in the laundry as a lady was washing the dancers' underwear and hosiery in an outside washing machine. We proceeded to the wig department where we saw some of the creations for the Moulin Rouge scene in Mata Hari, then wardrobe and shoes. We were shows a whole cabinet of pointe shoes, one for each dancer. There is a young lady of my acquaintance who makes a point of asking woman dancers the supplier of her favourite pointe shoes. "Well, Miss, I know that answer in respect of all the members of the Dutch National Ballet". We were shown the dressing rooms, gym, rehearsal studios (very like Northern Ballet's) and were actually allowed to watch the barre session of company class. All the big stars were there as well as the soloists, coryphees and corps de ballet.  I sat a few feet away from Michaela DePrince. It was she who had led me to the Junior Company and from there to HNB as I had started to follow her career even before she came to Amsterdam (see Michaela DePrince 4 April 2015).  The highlight of the tour for me was to be allowed on stage. The Stopera is a massive auditorium but the seats are arranged on levels so that everyone has a good view of the stage. From the audience's perspective the theatre is massive but from the performer's it has quite an intimate feel.

The tour finished at 13:00 and I had to get to the Meervaart theatre by 14:30. From the moment I set foot in the Stopera (minutes after the train pulled into Central Station it was wall to wall ballet. I had a lovely weekend. I just can't think of a better way of spending it. Dank U HNB!

Coppelia in Oxford

The first time I saw Coppélia was when I was an undergraduate at St Andrews. It was London Festival's at the Coliseum in the late 1960s with Peter Schaufuss ("can't believe it's a real name" scoffed my companion Jean who was reading German at the time and is now a successful solicitor in Scotland) and the beautiful Dagmar Kessler.  It was one of the first ballets that I saw shortly after I got my own income in the form of a local authority grant and entrance scholarship and could afford to take myself off to the ballet and pay for my first ballet lessons. Delibes's music and the kaleidoscope of colour and movement with the gorgeous sets and costumes and the spectacular choreography impressed me like no other ballet before or since.

I saw that show shortly after I had made my first acquaintance with digital computers and the so-called Turing Test. I could not help reflecting on the modernity of the ballet's plot in a way that Saint-Léon and Delibes could never have imagined a century earlier when they first staged the work (see Laura Dodge Coppélia: An Insight), This was a discussion of man-machine interaction, one of the issues of artificial intelligence, a topic of moral philosophy which was compulsory for St Andrews undergraduates as well as something we addressed in our short course in the computer science lab.

Fast forward nearly half a century to the same company's performance of the same ballet (albeit under a different moniker) in another ancient university city and the work was still as fresh and appealing to me as it had been when I first saw it.  Instead of Schaufuss and Kessler I saw Yonah Acosta and Shiori Kase as Franz and Swanilda. Acosta is a virtuoso. Always a pleasure to watch. He wowed us with his magnificent turns and jumps particularly in the last act. His virtuosity I had seen before but last night he also showed his charm and his aptitude as an actor. He is fast winning my admiration in the way that only a handful dancers (one of whom is Carlos) have done. Kase was a lovely Swanilda: sweet, vulnerable (Franz's dalliance with a doll really hurt her), impetuous and in the end heroic as she struggled to release her fiancé from Dr Coppélius's clutches. The role could have been created for her.

There were strong performances from Michael Coleman as the mad scientist, Fabian Remair as the Burgermeister, Crystal Costa as Dawn, Lauretta Summerscales and Jung ah Choi (who was also the doll). Anjuli Hudson, Sarah Kundi (one of my favourite dancers as every reader of this blog knows) and Jennie Harringtom in the Dance of the Hours. The whole cast danced well - as one would expect from a company of this calibre - and it is almost invidious to single any of them out for special praise.

Earlier in the day I had the privilege of seeing this company including last night's cast in company class.  I didn't see it all because the traffic yesterday morning was appalling and I don't know Oxford as well as I thought I did. I knew there was an underground car park under the bus station but could I find it in the congestion? I had intended to take the park and ride service but the car parks on the ring road were full by the time I had arrived from Yorkshire. The class took place in the theatre with the scenery for the show on stage. I noticed travelling barres on stage but missed the barre work if indeed there had been any.

Company class was very familiar with the ballet mistress Hua Fang Zhang directing the dancers much in the way Fiona, Annemarie or Ailsa directs me. Some of the exercises were the same as ours though there were several (probably most) that I could never do in a month of Sundays. There was a pianist just as we have in Leeds playing some of the same music as in our exercises. The big difference was in the pace of the class and the fact that the professionals were getting the exercises right first time (or at least most of the time) which doesn't happen with us (or at any rate me).  I noticed how many of the dancers followed the ballet mistress's instructions with finger movements - a useful trick that I shall try - and their effort. They really work hard. I'm even more impressed with those dancers than I had been before.

Just before we left the auditorium we were treated to a rehearsal of the pas de deux in the first act by Kase and Acosta.  As he was in his practice clothes I could see the muscles of that man.  I marvelled at the way he held his precious cargo on his shoulder with his right arm almost casually around her. A precarious position one would have thought but Kase seemed as relaxed and comfortable as if she had been in her favourite arm chair. I've seen such lifts and holds countless times as a ballet goer but seeing it in rehearsal with the principals stripped of their costumes was nevertheless a revelation.

The show is moving on to Bristol now and I thoroughly recommend it.

Further Reading

3 Nov 2014  Sarah Kundi   Oxford: Sarah Kundi on Tour   ENB website