I am delighted to announce that Rachel Hickey of the Czech National Ballet has agreed to give Powerhouse Ballet a masterclass from 14:00 to 16:00 on Sunday, 20 July 2025, at KNT Danceworks. Many thanks to Emily Joy Smith for introducing us to Rachel and to Karen Lester Sant for hosting us at KNT. I shall post the registration card on the Powerhouse Ballet website shortly. Tickets will be allocated strictly first come first served.
Readers can see from Rachel's web page on the National Ballet's website that she was born in Manchester, trained at Elmhurst, and danced first for the Olomouc Ballet before joining the Czech National Ballet in 2022. In Olomouc, she danced Myrthe in Giselle and Gamzatti in La Bayadère. Shehasgreatly extended her repertoire with the National Ballet.
Rachel's company was founded in 1883, nearly 50 years before the Vic-Wells Ballet, which later became the Royal Ballet. According to Wikipedia, the National Ballet was the first company to perform Swan Lake outside Russia, and Tchaikovsky attended the first night (per Pask, Edward H. (1982). Ballet in Australia: the second act, 1940-1980. Oxford University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978019554293). The "About" page states that the company consists of 75 dancers from 19 countries. Its current artistic director is Filip Barankiewicz.
The National Ballet shares the National Theatre in Prague with the Czech National Opera and the Czech National Theatre Company. It promises a very diverse and interesting new season with a programme that includes works by Van Manen and MacMillan. I am not sure whether they have any plans to visit the United Kingdom in the near future but there are plenty of budget airlines that fly to Prague.
The Birmingham Royal Ballet's website and programmes used to state: "Huddersfield is not as famous in the world of classical dance as St Petersburg, Paris or London, but it was the birthplace of David Bintley - one of the most consistent and significant forces in British ballet." After attending Deborah Weiss's online interview of Andrew McNicol for the London Ballet Circle on 7 May 2025, I looked up the McNicol Ballet Collective and found that it was based in Huddersfield. IMHO the Collective counts as another significant contribution from Huddersfield to the world of classical dance.
Andrew McNicol is a freelance British choreographer and Artistic Associate at English National Ballet School. He has created work for companies and ballet schools around the world, including the Royal Ballet, Northern Ballet, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the Joffrey Ballet, the Tulsa Ballet, the Royal Ballet School and the English National Ballet School. He founded the McNicol Ballet Collective in 2021.
The McNicol Ballet Collective describes itself as "a creation-based ensemble of extraordinary artists at the peak of their creative powers, alongside emerging talent primed to showcase their brilliance and artistry." They create works for the stage and screen and have launched a learning programme called "Compositions and Configurations."
I discovered that the Collective has a mailing list, so I subscribed to it. Yesterday, I received my first newsletter. It started with a note of thanks from McNicol to those who had attended the Collective's shows, made donations or engaged with it on social media. Since its formation, the Collective had presented 4 ballets to critical acclaim, premiered a new ballet called Liquid Life and commissioned a new score from Jeremy Birchall. There is also a link to the Collective's Insight Eventwith the Royal Academy of Dance.
For those who want to learn more about McNicol and his project, I recommend Trevor Rothwell's write-up of Deborah Weiss's interview on the London Ballet Circle website and the Insight Event video. Apart from asking McNicol why he chose Huddersfield as his base during that interview, my only contact with him was at the Tell Tale Steps Choreographic Laboratory 10 years ago. I remember struggling to get a word in edgeways at the panel discussion. I welcome McNicol's initiative in setting up the Collective and I will do my best to support it.
Northern Ballet will perform Christopher Gable's Romeo and Juliet at Leeds Playhouse between 18 and 21 Jun 2025. In my article on the Royal Ballet's rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet, I wrote that I had never seen a better Romeo than Gable though others have come close (see Attending My First Friends' Rehearsal31 May 2025). As I also wrote in A Christmas Carol - A Reflection of a Golden Ageon 19 Jan 2025, it was Gable who led me to Northern Ballet Theatre nearly 40 years ago when I saw him in A Simple Man. When he became the Artistic Director of Northern Ballet, Gable directed and devised a production of Romeo and Juliet for Northern Ballet in 1992. As Federico Bonelli acknowledged in his interview with Dominique Larose, that production is special to Northern Ballet and its audiences.
I last saw that production in Sheffield in 2024 and I reviewed it in Moriconi and Gable's Romeo and Julieton 5 Apr 2024. As regards the title of my review, I should explain that Massimo Moriconi was the choreographer whom Gable appointed to create his Romeo and Juliet. There is one important difference between the show that I reviewed and next week's performances in Leeds. The music for next week's shows will be recorded. According to Northern Ballet's website, the recording was made by the Orchestra of the Slovak National Theatre led by Mario Kosik which is probably the next best thing to live music. Everything else seems to be the same.
In his interview with Larose, Bonelli referred to the many other versions of Romeo and Juliet that he had danced. One of the versions with which he may well be familiar is Rudi van Dantzig's for the Dutch National Ballet, as he danced for that company before coming to the Royal Ballet. I have not yet seen that production, but van Dantzig's choreography with designs by Toer van Schayk and an orchestra conducted by Koen Kessels is likely to be exceptional. Romeo and Juliet will be performed at the Music Theatre (aka the Stopera) from 14 Oct to 11 Nov 2025. It is perfectly possible to fly to Amsterdam, watch a matinee and return the same day.
While I am delighted to see Gable and Moriconi's Romeo and Juliet again, Northern Ballet also has a version by Jean-Christophe Maillotwhich I hope they will continue to perform. As I said in one of my reviews of that work, it is different but in a good way.
Ballet Cymru is touring the United Kingdom with a new production of Giselle. It opened in Newport on 16 May 2025, and the company will bring it to Bangor on 13 Jun and Mold on 8 Jul 2025. The opening night was reviewed by Molly Stubbs for The Nation (see Dance Review: Ballet Cymru's Giselle, 20 May 2025).
If I am not mistaken, this is Ballet Cymru's third version of the ballet. They had one in the early days of the company when they were known as Ballet Gwent. They created a new version with a score by Catrin Finch in 2021. It opened in Lichfield and I reviewed it in Giselle Reimagined 9 Jul 2021). I also saw it in Leeds and Newport.
In their latest version, they appear to have reverted to Adam's score, banished the zombies and restored to the stage Myrthe and her wilis resplendent in their romantic tutus. While I liked Darius James and Amy Doughty's reimagining much more than I enjoyed Aktam Khan's, I do not like change for change's sake. If the live performance is anything like the trailer, we are in for a treat. I shall be in the Bryn Terfel auditorium on Friday and my write-up will appear soon afterwards.
Ockham's Razor TessHome, Manchester 7 Jun 2025, 19:30
Last night, I finally got to see Tess. I was supposed to see it at the Leeds Playhouse on 31 May 2025, but the show was cancelled at the last minute owing to staff illness. I was sorry to learn of that illness and hope that the person(s) affected made a full recovery. I managed to get a ticket for a performance at the Home, a new arts complex just off Whitworth Street in Manchester. It was my first opportunity to visit that venue, and I liked that arts complex a lot.
Ockham's Razor, the company that stages Tess, introduced themselves as "a contemporary circus company" on the home page of their website. They describe Tess as weaving "together acrobatics, aerial, physical theatre, spoken word and an inventive, evocative set to conjure Hardy’s world." I agree with that. The was a lot of dance but it was not a ballet. There was a spoken narrative, but it was not a play. There were also a lot of acrobatics, precarious balancing on planks of wood and feats of amazing strength. At one point, a single performer bore the weight of three others on her shoulders. The women seemed as strong as the men, lifting the men as easily as the men had lifted them. The performers shaped their bodies into all sorts of forms, even resembling a horse and cart at one point.
Although contemporary circus has much in common with dance and drama, it is best considered as an art form in its own right. I have seen only one other performance which I can compare with Tess. That was Citrus Arts' Savage Hart in the grounds of Oakwell Hall in Birstall, which I reviewed in Citrus Arts' Savage Hart on 23 July 2017. Although contemporary circus is a separate art form, it tells a story through dance, mime and movement just like ballet. Indeed, one of the performers in Savage Hart was Krystal Lowe who had been a dancer with Ballet Cymru. In fact, Darius James and Amy Doughty of Ballet Cymru have collaborated with Citrus Arts and incorporated circus into their productions of Cinderella and The Light Princess.
Tess followed Hardy's novel pretty faithfully. For those who have not read it, a digital copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg's site. There is also a good summary in Wikipedia. The phases of Tess's life in the novel - "The Maiden", "Maiden No More", "The Rally" et cetera - were flashed onto the backdrop together with the occasional quotation. Planks of wood were arranged to create scenes such as the dairy in "The Rally" and Stonehenge and, chillingly, the gallows of Wintoncester gaol in "Fulfilment".
Telling a story which once appeared in a 3-volume novel with 7 performers must have been a challenge for the directors, Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney and the producers, Alison King and Carina Simões. The role of Tess was divided between the narrator, Lila Naruse, and Anna Critchlow, who danced, mimed and otherwise represented Tess on stage. There were powerful performances by Joshua Fraser as Alec D'Urberville (Tess's seducer) and Nat Whittingham as Angel (her husband). Lauren Jamieson, Victoria Skillen and Leah Wallings played several parts in the show. They raised a laugh from the audience with their plaintive sigh to attract Angel Clare's attention. One of the strengths of the show was its score, an amalgam of several musical genres by composer and sound designer Holly Khan. Choreographer Nathan Johnston interpreted that music imaginatively and spectacularly. Another strength was Tina Bicât's designs combined with Aideen Malone's lighting and Daniel Denton's projections.
The audience rewarded the performers with a standing ovation. I have noticed recently that Mancunian audiences are increasingly inclined to rise to their feet for just about anything, but on this occasion, I think it was justified. For many, it would have been their first experience of contemporary circus, and there were plenty of spectacular acrobatics and aerial displays to impress them.
Finally, I should say a word about Ockham or Occam's Razor, from which the company that staged Tess appears to take its name. It is a logical concept with applications in mathematics, natural science and philosophy. The way it was taught to me is that the best way to solve a problem is to reduce it to the minimum number of variables. It is attributed to the 14th-century English friar, William of Ockham. For the sake of completeness, Ockham is a village in Surrey. There is a good introduction to the concept on The New Scientist's website by Chris Sims.
The latest issue of that newsletter announces some fascinating workshops, including in particular A Journey into Afro-Brazilian Artson Sunday, 15 Jun 2025 between 10:00 and 19:00, the “Alafia” 2025 Afro Cuban Dance Festivalbetween 10:00 on Friday, 11 Jul 2025 and 17:00 on Sunday, 13 July 2025 and Tango Purobetween 10:00 on Saturday 9 Aug 2025 and 17:00 on Sunday 10 Aug 2025. The fee for the last course has been reduced from £120 to £90. There are also lots of classes from floor barre at 11:00 today to pointe work at 13:15 on 28 Jun.
The Acosta Dance Centre differs from other studios in that it is linked to the Acosta Danza company, the Acosta Dance Foundation and the Academy in Cuba. It seems to have a dual mission to promote dance at all levels in Cuba as well as the UK.
The Centre is very close to Woolwich Elizabeth line station and a short walk from Woolwich railway and Docklands Light Railway station.
On 27 Oct 2025, the city of Amsterdam will celebrate the 750th anniversary of its foundation. Just now, it is in the middle of a year-long festival called "Amsterdam 750" which started on 27 Oct 2024. As part of the festival, the Dutch National Ballet is presenting a programme of dance called "Heel Amsterdam Danst" which ranges from free performances in the city's districts to a spectacular finale in the Music Theatre.
The performance in the Music Theatre is called "Let Amsterdam Dance". According to the Dutch National Ballet's website:
"From each of Amsterdam’s eight districts, a group of residents—of all ages and backgrounds, with or without dance experience—will learn a section of In C, a ballet by Sasha Waltz that blends improvisation with choreography. Each group will first present its own unique performance at a festive (and free!) event in their district. Then, on 15 June, all groups will unite for one spectacular final performance on the stage of Dutch National Opera & Ballet."
One of the company's works is In C, and it is easier for them than me to explain the piece in their own words in the YouTube video »In C« by Sasha Waltz & Guests - about the project. There is more information in The Cosmos of »In C«on the company's website. The Dutch National Ballet adds:
"Sasha Waltz’s In C consists of 53 choreographic ‘figures’ and gives the dancers both the freedom and the responsibility to experiment with them. All dancers start at figure 1 and end at figure 53, but they may repeat any phrase as often as they like, as long as they don’t drift more than a few phrases apart from each other. Waltz: “As a result, every performance is different, and each dancer is also a choreographer at the same time.”
The score was composed by the US composer Terry Riley. Wikipedia describes it as "one of the most successful works by an American composer and a seminal example of minimalism." When one considers the sheer number of distinguished American composers from Bernstein to Copland, that is saying something. Designs are by Jasmin Lepore. Of course, the choreography is by Sasha Waltz.
I have spent many pleasant days in Amsterdam, mostly at the Music Theatre but also at its other auditoriums, museums, historic buildings and restaurants. I wish all its residents, and in particular the National Ballet a happy 750th anniversary.
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