Powerhouse Ballet on a Roll

The Cast of Elysian Moments at ChromaQ Theatre, Leeds 23 Nov 2024

 

Last year was Powerhouse Ballet's best ever.  We danced an extract from La Sylphide at KNT Danceworks' 15th-anniversary gala in July and contributed Emily Joy Smith Elysian Moments to Dance Studio Leeds's Celebration of Dance at ChromaQ Theatre in Leeds in November.  

We have now performed nine times in public, twice at the Manchester Dancehouse, 6 times at ChromaQ and once at York St John University.  We have held workshops on The Waltz of the Flowers with Jane Tucker,  The Fairy Variations with  Beth Meadway, Alex Hallas's Concerto Jenkins and Morning from Grieg's Peer Gynt with Yvonne Charlton,  We have hosted Ballet Cymru's workshops on Dylan Thomas and Giselle.  We have held company classes almost every month since we started including during the lockdown when we welcomed Maria Chugai, Shannon Lilly and Krystal Lowe as guest ballet mistresses.

Our next step is to hold our own show which will probably be a mixed bill or a complete act of one of the romantic ballets we have learned.   We shall probably need to do this in conjunction with one or more partners which could be a dance studio or even another small company.   That will require a lot of planning and corporate reorganization.   Right now the company is a group of friends who enjoy dancing but we shall put it on a more formal basis in the course of the year.   I am exploring the possibility of charitable status for the company and converting Terpsichore into a private limited company.

Up to now, the company has relied entirely on sponsorship.  That source of funding will not dry up but we need to supplement it with a Friends scheme whereby we shall invite the company's members and well-wishers around the country to make a modest annual contribution.  We shall also need to monetize some of our services which will include smartening the appearance of this blog, publishing a regular print version, reviving Stage Door and charging for workshops and some of our other activities.

In the longer term, we shall seek grant funding and commercial sponsorship.  I have already made contact with Arts Council England and the Arts Council of Wales.  While it is impractical to expect funding from that quarter in the medium term it is never too early to prepare the ground.   I have also put out feelers to organizations that already fund the arts to find out what we must do to qualify for their patronage.

Dancers need to train regularly with each other which is why every company in the world holds regular company classes.  However, our membership is spread over an area that stretches from Hull to Holyhead.  It is very difficult for members who have demanding professional and domestic commitments to travel long distances.  When I have tried to hold classes in outlying areas in venues like Bolton or Myndd Isa the response has been disappointing.   Obviously, the solution is to hold regular monthly classes in Leeds and Chester as well as in Manchester but these will have to rely on non-sponsorship funding.  If we get that right there is no reason why Powerhouse Ballet branded activities cannot take place anywhere in the UK or beyond and not just Manchester and Leeds.

Bethany Kingsley-Garner - A Ballerina with a Brand

Standard YouTube Licence

 In Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers 13 March 2020 I quoted Alina Cojocaru:

"Ballet careers are relatively short and require years of training that pose the risk of injury, yet the world’s top dancers earn far less money than their counterparts elsewhere in show business."

"What to do about it?" I asked.  I concluded that companies and theatres were already pretty stretched and that the public whether as theatregoer or taxpayer cannot afford much more. Since then we have had the pandemic that has closed theatres around the world for months.

"So is there anything else that can be done?" I asked.    "Well perhaps" I answered." As the Bailey's Nutcracker commercial showed some years ago, ballet can sell. Maybe advertising, merchandising and endorsement.  Many companies were already taking advantage of that revenue stream but what about dancers?  Compared to sports stars, rock musicians and even opera singers, dancers have been slow to tap into it.   When I wrote my article 6 years ago, the only two that came to mind were Carlos Acosta and Darcey Bussell.

They have been joined by several others and the latest happens to be one of my favourite artists, Bethany Kingsley-Garner.   I wrote in my review of her performance as Odile in David Dawson's Swan Lake:

"Bethany Kingsley-Garner, who has recently been elevated to principal, was perfect in both. She first came to my notice as Cinderella in Edinburgh (see Scottish Ballet's Cinderella 20 Dec 2015) and she has already entered my canon of all time greatest ballerinas. The only other Scottish dancer in that rare company is Elaine McDonand (see Elaine McDonald in her own Words 11 March 2014)." (see Empire Blanc: Dawson's Swan Lake 4 June 2016)

Kingsley-Garner has two spin-off activities: online ballet classes and coaching and, more recently, her own dancewear collection which she distributes through Manchester-based online retailer Move Dance.

The dancewear includes leotards, shrug, skirts, top and leg warmers.  Each of those garments has a name and a story.   For instance, one of the leotards is called "The Rachel Leotard".  This is the story:

"Every step of the way

​Here's to good women everywhere. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them."

​Creation - Emergence - Life Force - Love - Nurture - Protect - Support - Confidence

​Rachel is my mother, she gave me the greatest gift of life itself; nurtured, protected and loved unconditionally.

She helped me take my first steps, raised me to become confident, individual and independent and was there to watch me step on stage emerged as a principal ballerina leading the ballet company.

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person who makes leaning unnecessary. I am a strong woman because a strong woman raised me.

​Feel the support and protection when you're dancing in The Rachel Leotard.

Be Inspired Be Unstoppable Be You . . BKG"

That is a delightful sentiment and it says something that we might have guessed but would not otherwise have known why Kingsley-Garner is such a remarkable dancer.  

Launching a dancewear collection when dance studios in most parts of the UK are in lockdown might seem to some to be a bold thing to do. But it is also a promise of better things to come.  This venture deserves to succeed and it has every chance of doing so.

Crowdfunding for the Ballet

Melissa Chapski and Giovanni Princic

Photo Michel Schnater

Copyright 2016 Dutch National Ballet, All rights reserved
Reproduction licensed by kind permission of the company

I argued in Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers 13 March 2014 that more money could be raised for the arts by licensing, merchandising and sponsorship. The Dutch National Ballet have been particularly innovative in that regard.  One of its most imaginative initiatives has been its collaboration in the design and marketing of Bounden, an award winning dancing game for two players (see Bounden - Something that appeals to my Interests in Technology and Dance 17 Dec 2013, Bounden Part II - How it works 1 Feb 2014 and Bounden Launched 28 May 2014).

The company's latest fund raising method has been crowd funding. On 12 May it launched a campaign to raise scholarships for two outstanding young dancers, the Italian Giovanni Princic, and the American Melissa Chapski (see Crowdfunding Campaign for Juniors Melissa and Giovanni on the Dutch National Ballet's website). The above photo shows them in van Manen's Trois Gnossiennes which I covered on 9 March 2016.

Van Manen is one of the big names mentioned on the website who train the Junior Company's dancers. Others include its principals, Igone de Jongh and Marijn Rademaker. The aim is to give those dancers a "last little push to reach their final goal: getting to the top of the ballet world". Readers can do that using their debit or credit cards through the donations page of the company's website.

As I said in 70 Years of the London Ballet Circle 10 May 2016 Ernst Meisner's name cropped up more than once in my conversations with dancers, dance administrators and teachers in this company. That is largely because he spent 10 years with the Royal Ballet and we regard him with great affection as one of our own but also because of his work with the Junior Company providing a bridge between ballet school and the company. I asked whether any company here had thought of setting up a junior company and was told that it would be something that they would all like to do but that it would cost too much money. If that is the case, maybe the Dutch have shown us a way to raise that money.

Returning to Giovanni and Melissa I do hope a generous contribution to their scholarship comes from this country.  The rewards of giving will be not only the dancers' gratitude but also "great personal rewards" which I surmise to be great performances  some of which could be in London.

Funding the Arts in the North

Palace Theatre, Manchester

Photo Wikipedia

You may have heard a lot of talk from politicians about a "Northern Powerhouse". That may be because there is an election is the offing and the politicians who have had most to sat about the idea - namely the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Deputy Prime Minister - hold Northern seats. But there is a case for growing the North as a counterweight to London in order to rebalance the British economy.

In its report on The Work of Arts Council England of 28 Oct 2014 The Culture, Media and Sport Committee found that:

"London has long received a disproportionate share of arts funding, something which even the Arts Council acknowledges. To a limited extent this reflects London’s position as the capital city and a world cultural centre. However, there remains a clear funding imbalance in favour of London at the expense of tax payers and lottery players in other parts of the country. The Arts Council is well-placed to restore some balance. It must do so with greater urgency if it is to realise its declared ambition to engineer the provision of great art and culture for everyone."

In a response to that report an organization that represents Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield known as "the Core Cities group" acknowledged "the important role played by London as the national cultural capital and the central role of the cultural economy in London’s attractiveness as a place to live, visit and invest" but contended that:

"the Core Cities have a unique role to play as regional cultural capitals and a similar argument in terms of the critical mass of larger-scale venues and producing companies. The substantial cultural offer of the Core Cities plays a lead role in driving economic growth and supporting competitiveness as well as providing a rich cultural environment. This role extends beyond the Core Cities themselves, to the wider city region, the region and surrounding economies. The term ‘Cultural Capital’ is therefore used here in that sense of delivering benefits to a much wider area, not in an exclusive sense."

Alleging that they contributed 28% to national output which was more than London the Core Cities continued as follows:

"[7] The cultural and creative sectors are key drivers of success (including economic diversity, human capital, innovation, quality of place), and growing competition for public and private funds will limit their growth. Sustainable development of the cultural and creative sector in the Core Cities is therefore vital to balanced growth in the wider economy.
[8] For this to be fully realised, it is important that decisions on Government spending recognise this contribution in terms of the economic impacts of cultural spend and how this relates to the wider re-balancing agenda in order to maximise growth dividends for the UK as a whole.
[9] This requires not only mechanisms which fairly reflect the activities of cultural organisations operating in the regions, but new ways of relating spending priorities to growth to take full advantage of culture’s economic contribution.
[10] Whilst the culture and creative sector contribute directly to economic growth, it should also be noted that they have a wider role to play in the Core Cities in strengthening economic competitiveness. A strong cultural economy attracts visitors and investors as well as being a significant provider of broader skills development."

They concluded "that, without a new policy direction agreed between the Core Cities and central government, it is likely that in the short to medium term, the national cultural infrastructure based in the cities and serving their regional economies, is not sustainable and its loss will have wide-ranging impact on the competitiveness of the country."

On the very day that the Core Cities' response to the Committee's report was published, Opera North announced "a new membership scheme for inspired business leaders who recognise and value the role the company plays in making the region an attractive place to live, study, work and invest" (see Business Partners scheme hits the right note ahead of its launch 12 Jan 2015 Yorkshire Business News). It appears that Opera North 25 founding business partners include AQL, Arup, Bartlett Group, Blacks Solicitors, Brewin Dolphin, The Business Desk, Dermalogica, DLA Piper, Evans Property Group, EY, Hainsworth, Hammerson plc, James Hare Ltd, KPMG, Land Securities, Leeds Building Society, Leeds City Council, MAC, Maestro! Tour Management, NJ Geddes Private Jewellery Concierge, One Medical Group, Taste Cuisine, Town Centre Securities, Yorkshire Building Society and Yorkshire Water.

To my mind raising money locally from business and the community is a better way of sponsoring the arts in the North than diverting public funds from artists in London. First, we are a very small country and London is easy to reach from any part of the UK. Nowhere is more than a couple of flying time by air and all the core cities are connected to the capital by motorway and intercity rail services. Secondly, institutions like the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera serve us all. I would much rather see a well funded performance at Covent Garden than more experimental theatre at the local civic. Thirdly, we have excellence in the North and the Midlands (see any my reviews of Northern Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet). Also in Scotland (see  Like meeting an old friend after so many years 4 Jan 2015), Wales (see An Explosion of Joy 21 Sep 2014) and indeed Grantham (see The Happy Prince in Halifax 21 Nov 2014) and Hinckley (The Bedouin of Ballet 12 Dec 2014). Fourthly, we want devolution in skills, transport and economic development and all sorts of other areas so why not in culture?