I am delighted to announce that Rachel Hickey of the Czech National Ballet has agreed to give Powerhouse Ballet a masterclass from 14:00 to 16:00 on Sunday, 20 July 2025, at KNT Danceworks. Many thanks to Emily Joy Smith for introducing us to Rachel and to Karen Lester Sant for hosting us at KNT. I shall post the registration card on the Powerhouse Ballet website shortly. Tickets will be allocated strictly first come first served.
Readers can see from Rachel's web page on the National Ballet's website that she was born in Manchester, trained at Elmhurst, and danced first for the Olomouc Ballet before joining the Czech National Ballet in 2022. In Olomouc, she danced Myrthe in Giselle and Gamzatti in La Bayadère. Shehasgreatly extended her repertoire with the National Ballet.
Rachel's company was founded in 1883, nearly 50 years before the Vic-Wells Ballet, which later became the Royal Ballet. According to Wikipedia, the National Ballet was the first company to perform Swan Lake outside Russia, and Tchaikovsky attended the first night (per Pask, Edward H. (1982). Ballet in Australia: the second act, 1940-1980. Oxford University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978019554293). The "About" page states that the company consists of 75 dancers from 19 countries. Its current artistic director is Filip Barankiewicz.
The National Ballet shares the National Theatre in Prague with the Czech National Opera and the Czech National Theatre Company. It promises a very diverse and interesting new season with a programme that includes works by Van Manen and MacMillan. I am not sure whether they have any plans to visit the United Kingdom in the near future but there are plenty of budget airlines that fly to Prague.
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Something very interesting seems to be taking place in Ireland and it is happening not in Dublin or Belfast but in Cork which has an estimated population of just over 200,000. In contrast to many cities of that size in Great Britain that do not even have an adequate auditorium for a touring company, Cork has its own recently rebuilt 1,000 seat opera house and a well-established local ballet company that is capable of staging a full-length Petipa ballet.
From this evening until Saturday the Cork City Ballet will perform Swan Lakeat the Opera House. Intrigued by this production, I have booked myself a seat in the stalls for the 14:00 performance on Saturday. I have also googled everything that I can find about the company and opera house and watched every video that I can find on YouTube. From what I have seen, the standard of performance is very high indeed.
The company appears to have been founded by Alan Foley who trained in Cork, London, Russia and New York. He is its artistic director and choreographer. According to the company's website, Foley danced with the Irish National Ballet and I think may have seen him in a show by that company in Dublin. I have not been able to find out much about the dancers other than the guest artists who have appeared for the company over the years so I can't say much about the troupe's size or experience. The Auditions page states that the company currently operates seasonal contracts for dancers for its winter season.
However, it has an impressive repertoire and has earned some complimentary reviews mainly from the Irish press but also some from Dance Europe and the Dancing Times. It does not seem to run a school or an associates programme for local students but I am delighted to see that it offers adult ballet training for absolute beginners and improvers at its Firkin Crane studios on Wednesday evenings. Should I ever be in Cork on that day I shall try to join one of those classes.
I will review the performance of Swan Lake either on Sunday or shortly afterwards.
Following the success of its first class in Huddersfield on 26 May 2018 (see We have a company27 May 2018) Powerhouse Ballet plans to hold classes on 30 June in Manchester, 28 July in Leeds, the 22 Sept in Liverpool and 27 Oct 2018 either in Huddersfield or Sheffield.
We have a very strong team of teachers from KNT Danceworks, the Northern Ballet Academy and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.
For the future we plan a residential courses in a pleasant part of the country with distinguished guest teachers where we can concentrate on technique and repertoire and occasional workshops with visiting companies. I have already approached the artistic director of one company with such a suggestion,
As ballet is an art we shall offer training for the mind and soul as well as the body. We shall therefore take a leaf out of the London Ballet Circle's book by inviting distinguished choreographers, dancers, teachers, critics and others who are either based in or visiting the North to give a talk to our members and other dance enthusiasts over a glass of wine. These will be open to the general public as well as dancers. I hope that the first talk will be in September and that our guest will be a very big name indeed.
I hope we shall be able to host occasional outings to the Lowry, Alhambra and other theatres in the region and in time maybe even to Covent Garden, the Paris Opera or Stopera or to see our favourite dancers and maybe even meet some of the great names from whom we can derive inspiration.
However, one step at a time. And we will take our next step with Mark Hindle who is an excellent teacher in Studio 3 of the Manchester Dancehouse at 10a Oxford Road on Saturday 30 June at 13:30. The Dancehouse could not be easier to reach as it has an NCP multistory car park next door and is just a few hundred yards from Oxford Road station which is on the Leeds to Liverpool mainline. Several bus routes run down Oxford Road and it is a short walk from the nearest tram stop.
I shall pay for Mark and the studio hire so the class is free to you but you must register in advance as we are limited to 25 dancers. I know it's summer but please register and turn up. None of the good things that I have suggested will be possible without good turnout in both senses of the word.
I posted those words to Facebook just before we appeared on stage to give readers who have never danced in public some idea of the thrill of doing so. Possibly the anticipation of the performance is even more delicious that the performance itself. It is during those moments that the adrenaline begins to flow and a thousand thoughts slip in and out of the brain. We danced our piece. I don't think there were too many disasters. At least nobody shouted at us to get off or booed. We detected no flying tomatoes or rotten eggs. Or if any were thrown the aim of the person throwing such missile would have been worse than our dancing. We even got a clap at the end.
I didn't see any of the show because we were the third act of the second part but I did see the dress rehearsal and was very impressed. Particularly good this year were the repertoire class which presented their own original ballet entitled Pirates of the Caribbean choreographed by their instructor, Josh Moss. I do not yet have a clip of yesterday's performance of Pirates but here in a video of their entry into the kingdom of the shades in October 2016 which I reviewed in Pride. This film shows how good they are:
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That performance is all the more impressive when you consider that all the dancers have busy lives and meet only for a few minutes on Wednesday evenings. As usual, the Chinese dancers delighted me and the advanced ballet, intermediate and pointe classes thrilled me.
My Facebook post elicited a whole tas de merde, a "chookas" and several invitations to "break a leg" but also the following comment: "Sadly, I don't get to do an annual show, despite attending two schools." The student who posted that response was right to be sad because performance is so important to ballet education. As I said in my review of Hype Dance's Annual Show:
"Performances are important to dance education because ballet and kindred styles of dance developed in the theatre and are intended for an audience. The experience of appearing before a living, breathing (and paying) audience is delicious. I well remember the charge of excitement I felt in my first show which I tried to describe in The Time of My Life 28 June 2014. Every dance student from toddler to pensioner can and should feel that charge no matter how inexperienced or incompetent he or she may be. Most get that opportunity because almost every dance school worth its salt offers its students a chance to take part in its annual show. Training and rehearsing for that show is what distinguishes dance classes from dreary keep fit."
A flippant answer might be "Go find yourself another ballet school", but that would not be very helpful. I happen to know that one of the schools to which the dancer refers is rated as one the best in the country - at least for highly talented young students with the ambition and ability to make a career in dance. Also, that school is not the only fine ballet school not to offer its adult dance students a chance to perform on stage. Northern Ballet Academy did the same a couple of years ago which is why I spend at least one evening a week in Manchester even though there are outstanding teachers in Leeds and the Academy's timetabling is much more convenient
In Essex, Cornwall and other parts of the country, an opportunity to perform in public is offered by local amateur ballet companies. I think we need something like that in the North, That is why I hope we can launch Powerhouse Ballet. However, everything depends on whether we can get a reasonable turnout (in both senses of the word) at Jane Tucker's class in Huddersfield on Saturday.
If you want to come but have not already registered, now is your chance. This will be great class:
