Northern Ballet's Mixed Programme

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Northern Ballet  Mixed Programme (The Kingdom of Back, Mamela, The Shape of Sound) Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds 15 Sep 2018, 19:30

A triple bill should be balanced and varied like a good meal.  The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company got it right in their fifth anniversary performance earlier this year (see "In the Future" - Junior Company's Fifth Anniversary Performance 17 April 2018). They started with a bit of Bournonville, continued with Juanjo Arqués's Fingers in the Air and finished with some vintage van Manen.  In contrast Northern Ballet's Mixed Programme was samey and far too long. 

That was a shame because each of the works in the Mixed Programme was worthy enough but they  would have been appreciated more had there been a little more variety.   Northern Ballet has plenty of works in its repertoire that it could have used - Mark Godden's Angels in the Architecture, Hans van Manen's Concertante and Jonathan Watkins's Northern Trilogy to name just three.  Had any of those works been sandwiched between say a Watkins and a van Manen the evening would have been much better.

Of the three works in the programme I liked Kenneth Tindall's The Shape of Sound  best.  His score was Vivaldi's Four Seasons recomposed by Max Richter.  There were some spectacular moments such as when his male dancers bounded onto stage in unison almost in silhouette.  There were also quieter moments when the dancers seemed to become architecture.  There was clever lighting some of which appears to have been designed by Tindall himself.  There were curious touches like linear makeup intersecting the eye line at angles of 90 degrees.  Tindall's cast included Hannah Bateman, Antoinette Brooks-Daw,  Ashley Dixon and Abigail Prudames,

Mlindi Kulashe is an exciting dancer so I had expected some exciting choreography from him.  His piece, Mamela.....  which means "listen" in Xhosa, turned out to be pensive and restrained - subdued even.  That may be because the programme states that it encompasses frustration, escapism and imprisonment though he left it to each member of the audience to create his or her own narrative.  I am mot sure how many of those themes came over. Imprisonment perhaps but only because of the greyish blue dungaree style costumes and the absence of women until some way into the piece.   Kulashe chose a score by Jack Edmonds which opens and ends with the human voices.  The movements were jerky with sudden turns and stretches.  Kulashe used 9 dancers of various levels of seniority from first soloists Joseph Taylor and Abigail Prudames to members of the corps.  One dancer who stood out for me was Ommaira Kanga Perez and I shall look out for her in future.

The Kingdom of Back by Morgann Runacre-Temple offered the only levity in the evening.  It opened with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's elder sister bearing an elaborate 18th century hair piece on her head which she removes at her brother's behest.  The piece focused on the relationship between the siblings relationship with their father and each other.   Some of my favourite dancers were in the piece including Javier Torres who was my male dancer of the year last year and Mlindi  Kulashe, Antoinette Brooks-Daw and Rachael Gillespie.  A lot of composers contributed to the score including Wolfgang Amadeus and Leopold Mozart and David Bowie.  The ballet grabbed my attention with its start but I had to work hard to follow it towards the end.  A good idea but it was rather long.

The Mixed Programme will be performed again at the Cast theatre in Doncaster tonight and tomorrow and in Newcastle in April. It is worth attending though I have seen better work including better triple bills from Northern Ballet.

Dutch National Ballet's Gala 2018: A very special evening with a very special company

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Dutch National Ballet Gala 2018 National Opera and Ballet Auditorium, 8 Sept 2018, 19:30

I described the Dutch National Ballet'a gala in 2015 as "The Best Evening I have ever spent at the Ballet" 13 Sept 2015.  I meant it even though I had seen some very special performances.  "How could the 2015 gala possibly be equalled?" I asked myself rhetorically. In fact it was surpassed the very next year (see in Dutch National Ballet's Opening Night Gala - Improving on Excellence 8 Sept 2016).  Saturday night's gala was better still  It was a very special evening with a very special company.

It was special for all sorts of reasons.  Some of those were obvious such as the brilliance of the performances and the sense of occasion.  Others were personal reasons like the expression of pride on the face of my former ward (the nearest I have to a daughter) as she spotted Michaela DePrince in the grand defilé.   My ward also came from  Sierra Leone.  Having suffered  from civil war and ebola Sierra Leone has not had much to cheer about lately. DePrince's success is an exception. It is unadulterated good news and an enormous source of pride even to Sierra Leoneans who have never seen a ballet.  Recently DePrince sustained an injury that has kept her from her public far too long.  Seeing her dance again on Saturday in Peter Leung's Portrait  was a joy.  That alone justified the trip to Amsterdam as far as I am concerned.

Another personal highlight was Cristiano Principato and Jessica Xuan in Ernst Meisner's Embers. I fell in love with that piece the first time I saw it at the Stadsshouwburg in 2015 (see The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company's best Performance yet 8 Feb 2015). In 2016 Principato brought his friends in the Dutch National Ballet and other leading companies to a tiny theatre in a small town half way between Milan and Turin to perform a Gala for Africa (see From Italy with Love 1 July 2016).  I flew to Italy to support them. While I was there I had the honour of meeting Cristiano Principato's parents.  It was a beautiful evening which ended with a performance of Embers by Principato and Priscylla Gallo. I wrote:

"Last year Meisner was my joint choreographer of the year for creating Embers. It moves me in a special way. I have now seen it four times and I love it a little more each time I see it. Thomas and Nancy Burer introduced me to the work and they dance it beautifully. I experienced it in a different way when Cristiano and Priscylla danced the piece on Tuesday night. Never has it seemed more beautiful."

In July of this year, Principato and Xuan danced Embers  at the Varna International Ballet Competition. For her performance in that piece, Xuan was awarded first prize.  I am very fond of both of those dancers. When they took their bow on Saturday I felt compelled to rise to my feet.  Wild horses would not have restrained me.

One of the reasons I like Meisner's work so much is that he innovates.   In 2014 he collaborated with Marco Gerris of the ISH Dance Collective to create Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  That work combined ballet with hip hop for the Junior Company and ISH.   Dancers from both companies performed extracts of that work at the 2016 gala and I was entranced.   Now Meisner and Gerris have collaborated again to produce a new work called Grimm which the Junior Company and ISH danced on Saturday night.  The combination of hip hop and classical dance succeeded brilliantly. The costumes were gorgeously outlandish and the music infectious.  I would love to see the whole work.   I hope it may be performed in the UK one day.

This year's gala was dedicated to Rudi van Dantzig who was one of two towering geniuses of Dutch ballet.  Three of his works were performed on Saturday: Voorbij Gegaan ("Beyond Goodbye")  by Josef Varga and Anna Tsygankova, Autumn Haze by Qian Liu and Constantine Allen and extracts from his Swan Lake.  The first extract was from act II where Siegfried meets Odette.   Artur Shesterikov was Siegfried and Anna Ol Odette.  The second was the seduction scene from act III with Legnani's 32 fouettés.  Maia Makhateli was Odile and Daniel Camargo Siegfried.   I have seen some great dancers in that role including Fonteyn and Nureyev but this was one of the most exciting performances  that I had ever seen.  Just before Christmas I joined the autograph queue following their performance in The Sleeping Beauty to ask Camargo and Makhateli to sign  two Christmas cards - one for two promising young ballet students at the Leeds Centre for Advanced Training whose mum is one of my ballet teachers and  another for Helen McDonough, who is the second biggest fan of Camargo and Makhateli from the UK.  Helen was in the audience on Saturday so they danced before their #1 and #2 British fans.

The other towering genius of Dutch ballet is, of course, Hans van Manen.  Three of his works were performed on Saturday.   The first was the Frank Bridge Variations, a pas de deux which was performed exquisitely by Remi Wörtmeyer and Suzanna Kaic.  It was followed immediately by In the Future  from the Junior Company which I had seen at the Stadsshouwburg in their fifth anniversary performance.  Visually Saturday's performance was as impressive as it had been the first time I had seen it but the words that are an integral part of the piece and essential for its appreciation were indistinct.  The last of Van Manen's works was his Symfonien der Nederlanden which was performed by the corps immediately after the first interval.  Van Manen is my favourite living choreographer and this symphony for the Dutch People is now my favourite of his works.  Set to Louis Andriessen's uplifting score, the dancers in costumes that resembled overalls saluted a great nation.  This was the first time that I had seen the Symfonien but I shall make sure that it is not the last.

Wörtmeyer is a talented choreographer.   I was impressed by his Passing Shadows at New Moves 2017:

"Passing Shadows by the company's principal, Remi Wörtmeyer, was another gripping work though more for the choreography than the staging. There was an explosion of applause before the curtain began to fall as Wörtmeyer spun his fellow Australian Juliet Burnett of the Flanders Ballet inches from the floor. This was a work for four dancers to Rachmaninov's Cello Somata in G Minor Op 19 Slow. This was a work for four dancers the other two being Jingjing Mao and Clemens Fröhlich. Wörtmeyer is credited with painting the sets and designing the costumes though they were sourced from the company's wardrobe and props departments."

He has created another beautiful work called You Before Me to Philip Glass's Etudes No 2 .  It was danced on Saturday by Anna Ol and Semyon Velichko.  Their interpretation was a joy to watch, as delicate as it was moving.

Ever since I saw her Streetcar Named Desire  for Scottish Ballet I have been a fan of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.  Last year I was introduced to her by Cassa Pancho at Ballet Black's performance of her Little Red Riding Hood in Nottingham (see All Hail to the Lone Star Dancer 23 June 2017).  Her NUDE a delightful piece danced by Erica Horwood and Vito Mazzeo in flesh coloured body hugging costumes delighted the crowd.

Another choreographer who has created a major work for Scottish Ballet is David Dawson.  I loved his Swan Lake but I also enjoy his shorter ballets for the Junior Company and the Dutch National Ballet.  One of my all time favourite ballerinas is Sasha Mukhsmedov whose Nikiya delighted me (see Dutch National Ballet's La Bayadère 14 Nov 2016).  On Saturday I saw her in a very different role in Dawson's The Grey Area and she delighted me once more.  In The Grey Area she has partnered gallantly by James Stout who has recently been promoted to principal.

One of the most thrilling virtuosos of any company is Young Gyu Choi.  He excels in such roles as the Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty and Shiva in Mata Hari.   He was superbly cast for the Soviet era ballet Flames of Paris which was danced for the first time in the Netherlands (and possibly the first time anywhere outside the former Soviet Union by a non-Russian company) on Saturday night. The bit that we saw was a rumbustious pas de deux with Aya Okumura to some catchy tunes by Boris Asafyev.  Okumura partnered Young enchantingly.  "Balletic Les Mis" flashed through my mind as I watched the piece.  I missed Ratmansky's revival of Flames of Paris on the Bolshoi's latest tour of London and in last year's cinema screening so I can't really say much about the work other than that the extract that we saw at the gala was very entertaining.

Another work that we see rarely in the UK is John Neumeier's Lady of the Camellias.   That is probably because we are brought up on Ashton's Marguerite and Armand which was created for Fonteyn and Nureyev some 15 years earlier.   Just as Fonteyn was Ashton's muse Marcia Haydée was Neumeier's.  The role of Marguerite requires a diva and there is probably nobody in the world who could have performed it more convincingly than Igone de Jongh.  Her Armand was Daniel Camargo who was magnificent.  Elegantly constructed and beautifully executed, it was the company at its best.

The show opened with the grand defilé or big parade - row upon row of dancers from the first year students at the National Ballet Academy to the principals presented themselves to the strains of Aurora's wedding from The Sleeping Beauty.   What presence and grace those children possessed.  The orchestra was conducted by our very own Koen Kessels.  That was yet another treat as Kessels is my favourite ballet conductor since John Lanchbery and I was able to tell him that in person as I was about to leave the theatre.  The show ended in a shower of gold confetti that brought the audience to their feet.

Every year the company awards a prize in honour of Alexandra Radius to the outstanding dancer of the year.  Usually it goes to a principal.   Young Gyu Choi won it last year and Artur Shesterikov the year before.  This year it was awarded to Timothy van Poucke, one of the company's youngest dancers who is still in the corps.  Van Poucke's career has been meteoric.  Only last year he and Salome Leverashvili were blogging about the Junior Company (see Missing Amsterdam 18 Feb 2017).

Readers will get some idea of the grandeur of the occasion from the video above. I am in the clip 8 minutes 35 seconds in.   Although it is grand it is not exclusive as it would be in some countries.  Anyone anywhere can buy a ticket through the company's website.  Tickets for the gala are more expensive than for other shows because there is a reception at which food and drink are served liberally.  Even so, our seats in row 9 of the stalls (zaal) were significantly less than the cost of equivalent seats at Covent Garden.

The New York Times ranks the Dutch National Ballet as one of the top 5 in the world and I would respectfully agree with that ranking.   I think the Junior Company has much to do with the Dutch National Ballet's success as recruits from the Juniors refresh and reinvigorate it every year.  According to Ted Brandsen, Junior Company alumni already make up a third of the company and that proportion is likely to rise over time.  I think that is why every year's gala has been better than the last.

KNT's Day of Dance: Rachael's Musical Theatre Class

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I described KNT's Day of Dance last Saturday in Vampires (19 Aug 2018).  While I was trying to dance like a vampire in Karen Sant's class Rachael Crocker was teaching this routine to our colleagues in the musical theatre class.  After we had performed our piece they invited us next door to watch them.

I described them as "very good indeed. Very slick, very polished and you could tell from the smiles on their faces that they were having a whale of a time."  You can see for yourself what I meant,

I am so fortunate still to be dancing with the graceful, athletic and generous students of KNT.  They welcome me as one of my own even though I am decades older, so much slower and far more ponderous than they are.  I am very well aware of my limitations as a dancer and am reminded of them whenever I see myself on film, especially when I get in the way of what would otherwise have been a much more polished performance.  Usually that does not matter but recently it very nearly did.

That brings me to two announcements to those who have put their names down for Powerhouse Ballet's audition on 15 Sept.   As promised I have spoken to Mark Hindle about extra coaching for the audition on 15 Sept and he has suggested a mock audition for those who want it in the Dancehouse on one of the Saturdays before the audition.   I will find out about availability of studio space with the Dancehouse on Tuesday but in the meantime it would be useful to know who intends to turn up for this session with Mark either on 1 or 8 Sept by emailing me at jane@powerhouseballet.co.uk.

The other announcement is that I have arranged for the chef whom Jay Rayner described as "Britain's best home cook" and "the greatest  Indian chef in Britain" to prepare a healthy but tasty energy giving lunch for those who show up at Dance Studio Leeds on 16 Sept 2018 to work with Terry Etheridge.

Not quite blown away but still a good show - "Swan Lake" with Rodkin and Kolesnikova

Queen's View, Perthshire

Author Peter Hermans
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St Petersburg Ballet Theatre  Swan Lake 23 Aug 2018 19:30

Three years ago, my friend Gita and I zoomed down to London for the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's performance of La Bayadḕre at the Coliseum with Denis Rodkin and Irina Kolesnikova in the lead roles.  I was blown away as you can see from my review which I wrote exactly three years ago.  We returned yesterday full of excitement and anticipation to see the same two dancers in the lead roles in Swan Lake.   We had a great evening but it was not quite as good as the last tune we had seen them.

Technically, Rodkin danced faultlessly.  A powerful virtuoso he never fails to impress.  But he seemed a little bit subdued last night as though he was performing on autopilot.  Koleshnikova, one the other hand, rose in our estimation.  She was much more convincing as Odette-Odile than she had been as Nikiya. The dancer who almost stole the show for us was Sergei Fedorkov as the court jester.  Not only did he wow us with his fouettḗs and acrobatics.  He also raised a laugh and won our hearts with his passage across the stage with a single flower in his suit of a lady from the pas de trois.

By and large I prefer the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet's versions of the traditional Swan Lakes and David Dawson's for Scottish Ballet of the revisions to any of the Russian versions but there were bits that I liked very much indeed.   I have already mentioned Fedorkov's performance which won him Gita's accolade as man of the match.  She likes to think of ballet in sporting terms.  I enjoyed the corps - particularly the arrival of the black swans in the last act - the divertisseements (particularly the cygnets' in act 2 and the Hungarians in act 3 perhaps because I had a go at learning the choreography a few years ago) and the fidelity to the libretto and score.

Talking of the score we heard passages in acts 3 and 4 that we do not often hear in England.  The harp music is particularly lovely.   The production also had gorgeous sets and lighting.   I think I liked them even more than I liked John Macfarlane;s for Scarlett's version.  Particularly the backdrop in acts 2 and 4 which reminded me of the Queen's View of Loch Tummel and the castle in the first scene that resembled Schloss Neuschwanstein in Bavaria.

There was a much more diverse audience than I usually see for ballet in London which can only be for the good.  I guess there were more ballet newbies than usual.   Nobody followed me when I tried to clap Rodkin as he first appeared on stage though there was a ripple of applause for Koleshnikova and the clapping for Legnani's 32 fouettḗs started far too soon and ended far too early but hey ho.  Having said that, it was a very responsive audience and they are the best kind to be part of.

Ballet West in Genting

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This week and next the Ballet West International Touring Company will perform Swan Lake and will give a series of masterclasses at the Genting International Showroom at Genting Highlands in Malaysia.  The cast will be made up of instructors, recent graduates and students of the school.  I have seen and reviewed Ballet West's performances of Swan Lake at Pitlochry in 2014 and Greencock last year and I am confident that the Malaysian public are in for a treat.

I have a very soft spot for Ballet West.  It was they who started me blogging with their impressive performance of The Nutcracker at Pitlochry in Feb 2013 and I have attended at least one performance of every winter tour of Scotland ever since.  Located some 500 miles from London they do not always get the attention of the largely metropolitan dance press and blogosphere that they deserve.  They are a centre of excellence of which everyone in the UK (not just Scotsmen and women) should be proud.  I know because I have experienced their training first hand (see Visiting Taynuilt  4 May 2018).

I have not yet visited Malaysia but I understand from members of my family who served there that it is beautiful and the pictures I have seen certainly reinforce that understanding.  Malaysia also has a rapidly growing economy which is an important market for British goods and services.  There is a clear link between a country's prowess in the performing arts and its perception by overseas consumers.  All of us in the UK have an interest in the success of this tour.

KNT Danceworks Day of Day - A Couple of Postscripts

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Two postscripts to Vampires, my write up on yesterdays' Day of Dance at the Dancehouse,

The first is that Karen has posted the video of our performance of Daethon and Arundel to YouTube which you can see above.   Remember we learned this piece in 90 minutes.  For many of us it was the first time we had heard David Hotchkiss's music or learned about his libretto.   Daethon was danced by Ruaridh Bisset and the lead vampire by Mark Hindle.

The other postscript is that Harriet Mills, who taught the advanced ballet class yesterday, keeps an excellent blog called A Ballet for Life which I strongly recommend. Harriet is a principal of the Karlsuhe State Ballet.  On 17 Nov 2018 her company will premiere a new production of Swan Lake by Christopher Wheeldon which I for one should like to see. 

If anyone would like to see it with me get in touch as soon as possible.   If there are enough of us we might be able to negotiate group discounts with the theatre, hotel and airlines.

Vampires

The Vampire

Author Philip Burne-Jones

KNTs Day of Dance at the Dancehouse was a great success.  I got some valuable tips on arabesques and développés from Rachael Crocker that everyone else seems to know but had somehow eluded me these last 50 years and I got to dance a vampire in a scene that Karen Sant had created from David Hotchkiss's music for Daethon and Arundel.  I would not have missed the day for the world.  Judging by the comments on Facebook and twitter, neither would anyone else who was there.

I had booked just two classes:  beginners and pre-intermediate ballet with Rachael from 14:00 to 15:30 and the repertoire class with Karen from 15:30 to 17:00.  There was, of course, much more than that.  There had been classes in jazz, PBT and contemporary in the morning. The prima ballerina, Harriet Mills gave a class for more advanced students at the same time as our beginners and pre-intermediate class and Rachael gave a repertoire class in musical theatre at the same time as Karen's class.

There were a lot of familiar faces from KNT but also several from Northern Ballet.  Several students had travelled considerable distances.  One from as far way as Anglesey which is where I plan to spend my long awaited and much anticipated summer holiday next week.  While I have been beating the drum for KNT in Leeds my Yorkshire friends have been spreading the word for Hannah Bateman's Ballet Retreat next weekend which I would have been tempted to attend had I not arranged a holiday.  Karen occasionally refers to us as the KNT family which sounds soppy but really isn't while a friend who attends the Ballet Retreat tells me that is how she feels about that workshop.  One of the wonderful things about events like yesterday's are the friendships and connexions that they catalyze.

Rachael's class began  with the usual barre exercises with a particular focus on relevés, retirés and balancing on demi with rapid turns.  Clearly she was getting us used to the idea of pirouettes. We did plenty of those in the centre including chassé, pas de bourré and turns in fourth.  I continue to find them difficult even though I had performed the exercise with two other teachers that week.  Rachael spotted that several of us were struggling with arabesques and pivots and diagnosed the problem as the position of the right arm. Similarly, several of us were struggling with  développés,   "Imagine your leg connected to your arms by a piece of string", she suggested. "You raise your arms from bras bas to first at the same time as you lift your leg," I tried that and it really helped.  "And as you unfold your right leg you raise your left arm," she added.

I was so pleased about what I had learned from Rachael that I mentioned it to Mark Hindle on the way into studio 1 for Karen's repertoire class.  I suspect that he was surprised that I had not worked that out for myself or learned it from another teacher some time between yesterday and my first ballet class in 1969.  Diplomatically he observed that it was one of the advantages of taking classes from different teachers.  I had already learned that from Marion Pettet of the Chelmsford Ballet. That is why the Chelmsford Ballet invites different teachers for its company classes which is what I try to do with Powerhouse Ballet.

Mark was in the repertoire class because he was lead vampire in the scene that Karen had choreographed from David Hotchkiss's score.  A recumbent Daethon (danced by Ruaridh Bisset) was ambushed by circling vampires. Most of us wore black as had been requested by Karen.  We surrounded Daethon menacingly with our arms rippling like bat wings.  We bourréd away to form several lines where we pivioted, pliéd, turned twice, joined hands, balancéd, pushed Daethon to the ground as he morphed into a vampire.  Pretty chilling choreography and at least as impressive in my humble opinion as other choreographers' Dracula.  There is only so much that can be accomplished in 90 minutes but I think Karen did justice to David's score.

We performed our piece before Rachael's musical theatre students who applauded us generously.  Ruaridh and Mark and many of my fellow vampires were superb and deserved their clapping though I am not sure that I did.   I was beginning to slow down after 90 minutes of hard exercise.  Rachael invited us back to studio 1 to show us what her class had learned.  They were very good indeed. Very slick, very polished and you could tell from the smiles on their faces that they were having a whale of a time.

I hope that Karen arranges another day of dance soon. Many others have said the said the same on Facebook.  Having said that I also enjoyed the repertoire workshops with Jane Tucker and Martin Dutton.   I hope that we shall have a few more of them too. Although I can attend Jane's class in Leeds throughout the year her repertoire classes were special.  I learned more about Swan Lake and La Bayadère from her intensives than watching scores of performances from the stalls and reading libraries of books and programme notes.