Christmas Carol - "A Fine Performance Filled with Joy"

Standard YouTube Licence 

Northern Ballet A Christmas Carol Alhambra, Bradford, 16 Nov 2013

The Bradford Alhambra is a lovely theatre in a magnificent position:  just across the road from the National Media Museum, a few minutes walk from St George's Hall and overlooking the City Park with some of the finest 19th century architecture in the world. Bradfordians love to dis their city. I don't know why.  "Try living here!" is their usual response when challenged. Well, perhaps.  But I am glad to see when something important happens to their community they unite whether it is something bad like the anniversary of the disaster at Bradford City football ground in which 56 spectators died or something good when that same football club played triumphantly at Wembley a few days later.

And Bradfordians clapped and cheered their hearts out in  the Alhambra last Saturday when Northern Ballet danced A Christmas Carol.  As one of Bradford's most famous daughters tweeted, it was a "fine performance filled with joy." All my favourite dancers were there: Tobias Batley, Hannah Bateman, Matthew Broadbent, Martha Leebolt, Pippa Moore, Kevin Poeung, Hironao Takehashi and Javier Torres but the evening provided an opportunity for Sebastian Loe to shine as Scrooge. I had no idea that he was such a talented character dancer.

A Christmas Carol is one of the oldest works still in the repertoire of Northern Ballet. Created by the great dancer and actor Christopher Gable who was Northern Ballet's artistic director and also founder of Central School of Ballet with a magnificent score by Carl Davis, a spectacular set by Lez Brotherston  and sparkling choreography by Massimo Moricone it was one of the ballets that made the company's reputation (another being A Simple Man which I discussed on 14 Sep 2013).

Based on Dickens's novel there are tugs for every emotion from Tiny Tim's song (a prodigiously talented Oscar Ward who is still at Sara Packham Theatre School) to the joy of Christmas morning when Scrooge doles out the goodies to the Cratchit family. Everyone has his or her favourite bit and for me it was the pas de deux between young Scrooge (danced by Batley) and Belle (danced by Leebolt).

The production is now at the Palace in Manchester until the 23 Nov. The company was founded in Manchester and has at least temporarily come home.  Do welcome them back!

Something to brighten up your Friday - MurleyDance is coming to the North

I must confess that I found out about MurleyDance only this morning which shows you how much I have to learn about dance; but I am a fast learner and I watched every one of the YouTube clips on the company's video page with mounting pleasure.  How could I have missed such a talented bunch of dancers? My pleasure increased all the more when I found out that one of my favourite dancers had recently joined the company.

According to the "Who we are" page of the company's website MurleyDance is a classical dance company. that "enjoys fusing classical technique with theatricality". Its work is "often described as colourful, full of character, passionate and sometimes comedic".  Well if they live up to the promise of their videos ....... 

The company made its début at The Robin Howard Theatre in 2012 and has performed at the Edinburgh Festival fringe in August of this year.  It is about to start its first tour at Lilian Baylis Studio in Islington on 22 Nov after which it perform at The Lowry on the 29 and 30 Nov and the Stanley and Audrey Burton in Leeds on 1 Dec.  

I shall tell you whether they really are as good as they look after I have seen them but with the accumulation of talent that I mentioned above I have high expectations.

Ballet West's Swan Lake - Dates and Venues 24 Jan to 1 Mar.

Ballet West will be touring Scotland with Swan Lake between 24 Jan and 1 March 2014.  Located very close to Loch Etive (see "Taynuilt - where better to create ballet?" 31 Aug 2013) that company must know a thing or two about water though as Loch Etive is a sea loch I doubt that too many swans are attracted to its surface.

The tour starts in Oban and continues through Musselburgh, Stirling, Dundee, Cumbernauld, Greenock, Dunfermline, Giffnock, Livingston, Pailsley, Dunoon, Inverness and Pitlochry. All good stuff as you can see from the YouTube trailer for a previous tour on the company's website.

Now this is a very good excuse for a visit to Pitlochry - not that I ever need much of an excuse - but I have a question for the management of Ballet West.  When are you coming here?  If you can get to China surely you can delight your public in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ballet Black is still special

You can see the same company perform the same works with many of the same dancers in two different venues and come away feeling that you have seen two different shows.  Why is that?  I think it is because each theatre has a different atmosphere. And each audience interacts differently with the cast.

Yesterday evening I saw Ballet Black's Quadruple Bill at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds. Exactly the same show as I had seen at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham 6 months ago (see "Why Ballet Black Is Special" 20 May 2013).  And yet it wasn't the same show.  There were different dancers and a very different audience.  The audience in Leeds last night was predominately white, female and middle aged and probably drawn largely from comfortable North Leeds suburbs like Bramhope and Headingley or towns like Harrogate and Ilkley. The sort you see in Bettys who had almost certainly seen and possibly even studied a little ballet before.  The audience in Tottenham was younger, more racially mixed, there were far more young men and from conversations that I overheard in the Blooming Scent and the queue for the loo there were many for whom that performance was their first experience of ballet

Sayaka Ichikawa and José Alves danced Dopamine very differently from the way it had been performed by Sarah Kundi and Jazmon Voss.  Ichikawa is a delicate dancer and her movements are precise.  She revealed detail in Ondviela's choreography that I had missed before.  Alves partnered Ichikawa with equal precision and grace.  The adjective that I scrawled on my cast list was "pretty".  My notes last May contained the nouns "elegance" and "power".

Powerful is an adjective that I would use for Isabela Coracy, one of the company's two new dancers. We saw something of that power in the YouTube clip that I inserted into my article "Ballet Black's New Dancers" on 24 Sept.  She reminded me of dancers of the Soviet era like Maya Plisetskaya and I was not surprised to read in the cast list that she had toured Russia extensively.  She shone in Frutos's The One Played Twice.  This was also our first opportunity to see the company's other new hire, Christopher Renfurm who performed fluently. In that ballet they danced with Damien Johnson and Cira Robinson who are regarded as Ballet Black's stars and were not eclipsed.

The last work before the interval was Robert Binet's Egal, elegantly danced by Kanika Carr and Jacob Wye.  I had seen Carr in that role May but yesterday she was partnered deftly by Jacob Wye.

Christopher Marney's War Letters is a very moving piece and it resonated with the audience in Leeds last night even more than it had done in London.  Possibly because it was danced in poppy season.  Two movements brought many including me close to tears.  The hospital visit to a seriously wounded soldier and the Winter coat.  Beautiful chorepgraphy giving every dancer an opportunity to show what he or she can do.

Though I do miss Kundi and would love to see her dance again I enjoyed yesterday evening's show at least as much as the one in May.  I can't wait until February when I shall see them in their home in Covent Garden.

Scotland

I'm going to Pitlochry this weekend to see The Steamie. It was at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre where I first saw Ballet West (see "Ballet West's: 'The Nutcracker'" 25 Feb 2013) and it is good to know that one of Ballet West's students - Genée medallist Natasha Watson - has joined Scottish Ballet and will be dancing in Christopher Hampson's Hansel & Gretel shortly.  I shall follow her career with interest and wish her well.   

The company that she is joining is one that I have followed even before it was Scottish.  It moved to Glasgow shortly after I moved to St Andrews.   I played a small role in bringing it to St Andrews for the first St Andrews Arts Festival.  It performed the day that decimal currency was introduced. How do I remember that? I was on the Festival's organizing committee and did the sums.  It was at Scottish Theatre Ballet that I learned to appreciate ballet - even tempting me to take my first lessons.

Scottish Ballet is one of the partners of Get Scotland Dancing, a project to encourage more people to get active and participate in dance.  As part of the Genée legacy there will be "Get Dancin' Week" between the 19 and 26 January when free dance lessons will be offered to those who have never danced or who last danced a long time ago. Like Northern Ballet and Rambert Scottish Ballet holds classes for those of us who won't see 21 again. Those classes were featured by the BBC in "Silver Swans' taking to the barre later in life for ballet lessons" 18 Oct 2013.

That influence of that video has already spread far beyond Scotland.  A class of seniors in Barnsley who have been inspired by the Silver Swans is looking for a teacher.   I am sure there must be more all around the UK.

Ballet in Switzerland

Images if Geneva   Courtesy Wikipedia

One of my day jobs is sitting an arbitrator. An arbitrator is a bit like a judge in that he or she decides disputes after considering the evidence and the parties' arguments. Unlike a judge who is appointed by a state an arbitrator is chosen by the parties and his or her jurisdiction to decide the dispute arises from their agreement to refer their dispute to a trusted third party for adjudication. Arbitrations are particularly useful in resolving disputes between parties in different countries where neither party trusts the legal system of the other.  I sit on an arbitration panel run by the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") which is the UN Agency for intellectual property.   Every October the WIPO holds a conference for its panellists in Geneva which it encourages us to attend.

I was thinking of giving the conference a miss this year because the Sao Paulo State Symphony is performing at the Bridgewater Hall this evening, that is to say the 27 Oct. It is under the baton of Marin Alsop who was the first woman to conduct the last night of the proms. I was cursing all the more on the way here when one of the jobsworths at John Lennon International Airport forced me to discard about £40 worth of unopened bottles of toiletries because they were in a stiff plastic container that met the regulations and most other airports let through rather than one of the flimsy plastic bags that the airport flogs from vending machines at either 50p or a £1 a throw.

However, once I arrived at Geneva I was welcomed by warm sunshine (22C) and lovely clear air that revealed the mountains and hills that surround this beautiful city. I don't think I have ever seen the city look lovelier than it did at sunset with the sun radiating off the mountain peaks and the jet d'eau (a fountain that shoots water from Lake Geneva hundreds of feel into the air} shimmering in the last rays if the day. Crossing a bridge that divides the lake from the Rhone I spotted a flock of swans in exactly the numbers and formation of Petipa's choreography proceeding from stage left.  Finally I treated myself to one of the best meals of my life at Cafe Papon.

Seeing the swans on the lake made me contemplate ballet.  Sadly there was nothing doing tonight at the Grand Theatre but there seems to be lots happening at other times of the year.  Right now the Theatre's ballet company is touring Asia with Romeo and Juliet and Giselle but they are returning to Switzerland with Spectre de la Rose.  They seem to have some really interesting new works in their repertoire.

Another company I should like to see is the Basel Ballet. Just look at the power and precision of the dancers in Absolut Dansa in this video.

There are also companies in Zurich, Bern and St Gallen and Maurice Bejart's company is in Lausanne.  Bejart is performing in Senegal in November. In view of the interest in ballet that is developing in Africa it would be nice to see a British company following them.  Many of us tend to overlook Switzerland when we think of ballet and that is probably a mistake because there is a lot going on there.

PS, I have just added Bejart Ballet Lausanne and Geneva Grand Theatre Ballet to my blogroll.

Spartacus - streamed live to Wakefield

Scene from the Bolshoi's Spartacus        Source Wikipedia

In my review of Don Quixote I compared the relationship between ballet streamed to a cinema and ballet in a theatre to that between hamburger and fillet steak (see "¡Por favor! Don Quixote streamed to Huddersfield" 17 Oct 2013). Well in today's HDTV broadcast of Spartacus to nearly 1,000 cinemas around the world we tasted some raw meat. Or at any rate steak tartare since the performance was brought to us by Pathé Live.

This show was an eye opener: a great score, great choreography and above all great dancing. There was spectacular athleticism from each of the male principals, sultry sexiness from one of the ballerinas and innocent tenderness from the other, a mighty duel and an even mightier battle.  It is a great shame that this ballet is not seen more often in this country.   It is an even greater shame that it is not in the repertoire of any British company.

I suspect that one reason for that is that Spartacus is perceived as a ballet of the Soviet era.  It was first performed by the Kirov (now the Mariinsky) in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1956 which was the year that Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest.  The production that we saw today was choreographed by Yury Grigorovich in 1968 - the year the Warsaw pact deposed Alexander Dubček.  The historical Spartacus has a special place in Communist mythology - though without the slightest basis in Roman history. He is said to have been one of Karl Marx's two heroes (see "Karl Marx's  Confession" 1 April 1865). The revolutionaries who very nearly took control of Germany at the end of the First World War called themselves The Spartacus League.

Very little is known of the historical Spartacus. He was a gladiator and he did lead an insurrection known as the Third Servile War between 73 and 71 BC but there is no evidence that he had a wife called Phrygia (which was a region of Anatolia) or that he worsted the politician and property speculator, Marcus Licinius Crassus, in single combat. The story upon which the ballet is based is a novel by Raffaello Giovagnoli and it bears as much resemblance to classical history as English history does to King Lear.

It is a very good tale, though, and for those who have yet to see the ballet this is the gist. Spartacus and his wife Phrygia are captured by the Roman general Crassus and brought to Rome as slaves. Spartacus is made to fight as a gladiator while Phrygia is forced into concubinage. In one of his fights Spartacus kills a friend. Overcome by remorse he stirs his fellow slaves into rebellion.  While rescuing Phrygia he confronts Crassus and challenges him to duel which Spartacus wins.  Though Crassus is at his mercy Spartacus lets him go. Humiliated at losing the duel, Crassus gets his concubine Aegina (another geographical name, this time an island near Athens) to infiltrate the rebel camp and distract the slaves while his soldiers creep up and ambush them. It is true that Crassus crushed the rebellion but he did that by cruelly disciplining his own soldiers and crucifying the slaves he captured along the Appian Way.

This story creates two powerful roles for the two male principals: Spartacus danced by Mikhail Lobukhin and Crassus danced by Vladislav Lantratov. There are two very different female roles - the proud, seductive, scheming Aegina danced by Svetlana Zakharova and the sweet Phrygia danced by Anna Nikulina who has a lovely smile on her web page but looked understandably the picture of misery in her role.

Having grown up during the cold war I had always thought that the Soviet Union was very straight laced. How, I wondered, could Grigorovich have got away with Aegina's seduction scene during that time.  That question  was actually put to the ballerina who first danced that role by the presenter, Katerina Novikova. She replied that she was told to tone it down the night the authorities were in the auditorium but then she could dance it normally.  The same question might also have been asked about Aram Khatchaturian's score. We in the UK know the adagio from signature tune for the TV series The Onedin Line but there is so much more to this lovely score parts of which reminded me of Bernstein.

Save for a break in transmission towards the very end this was a delightful transmission. I liked  the understated presentation with a single presenter and cameras in the slips and foyer during the intervals. It was a revelation to see Lobukhin limbering up with press-ups before the curtain rose and the shots of the audience in the foyer.  Seeing members of the audience in Moscow chatting or snapping one another with their mobile phones made us feel as though we were in the theatre.  And that is perhaps one of many reasons why people clapped tonight in Wakefield whereas they sat in stony silence in Huddersfield on Wednesday.  I think the Royal Opera House has lessons to learn.