Northern Ballet's Ability Programme

One of the reasons why I am a Friend of Northern Ballet and a Friend of the Northern Ballet Academy is that it caters not just for those who are about to dance Siegfried and Odette-Odile in Swan Lake but everybody. Gita and I have both written about the Over 55 class (see Gita Mistry "I felt elongated and taller and stronger too" 14 June 2015 and my "We're in the Paper" 25 April 2015). The clip, Paul's Day, shows the work that the company and academy do for other groups who will never dance on the main stage of Covent Garden but can still enjoy and derive enormous personal satisfaction and confidence from dance.

Now although Paul and folk like him may not make it to the Royal Opera House they can still perform on stage in one of the principal dance venues of the nation.  On 15 July 2015 Northern Ballet will host Expressions at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre. This is described as "a sharing which brings together inclusive dance groups from the North of England, giving talented dancers with disabilities the chance to showcase their skills to an audience on a professional stage." It will include performances from Northern Ballet’s Ability course in which Paul participates, local dance organizations and by the professional dance company Flex Dance.

Now I am going to try to get along to this show if I possibly can because accessible dance can be good dance as you will see from my reviews An Explosion of Joy on Ballet Cymru's collaboration with Gloucestershire Dance in Llandudno last September and No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015 on Scottish Ballet's work with Indepen-Dance. Tickets for Expressions are free but you do have to book in advance.

Ballet Cymru's Cinderella

Photo: Sleepy Robot
(c) 2015 Ballet Cymru, All rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of 

I have seen a lot of versions of Cinderella over the years: Ashton's of course for the Royal Ballet but also Matthew Bourne's set in wartime London, Nixon's for Northern Ballet and a version danced by the Bristol Russian Youth Ballet Company which starred Elena Glurdjidze (see Good Show - Bristol Russians' Cinderella in Stockport 19 Feb 2014), Until yesterday evening I liked Ashton's version best but now I think I prefer Darius James and Amy Doughty's for Ballet Cymru. Perhaps I will change my mind again when I see Christopher Wheeldon's for the Dutch National Ballet at the Coliseum on 11 July 2015 as it looks lovely in the YouTube trailer, but for now this Welsh Cinderella is my favourite.

Ballet Cymru's Cinderella is choreographed by Darius James and Amy Doughty to a new score by Jack White. It is a co-production with the Riverfront Theatre in Newport in association with Citrus Arts. This is a very tight production that adapts well to touring with ingenious costume and stage design and lighting. It is dramatic and poignant in parts but also witty. It is exactly the right length. It tells the story in full but does not drag for a second. It makes maximum use of the company's small but very talented troupe of dancers.

In the inset of the programme someone has written in English and Welsh:

"We are a ballet company who like to do things a bit differently. We enjoy finding new ways to make what we do exciting, innovative and relevant."

This production was certainly innovative but it was also firmly based on the work of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The ballet opened with a voice over reading the words of Cinderella's dying mother (Krystal Lowe) as she was tended by her daughter (Allegra Vianello):

 "Dear child, remain pious and good, and then our dear God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you."

James made a few modifications to the story. He gave Cinderella a gawky, half witted step brother called Cas (Robbie Moorcroft) as well as a step sister called Seren (Lydia Arnoux) and as you will have probably guessed from the names of the step children he rooted his ballet in Wales. But then why not? The brothers Grimm did not mention a location or give names to their characters and Wales has no shortage of forests lakes, mountains, castles and even princes who marry commoners in real life. Overall, James took far fewer liberties with his literary source than did Bourne, Nixon settling his ballet in pre-revolutionary Russia, Ashton or indeed the traditional British pantomime.

The ballet proceeds as in the fairy tale with the marriage of the well meaning but ineffectual father (Andrea Battagia) to the mean and jealous step mother, Aerona (Natalie Debono). The family receives an invitation to Prince Madoc's ball. Incidentally, there really was a Prince Madoc in Welsh history who gave his name to the towns of Tremadoc and Portmadoc in Carnarvonshire (now part of the modern county of Gwynedd) and who is said to have discovered America several centuries before Columbus (see the entry in Wikipedia). Cinderella wants to go but her step mother gives her the Herculean labour of picking up within the hour a bowl of lentils which she peevishly scatters on the stage. As in the story, the birds come to her rescue. A voice over reads the rhyme:

"The good ones go into the pot,
The bad ones go into your crop."

They swoop and pick up the grains within the hour as stipulated by Aerona.

Of course, that is still not good enough for the step mother who forbids Cinderella from attending the ball on the pretext that she can't dance and has nothing to wear; but Cinderalla's mother now in the form of a bird presents her with a beautiful ball gown which it plucks from a tree by her mother's grave and off she goes. You may have noticed, gentle reader, the absence of a fairy godmother and a Cinders mobile morphed from a pumpkin drawn by mice in James's ballet but you won't find any of that in the Grimms' story either.

The family arrive at the reception by their separate ways and the stepmother and her daughter make a beeline for the Prince. He and his friends Maldwyn (Mandev Sokhi) and Math (Tim Hill) try to keep out of their way. At one point they comically crouch behind the furniture in an attempt to conceal themselves. But then the Prince spots Cinderella whom he had previously seen at her mother's graveside. He falls for her and they dance all night until she has to make her getaway losing her pointe shoe in her flight.

The prince and his entourage tour the town inviting the girls of the parish to try on the pointe shoe. Eventually, they reach Cinderella's house and her step sister tries on the shoe. Remarkably (as Arnoux is a very petite dancer) the shoe is too big so her brother sets about her with a meat cleaver to perform foot surgery without anaesthetic. There are squeals and squawks of pan from Arnoux but to no avail. The voice over, representing the birds, reads:

"Rook di goo, rook di goo!
There's blood in the shoe.
The shoe is too tight,
This bride is not right!"

Poor Seren hobbles about with a red ribbon representing a stream of blood.  Aerona then forces Cas into drag and he emerges with a crinoline frame rather like the ones that Ruth Brill uses in her ballet Matryoshka (see Birmingham Royal Ballet in High Wycombe 31 May 2015). He tries on the pointe shoe but he has no more luck than his sister despite also undergoing agonizing foot surgery.

Cinderella enters and produces the other shoe from under a cushion on the sofa. She tries on the lost shoe and of course it fits. Prince Madoc claims his bride. The birds chase Aerona and Cas away but perhaps it is not all bad news for the step family because the closing scene shows Seren dancing happily with Math.

This was an enchanting ballet and I could quite happily have sat through it all again there and then had that been possible. I loved White's score - maybe not quite as much as Prokofiev's - but then it fitted the ballet like a glove. An arranger or even a musicologist would have had to have taken a meat cleaver to Prokofiev and the result might have been no more satisfactory than the operation on the feet of Cas and Seren. I also loved Steve Denton's designs, particularly Aerona's headdress, which suggested horns as well as vulgarity in millinery. Denton made Seren look really plain which is an achievement because Arnoux is actually a very attractive young woman when not in costume. I loved Chris Illingworth's lighting design and the ingenious use of a projector to set the scene which is ideal for touring.  But most of all I loved the choreography and the dancing which had some unusual features like a remarkable three person lift and turn executed by the step family and some ape like acrobatics by Cas and Seren. There were great performances by all, particularly Lowe, who transformed herself convincingly from a dying woman into an angry bird.

I discussed the choreography with Darius James whom I met in the interval. He told me that the remarkable three person lift and turn had been a circus trick devised by Citrus. He also said that the cast rotates and that the different dancers interpret the roles quite differently. That is, of course, what one would expect but I would love to see it for myself. If I can, I will try to catch this production with a different cast somewhere else on its tour.

Ballet Cymru is a very special company. It is, of course, a national ballet company and while it is nothing like as big as English National Ballet or Scottish Ballet I don't think anyone could argue that it is not in its own way just as good. It does a lot of things that other companies don't do such as its collaboration with Gloucestershire Dance which produced an Explosion of Joy in Llandudno on 21 Sept 2014. Much of the credit for that triumph must go to the choreographer Marc Brew whom I featured in Special Brew on 28 April 2015. As I said in that feature and in my review of his Exalt Brew is now working with Ballet Cymru and I see from the programme that he has been appointed Associate Artistic Director. In our conversation James told me that the company will dance a new work by Brew together with TIR and Celtic Concerto in Newport, Llandudno and London later in the year. Even though we won't see the wonderful Cerys Matthews as she will be in Chubut to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the voyage of the Mimosa to Patagonia (see Y Wladfa in Wikipedia)  I can't wait to see it.

Ballet Cyrmu is a great national treasure not just for the principality but for the whole United Kingdom which is no doubt why the London Ballet Circle seem to pay it special attention despite their metropolitan provenance. If you get the chance to see a performance by this company then go. It is a good example of what a small touring company can do and provides an excellent model for others.

"I felt elongated and taller and stronger too"

Chris HintonLewis as Heathcliff in Wurthering 

Heights

Last week I attended two beginners' classes at Northern Ballet.

The first was promoted as  "a one off extra ballet beginners drop in class with Chris Hinton Lewis from 19:00-20:15" on Monday evening.  The second was Annemarie Donoghue's over 55 class between 11:30 and 12:30 on Thursday morning.

I thoroughly enjoyed both classes and I felt that I had learnt so much.

By the time I attended my second class I had invested in some "skins" or "thins" as I have often heard them referred to. "Ballet slippers" to you and me.  I have to say that it is not easy for me to get used to them as I have always danced with bare feet in Indian dance, contemporary and even ballet up to now.

All classes start with a warm-up. It is so much better when there is a pianist to set the mood. Actually, I have to say that out of all the ballet classes that I have taken so far, those with a pianist are best. The whole feel of the studio sets me up to work at my best. It really stretches me.  It motivates me at least to try each move correctly.  It helps me concentrate on the instructions which is vital to avoid damaging the body as well as executing the stages of each move correctly.

So what did I enjoy about Chris's class? Well, firstly, his smile, his positivity and his encouragement. Secondly his way of engaging with the class which consisted of students who had reached different levels making sure that we were all doing the moves correctly as best we could. I liked his big sense of humour and the grace with which he directed both the pianist and students.

I had attended Annemarie's class once before (see Coming Back to Ballet 13 March 2015). As on that occasion I found her very welcoming and the class very friendly, I don't think I have ever been in a class with such nice people. But Annemarie is also very professional. She concentrates on the work in hand. No chitchat about children, chocolate or other distractions. She seems very conscious of safety and takes every reasonable precaution. Her students adore her and she brings out the best in them.

After the class Annemarie told me about the Ichino method in which technique all the teachers of Northern Ballet had been trained.  This is very systematic and it works very well for me.  In a previous ballet class I had been shown a pirouette and was told to get on with it. I like to break down moves into stages in order to master it. So that each stage is imprinted in my mind and in turn flows through my body. There is no point in trying to turn clockwise on your left leg with your foot on demi pointe and spotting until you have mastered balancing on one leg in retiré, For some of us that does not come easily particularly as we get older.

I felt elongated and taller after I had finished both classes and stronger too. Most of all I felt confident. I believed for this time I could actually change my posture and body alignment through regularly attending classes at this standard.

Will keep you posted with my progress.

BTUK's Aladdin Second Time Round

I attended Ballet Theatre UK's performance of Aladdin in Southport with Jane and her family on 4 April 2015 (see Ballet Theatre UK's Aladdin 5 April 2015). Like Jane I was annoyed at having to wait outside the auditorium until minutes before the start of the show and the lack of programmes and cast sheets.

I saw the show again at The Key Theatre in Peterborough on Saturday and I am glad to say that it had improved greatly. I set out my immediate reactions in a text to Jane who had been watching the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company at the Linbury. I wrote:

"Performance polished, refined and graceful. The pas de deux was as smooth as a baby's bottom. Real improvement on last time and very well articulated by the dancers. The male dancers as a group were very well composed and extremely responsive to the score and well disciplined."

The production was more polished in other ways. In Southport some of the dancers seemed to be in danger of losing their costumes. Nothing like that happened in Peterborough.

However, there were still no cast lists or programmes making it difficult for me to identify the dancers and I found that really annoying. It is also  unfortunate that the dancers do not get the credit they deserve. I appreciate that BTUK must have lots of overheads with its extensive touring but a Xeroxed cast list or even just a sign on an easel at the entrance to the auditorium (which is what Matthew Bourne's company does) would hardly break the bank. We were after all paying nearly £20 per head for our tickets. I might add that many theatre goers keep a programme as a souvenir of their evening.  With a programme they are much more likely to come twice.

Another reason why the absence of a programme was annoying is that there was no synopsis. It was not easy to follow what is going on. That is partly because the choreography was too complex. Each sequence was exquisite. The costumes and coiffures were gorgeous. But it was all too much.The ballet would have benefited from far fewer scenes, particularly in Act I. The succession of dances complicated rather than elucidated the story. The changes of costume did little to assist my comprehension.

 I attended the ballet with an enthusiastic family member who was born in Mumbai but who had lived in this country for many years. She had read the story of Aladdin twice and was reasonably familiar with it. This was her first experience of ballet and I suggested Aladdin to her because of its oriental theme, colour and music which I thought might appeal to her tastes. As it happened I was right. She did enjoy all that as well as the pointe work but she asked me several times to explain what was happening and I was not really able to help her. There must have been many people like us in the audience and if they can't understand a performance there is a risk that they will conclude that ballet is not for them.

In the absence of a cast list I think the following roles were danced by the following dancers:

• Aladdin David Brewer
• Princess Ines Ferreira
• Genie Philip Tunstall
• Slave of the Ring Jessica Hill
• Magician Vincent Cabot
• Sultan Robert Noble

The reason I say "I think" is that I got this cast list from Jane who got it from Helen Brewer (David's mum and the lady who runs the Harpenden Summer Dance School). Helen originally told Jane that that cast would dance the matinee performance. I think I recognized David and Ines because they had danced those roles in Southport last time.

Being a sports fan I am used to looking out for a man or woman of the match. In this ballet I would award the person of the match  (overall best dancer) to Ines and man of the match (best male dancer) to David. Having seen the same ballet in diametrically opposite parts of England I consulted their website to see where else they danced.  They do go to a lot of places. I counted over 50 shows in just short of 4 months. The distances they have to cover between venues in a very short time are considerable. I feel really sorry for the young dancers.  It all makes me wonder whether a little less could yield so much more.

I should like to say a word about the Key Theatre. It is a very pleasant venue on the banks of the Nene. It is quite a modern building and all facilities were in order. It has an elegant restaurant with great service where we savoured asparagus and poached egg with Hollandaise sauce and beautiful French fries. Generous portions too. Save for the lack of programmes and cast lists it was a much better experience than at the Atkinson."

Other Reviews

6 June 2015    RhodaKuc   BalletcoForum

Tell Tale Steps - Choreographic Laboratory

During this month Kenneth Tindall has been participating with Ludovic Ondiviela, Constant Vigier and Andrew McNicol with dancers of the Northern Ballet in a choreographic laboratory called Tell Tale Steps. Their work has been streamed to the public and you can watch the first and second weeks work on YouTube (see Choreographic Laboratory Live Stream 5 June 2015 and Tell Tale Steps, live session 2 (Fri 12 June)). The choreographers have also made video diaries which you can see at Choreographic Laboratory, Week One Video Diaries and Choreographic Laboratory, video diaries week 2.

The work will culminate in a full day session at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre on 20 June which will consist of company class, a brown paper bag lunch, a panel discussion on narrative ballet and a sharing of the work by those four choreographers. Again, the work will be streamed over the internet over Northern Ballet's YouTube channel.

Regrettably this all day session coincides with the last day of Birmingham Royal Ballet's short season of The King Dances and Carmina Burana in Birmingham which is reconstruction of one of the earliest spectacles in ballet and of enormous cultural and historical significance (see The King Dances 23 May 2015) and that Saturday is the only day I can traipse down to the Midlands but Team Terpsichore hopes to be represented in Leeds by another contributor. If that is not possible I shall certainly watch and comment on the video recording.

Tindall, Ondiviela, Vigier and McNicol are enormously talented and they are still quite young. There is every chance that they will become influence British ballet in the way that Cranko, Darrell and MacMillan did when I was young. Such concentrations of talent and potential are very rare in ballet. Such opportunities should be seized and savoured.

Ballet Cymru returns to Lincoln

Swans in Lincoln

Author Rept0nlx

Source Wikipedia

Ballet Cymru will be 30 next year and they have a lot to celebrate (see Our History on the company's website). They have some lovely dancers who have created some great ballets several of which I have reviewed in this blog (see  They're not from Chigwell - they're from a small Welsh Town called Newport 14 May 2013, Diolch yn Fawr - Ballet Cymru's Beauty and the Beast 24 June 2014 and An Explosion of Joy 21 Sept 2014, see also Mel Wong's review of Beauty and the Beast 24 June 2014). They have also created a number of ballets that I have not yet seen and would very much like to see such as TIR with music by Cerys Matthews. Under Milk Wood and How Green was my Valley.

On Sunday the company is returning to Lincoln - almost as far to the East from Wales as it is possible to get without leaving Great Britain - to dance Cinderella at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. The advance publicity for this show is irresistible which no doubt explains why there are hardly any seats left. The music is by Jack White who composed the score for Stuck in the Mud. The choreography is by Darius James and Amy Doughty and there is the most compelling picture of Krystal Lowe racing under the moon on the home page of the Centre's website.

I have a soft spot for Lincoln for it is where I first met Chantry Dance (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 10 May 2014). It is a beautiful city where they do a lot of dance including an impressive bachelors' degree course at Lincoln University. It should be a great evening.

Renewing Friendships

The Main Stage, The Royal Opera House

Source Wikipedia

When I was an undergraduate I practically lived at Covent Garden during the Christmas, Easter and start of the Summer vacations. The Royal Opera House sent bundles of ticket vouchers to Young Friends which could be exchanged for tickets for the upper slips or two thirds of the cost of the rows H to Q in the amphitheatre and I saw all the great stars - Fonteyn, Nureyev, Sibley, Dowell, Symour and all the other great names of the time. Those ticket vouchers enabled me to see great visiting companies such as American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi and even Dance Theatre of Harlem.

I maintained my membership of the Young Friends even when I was a graduate student in California. "You have such neat mail" my fellow students would say when About the House would arrive. And it was true, I did. It was a little reminder of home like "Ye Mucky Duck" and the "Brigadoon" at Santa Monica. I maintained my membership even after I ceased to qualify as a Young Friend at the age of 26. I kept it going even after I had moved to Yorkshire and made the acquaintance of Northern Ballet.

I let my membership lapse only when my late spouse was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. Somehow ballet no longer seemed to matter. In fact very few things did. There is nothing more distressing than watching someone you love shut down limb by limb and organ by organ.  Everything in my life went to seed.

But then a month after my spouse died I noticed a postcard on a notice board advertising "Ballercise" classes. I was told that a group of mums had asked the instructor who taught their little ones ballet to lay on a class for them. I was even more overweight than I am now and quite unfit but I joined the class and stuck with it. I struggled through pliés and tendus and goodness knows what. Eventually, my teacher invited me to a real ballet class in Huddersfield which led in turn to the over 55 class at Northern Ballet and ultimately Terpsichore.

Last Saturday I collected my tickets for the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company I impulsively asked whether I could rejoin the Friends. "Certainly" they replied and remarkably the House still retained my membership records.  Today my membership pack arrived and what a delight. My red membership card with the royal coat of arms, welcome letters from Susan Fisher, the new season guide, an invitation to attend the opening night of Carlos Acosta's Carmen on 26 Oct 2015 (the cheapest tickets being £1,000 per head) and the January and April copies of the Friends' magazine which appears to have superseded About the House. 

The January issue has a great picture of Ed Watson and Wendy Whelan on the cover as well as news of Wayne McGregor's Homage to Virginia Woolf and an essay on the genius of Jerome Robbins. The April issue has articles on Carlos Acosta, Cuba and transition and 50 years of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. When am I going to get round to reading all of that? But does it matter for I feel as though I have come home.

Although I have rejoined the Friends because I love the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet there are actually some tangible benefits of membership which are listed on the Friends page of the Royal Opera House website. This video explains what they are. I have derived so much pleasure from performances at the House over the years. I do hope this article encourages others to join the Friends too.