"Show!" - the Video

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In Show 14 May 2017 I wrote how it felt to dance in Move It o at the Dancehouse Theatre in Manchester on 13 May 2017. Our teacher and choreographer, Karen Sant, filmed our performance and she has recently uploaded her videos onto YouTube so you can now see how we did.

It was a memorable night. We all had a whale of a time. Here are links to some of the other performances:

• The Advanced Ballet Class;
• The Advanced Contemporary Class;
• The Advanced Jazz Class;
• The Beginners' Ballet and Jazz Class;
• The Beginners' Class;
• The Beginner Contemporary Piece;
• The Intermediate Ballet Class; 
• The Pointe Class; and
• The Repertoire Class dancing the entry to the Kingdom of the Shades from La Bayadère.

Everybody who took part in those performances studies dance after a long day's work.  We are all ages. Some of us had taken up dance for the first time as adults. Our classes take place in the studios of the Northern Ballet School on Oxford Road of which the Dancehouse Theatre is an integral part. It is a really lovely place to learn dance. Karen once referred to us as "the KNT family". That is not a bad description.  If you want to join us, you will find all the information you need on the KNT website.

"A Most Rare Vision ...... A Dream"

Ballet Cymru A Midsummer Night's Dream 7 June 2017  19:30

Yesterday I had to make a tough choice between two ballet's derived from A Midsummer Night's Dream. In my local cinema was The Dream by Sir Frederick Ashton, one of my favourite ballets because I shall always associate it with Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell, streamed live from Covent Garden. At the Preston Guild Hall and Charter Theatre was a live performance by Ballet Cymru of Darius James's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

What made the choice particularly hard was that The Dream was to be performed as part of a triple bill with Symphonic Variations and Marguerite and Armand.  Just as I associate The Dream with Sibley and Dowell I shall always associate Marguerite and Armand with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn and Symphonic Variations. Making the choice even harder was the knowledge that Zenaida Yanowsky was due to make her last appearance yesterday.

Much as I love the Royal Ballet and Yanowsky I chose Ballet Cymru without hesitation. In my book, living breathing human beings on stage will always trump images flashed onto a screen. Also, there is a chance of seeing a recording of last night's transmission though, sadly, there are not many cinemas advertising the encore. I think I made the right call because last night's performance was outstanding.

Darius James first created the ballet for the company in 1997. It was an immediate success. The Sunday Telegraph described the dancers as "impressively able" and commended James for making use of "every gift they have." The Theatre Critics of Wales nominated it for the best dance production of 2013. It is not hard to see why for James is a skilled narrator with an exceptionally keen eye for detail and a superb gift for transposing Shakespeare's words into movement.

James understands Shakespeare better than most.  In A Romeo and Juliet for our Times 7 Nov 2016 I described his Romeo a Juliet as James and Doughty's best work yet which shows how a small company of young dancers with modest resources can stage a full-length ballet brilliantly. Other plays that have inspired James are The Tempest, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet which I should very much like to see.

Unlike Ashton, who focuses on the quarrel between Titania and Oberon and their reconciliation, James follows the play faithfully. That could not have been easy because the plot is complex. In addition to the quarrel there is the love affair between Hermia and Lysander and Helena's pursuit of Demetrius, Puck's mischief making, Titania's infatuation with Bottom, the mechanicals' performance of Pyramus and Thisbe and the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta. James's solution is to divide the ballet into three parts. The first part embraces everything except the merchanicals' play and Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. The second part is that play.  The third is a Petipa style pas de deux with Hippolyta in a classical tutu. It may sound bitty when described in words on a page but, in fact, it works very well indeed.

One day Ballet Cymru may have principals, soloists, coryphées and a corps but at present it has twelve young, very able and very ambitious young dancers. All of them had important roles in the ballet that reflected their personalities as well as their respective technical skills. Each and every one of them performed his or her role brilliantly.

Oberon and Titania were performed by Adreamaria Battagia and Gwenllian Davies who had impressed me so much in Romeo a Juliet.  They do comedy as well as they do tragedy. They also doubled as Theseus and Hippolyta. For me, the pas de deux at the end was the high point of the show. Casting Miguel Fernandes was inspired. He is a talented character dancer as well as a splendid virtuoso. Anna Pujol was a delightful Hermia and Robbie Moorcroft a gallant Lysander but it was as Bottom where Moorcroft's brilliance shone through. The company's latest recruits, Miles Carrott and Beth Meadway, were each given two demanding roles which they performed magnificently. Medway touched our hearts as poor spurned Helena and our funny bones as Snug. Carrott excelled as Demetrius and Quince. Natalie Debono was a spirited Peasebottom. Ann Wall, who doubled as fairy and mechanical, was a hilarious man in the moon complete with lamp and dog.

The music for most of the ballet was Mendelssohn which James tells us in the programme is a delight to dance.  No wonder as the score has so many familiar tunes. For Pyramus and Thisbe, however, the dancers provided their own music on tin whistles and kazoo which virtually spoke the words of the play. I was amused by Pyramus's death throes and the Death March that the motley band managed to conjure from their assorted instruments.

As a small touring company Ballet Cymru has to travel light so it relies on projections to create scenery and atmosphere. Chris Illingworth's designs were inspired.  So, too, were Yvonne Greenleaf's costumes. The simple body hugging costumes for the fairies with their fluffy, white wigs worked well. So, too, did the mechanicals' working clothes and, of course, Bottom's ears.

The company will perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Waterside Arts Centre in Sale on Saturday. A tip to all my classmates at KNT - if you are free on Saturday afternoon or evening. try to get down there.  After Sale the show moves on to Bangor on the 15 June followed by Tewkesbury, Poole, Taunton, Stvenage, Hereford, Basingstoke, Ayr, Porthcawl, Newbury and Lichfield.

Hampson! A Postcript

I am very glad I attended Christopher Hampson's conversation with Gerald Dowler at the London Ballet Circle last night.

It was a very good meeting. I learned a lot about choreography and running a major national company with a great heritage and I also enjoyed some interesting anecdotes. Dowler is a good interviewer. One of his techniques (which I shall try to remember next time I chair a meeting) is to pause at various stages to invite questions and comments from the floor. It prompted an interesting discussion.

Although I try not to have favourites Scottish Ballet has a very special place in my affections. I have followed it since the 1960s. I was acquainted with its founder Peter Darrell and several of his dancers. I remember ferrying several of them to their lodgings in my old Ford Popular and giving others a tour of St Andrews. It is good to know that this very special and very precious company is in such good hands.

Yesterday's visit was my first to the Circle since David Nixon's talk last year. It was good to exchange greetings with Susan Dalgetty Ezra and other members of the Circle. It was a very long day. I had to leave home at 14:20 to catch the 16:21 train from Donny and I did not return until just before 02:00 this morning but the talk was well worth the effort.

Hampson!

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Whenever the London Ballet Circle has a special guest such as Li-Cunxin or a special event such as the Circle's 70th anniversary celebrations last year, the Dancing Times's Gerald Dowler is asked to play a special role. Dowler has a profound knowledge of the ballet and a pleasant interviewing style that can coax the best from a guest. Dowler's services have been called upon tonight as he will interview Christopher Hampson, Scottish Ballet's artistic director and chief executive.

Hampson is a Mancunian like me and he is one of the artists I most admire in the performing arts. His work is also admired by my readers because my reviews of Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Storyville and other works attract a lot of page hits. In February of this year, I actually met him in Newcastle and seized the opportunity to tell him how much I admired his work.

For those who would like to learn a little more about Hampson, the London Ballet Circle has published this potted biography on its website:

"Christopher joined Scottish Ballet as Artistic Director in August 2012 and was appointed Artistic Director / Chief Executive of Scottish Ballet in 2015. Christopher trained at the Royal Ballet Schools. His choreographic work began there and continued at English National Ballet (ENB), where he danced until 1999 and for whom he subsequently created numerous award-winning works, including Double Concerto, Perpetuum Mobile, Country Garden, Concerto Grosso and The Nutcracker. Christopher’s Romeo and Juliet, created for the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB), was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award (Best New Production 2005) and his production of Giselle for the National Theatre in Prague has been performed every year since its premiere in 2004. Christopher created Sinfonietta Giocosa for the Atlanta Ballet (USA) in 2006 and after a New York tour it received its UK premiere with ENB in 2007. He created Cinderella for RNZB in 2007, which was subsequently hailed as Best New Production by the New Zealand Herald and televised by TVNZ in 2009. His work has toured Australia, China, the USA and throughout Europe. Other commissions include, Dear Norman (Royal Ballet, 2009); Sextet (Ballet Black/ROH2, 2010); Silhouette (RNZB, 2010), Rite of Spring (Atlanta Ballet, 2011), Storyville (Ballet Black/ROH2, 2012) nominated for a National Dance Award 2012, and Hansel and Gretel (Scottish Ballet 2013). Christopher is co-founder of the International Ballet Masterclasses in Prague and has been a guest teacher for English National Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures and the Genée International Ballet Competition. Christopher’s work now forms part of the Solo Seal Award for the Royal Academy of Dance. Christopher most recently gave a talk on ‘Creative Thinking’ for TEDx Glasgow and developed and led the inaugural Young Rural Retreat for Aspiring Leaders, in association with Dance East last summer."

Even though I really do not have the time to swan off to London today I shall be on the 16:40 from Donny to London and the 22:57 back. I am traipsing down to the Smoke tonight mainly out of respect for Hampson but also partly out of love for Scottish Ballet which I followed even before they became Scottish and also partly as a minor act of defiance to those religious fanatics who have wrought so much harm to my native city and national capital.

Scottish Ballet is making one of its rare and highly valued visits south of the Tweed and Solway this week. Between Wednesday and Saturday, it will dance Emergence and MC 14/22 (ceci est mon corps) at Sadler's Wells. I will be there on Saturday evening.

If you are free tonight, the interview takes place between 19:30 and 20:30 tonight on the 1st floor of the Civil Service Club at 13 - 15 Great Scotland Yard, London SW1A 2HJ. The Club is next to the Nigerian embassy and on several bus routes. The nearest Underground stations are Charing Cross and Embankment.

A Phial of the Antidote

Photo Mattia Giannuzz
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I had intended to write about the brilliant Southbank Centre's Alchemy Doncaster festival of South Asian arts that Gita and I attended at CAST in Doncaster yesterday and Friday but after last night's outrage in our capital, I am not in the mood for celebrating and I  doubt that my readers are in a celebratory mood either. However, I do intend to report on the festival soon because the arts are the antidote to the toxins of hate that have led to terrorism and all sorts of other distressing events recently.

This weekend's festival of comedy, dance, drama, gastronomy, music, photography and poetry from British artists of South Asian heritage and artists of the South Asian diaspora living here contains a phial of the antidote.  Cakes, a brilliant monologue by Bilal Zafar, in which he gently took the mickey out of folks who have a problem with Muslims with his tweets about a fictitious Muslim only cake shop in Bristol is just one example. Whether intended or not, Cakes reminds me of Sir Toby's riposte to Malvolio:

"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

Bilal has posted a video of his monologue to YouTube which I think you will enjoy.

Gita and I will review Bring on the Bollywood with its brilliant dancing as well as many of the other performances this week but today our thoughts are with the victims of last night's appalling violence and their friends and relations.

Bollywood Beginner

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Yesterday I had my first lesson in Bollywood dance. As part of the Southbank Alchemy, the largest UK festival of South Asian culture, members of the cast of Bring on the Bollywood offered a dance workshop to those with tickets for their show at the CAST in Doncaster.  That is the company featured in the video above.

Now I have to confess that I do not know a lot about Indian dance or popular culture. I don't speak any Indian languages beyond a few words of Urdu that my mother had taught me. She picked them up from her father who had lived in Lahore. He was the last of several generations of my mother's family who had spent their lives in the Sub-Continent some in the armed forces and others in the civil service.

Everyone in my mother's family, whether they had spent any time in the Sub-Continent or not, had an enormous affection for the region and a very high regard for its people. My mother and her sisters always wanted to return and, in particular, to see my grandfather's house in Lahore which was next to the Roman Catholic cathedral. Something I managed to accomplish in 1992, a few months after my mother's death while my aunts were still alive, on my one and only trip to Pakistan.  I have inherited that affection and regard and while my knowledge of the culture of the Sub-Continent remains superficial, I take every opportunity I get to learn a little bit more.

Before attending the workshop I had seen one Bollywood film in an Indian cinema in Southall and a couple more on video at the Washington home of my best friend from St Andrews who was then working for the World Bank. I had attended the Bollywood Icons: 100 Years of Indian Cinema (8 March – 16 June 2013) at the National Media Museum (as it was then) in Bradford.  I had also read Irna Qureshi's Bollywood in Britain blog. That was just about it.

I attended the workshop with  a friend of Indian heritage who knows a lot about Indian dance in general and Bollywood, in particular, having danced in a Bollywood musical at the West Yorkshire Playhouse a few years ago. The workshop was due to start at 14:00. It was to take place in a dance studio on the first floor of the theatre.  I collected my friend from her home in Bradford just after 12. Normally that have been would be more than enough time to reach Donny but there was an incident on the A1 which delayed us by over half an hour. As a result, we arrived at the CAST theatre after the workshop had started.

We, therefore, missed the warm-up and introductions but not a lot of the choreography. Nisha Aaliya showed us the steps and arm movements that the rest of the class had been taught and we were able to catch up quite well. The routine that we learned was the second number in the show.  It started with the dancers in the wings. After a few bars, we danced on stage using the steps that Nisha had taught us. We then faced the audience with our hands in what I believe to be the namaste position. We raised our hands above our heads. More dancing to the left and right, then a clockwise turn and an anticlockwise turn, we exchanged something like a high five with the person next to us with different hands several times, we danced around each other, we drew an imaginary bow and arrow several times, assembled ourselves into a line in height order with our arms at different angles and then broke from the line assuming a pose of our choice.

Not knowing how to dress for a workshop I turned up as I would for ballet in a leotard, tights and ballet shoes.

"You're showing me up" hissed my friend, "this is Bollywood, not La Bayadere" 

Well, it is true that I was the only one dressed like that but nobody had told me about a dress code. Moreover, the plot of the show that we saw in the evening had several things in common with Petipa's ballet including a compulsory marriage, a scene in the mountains and a snake of a woman who nearly destroyed the heroine.

The workshop passed very quickly and I had a whale of a time. It was a friendly class that included children who seemed to know quite a lot about this style of dance as well as adults. I was the most overweight, woefully unfit and least coordinated member of the class but even I was able to keep up. If I had more time, I would certainly look out for a regular Bollywood class. Alas, I struggle to find time even for ballet.

The class was an opportunity to see a bit of the theatre than few members of the public ever see.  The studio had a wall mirror and barre and a beautifully sprung floor. The dancers at Northern Ballet, Ballet Black and the National Dance Company of Malta must know that studio. I can see why so many fine dance companies include Doncaster in their itineraries.

Ballet Cymru's Shadow Aspect

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As a sign of increasing confidence of its special place in British Ballet following its Sleeping Beauty Moment at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff before Christmas and its triumphant launch of The Light Princess in Newport last month, Ballet Cymru has announced that it will stage Shadow Aspect a new evening-length work by Tim Podesta starring the Royal Ballet's guest artist Mara Galeazzi at the Riverfront Theatre in Newport on 3 and 4 Nov and at Sadler's Wells on 5 Nov.

According to the Riverfront's website

"Shadow Aspect refers to an unconscious aspect of the personality that the conscious mind does not identify in itself. In short, the shadow is the dark side.

'To know yourself, you must accept your dark side. To deal with others' dark sides, you must also know your darkside.' Carl Jung"

The Royal Ballet's website adds:

"Galeazzi was born in Brescia and from the age of ten trained at the school of La Scala, Milan. She was awarded a Cavaliere del Lavoro medal in 2009 and the Positano Prize in 2008. Signature roles with The Royal Ballet included Juliet, Anastasia, Tatiana (Onegin), the Firebird, Giselle and Mary Vetsera (Mayerling), the role in which she made her farewell appearance as a Principal. Since retiring she has returned to The Royal Ballet to create the role of Mother (Ludovic Ondiviela’s Cassandra) and to collaborate in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works. Further dance work since leaving the Company includes founding the dance group M&T in Motion with Australian choreographer Tim Podesta. In 2016 she created her first piece of choreography, Remembrance, performed with Covent Garden Dance Company in Hatch House, Wiltshire."

Galeazzi is one of the great ballerinas of our age and I am looking forward to seeing her interaction with the brilliant young artists of Ballet Cymru.

Ticket prices in Newport to see a star of this calibre are unbelievable:  Red seats - £14.50, concessions £12.50, dance schools £10.50, Yellow seats - £12.50, concessions - £10.50, dance schools £9. These are Eastern Europe - no Cuban - prices, people, in a leading British theatre in the second largest city of Wales. To bag your ticket before the Bristolians, Londoners and your neighbours at the Syddfa Batent cotton on click this link today. You won't get in to see anything like this at these prices in Llundain I'll be bound.