Daethon and Arundel - A New Four Act Ballet

David Hotchkiss

© 2018 David James Hotchkiss, all rights reserved

Daethon and Arundel is a love story between a lowly young palace manservant and the prince he serves.  It is set in the 18th century somewhere in Mitteleuropa.  The young English composer, David Hotchkiss has written the score for a 4 act ballet around this story which you can hear on YouTube. He is now appealing to the public for funds to stage the ballet through GoFundMe. His target date for completion of the project is 14 July 2020 which is the 110th anniversary of the death of Marius Petipa.

David writes:

"In no art-form do I believe the beauty of love is better conveyed than in ballet. I have danced ballet myself now for almost two years, training in both England and Hungary three to four times a week, and I have seen many great ballets on the stage in England, Russia, Austria and Hungary."

One of the places where he trained was KNT Danceworks in Manchester and it was there that I made his acquaintance last year.

Most of the great 19th and 20th century ballets focus on love between a man and a woman represented on stage by a ballerina and her beau,  Slowly this is beginning to to change.   Last October, for instance, Lauren Lovette created Not our Fate for the New York City Ballet. Writing in the New York Times, the critic Gia Kourlas observed:

"Same-sex partnering on its own is not new, especially in contemporary ballets and in modern dance. And even at City Ballet, there have been instances of same-sex partnering in several ballets, including those by Ms. Lovette, Pontus Lidberg and Mr. Peck. What feels unusual in these two dances is their fresh approach: Full of abandon and brimming with romantic desire, they seem utterly natural." (see When Two Men Fall in Love on the Ballet Stage, and Why It Matters 10 Oct 2017).

 "I am really keen to get this sort of work actually choreographed and produced" writes David. "My hope is that the New York City Ballet will take this on themselves but I am also trying my best to petition other ballet companies to take the piece on."

One of the reasons why David is so keen to stage this work is that he is gay.  Love between persons of the same sex has been accepted in the UK and other countries since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 but it is still not mainstream.  He longs for a world where, for example, at Christmastide families with young children might watch movies where two men fall in love and think it no different from movies where a man and a woman fall in love. To get to that place is still a long journey, and in writing this piece of work he hopes to take a step in that direction. His dream is that a ballet like the one he has written might one day be as popular as The Nutcracker, Coppélia or Swan Lake. To get there he needs to show that the love between two men or between two women can be as graceful, beautiful and meaningful as the love between a man and a woman.

Although I can think of other works that explore same sex love such as that subsisting between Siegfried and the swan in Sir Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake  and perhaps between Simon and Anthony in David Nixon's version, I can think of no full length work on the theme of same sex love with a detailed libretto and a wholly original score. That is a significant enterprise and it is why David deserves every encouragement.

Crowd Funding
GoFundMe Daethon & Arundel - A Gay Ballet

Introducing Mel

I'm not sure that Mel needs an introduction, Her first two posts for Tepsichore - "Kenneth Tindall - The Architect of Ballet"  21 June 2014 and "For grown ups who haven't lost touch with their childhoods - Ballet Cymru's Beauty & The Beast" 24 June 2014 - have been extraordinarily popular. That's not just because she can write well. It is because she is a dancer and knows what she is talking about.

Mel came to my notice when she was in Channel 4's Big Ballet. As I said in my review "No Excuses! If the Dancers in Big Ballet can do it so can I" 21 Feb 2014 I did not watch the series because I don't like reality TV but I did watch the film of the performance on Channel 4's website and was impressed. She signed up to BalletcoForum of which I was already a member shortly after the show and we swapped a few pleasantries now and again.  We started to correspond because she appealed for a dance teacher on BalletcoForum and I happened to know a good one.  In the course of correspondence Mel told me something of her career in dance and shared links to some videos of her on YouTube.

We actually met for the first time in May when I gave her a lift to Lincoln to see Chantry Dance (see "Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance" 10 May 2014). On the way down to Lincoln we got on like a house on fire. Ballet is a lifetime passion for me but it is not for everyone so I have to be careful who I share it with. No such problems with Mel. It was so good to meet someone who was as enthusiastic about dance as I was. That trip to Lincoln was a first for me for we ended up dancing on stage. There was no audience for our performance but Gail Gordon of Chantry Dance filmed us on her iPad,

The teacher that I had recommended applied for and got the job and she invited me to take her class in Sheffield. Mel took that class too and I saw her dance. She dances quite differently from most women. She is strong and really soars in her sautés and jetés.  She's not called Skydancer for nothing. She's got just about as far as she can taking class in the evenings and now wants to take professional training while she still can. She has appealed for funding through gofundme and she has already made quite a good start.

Some styles of dancing have been atrophied by tradition until they are reduced to a few dedicated practitioners. Ballet is a long way from that fate so long as it evolves but there are purists who like to keep things just the way they are. One of the ways in which it has to evolve to avoid atrophy is to recognize that women do not have to be petite and princess-like. In the real world they come in all shapes and sizes and do all sorts of jobs from architects to zoo keepers some of which require enormous physical strength and endurance. As we saw in the Olympics and other sport women brandishing bats and boxing gloves can be just as beautiful to watch as ballerinas. Mel may never look right as Lise or Giselle but she is just right for the roles that just need the right choreographer. Maybe Mel will even be that choreographer.