The Sleeping Beauty

Leon Bakst's costume design for  Carabossse

Source Wikipedia

In my review of Birmingham Royal Ballet's performance of The Sleeping Beauty in The Lowry on 27 Sept 2013 I wrote:

"Even though The Sleeping Beauty was premièred at St. Petersburg, its score was composed by Tchaikovsky and it was choreographed was by Petipa to Perrault's story, it is also a very English ballet. It was the work that reopened the Royal Opera House on the 20 Feb 1946 after the House had been used as a dance hall and furniture store (see "The History of the Royal Opera House" on the Royal Opera House website).

To understand the importance of The Sleeping Beauty in our social as well as our cultural history you have to know that it entered the repertoire of the Vic-Wells Ballet just before the Second World War. By all accounts the 1946 revival was a glittering occasion. It must have been one of the rare great nights of ballet to which I referred "In Leeds of all Places - Pavlova, Ashton and Magic" 18 Sept 2013. It was produced by Ninette de Valois, designed by Oliver Messel, Princess Aurora was danced by Margot Fonteyn and Petipa's choreography was supplemented by Frederick Ashton. There must have been a whiff of mothballs in the theatre as the audience had dusted off their pre-war dinner jackets, retrieved their best frocks and put on their jewellery for the first time after the Second World War. The analogy of that evening after years of war and rationing with Aurora's wedding after a century of hibernation must have been obvious and compelling."

It is a very special ballet which is why I am delighted to report that the Chelmsford Ballet Company (of which I am a proud non-dancing associate) will perform it at the Chelmsford Civic Theatre between 16 to 19 March 2016.

Although this company is made up largely of dancers who do not make their living from dance there is nothing amateurish about its performances (see The Nutcracker as it really should be danced - No Gimmicks but with Love and Joy 20 March 2014 and A Delight Indeed 22 March 2015). They have a resourceful and imaginative artistic director in Annette Potter, talented dancers several of whom are at first rate ballet schools, accomplished costume and set designers and makers, able technicians and an inspiring Chair in Marion Pettet who showed her flair as a character dancer in Pineapple Poll and Carnival of The Animals. Small wonder that their patrons are Christopher Marney, my favourite living British choreographer, and the great ballerina Doreen Wells.

I don't yet have any details of the performance. In particular, I don't know whether they have begun casting but I know who could dance the lilac role very well indeed. In my review of Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty in Bradford on 28 March 2013 I wrote:

"No Lilac Fairy though there was a Count Lilac powerfully danced by Christopher Marney"

Marney's dancing in that show was spectacular. I also seem to remember that Cara O'Shea, one of Northern Ballet Academy's most adored teachers (see Northern Ballet Open Day 18 Feb 2014 and A Treat For Us Old Ladies 27 Feb 2014), once danced Princess Aurora for the company. When I do get some information about Chelmsford's show I shall pass it in to you.

There's just one other thing about The Sleeping Beauty and that is the following passage from Wikipedia:

"Trademark controversy

The Walt Disney Company has registered a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office, filed March 13, 2007, for the name "Princess Aurora" that covers production and distribution of motion picture films; production of television programs; production of sound and video recordings. Some suggest that this may limit the ability to perform this ballet, from which Disney acquired some of the music for its animated 1959 film Sleeping Beauty."

At first I thought it was a joke but I followed the link and found that the words PRINCESS AURORA have indeed been registered by Disney Enterprises Inc. with the US Patent and Trade Mark Office as a service mark for

"Production and distribution of motion picture films; production of television programs; production of sound and video recordings"

in class 41 on 17 Jan 2012 under registration number 4,088,154.

The scare seems to have originated in an article by Nikki Finke in Deadline Hollywood dayed 1 May 2009 entitled An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine which began with the alarming words:

"I’m told that the Walt Disney Co is currently attempting to trademark the character name “Princess Aurora” for all media: stage, sound, film, TV, video, Internet, photographs, news. In short, everything except literature."

The article continued:

"The problem is that, if the Disney Company is successful, it will effectively control the legal right to all future performances of the ballet. The move also could sink any movie about the ballet or that uses a scene of the ballet in another movie."

There is, incidentally, a parallel registration for the words PRINCESS AURORA in relation to a wide range of goods and services here.

Disney's trade mark cannot be infringed by performing Petipa's ballet The Sleeping Ballet for all sorts of reasons. The intellectual assets that the Disney Corporation seeks to wish to protect is a range of goods and services about a number of princesses one of whom is called Aurora.  She seems to be a spin-off from the studio's well known 1959 animation. The other princesses, incidentally, include Cinderella, Pocahontas and Rapunzel. A ballet that is based exclusively on any of those characters might perhaps infringe some of Disney's IP rights (though not necessarily the trade mark) but that would be an altogether different matter.

If anybody is, however, troubled by the intellectual property issues relating to The Sleeping Beauty, do give me a shout. I will advise and represent you and keep you on the straight and narrow for free. I know of at least one patent and trade mark agent as well as a specialist solicitor who love ballet as much as I do who would probably do the same.

Post Script

I do have some more information about Chelmsford Ballet's production. The following notice appeared on its Facebook page:

The Company will present
  "The Sleeping Beauty "

March 2016

Do you or someone you know want to dance in this enchanting tale?

Company Auditions 21st June 2015

Only auditioned dancing members can dance in our annual productions.
Company auditions for new members and for upgrades for existing members are scheduled for Sunday 21st June.  Male applicants are especially welcome. Application forms are available to download from the website, or you can contact the membership secretary directly for more information. cbcenquiries@hotmail.com 
The closing date for applications to audition is the 7th June.
(Auditions for The Sleeping Beauty, open only to members, will take place in October 2015)

Mixed Programme - with a sweet centre

Northern Ballet’s Mixed Programme, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House

Northern Ballet is known for storytelling, and last night’s programme mostly lived up to this reputation. The Mixed Programme too lived up to its name: the five ballets designed by five choreographers each told a different story. 

Angels in the Architecture – Mark Godden’s Shaker-inspired choreography to Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring (which includes the song ‘Lord of the Dance’) – featured six couples, with brooms and chair as props. The girls’ flowing circle dresses were particularly lovely – pretty, elegant and used to great effect choreographically as the dancers pulled them over their heads in different ways and I loved the creative use of the Shaker chair which had apparently inspired the piece. Personally, I wasn’t too sure about the brooms – I understand the motif, but there were a couple of times where they seemed to confuse the pattern of movement.

Christopher Hampson’s Perpetuum Mobile to Bach’s violin concerto in E Major was a beautiful classical piece which did not have a clear narrative – at least not one that I could discern – but followed the patterns of the music. I liked the way the dancers’ skill and dynamism brought this set piece to life as they leapt joyfully across the stage.

After the first interval, Little Monsters offered a complete change of tone with Dreda Blow and Isaac Lee-Baker doing marvellous things with Demis Volpi’s choreography. This was a fresh, innovative interpretation of Elvis Presley’s music, about as far away stylistically from 1950s cliché as you could get.  I thought it worked perfectly, making the most of the dancers’ exquisite physiques and energy. The theme was a love story, told in three songs, and it was both entertaining and emotive. I can still picture the resonant simplicity of ‘Are you Lonesome Tonight?’ with the two dancers who had been so closely entangled and engrossed with each other in the first two songs – ‘Love me Tender’ and ‘I want you, I need you, I love you’ – standing apart, each in their own spotlight.

A Northern Trilogy was perfect too, in a different way, offering a sensitive and entertaining take on the company’s northern roots, with Jonathan Watkins’ clever and cute interpretation of Stanley Holloway’s monologues, ‘Yorkshire Pudden’, ‘One-Each-A –Piece All Round’ and ‘The Lion and Albert'. As well as the dancers’ accomplished and enthusiastic performance and the straightforward storylines overlaying some deeper themes, the costumes and lighting accentuated the bitter-sweet sentimentality of these pieces. Yorkshire Pudden was lit in a way that suggested a sepia photograph, while the fresh brightness of ‘The Lion and Albert’ evoked images of the mid-20^th century seaside holiday and managed to include humour without descending into pantomime.  Everyone in the auditorium was smiling – the programme had been designed with a sweet centre.

The final and most ambitious piece was Kenneth Tindall’s The Architect. This was highly original – and dazzling. I hardly know where to start. It was also the most obscure narrative of the programme, a cryptic version of the biblical creation scene with Adam and Eve – well, multiple Adams and Eves and a few pounds of apples. A beautiful opening sequence with what seemed to be Adam and Eve chasing a single apple set the scene for a dramatic sequence around birth and creation. There then followed a complex sequence involving several apples being passed mouth-to-mouth between the dancers while Adam had his own apple routine. This was certainly different, but I was a bit distracted from the tango-like ambiance by all the apples. In the final sequences a single apple, this time suspended above the dancers, provided a focal point for some clever and quite acrobatic group sequences enhanced by darker lighting design. Personally, I preferred the sections where there was just one apple in play, as it were.

I may have picked at a couple of details, but I was hugely impressed. It was a pretty tall order to create a contemporary ballet that balanced biblical narrative with biological symbolism and it looked amazing and the demanding choreography showcased the dancers’ extreme athleticism and flexibility. It also showed what an excellent company Northern Ballet are, particularly in the group sequences that expanded and contracted around the single, suspended apple. There were also some wonderful partner and individual pieces.

This was my first experience of Northern Ballet and I will definitely find opportunities to see them again. I love their originality, their clear identity and the way their work can be appreciated on multiple levels. I felt that their excellent dancing spoke for itself and didn’t need embellishing with complex staging. Having said that, it would be interesting to see The Architect performed in a bigger space.

Further Reading

10 May 2015  Between Friends - Northern Ballet's Mixed Programme (The Mixed Programme in Leeds)

Ballet Economics

Population densities of the UK from 2011 Census

Source Wikipedia

One of the questions that I would have liked to have asked David Bintley when he spoke to the London Ballet Circle on Monday but didn't was "Why don't we ever see Birmingham Royal Ballet in Leeds?" They come to Manchester twice a year but the nearest they get to Leeds, Sheffield or Bradford is York. I would also like to put the same question to the business managers of English National Ballet, Scottish Ballet and Ballet Cymru.

I suspect their answer may be that Northern Ballet is based in Leeds and the other great companies don't want to tread on their toes. That probably explains why Northern Ballet will dance in Edinburgh but not in Glasgow, Manchester and Milton Keynes but never Birmingham. It may even be a condition of their funding from the Arts Council or other bodies. I shall have to do some digging to find out.

But if that is the explanation I think it is flawed. Northern Ballet has cultivated an audience for dance in Leeds which is hungry for more. Cassa Pancho said something to that effect when I first met her. Ballet Black had been performing in Southport to an appreciative but not particularly massive crowd. Their show had been a sell out at The Linbury the previous February and they usually fill the Stanley and Audrey Theatre. Yet Southport is in Merseyside, which is itself part of a much bigger urban area. Though it is at the North-Western end of the conurbation it is well connected to the rest of North West England by road and public transport.

Manchester is one of our greatest cities but I have attended excellent performances at The Lowry where the auditorium has been much less than full. Manchester. Now Manchester has great cultural institutions such as The Hallé and The Royal Exchange but, sadly, no longer has a major resident ballet company and that seems to make all the difference.  I am told that the Birmingham Royal Ballet has created a massive audience for dance at the Hippodrome and I have seen and felt the audience at The Tramway in Glasgow (see No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015).

If major companies struggle to fill seats in Manchester it must be even harder to sell tickets in sizeable towns and cities in the remoter parts of the country. Maybe you could get a good audience for The Nutcracker but you might struggle for anything else.

I am not a great fan of public sponsorship of the performing arts. The Arts Council was the brain child of Lord Keynes (see John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet 3 March 2013) and on this matter as on many others I am no Keynesian. There seem to be all sorts of shadowy figures such as the National Dance Coordinating Committee which I heard about for the first time only the other day but have found impossible to google. So much better, indeed so much fairer, to let companies follow their audiences and perhaps to grow them.

Post Script

Janet McNulty writes:

@jelterps I've tried to post a comment on the blog. @BRB perform in Salford not Manchester and they stopped coming to Leeds long before Nb

— Janet McNulty (@JanMcN) May 15, 2015

Chantry Dance's Autumn Tour

Vincent van Gogh Self portrait

Source Wikipedia

Last year Chantry Dance Company performed The Happy Prince to celebrate the anniversary of the 160th anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde (see The Happy Prince in Halifax 21 Nov 2014). This year they are creating a ballet about Wilde's contemporary genius Vincent van Gogh. According to the company's website, the ballet (which is called Vincent - a stranger to himself) is based on

"the life and loves of Vincent Van Gogh and pursues the man behind the self-portrait, yearning for affection, balancing genius with madness. The piece explores the artist's relationship with the women in his life, as well as the relationship with his one true passion - his art."

I can't tell you much about it right now but if you follow the link you will find some lovely photos of the dancers who will perform the piece by Dani Bower.

Vincent - a stranger to himself will form part of a double bill called Duology.  The other work will be Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' 

"where the audience is at liberty to create their own interpretation of the dance imagery they are presented with. The choreographer invites the audience to become an active interpreter, rather than passive observer."

Needless to say I am intrigued. Does that mean that we get a chance to dance with the professionals as we did in Dream Dance last year? (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 10 May 2014), I shall always be grateful to Gail Gordon for coaxing me out of the stalls and on to the stage to take part in that show.

Duology will tour England between 16 Sept and 2 Oct visiting Grantham, Stamford, Birmingham, Worcester, Halifax and London. I hope to catch them company at The Square Chapel in Halifax on 26 Sept 2015. If you want to join me and their many Yorkshire fans call the box office on 01422 349422 or visit the theatre's website.

My Home and Bintley's

I arrived home from London in the early hours of the morning, I had gone to London specifically to hear David Bintley. He spoke to the London Ballet Circle yesterday evening. I would have wanted to hear him had he been born in Tierra del Fuego or Stewart Island as I admire his work so much but, as it happens, he comes from Honley in the Holme Valley which is almost the next village from mine.

We have a rich musical tradition in this part of Yorkshire with silver bands, brass bands, choirs, the annual contemporary music festival and above all The Choral. Here they are singing Hallelujah from  Handel's Messiah. At one time every pub in every village held a sing at Harvest time. Sings usually ended with a rousing chorus of Pratty Flowers which us sometimes called the Holmfirth anthem. Though sings are rarely held nowadays you can see from the film there are still folk who remember the words of that song.

Ever since I first learned that Bintley came from this area I had imagined that he would be influenced by that tradition so I asked him.  I can't tell you what he said because I have been asked not to do so but a summary of his talk will be available in due course on the London Ballet Circle website.  As the Circle says on its Facebook page: "We had a lovely, very interesting and informative evening with David Bintley!" The Ballet Circle thanked everybody for coming but I would not have missed that talk for the world.

Lots of other good talks and visits are planned as you can see from the Events page of the Circle's website. I am coming down again to hear Ernst Meisner whom I featured at the end of last year and Li Conxin, artistic director of the Queensland Ballet. Membership of the London Ballet Circle costs only £12 a year and it helps to support young dancers and students. This year we are sending a dancer from London to Amsterdam to attend a workshop with the Dutch National Ballet. So it is very worthwhile becoming a member.

David Bintley

In their programmes and on their website Birmingham Royal Ballet wrote: 

"Huddersfield is not as famous in the world of classical dance as St Petersburg, Paris or London, but it was the birthplace of David Bintley - one of the most consistent and significant forces in British ballet."

Actually Bintley was born not in Huddersfield itself but in Honley near Huddersfield which is a place in its own right as anyone from these parts (estate agents in particular) will tell you.

Also, Huddesfield is not such a terpsichorean desert as Birmingham Royal Ballet would lead you to believe. Bintley was not the first great dancer to come from the Huddersfield area. Brian Shaw for whom Ashton created some of his most famous roles did so too. Nor, I hope, will Bintley be the last for there is a lot of dance going on in Huddersfield both for adults (see Team Hud Adult Ballet Class 22 June 2014 and The Base Studios, Huddersfield 2 March 2013) and children. I know of at least two very talented little girls in the next village to Honley one of whom has already performed at The Grand in Northern Ballet's Ondine and Gatsby.

Anyway, chums, the reason I mention Bintley is that he is speaking to the London Ballet Circle at the Civil Service Club, 13-15 Gt Scotland Yard, London SW1 at 19:30 this evening. I am going down to London today specially to hear him. If you are a member of the Circle his talk will set you back £5.  If you are not a member you will be charged £8. Any profits go to a scholarship fund to support promising young dancers. Both Xander Parish and his sister Demelza have benefited from that fund. From now on any spare cash I may have will go to that fund rather than to individuals.  I would much rather my bounty went to outstanding young dancers like the Parishes than have companies like Northern Ballet, Ballet Black or Chantry Dance perform before unfilled but paid for seats however compelling the reason for such absences.

I shan't blog about tonight's meeting because I have been asked not to do so. If you want to know what Bintley has to say you will just have to turn up.

Between Friends - Northern Ballet's Mixed Programme

The Architect - Trailer from Kenneth Tindall on Vimeo.

Northern Ballet, Mixed Programme, Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, 9 May 2015

Every Spring Northern Ballet presents a programme of short ballets to its public in Leeds and London. For me that programme is the highlight of the year because the company is at its best.  Not all the works in the programme are new but they are always fresh as the dancers seem to delight in performing them. That delight is picked up and reciprocated by the audience which makes these shows very intimate and very precious.

This year is special because it is the 45th anniversary of the formation of the company which it celebrated with the Sapphire gala (see Sapphire 15 March 2015). The company included three of the works from that gala in the programme.  They were Jonathan Watkins's A Northern Trilogy, Daniel de Abdrade's Fatal Kiss and Demis Volpi's Little Monsters.  They formed part of the first act which was crowned with Christopher Hampson's Perpetuum Mobile. Top of the bill was Kenneth Tindall's The Architect  which I had seen last year (see Jane Lambert A Wonderful Evening - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill 21 June 2014 23 June 2014 and Mel Wong Kenneth Tindall - The Architect of Ballet 21 June 2014).

It was lovely to see the first three ballets in the intimacy of the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre. A Northern Trilogy is a pas de deux by Martha Leebolt and Tobias Batley, a solo by Kevin Poeung and a narrative by Leebolt and Barley joined by Hannah Bateman, Dreda Blow and Isaac Lee-Baker to Stanley Holloway's Yorkshire Pudden, One-Each A-Piece All Round and The Lion and Albert. The  opening pas de deux was danced "with Heavenly magic ...... As light as a maiden's first kiss", the solo proudly "as any gentry" and the Lion and Albert with love. I enjoyed A Northern Trilogy when I first saw it at The Grand but I relished it in the the company's own theatre.

The same is true of the other ballets, particularly Fatal Kiss danced passionately by Lucia Solari and Javier Torres.  Since the gala I have seen van Dantzig's 5 Tangos performed by Scottish Ballet which is also to the music of the tango composer Astor Piazzolla (see No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015) which helped my appreciation of de Andrade's work. The dance represents a life which ends in a full frontal kiss on the lips that means death.

Little Monsters is danced by Dreda Blow and Joseph Taylor to three Elvis songs. In Love me Tender we see only Blow's arms which grab Taylor's body first his upper body then his legs like a clamp as she appears about to devour him. It is love all right but love in the sense of "I'd love a tender steak" rather than "I love him tenderly."  By contrast, in "Are you Lonesone Tonight" the dancers were apart and almost disconnected.

Christopher Hampson's Perpetuum Mobile was the only work I had not seen before and what a surprise and delight. Choreographed to Bach's Violin Concerto in E Minor it has joyful leaps for the men and turns for the women.  It is exhilarating to watch but demands much from the dancers. The company did Hampson proud. Batley and Leebolt were brilliant, of course, but so too were Lucia Solari, Abigail Prudames. Ayami Miyata, Kevin Poeung, Isaac Lee-Baker, Sean Bates and Rachael Gillespie. I love to see Gillespie dance and I don't think I have ever seen her dance better.

Even though he created it last year The Architect is Kendall's first show as an independent choreographer and it was impressive. Tindall spoke about the show immediately after the matinee performance. He explained how he wanted to explore the story of Adam and Eve but tie it in with science. He referred to the double helix of the male dancers' costumes representing DNA.  Do we carry Adam's disobedience in our DNA? The words of Milton* sprang to mind:

"Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe..."

That prompted a question from me about the characters on the chests of the male dancers which reminded me of DNA sequencing. Tindall confirmed that the allusion was deliberate.

Gillespie was in The Architect and again it was a joy to see her.  But the others were great too: Antoinette Brooks-Daw, Abigail Prudames, Jeremy Curnier, Matthew Topliss, Mlibdi Kulashe and Matthew Koon who joined Miyata and Lee-Baker. The lighting and the set design were like extra dancers particularly in the last scene when humanity combined to grab the apple. The ballet was striking. Even better second time round.

This show is on its way to The Linbury with the substitution of Mark Godden's Angels in the Architecture for Perpetuum Mobile. Angels in the Architecture is a gorgeous ballet that I saw in the 2013 Mixed Programme (see Angelic - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill 9 June 2013). It has the same music and even some of the same choreography as Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring. I would have liked to have seen that too though I wouldn't have missed Chris Hampson's ballet for the world.  London is in for a treat.

Further Reading

14 May 2015  Joanna Goodman Mixed Programme - with a sweet centre (the Mixed Programme in London)

* An old boy of my school as it happens