"Dutch National Ballet has announced the following promotions for the 2016-17 season: Jared Wright - 2nd soloist; Michaela DePrince - grand sujet; Matthew Pawlicki - grand sujet; Floor Eimers - coryphée; Krista Ettlinger - coryphée; Sem Sjouke - coryphée; Jessica Xuan - coryphée; Martin ten Kortenaar - coryphée; Oscar Valdes - coryphée; Riho Sakamoto, Yuanyuan Zhang and Cristiano Principato to corps de ballet. From the Junior Company to the main Company: Emilie G. Tassinari, Clara Superfine, Thomas Van Damme, Daniel Robert Silva, Joseph Massarelli and Giovanni Princic become élèves."
"I had come to Amsterdam to see Michaela DePrince about whom I have written a lot. She appeared as Diana in Diana & Actaeon a ballet originally choreographed by Agrippina Vaganova for the Kirov in 1935. Soviet ballet was athletic and spectacular requiring enormous virtuosity. I had seen something of DePrince's virtuosity in her YouTube videos but she is even more impressive in real life. She is quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while."
Last year she gave a masterclass at Danceworks and Lesley Osman sent me some lovely photos and a first hand account from Ciara Sturrock who took part (see Michaela's Masterclass8 July 2015). She is coming back to Danceworks on 18 July 2016 (see Another Masterclass2 May 2016). Last year at the opening gala I bumped into DePrince as I was leaving the Stopera. As I said in The best evening I have ever spent at the ballet12 Sept 2015, "I left the Stopera thinking how that exceptionally talented young dancer was as gracious off stage as she is magnificent upon it." The photo above shows DePrince in Dawson's A Million Kisses to my Skin. Instead of a million kisses I send Michaela DePrince a million congratulations.
Last June I returned to Amsterdam to see Cool Britannia which included yet another of Dawson's works, Empire Noire (see Going Dutch29 June 2015). DePrince was dancing in that work but so too was another outstanding young dancer, Floor Elmers. I was most impressed by her performance and have been following her career ever since. A million congratulations to Floor as well.
This year on my birthday I saw Clara Superfine, Thomas Van Damme, Daniel Robert Silva, Joseph Massarelli and Giovanni Princic in Ballet Bubbles16 Feb 2016. It was the best birthday treat ever. I thank them profusely and wish each and every one of them every success in their careers.
Finally, I congratulate all those artists listed above whom I have not mentioned. Each and every one of them deserves an enormous bouquet of flowers.
English National Ballet, Swan Lake, Royal Albert Hall, 12 June 2016 Watching ballet in the Royal Albert Hall is quite a different experience from watching it on a proscenium stage. Even though the performance space is so much larger it is in many ways more intimate. I think that may be because the audience surrounds the dancers who often down the aisles between them to enter the stage. Swan Lake is particularly well suited for arena performances because much of the action takes place around a lake which is by definition a space enclosed by land.
The scale of the production is staggering. According to the programme there were 120 dancers of whom 60 were swans. There were also 80 musicians in the orchestra. Many of the dances doubled in size. There were 8 cygnets and not just 4. The pas de six became a pas de douze. There were 8 princesses, 8 Spanish dancers and 8 Hungarians.
The reason for the scaling up was that those dances would have been lost to at least half the audience had they been performed with the usual numbers in the traditional way. However, there are some roles that cannot be scaled up. Clearly you can't have 2 Siegfrieds, 2 Odette-Odiles (except for Odette's 'don't be such a blithering idiot' bits of the black act which I shall mention later) or indeed 2 Rothbarts. For those roles the company needs to deploy dancers of exceptional versatility who are thrilling to watch and capable of filling the massive space single handed. All the dancers I saw yesterday met that requirement.
The key to the success of this ballet - unless you rewrite the story as Sir Matthew Bourne and David Nixon have done (see Wikipedia Swan Lake (Bourne) synopsis and Swan Lake Storyon the Northern Ballet website) - is a strong Odette-Odile. She must be ethereal, delicate and almost fragile in the second and fourth acts and an only two human vamp in the third. Now what I perceive to be the difficulty for the ballerina - and it may well be that I am quite wrong about that - is that human personality leans towards one or the other and if you lean one way it is not easy to project the other.
One ballerina who can pull it off is Erina Takahashi. I saw her dance Odette-Odile at the Palace in Manchester on the 9 Oct 2014 (see What Manchester does today10 Oct 2014). Here is what I wrote about her then:
"Yesterday was the first time I had seen her (or at any rate the first time I had noticed her) and she impressed me considerably. She was a very convincing Odette in the prologue and second act - so delicate and feminine - and I couldn't imagine her as Odette but the lady is tough as well as beautiful and she is also an accomplished actor. She danced the seduction scene even more brilliantly than she had danced Odette."
I had forgotten that I had written those words for this is what I tweeted at 15:59 yesterday
Thoroughly looking forward to seeing @ErinaTakahashi_ in the Black Act. Can she do seductress.as well as the Swan Queen? Test of a ballerina
I have never really believed that Siegfried could have been taken in by Odile's appearance because she moves and behaves so differently from Odette. I think he was so dazzled by Odile, and in particular by her 32 fouettés, that he temporarily forgot about Odette even when she fluttered in to warn him not to be such a blithering idiot. Had it been mistaken identity the spell could have been undone but as Siegfried's promise was intended it could not. At least not unless he jumped in the lake or fought Rothbart or something.
My view of Siegfried - any Siegfried - has recently been revised by David Dawson (see Empire Blanche: Dawson's Swan Lake4 June 2016). Siegfried is a blundering adolescent. Yes he really is impressed by silly things like cross bows. He falls in love with visions. He makes promises he cannot keep. Yet he cannot be ignored for he is heir to the throne. However, great virtuosity is required of him. He must thrill us in the third Act with his leaps and his turns in the air. One of the most thrilling dancers in English National Ballet who filled that bill exactly was Yonah Acosta.
The third major player in the story is Rothbart. He must also thrill and also chill even though he has no great solo. However, he does have a cape to wave or rather wings to flap and his appearances were heralded by flashing lights across the auditorium and the antics of his skull headed acrobatic acolytes. Yesterday his role was performed by Fabian Remair whom I had last seen as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (see Manchester's Favourite Ballet Company 28 Nov 2015). He had impressed me then and he did so again yesterday. A first soloist with the company he is clearly a name to watch.
There were fine performances also by Michael Coleman as Siegried's tutor and the master of ceremonies, Jane Haworth as Siegfried's mum (or the queen) and Shiori Kase and Vitor Menezes. Everybody in the cast did well. Although she did not dance a solo role on this occasion I am always delighted to glimpse Sarah Kundi, one of my favourite dancers, in any role. She was in the Spanish dance and I gave her an especially loud clap as she passed my box at the end of her piece.
This year the swans included Natasha Watson and the guests at Siegfried's party Andrew McFarlane who trained at Ballet West (see A Cause for Double Celebration at the Robin's Nest9 Feb 2016). I could not recognize Andrew but I do know Natasha and I uttered a little "brava" for her at the end of the show. I am so proud of her and also of Andrew. Natasha is a Genée medallist and was the only British finalist in Lausanne in 2015. She is on a trajectory to the top and I wish her all the best.
I should say a word about the expanded orchestra. They played well. Indeed rarely have I heard the English National Ballet Philharmonic play better. I had expected Gavin Sutherland to cinduct them but instead Helena Bayo appeared. It was the first time I had seen her but I hope it will not be the last. Often my eyes turned to her from the stage for her body was expressing the music too just as beautifully as any of the dancers. She directed the musicians with passion but also with sensitivity. The result was a most delightful rendering of one of my favourite ballet scores.
Some things have to be done differently in the round. A real live dancer who is obviously not Takahashi has to represent Odette during the seduction scene. The ballerina could not lead the admirable Helena Bayo onto the stage. All that could be done was a reverence by the lead dancers and a kiss from the conductor blown back to them. There were also monitors around the auditorium with the camera fixed on the conductor. I surmise that was for the benefit of the dancers.
Although I enjoyed yesterday's performance tremendously I do have reservations. It is spectacular but at times I felt the emphasis was on the spectacle - the flashing lights, the acrobatics, the costumes and the sheer numbers on the stage - rather than on the dancing. It is obviously more expensive to stage than a proscenium show because the ticket prices were high even for London. However there were plenty of people able and willing to pay the price for the Albert Hall was packed to the gunnels. In The Arena Phenomenon in the programme noted that the novelty and appeal of ballet in the round attracts audiences who do not regularly attend conventional performances. The absence of a ripple of applause when the principals appeared or at turn 28 of Odile's fouettés, someone from my box shouting out "He's behind you" when Rothbart took his curtain call to mixed cheers and boos, the middle age man in the box next to mine sticking his fingers in his mouth and whistling his appreciation at the end of Act III and the eyes of so many on the synopsis page of the programmes suggested that was indeed the case. Nothing wrong with that of course if ballet in the round inspires a love of ballet generally, but it is an indulgence which, like chocolate, should be savoured only sparingly.
One of my very first and most popular posts was about the Kenyan dance teacher, Mike Wamaya, who gave ballet classes to kids from one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Nairobi and raised their aspirations not just in dance but in everything they do (see What can be achieved by a good teacher3 March 2013). I revisited Mike's dance class in Back to Africa7 Jan 2015 and Revisiting Kenya with Obama25 July 2015).
I have now come across another remarkable teacher called Tuany Nascimento who does very similar work in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro (see Taylor Barnes How a Ballet School in the Slums of Brazil Is Changing Girls' Lives 27 April 2016 Marie Claire and Sarah Grossman Ballet Class For Girls In Rio Slum Is Free With Good Report Cards10 June 2016 Huffington Post reported by Network Dance). A film has been made of her by Nownesss entitled Dancing for the Future25 May 2016 which is also on Vimeo and she has a website called Na Punto Dos Pés or On Pointe.
Dance has made an enormous difference to my life. I took my first ballercise lesson when I was at my lowest ebb one month after losing my late spouse to motor neurone disease and just a few months after literally life changing surgery of my own during which time I had to run down my practice. Ballercise led to ballet which I took up at the grand old age of 64. My classes gave me something to which I could look forward and gradually restored my confidence and hope. The discipline for class is a discipline for life which can be applied to anything. I used it to restore my practice and rebuild my life.
I have been exceptionally privileged having been educated at the same secondary school as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the same university as the heir to the throne and one of America's greatest research universities. If dance can do so much for me imagine what it can do for Mike Wamaya's kids in Nairobi or Tuany Nascimento's in Rio.
In Dance in the Gulf10 June 2016 I noted that "a lot of money is going into the arts as states in the Gulf seek to diversify their economies and that has resulted in the construction of new auditoriums for the performing arts. " I mentioned the Royal Opera House in Muscat which has already hosted the English National Ballet and is about to stage performances by the Eifman Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.
Next door to Oman is the United Arab Emirates. The capital of the Emirates, Abu Dhabi, already has an annual arts festival which included a performance by Carlos Acosta at the Emirates Palace auditorium on 25 April 2016. In 2008 and 2009 the Bolshoi Ballet performed Swan Lake and Giselle in Abu Dhabi.
The other metropolis of the UAE is Dubai which is just about to open a new opera house in an area to be known as "the opera district". Two ballet companies will perform in its first season: The Russian State Ballet and Orchestra of Siberia which will dance Coppeliaon the 15 and 17 Sept 2016 and Giselleon the 16 and
Béjart Ballet which will dance Ballet for Lifeon 21 Oct 2016 and a gala that includes Seven Greek Dances, Piaf and Bolero on the 22.
Further up the Gulf, Bahrain has a National Theatre which staged the Eifman Ballet's Anna Karenina and Giselle with Anna Nikulina in the title role last year. Qatar has an opera house which has hosted a number of dance companies. Kuwait is constructing an opera house which should open soon.
Last year I mentioned the Harpenden Dance Summer School in There's more to Harpenden than Thameslink17 May 2015. That was a week long summer school in August run by Helen Brewer and Mary Schon. Sadly Mary Schon died last year and Helen Brewer did not wish to carry on the event without her.
However, she and her son David will be teaching at the Hertfordshire Dance Summer School which will take place at Sele School in Hertford between 22 and 28 Aug 2016.
Helen Brewer is a registered teacher for the Royal Academy of Dance and her credentials are impressive:
"Training at the Hammond school Chester, she went on to perform professionally with ‘Link Up’ Dance and Theatre Company in London. During this time she developed a strong interest in teaching dance to students with special needs. She taught visually impaired students for the Royal Opera House Education Department and led workshops for deaf children at Sadlers Wells. For many years Helen also led the Special Needs Dance Project at the Royal Academy of Dance. She currently remains responsible for dance at Weatherfield Academy in Dunstable.
As well as teaching for Stephanie Ledger, Helen has taught for 25 years at the Louise Sheaves School of dance in Harpenden, where she pioneered boys only classes and helped develop a strong Vocational level department. She was co-director of Harpenden Summer Dance School which ran from 2005 - 2015 and also mentors trainee teachers as part of the Royal Academy of Dance certificate of Ballet Studies."
She now runs the Stephanie Ledger School of Dancing in St Albans which runs an adult ballet class between 18:15 and 19:15 on Thursdays. Useful to know as I often find myself in the South mid-week.
Her son, David, dances with Ballet Theatre UK which I last saw in Rotherham on Saturday (see Pinocchio6 June 2016). He also has an impressive CV:
"David joined Ballet Theatre UK as a graduate from Tring Park and he has become an accomplished and versatile Principal Dancer. Looking back he feels one of his career highs would be the title role in BTUK’s production of A Christmas Carol. David took on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge with an actor’s eye and was able to fuse theatre and dance to great effect, a role he feels he will look back on as a great achievement in years to come.
Since 2012 he has performed in many roles for Ballet Theatre UK including Prince Siegfried (Swan Lake), Aladdin (Aladdin) and The Nutcracker (The Nutcracker). Most recently he has danced the lead roles of Kay in The Snow Queen, and Gepetto in Ballet Theatre UK's newest ballet, Pinocchio. We are delighted that David will be joining us at our summer school!"
Other teachers include Kathryn Swainton (PDTD ARAD AISTD RAD examiner teaching ballet and rep), Alison Boden (CDE, Dip. LCDD, Dip. AIST teaching ballet, modern and jazz), Damian Slade (CAT Scheme teaching contemporary) and Anna Forbes (Royal Ballet trained, ex-ENB and Phantom of the Opera).
Applications for the course can be made on-line using this form.
One of my best nights out in Leeds last year was Expressionsat the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds which I reviewed on 16 July 2015. This was 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." Gita obtained some photos which you can see at Expressions - some Pictures17 July 2015.
There will be a similar show on 22 June but this time it will be divided into a matinee and evening performance: Matinée (2pm) performance: Mind the Gap TIN Arts’ Tees Valley Inclusive Dance Company Yorkshire Dance’s Leaps & Bounds group Magpie Dance’s Highfliers group Flamingo Chicks DAZL’s Vine cheerdance group
Evening (7.30pm) performance: Dance 21 Mesh Dance’s ME2 group TIN Arts’ Tees Valley Inclusive Dance Company Yorkshire Dance’s Raised and Mind the Step groups Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Illuminate group Northern Ballet’s In Motion and Ability groups
These artists achieve a very high standard indeed as you can see from Northern Ballet's video, Introducing Ability.
Admission is free but tickets have to be booked in advance either 0113 220 8008 or through the theatre's website. The evening show is already fully booked but there are still 13 tickets for the matinee.
A lot of money is going into the arts as states in the Gulf seek to diversify their economies and that has resulted in the construction of new auditoriums for the performing arts. One of the most impressive is the Royal Opera House in Muscat where the English National Ballet performed Le Corsaire between 10 and 12 March 2016. Other companies that are scheduled to visit that venue include the Eifman Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. The Eifman Ballet will dance Anna Karenina(which Mel saw in Budapest last Monday) between 15 and 17 Dec 2016 while ABT will dance Giselleon 6 and 7 April 2017.
While there is a very well established national ballet in Egypt at the splendid Cairo Opera House where I once saw a performance of Act I of The Nutcracker I have not been able to find any professional ballet companies in the Gulf itself. I believe there was once a very good Iranian ballet but that has been forced underground and overseas (see Wikipedia Iranian National Ballet Company). I have not been able to discern a consensus among my Muslim friends as to whether ballet is compatible with Islam (any more than I have been able to detect a similar consensus among my Quaker friends whether it is compatible even with that faith), but ballet certainly seems to be taught to children in many Islamic countries and not just wealthy ones like Kuwait (see Gaza Ballet School3 Jan 2016). It would be nice to think of some of Teni Martian's pupils making a career in dance.
