This year has been Powerhouse Ballet's best ever. We gave our second and third public performances to packed houses at the Chroma Q Theatre in Leeds on 19 Nov 2022. I reviewed the show in A Celebration of Dance: Wilis and Moreon 21 Nov 2022. We held full-day workshops on The Nutcracker in March and Giselle in July. We returned to the Northwest with company classes in Bolton and Salford in September and November. We have offered training and rehearsing opportunities for four of our members with teaching skills, namely Katherine Wong, Lauren Savage, Christie Barnes and Alicia Jolley.
We are now on a roll and will build on that success immediately with a special online-only Post-Christmas company class with Beth Meadway between 14:00 and 15:30 on 28 Dec 2022. Beth is one of Ballet Cymru's lead dancers. I reviewed her performance as Helena and the Wall in Dream in Ballet Cymru at its Beston 13 Nov 2022 and in A Child's Christnas in Wales and Terms and Conditions in Ballet Cymru in Bangor - Finishing a Great Week of Balleton 19 Dec 2022. Anyone can attend Beth's class from anywhere in the world. There will be no charge. All you need is a computer with an internet connection, a leotard or other danceweaer, ballet shoes and a little bit of space at home or elsewhere. It is not every day that you get a chance to dance with an up and coming ballet star from the comfort of your home. If you want to attend, register here.
Our first class in the studio of the New Year will be given by Northern Ballet Academy's Annemarie Donoghue at Dance Studio Leeds from 13:00 to 14:30 on 28 Jan 2023. In February we hope to give our first class in Wales. Alicia Jolley who danced in Aria has kindly agreed to give that class. The date, time and venue have yet to be agreed but it will probably take place in Mold on the afternoon of Saturday, 25 Feb 2023. In response to popular demand I have asked Fiona Noonan to deliver our March class and she has accepted in principle. Her class is likely to take place on 25 March 2023 either at Dance Studio Leeds or Huddersfield University.
Karen Lester-Sant of KNT Danceworks has kindly invited Powerhouse Ballet to dance in KNT's next show in Manchester. We are looking forward to this opportunity immensely. We shall start rehearsals as soon as we know the date. We already have the piece that we presented in Leeds on 19 Nov 2022 but it is possible that we may have a new work by then. Jane Tucker who directed and choreographed the Dance of the Wilis has offered us a workshop on another scene from Giselle early in the New Year. I shall leave the choice of scene to Jane but we have discussed some of the possibilities. These include the Retour des Vendageurs in act 1 as there is a big role for the ensemble. As soon as Jane gives me a date, I shall announce the workshop on Eventbrite.
One of the objectives of Powerhouse Ballet is to provide opportunities for members to develop their skills in all aspects of theatre. We have already made use of our members' teaching skills but other members also have skills that could be useful to the company. Fiona Cheng, for instance, is a drama student at Leeds Conservatory. I have seen her act in one of the Conservatory productions and was very impressed. The betrayal scene at the end of act 1 of Giselle requires considerable dramatic skills from Giselle and the other characters Drama is not formally taught in many dance schools and perhaps it should. I have therefore invited Fiona to propose an acting workshop for us. Other possible workshops include exhibition classes in Kathak and Welsh folk dancing with its spectacular grasshopper step.
As we are a company and not a school we will never charge our dancers for attending our classes and workshops. However, we shall be introducing a Friends scheme for those who wish to support the company and participate in some of its activities but not dance in its shows. A year's subscription will be around £25 a year and it will be possible for members to switch from "Friend" to "Dancer" and vice versa within the course of the year.
As this will be one of my last posts for this year, I should like to wish all my readers a happy and prosperous New Year.
Dutch National Ballet Dawson 11 Dec2022 14:00 Music Theatre, Amsterdam
Although David Dawson is one of the United Kingdom's leading choreographers, balletgoers usually have to travel to see his work because he is Associate Artist with the Dutch National Ballet and Resident Choreographer with the Semeroper Ballett in Dresden. His surname is the name of a double bill of two of his works that the Dutch National Ballet is currently performing in Amsterdam. It consists of Legacy Variations, a new piece that the programme describes as "a love letter to the company that has been his home for 27 years" and The Four Seasons which was first performed in 2021.
"I’ve worked with them since the day each of them joined the company, and since then we’ve discovered a way of working together that’s unique. In this new ballet, we reflect on our journey together, on what we’ve learnt and where we’ve arrived.”
He describes them as unique dancers: James as "very elegant and stoic, yet sensitive in his dancing" embodying a purity which is both strong and vulnerable at the same time; Edo as having "the quicksilver qualities of mercury" that "shines so brightly and moves in the most profoundly coordinated and musical way" and Joey as having "an abundant energy that appears endless" whose dancing is "incredibly organic, earthy in tone, with a deeply felt understanding of his own strength." The music for this piece is by Alex Baranowski, the sets were designed by John Otto and the costumes by Yumiko Takeshima.
I enjoyed Legacy Variations very much indeed. It exhibits the two qualities of its creator that I most admire. His adherence to the classical tradition in which he was trained and made his career as a dancer combined with a willingness to innovate. Although I had seen several of his work before I recognized those qualities for the first time when I saw his Sawn Lake for Scottish Ballet in Liverpool (see Empire Blanc: Dawson's Swan Lake4 June 2016). This is a work that I long to see again and I would have seen its revival in 2020 had it not been for the lockdown. Legacy Variations reminded me why I am a Dawson fan. It is a very short work. For me, it was over almost as soon as it started. I could have watched it all afternoon. Having said that it must have required prodigious strength, stamina and concentration from Stout, Wijnen and Massarelli though they made it look effortless and aetherial.
TheFour Seasons is a longer work based on Max Richter’s arrangement of the well-known work by Vivaldi. This is a work for 16 dancers: Jingjing Mao, Jakob Feyferlik, Yuanyuan Zhang, Martin ten Kortenaar, Jessica Xuan, Sho Yamada, Mila Nicolussi Caviglia, Connie Vowles, Arianna Maldini, Luiza Bertho, Inés Marroquin, Conor Walmsley, Jan Spunda, Daniel Montero Real, Davi Ramos and Rémy Catalan. I have followed the careers of many of those dancers from the day they joined the Junior Company and it gives me enormous pleasure to see them in major roles. I am particularly proud of my compatriot Conor Walmley who comes from the same county as Kevin O'Hare, Xander and Demelza Parish and a less well-known but abundantly talented favourite, Beth Meadway. I was thrilled to learn that one of Powerhouse Ballet's guest ballet mistresses once taught Walmsley (and also me despite the gigantic chasm of age and talent between us).
This is another ballet that displays Dawson's classicism and innovation in abundance. The music, particularly Isabelle van Keulen's violin playing, was enchanting. Equally captivating were Eno Henze's simple geometric shapes representing the seasons - a green triangle for Spring, a red rectangle for Summer and a golden circle at the end and so on - that subtly changed position and lighting throughout the show. These were complemented by Takeshima's costume designs. Again, I could have watched it for hours. The artists were rewarded with thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
This has been an annus mirabilis with such highlights as Like Water for Chocolate and Mayerling from the Royal Ballet, the Van Manen festival from HNB and Mthuthuzeli November's Wailers for Northern, but I wrote on this blog's Facebook page that I had an inkling that Dawson would be special. I was not wrong.
I noticed a few changes in the show since 2018. A different group of children seem to have been asked about their experience and expectations of Christmas or, in the case of one child, Eid. There seem to have been a new set of projections. Also, there is an almost entirely new cast. Robbie Moorcroft, Beth Meadway and Isobel Holland are the only dancers who performed in the 2018 show. One thing that has not changed is the mellifluous voice of Cerys Matthews, The laughter in her voice as she mimics the dialogue of kids fantasizing as to how they would deal with a hippopotamus in their street never fails to induce giggles. I used to associate Dylan Thomas with Richard Burton, Now I associate him with Matthews.
Ballet Cymru paired A Child's Christmas with Terms and Conditions, new work by Marcus Jarrell Willis. Marcus is an American who spent 8 years with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. As one who makes a living from drafting and construing terms and conditions, I was bemused by the title. I could not envisage how contract terms could possibly be spun into a 40-minute ballet. The answer is that these terms and conditions are about the negotiations that humans enter when experiencing love. Several aspects of love were explored, Each topic was introduced by the projection of a typewriter typing words on a screen punctuated occasionally by a voiceover. I will have to see the piece at least one more time in order to understand it properly but it seemed to work.
Before the main show, we were treated to a performance of Snow Day by pupils of Llanllyfni Primary School who had taken part in the Duets programme. This is an initiative by the Arts Council of Wales, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and regional community dance organizations to introduce dance to schoolchildren in inner city and rural communities throughout Wales. It is important work. At the very least it should generate an informed audience for the performing arts, For a few highly talented children it may be the first step of a career in the theatre.
I have seen Ballet Cymru four times this year, They have performed in very different venues: a medieval cathedral, a university arts centre, a municipal theatre and the studios of two major dance companies. Audiences in those venues will have had different experiences of dance but there was no difference in the warmth of the reception. The company has had a good year and it can look forward to the future with confidence.
Ballet Black Say it Loud and Black Sun York Theatre Royal 11 Oct 2022 Lowry Salford 1 Dec 2022 20:00
I once attended an interview in which Cassa Pancho was asked about the early days of Ballet Black. She had created the company's first ballet but did not think that she would ever make another. Happily, that has not turned out to be the case. She and the dancers have given us Say It Loud, a glorious celebration of the company and its achievements over the last 20 years. It is the first part of a double bill that has been touring the country since March.
In her programme note, Cassa Pancho divides the work into chapters as though it were a book, The first chapter consisted of voces populorum. One that sticks in my memory is "Shouldn't all ballet should be like this". But there were more negative ones about the company's name, the ethnicity of its members and why it doesn't;t do more about knife crime. My favourite chapter was Mthuthuzeli November.'s "Welcome to London" which he danced with panache. That city may be expensive, congested, overpowering and for some even threatening but it's the company's home. There was a change of mood with Lord Kitchener's "If you're brown". But it was followed by hope: "We love ballet because ballet loves us back".
The second ballet, Gregory Maqoma's "Black Sun", was very different. Only to be expected, perhaps, because, as Ebony Thomas explained, one of the strengths of Ballet Black is that "no two ballets are the same." Black Sun was more than ballet. Indeed, it was more than theatre. It was akin to an act of worship. The climax of the piece started with drumming, followed by incantations from November and then cries, soft at first, then louder, from Isabela Coracy. It was a moving experience.
I became a fan of Ballet Black even before I saw them on stage. I was captivated by Sarah Kundi and Jade-Hale Christofiin Dépouillement. When I actually saw the company for the first time at the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham in 2013 I was enchanted. I am still under their spell nearly 10 years later. Every year Ballet Black seems to get better and better. In my estimation, this was their best season yet. I only wish I could have seen Mthuthuzeli dance Welcome to London in Stratford or the Barbican because I think the response of a London audience would have been ecstatic.
Every year that I have watched Ballet Black, Cira Robinson has been in the company. She is one of my all time favourite ballerinas. I admire her work very much. Sadly Ballet Black's season at the Lowry will have been Cira Robinson's last with the company. However, she is not leaving ballet and, even better, she is not leaving this country. She has taken up an appointment as Artistic Director of Yorkshire Ballet Seminars (see Yorkshire Ballet Seminars Facebook page 1 July 2022). I congratulate her and wish her every success.
The last time I saw Ballet Black on stage was just before the pandemic, They have recruited four very promising young dancers since then: Alexander Fedayiro, Taraja Hudson. Helga Paris-Morales and Rosanna Lindsey. I saw some of them at the Lowry and was very impressed. I wish them well.
Ballet Black will begin a new tour starting at the Barbican from 8 to 12 March 2022. It will be a double bill entitled "Ballet Black Pioneers". It will consist of Will Tuckett’s Then Or Now and MthuthuzeliNovember’s By Whatever Means. I am very much looking forward to it.
The Royal Ballet MayerlingRoyal Opera House, 29 Nov 2022 19:30
Schloß Mayerling is now a Carmelite convent. In 1889 it was a royal hunting lodge where Rudolf, the 30-year-old Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Mary Vetsera, an impressionable 17-year-old, killed themselves. Details of their deaths were suppressed for many years but the truth eventually emerged. In 1978 Sir Kenneth MacMillan created a ballet on the story to the music of Franz Liszt with designs by Nicholas Georgiadis. I saw the work in the cinema in October and on stage at the Royal Opera House on 29 Nov 2022.
While not exactly a barrel of laughs it is one of MacMillan's most frequently performed ballets. It is not hard to see why. It has exciting choreography, enchanting music, elaborate sets and lavish costumes. For many years the Royal Ballet was the only company to stage Mayerling. There are now several others in the United States, Germany and Scotland. Scottish Ballet's was based on Sir Kenneth's choreography and staged with his widow's cooperation. I missed it because I was recovering from a hip injury when it was on tour.
The performance that I saw last Tuesday evening was one of my best nights at the ballet in a lifetime of theatre-going. That was despite last-minute cast changes resulting from an injury to Steven McRae. Having seen Ryoichi Hirano on screen I had been looking forward to a very different interpretation from McRea. I also wanted to see Kristin McNally as Sissi, Anne Rose O'Sullivan as Rudolf's long-suffering wife and Bradfordian Thomas Whitehead as Colonel Bay Middleton. Having said that I was not in the least disappointed by those who took their place.
The role that MacMillan created for Prince Rudolf is pretty close to the historical character. An exceptionally privileged individual who could literally get away with murder (or at least manslaughter) but also a very trapped one. A figure readily deserving contempt but also sympathy and compassion. Hirano stimulated all those emotions in me. Contempt as he humiliated his bride in a brothel or threatened women with his pistol but compassion as he drank himself crazy minutes before he blew his brains out. The role requires outstanding virtuosity. It requires a rare talent to carry all that off but that is exactly what Hirano did.
There are four important female roles in Mayerling:
Mary, Baroness Vetsora who agreed to die with him
Mitzi who most certainly would not
Rudolf's wife, Princess Stephanie of Belgium, and
his mother, Empress Sissi.
Akane Takada brought Mary to life with her sweetness and delicacy. Perhaps more than brought her to life because the real Mary was little more than a child when she met Rudolf. Leticia Dias was a streetwise Mitzi, picking herself up and carrying on even after a police raid. Yuhui Choe danced Stephanie. Her indignation was palpable as she was dragged to a brothel. Itziar Mendizabal danced the Empress exactly as I would have imagined her,
The Hapsburgs who had ruled Austria since the 13th century were approaching their end by the late 19th century. Like contemporary Britain, they faced challenges from nationalists represented in the ballet by the 4 Hungarian officers, Luca Acri, Benjamin Ella, Joseph Sissons and David Yudes. There was more than a little sleaze as represented by the sex workers. A flawed royal family had their extra-marital support in such characters as Sisi's lover Colonel Middleton danced by Nicol Edmonds.
Dance Studio Leeds, Powerhouse Ballet, Part of Giselle 19 Nov 2022, 15:00 Chroma Q Theatre, Leeds
By some fluke, I once accomplished a chassé, pas de bourrée, pirouettes single or double and pirouettededans without everything going wrong. The delight on my teacher's countenance was a picture to behold. I saw exactly the same expression on Saturday after Powerhouse Ballet had danced the scene from act II of Giselle where Zulma and Moyna summon the wilis from their hidden forest graves to attend Myrtha.
The reason for my teacher's delight is that the cast danced very well. So well that I felt impelled to rise to my feet in standing ovation. Our teacher, Jane Tucker, had taught us the choreography during a day-long workshop in July and rehearsed us almost every weekend since. She had a cast with different levels of skill and experience and she adapted Coralli and Perrot's choreography in a way that enabled each and every one of them to shine. Christie Barnes excelled as Myrtha as did Lauren Savage and Esther Wilson as Moyna and Zulma. They were supported by a polished corps consisting of Fiona Cheng, Jayne Johnston, Helen Peacock. Sue Pritchard, Helena Tarren, Lois Watters, Anne Williams and Bo Zhang.
During our rehearsals, we discovered the talents of many of our members. Christie Barnes not only danced Myrtha but also directed several of our rehearsals including one that was effectively a second workshop at York St John University. We also discovered that she is an accomplished photographer and filmmaker as she chronicled our progress. Lauren Savage proved to be an excellent teacher leading one of our company classes and several warm-ups. We found costuming and make-up skills and lots of practical tips such as the best place to park on a busy Saturday from different members.
Those discoveries have advanced one of the objectives of Powerhouse Ballet which is to provide opportunities for members to develop their theatre skills. That is why I invited Katherine Wong to lead our company class in Bolton last October`. I have also asked Alicia Jolley to give a class in North Wales in the New Year, Holly Middleton to help rehearse future productions and drama student, Fiona Cheng, to teach us how to act.
Our 8-minute extract from Giselle was just one of many pieces performed at Dance Studio Leeds's Celebration of Dance on Saturday. The show was staged to raise funds for Martin House children's hospice in Boston Spa. At a health and safety briefing just before the show, the studio's director, Katie Geddes, announced that she had raised a very healthy profit for the charity, Readers will be happy to learn that this publication contributed to that sum as one of the show's sponsors.
Because I wanted to assist our cast in any way I could I only saw the second half of the show. However, everything that I did see was excellent. Every style of dance was on display from Egyptian folkloric bellydance to West Side Story. I enjoyed them all, particularly belly dancer Ya Habibi who entered the stalls inviting the audience to join her on stage, West Side Story and Afro Fusion's Rise 'N' Shine. Some of the pieces that I would like to have seen but couldn't because they were in the first part were Indian classical dances. Happily, at our last rehearsal, I asked the director to give us an exhibition class and some background information on the art form early in the new year.
Powerhouse Ballet hit a number of headwinds even before lockdown of which the biggest was scepticism. When Covid 19 closed the studios and theatres I wondered how we could possibly survive. Relief came from an unexpected source. Maria Chugai, a soloist of the Dutch National Ballet and the best Myrtha I have ever seen in over 60 years of balletgoing, offered us an online class in April 2020 which was a spectacular success. The success of that class encouraged me to invite other performers such as Krystal Lowe, Beth Meadway and Shannon Lilly as well as Jane Tucker, Annemarie Donoghue, Fiona Noonan and other teachers from our region to be online ballet mistresses.
Powerhouse Ballet is now on a roll. We have found a new venue at Ballet Contours near Manchester city centre where we shall hold this Saturday's company class. We welcome dancers from Hull to Hollyhead. If you can get to East Ordsall Lane by 15:00 do come and join us. We have invited Heather Boulton, the director of the studio, to give us our first company class at that venue. I visited the studio a few weeks ago and was most impressed. It is fully equipped with a well sprung floor. Above all, Heather is an excellent teacher.
Ballet Cymru DreamStanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds 19L30
Yesterday I saw Ballet Cymru's Dreamfor the third time and I think it was their best performance of that ballet yet. There were two reasons for that. The first is that the performers and audiences are more familiar with the work. They know what makes us laugh (and cry) and members of the audience who have seen it before know what to look out for. As I said in Croeso i Ŵyl Dreamon 9 July 2019:
"Shows often grow as they tour the country and I think that has happened with Dream. It was already a good show when I saw it in Mold on 29 May but it was even better yesterday."
The second reason is that the ballet was performed in a theatre in Northern Ballet and Phoenix's studios that those companies use for their own shows before an audience that knows and appreciates dance.
The Stanley and Audrey Burton's lighting and projection equipment enabled the company to make full use of James and Doughty's projection and Charles Illingworth's lighting designs. The company has always made ingenious use of those projections to create a sense of space. For example, their Romeo and Juliet is set not in 15th-century Verona but in contemporary Newport. The scene of the rumble between the Capulets and Montagues is instantly recognizable as the pedestrian walkway under the approach road to the bridge over the Usk. Well, despite the Greek music in the mechanicals' play, I felt transported not to an Athenian wood or even Warwickshire or South Wales but to New South Wales where Cobwebs or rather their makers are to be feared. The giveaway was the image of Sydney Harbour Bridge which I once walked across not to mention the gum trees and pyrotechnics in another scene. A reminder that Ballet Cymru has a strong link with Australia as well as Wales in Amy Doughty and Robbie Moorcroft.
Every dancer excelled last night and it would be wrong to single any out for special praise. It was hard not to adore Kotone Sugiyama who danced a feisty Hermia. Especially as she wiped her hands after knocking Demetrius (Jacob Hornsey) cold. Hornsey must also be commended for his performance as Bottom. Also, I loved Sanea Singh as Puck. An interesting contrast to Ballet Black's Isabela Coracey who also dances Puck in Arthur Pita's Dream within a Dream. Llongyfarchiadau calonnog to Caitlin Jones whom I think I remember from Swan Lakein Glasgow and Greenock the last full-length ballet that I saw live on stage before lockdown. She has created the role of Lysandia and made it her own. Moorcroft who dances Oberon and Helena's dad is always a pleasure to watch as is Isobel Holland his Titania. A special cheer for Beth Meadway and not just because she is one of our own. Her main character was Helena but she was also Wall and any artist who can bring to life a structure of cereal boxes has a very rare gift indeed. Her little dance at the curtain call for Pyramus and Thisbe was greeted with thunderous applause.
The company's patron, Cerys Matthews, once described Ballet Cymru as "the pride of Newport and the pride of Wales." But not just of Wales. They have performed three very different works, Child's Christmas, Giselle and now Dream in Leeds. I think it is safe to say that we have taken them to our hearts. And Yorkshire folk are not known for wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
English National Ballet Swan LakeLiverpool Empire 1 Oct 2022 19:30
On the last day of its season at the Liverpool Empire, English National Ballet cast Brooklyn Mack as Siegfried and Natasha Mair as Odette-Odile. it was the first time those artists had performed those roles with English National Ballet though Wikipedia states that Mack had danced Siegfried with the Washinton Ballet and Mair's website states that she had danced Odette-Odile in Moscow and Turkey.
It is always interesting to watch a dancer perform one of the great classical roles for the first time, particularly at the Empire whose audiences can be loud and demonstrative. I am glad to say that the crowd loved them. Several gave them a standing ovation. In the lift of the multistorey next to Lime Street station, a lady purred "Didn't you just love them" eliciting ascent and contentment.
Mack is an American. He trained at the Kirov Academy in Washington DC. He danced with Joffrey Ballet, Orlando Ballet, the Washington Ballet and American Ballet Theatre before joining English National Ballet in 2015. He is listed as a guest artist on the company's website rather than as a principal or soloist. He is exciting to watch as the early clip shows; muscular, athletic and tightly self-controlled.. He was particularly impressive in the solo part of the pas de deux of the seduction scene of the third act.
Mair is from Vienna. That is where she trained and began her career. A clue as to what may have drawn her to England is that her favourite role is Lise in Ashton's La Fille mal gardée. it is not hard to imagine her excelling in that role from her monologue in Natascha Mair: our new Principal dancer | English National Ballet. The roles of Odette and Odile are quite different and not all ballerinas can carry off both with ease. Mair is one who can. Delicate and vulnerable in the white acts and hard as nails in the black, she is as accomplished an actor as she is a dancer.
Mack and Mair danced in Derek Deane's production of Swan Lake which has been in the company's repertoire for quite some time. I have seen it several times and know it well. It has several features that I love like the prologue where Odette is turned into a swan and the Neapolitan dance which Wayne Sleep and Jennifer Penney made their own. It provides plenty of opportunities for virtuosity in such roles as the pas de trois in act 1, the petits cygnes in the second and the divertissements in the third. Actually, one artist other than Mack and Mair who did stand out in the show and that was Precious Adams. She worked hard in Liverpool as a lead swan in acts II and IV and princess in act III, She was recently interviewed in The Guardian under the headline: Precious Adams on balancing ballet and computer science: ‘you don’t want to be 45 with zero credentials’
This was the first live performance by English National Ballet that I had seen since the 70th anniversary gala on 18 Jan 2020 just before the pandemic. It was reassuring to see it back on tour apparently in good shape. It will soon get a new artistic director (see English National Ballet announces Aaron Watkin as new artistic directorThe Guardian 24 Aug 2022), If the Semperoper Ballett's class and rehearsal of David Dawson's Romeo and Juliet are any kind of indicator, ENB will be in very good hands.
I shall join the call for the reasons I set out in Northern Ballet's New Director on 2 Feb 2022. I have been one of his fans for many years. He is now Artistic Director of Northern Ballet which I have followed ever since its formation and have supported financially and in other ways ever since I returned to the North in 1985. Bonelli has only been in post since May but he seems to have worked some kind of magic with the company. The performances of Made in Leeds: Three Short Balletsat the Leeds Playhouse on 14 and 17 Sept 2022 were the best I had seen from the company since Christopher Gable danced with Moira Shearer in Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man,Both casts danced with a flair and engagement that I had never seen before.
The three short ballets were Mthuthuzeli November's Wailers, Stina Quagebeur's Nostalgiaand Dickson Mbi's Ma Vie Live. They were very different but nonetheless complementary works. Wailers is set in rural Africa against a background that appeared to be parched earth to a score created by November. Like his other works, Wailers successfully merges classical steps with African dance and rhythms. Nostalgia features two couples both clad in red and an ensemble in brown. The music is by Jeremy Birchall. Ma Vie reminded me of both Kenneth Tindall's Casanova and Nixon's Wuthering Heights. It had the most elaborate sets, costumes and lighting. It finished with a rumbustious reverence where each of the dancers demonstrated his or her virtuosity,
There was a well-deserved standing ovation on both nights. Indeed, Gita and I who were sitting one row back from the stage led the one on the 14, I enjoyed all three works but particularly the first. Possibly that is because I have seen November's work before and understand it better. He is one of the senior artists of Ballet Black. I first noticed him in 2015 when he toured with Ballet Central (see Dazzled2 May 2015. He is an impressive dancer who showed his talents for choreography almost as soon as he joined the company
On Monday Northern Ballet announced that it had appointed David Collins as its new Executive Director. Collins comes from Opera North, another important regional touring company. I wish him every success in his new role.
Scottish Ballet CoppeliaTheatre Royal, Glasgow 25 May 2022 19:30
Scottish Ballet has specialized in reinterpreting the classical repertoire ever since Peter Darrell's Beauty and the Beast. Sometimes it has been spectacularly successful, as with David Dawson's Swan Lakeor Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling. Others such as Krzysztof Pastor's Romeo and Juliet less so. Despite excellent performances by Rishan Benjamin as Swanhilda and Thomas Edwards as Dr Coppelius which saved my evening, I regret to say that Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright'sCoppelia did not work for me.
Coppelia is not a story that needs to be reworked. It is basically Pygmalion which has fascinated human beings since classical times. Ted Brandsen has set it in modern dress but kept the story intact in his Coppelia. As my readerswill gather from the synopsis, Runacre-Temple and Wright have transplanted Dr Coppelius to Silicon Valley. Instead of an eccentric old codger with a workshop full of automatons, Coppelisu is the founder and CEO of the sinister startup NuLife.
The conventional Coppeliawould not have retained its popularity for more than 150 years had it focused on Dr Coppelis's experiments. Audiences like the lovely mazurkas of the first act, the humour of the village girls' overtures to Dr Coppelius's doll. Swanhilda's increasing exasperation with Franz as he flirts with the doll, the mugging where Dr Coppelius loses his house keys, the break-in by Swanhilda and her girlfriends to the workshop, the girls' nervousness, the cacophony when Swnhilda sets off the toys as she makes her escape, the charming dance of the hours of the last act and of course a delightful pas de deux at the end.
There is none of that in Runacre-Temple and Wright's work. It was essentially about Coppelius and his interview with pant-suited investigative journalist Swanhilda, A voice-over asks Coppelius how he deals with his critics. "Do I have any?" asked another voice which made me smile as I was already thinking about this review. There were lots of lights and screen images, a percussive score with the occasional echo of Delibes and snatches of dialogue such as "This table does not exist." Everything was packed into a single 80-minute act. Altogether. I found it heavy going.
Now I have to say out of fairness that most of the audience seemed to love the show. There was a standing ovation which was the first I have ever seen in Scotland. But it was not a simultaneous rising as I had seen in Leeds the previous week but a phased one like the opening night of Akram Khan's Giselle or at the Lowry after Sir Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet. In a phased standing ovation unlike a spontaneous one, audience members rise to their feet because others have done so and they feel they should or maybe they just want to see the stage at the curtain call,
Now I want to end my review on a positive note because I have followed Scottish Ballet ever since they were in Bristol and I love them to bits. This was the first time I had seen them live since lockdown and I had been looking forward to the show for weeks. For me, the evening was saved by Benjamin and Edwards. Particularly Benjamin. This was the first time I had noticed her. She is still listed simply as an "artist". I am not sure when she joined the company but I think her future is bright. She reminds me a lot of Michaela DePrince. She commands the stage in much the same way.
There were good performances from Evan Loudon who danced Franz and Amy McEntee, Xolisweh Richards. Roseanna Leney, Noa Barry, Urara Takata, Grace Horler, Melissa Parsons, Aisling Brangan, Hannah Cubitt, Nicholas Vavrecka,, Rimbaud Patron, James Garrington, Harvey Evans, Andrea Azzari., Ben Thomas, Ishan Mahabir-Stokes. Joel Wright and Jamie Reid as lab technicians. Franz was not quite the same role as in the conventional Coppelia. Reed was also the cameraman.
As I said above I don't think it is necessary to update Coppelia because the challenge of artificial intelligence has existed since 1870 if not from the ancient Greeks. However, if Scottish Ballet wants to modernize that gorgeous work it need look no further than one of its own board members.
Dutch National Ballet Sixtieth Anniversary GalaNational Opera and Ballet Auditorium Amsterdam 30 June 2020 19:30
One of the high points of my year is the Dutch National Ballet's annual gala. It consists of extracts from some of the company's work over the previous year and ends with a reception in which the dancers and musicians mingle with the audience. In other years it has taken place in early September but this year it was on 30 June. It is always a special occasion but this year's gala was particularly important because it was the company's 60th anniversary. It also celebrated Hans van Manen's 90th birthday and the company's emergence from covid restrictions. To underscore the significance of the occasion, the event was attended by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands.
As usual, the evening began with the Grand Défilé, a parade of artists from the youngest students of the Dutch National Ballet Academy in their smartest leotards to the principal ballerinas in dazzling white classical tutus accompanied by the premiers danseurs nobles to the strains of Aurora's wedding from The Sleeping Beauty. That was a tune that I often played in 2020 and 2021 in the hope that the pandemic would one day come to an end and the world's theatres would reopen. This visit was my first trip to the Netherlands since 17 Nov 2019 when I saw The Best of Balanchine at the Zuiderstrandstheater in The Hague.
The Grand Défilé was followed by Hans van Manen's Solo, a spectacular piece to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach's Violin Partita which had come pretty close to stealing the show the previous evening. Henrik Erikson of the Stuttgart Ballet who had entertained us the night before thrilled us once more. This time, he was joined on stage by Fabio Adorisio and Christian Pforr. Once again the applause was tumultuous.
At this point, the company's artistic director Ted Brandson usually walks on stage to welcome the crowd in Dutch and English. This year it was a little different for he spoke only in Dutch. Presently a screen appeared and this film was run. Now I have never learnt any Dutch - I regret to say that there are not many opportunities to learn that language in this country except for diplomats and a few academics - but I do speak German and my ears caught something that sounded like "Ritter" which means knight in that language. Dutch is a language that English speakers with a good knowledge of German can actually get the drift because it is close to both languages. The ceremony was nothing like a British investiture at which Her Majesty or nowadays Prince Charles dubs the candidate with a sword. A decoration was presented by the Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam. But it was clearly a very high honour at least equal to any of our knighthoods for service to the arts as the company's news release makes clear. I met Brandsen after the show and congratulated him on his knighthood. I asked him whether we had to call him "Sir Ted" from now on. Brandsen thought that perhaps we should but I have to say that his view was not shared by any of my Dutch friends.
The preeminence of Dutch ballet rests largely on the work of three outstanding choreographers, Hans van Manen, Rudi van Dantzig and Toer van Schayk. The company actually refers to them as the three Vans on the History page of its website. Van Schayk is a distinguished sculptor, painter and stage designer as well as a choreographer and many of the sets for the Dutch National Ballet's productions were designed by him.
The next work on the programme was De Chimaera van LA, an extract from van Schayk's ballet Het mythische voorwendsel which means "the mythical pretext". According to the programme notes, the title of the ballet was inspired by a quotation from Salvador Dali who said, "the subject of art is a pretext." The music for the piece was by Bela Bartok but van Schayk created just about everything else. He choreographed the work and designed the set, costumes and lighting. It was performed by Anna Tsygankova and Giorgi Potskhishvili. I know Tsygankova very well having seen her for the first time as Cinderella at the Coliseum in 2014 but Potskhishvili was new to me. He is clearly a rising star having entered the Junior Company as recently as 2020. Their ballet master, incidentally, was Caroline Sayo Iura who danced in the first performance of the ballet.
The French composer Erik Satie inspired Sir Frederick Ashton to create Monotonesand Hans van Manen Trois Gnossiennes. Van Manen's work was the next in the programme. It is a duet but one in which the pianist and piano have a role at least to the extent that they are on castors and moved around the stage. Having never heard the word "Gnossiennes " outside the context of this music I looked it up and found that it had been coined by Satie and that he had never explained what it means. The word is reminiscent of the Greek word γνῶσις and as the music has a sacerdotal quality I offer "The Three Initiates". The dancers were Anna Ol and James Stout and the pianist Olga Khoziainova.
The Staatsballett Berlin presented the following ballet It had commissioned David Dawson (the Dutch National Ballet's Associate Artist) to create Voices during the lockdown. According to the programme notes the piece reflects that time. Dawson is reported to have said:
“The difficult times caused by the pandemic have given us an opportunity to reflect and progress, and help us to see the world again in its truth. I believe this is when change can really happen. VOICES aims to visualise the awakening of a new era where we can create the world we want to live in. A new place for humanity to have the chance to be the best it can be as we all learn more about our infinite capacity and potential.”
One of van Manen's best known works is 5 Tangosto the music of Astor Piazzolla. Perhaps the most thrilling part of that ballet is Voyamos a Diablo. This is a male solo which requires a dancer of considerable strength and equal grace. Artur Shesterikov danced that role with characteristic flair.
The contribution to the evening from Van Dantzig's repertoire was Voorbij Gegaan. The title has never been translated but I think it means "Gone By". Van Dantzig created it for Alexandra Radius and Han Ebbelaar as they approached the peak of their careers. A lyrical piece to a piano composition by Chopin it was danced delightfully by Qian Liu and Semyon Velichko.
One of my favourite moments of the evening was Joela short solo by Remi Wӧrtmeyer that he had created for himself to the music of Jacques Offenbach. It was a humorous piece but also one that required strength, stamina and enormous skill. The company has recently announced Wörtmeyer's retirement, In his valedictory, Brandsen said:
"Remi’s positive energy, fabulous technique and engaging personality onstage and off have made him one of the most beloved dancers in our company. I will miss Remi and his dancing enormously and I wish him lots of success with his new artistic adventures.”
I shall also miss him and I add my best wishes.
My other favourite piece was Riho Sakamoto'sMy One and Only from Balanchine's Who Cares. I interviewed her when she joined the Junior Company and have marvelled at her meteoric rise. This is a solo that charms her audience. The applause loved her and exploded in applause.
I had seen van Manen's Variations for Two Couplesthe previous night and discussed it in my review of that performance. Jozef Varga, who has also announced his retirement, had appeared in the first performance of that ballet. He was joined by Tsygankova who had also been in the first show, The other dancers were Jessica Xuan and Constantine Allen. This performance is likely to have been Varga's last with the company. He will also be missed and I wish him well.
The last piece before the interval was Grand Pas Classiqueby Viktor Gsovsky. It is not performed very often if at all in the United Kingdom and the only time that I had seen it before was as part of the Dutch National Ballet's Christmas Gala which was live streamed on 19 Dec 2021. The work is spectacular even on screen but it is even better on stage. The dancers were Jakob Feyferlik who had performed the work in the Christmas Gala and Olga Smirnova.
There was an interval after Grand Pas Classique. After we had returned to our seats, Matthew Rowe, the Director of Music, rose and addressed the King and Queen of the Netherlands. He said that the Dutch Ballet Orchestra had commissioned some music from the Dutch composer, Jacob ter Veldhuis, as a 60th anniversary present for the company. Mr Ter Veldhuis was in the audience and a spotlight picked him out immediately after the conductor's announcement. The piece that Mr ter Veldhuis had written was entitled Luce Divina inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy on which he had already written an oratorio. The orchestra then played the commissioned work.
Although Rowe conducted the orchestra for most of the evening, he handed the baton to Jonathan Lo for De Chimaera
van L.A and the finale. Lo is the Director of Music of Northern Ballet and I have also seen him at Covent Garden. Lo was with Brandsen when I congratulated him on his honour and Brandsen kindly introduced me to Lo. I expressed my delight that through Lo there was now a personal link between Leeds and Amsterdam. I was even happier when Lo told me that Northern's new Director, Federico Bonelli, had also attended the gala which means that there is now a direct link with my local company at the highest level.
Every year an award is presented by Alexandra Radius to the year's most outstanding dancer. This year it was won by Salome Leverashvili. She came to my attention when she and Timothy van Poucke published a vlog which I featured in Missing Amsterdamon 17 Feb 2017.Those talented young artists have risen through the company's ranks very quickly. Van Poucke won the Radius prize as early as 2018. Leverashvili accepted her prize with a short but witty speech in English which may well have won her even more fans.
A part of any gala to which the audience particularly looks forward is the Junior Company's piece. This year the Junior Company danced the last part ofIn the Future. I discussed the piece in detail in my review of the previous night's performance. The Junior Company did not disappoint their fans. They were as exciting and vivacious as always. Yet another triumph for their artistic coordinator, Ernst Meisner. The programme did not name them individually but I have done so in my review of the previous night's show.
After the performance, the audience spilt out onto the lobby and terraces for the reception. The reception welds the company and its audience into a family which does not happen with most other companies. It is one of the reasons why I love the Dutch National Ballet. Of course, I have a lot of respect for the world's other great companies and I am a member of many of their Friends' schemes and support them in every way I can. But, with the exceptions of Scottish Ballet, Ballet Cymru and, very recently, Northern Ballet, I do not feel as close to them as I do to the Dutch National Ballet. It was at the reception that I met van Manen. My brief handshake and greeting enabled me to express my admiration and gratitude for his lifetime's work. I doubt that I could have done that in any other way.
Dutch National Ballet and Guests Hans van Manen Festival IV National Opera and Ballet auditorium 29 June 2022 20:15
I would argue that Hans van Manen is the greatest living choreographer and one of the greatest of all time. I have been a fan ever since I first saw his work some 50 years or so ago. In that time he has made over 150 ballets and I have seen a fair number of them. His works are performed regularly by the world's leading ballet companies including those of the United Kingdom.
Earlier this month van Manen celebrated his 90th birthday. To mark the occasion, the Dutch National Ballet ended its 2021-2022 season with a special Hans van Manen Festival. Between 8 and 29 June 2022, the Dutch National Ballet and companies from Austria and Germany performed 19 of van Manen's works arranged in four separate programmes.
I attended the fourth of those programmes on 29 June 2022 which consisted of Four Schumann Pieces, In the Future, Variations for Two Couples, Solo and Concertante. I chose that programme for three reasons. It was an opportunity to see the latest recruits to the Junior Company which I had followed closely since 2013. They were to perform In the Future which I had previously seen at their 5th-anniversary celebration at the Stadsschouwburg on 15 April 2018, the 2018 gala and in London on 5 July 2019. Secondly, one of the works was to be performed by the Vienna State Ballet and another by the Stuttgart Ballet which had been Cranko's company. These are companies that rarely visit this country and it was a chance to see them. Finally, the fourth programme included Concertante which is the work by van Manen that I know best.
Van Manen had created Four Schumann Piecesfor the Royal Ballet. It was first performed at Covent Garden on 31 Jan 1975 with Sir Anthony Dowell in the leading role. The music is Robert Schumann's String quartet in A opus 41 no. 3. The ballet revolves around the leading male and there is some YouTube footage of Dowell in that role. It was part of a mixed bill which I attended. I can't remember much about it but it would have been one of the reasons why I began to admire van Manen. According to the programme notes, the male lead was later performed by Rudolf Nureyev, Hans Ebelaar, Wayne Eagling and Matthew Golding each of whom interpreted it in a different way. The company that performed the piece on 29 June was the Vienna State Ballet. Davide Dato was the lead male He was supported by Hyo-Jung Kang and Arne Vandervelde, Liudmila Konovalova and Francesco Costa, Elena Bottaro and Igor Milos, Sonia Dvořák and Géraud Wielick and Aleksandra Liashenko and Andrey Teterin. The company danced Four Schumann Pieces for the first time in the Vienna Volksoper on 4 June 2022. For them, it was a brand new piece which they danced with appealing energy and freshness.
In the Futurewas created for the Scarpino Ballet Rotterdam in 1986, a company that is even older than the Dutch National Ballet. The piece was inspired by music that the Scottish composer David Byrne had written as a soundtrack for Fritz Lang's film Metropolisthe previous year. As striking as the music are the set, costume and lighting designs of Keso DekkerEach dancer wears a garment that is green at the front and red at the back. The dancers pulsate to the music as if they were beams of light. It is a perfect piece for the Junior Company which is now a completely different cohort from the one I saw in Amsterdam in 2018 and London in 2019. The members who danced on 29 June were Luca Abdel-Nour, Koko Bamford, Lily Carbone, Mila Caviglia, Sven de Wilde, Lauren Hunter, Nicola Jones, Gabriel Rajah, Guillermo Torrijos,Louisella Vogt and Koyo Yamamoto. They were as impressive as their predecessors and I look forward to watching them develop as a troupe and blossom as artists of the Dutch National Ballet and other leading companies.
Variations for Two Couplesis one of van Manen's latest works. It was created for Anna Tsygankova, Matthew Golding, Igone de Jongh and Jozef Varga and first performed on 15 Feb 2012. It is a very short piece that packs in music by Benjamin Britten, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Stefan Kovács Tickmayer and Astor Piazzolla. The programme states that for van Manen it was all about the personalities of the dancers that he wished to draw out. Varga danced the role that van Manen had created for him on 29 June. but instead of Tsygankova, Golding and de Jongh he was joined by Riho Sakamoto, Young Gyu Choi and Jessica Xuan. Van Manen intended this to be a very understated ballet. He said, "everything is 'low down' – even the dancers’ lifts." That is echoed by Dekker's costumes and backdrop. The result is a work of refinement and elegance.
There was an interval after Variations for Two Couples. On returning to my seat I noticed that van Manen was sitting in my row. Several of his fans were talking to him and one gave him a hug. He stood up to allow me to pass and for a moment I felt impelled to introduce myself and shake his hand. However, the curtain was about to rise and I let the moment slip. The very next day my friend Gita Mistry button-holed him in the lobby of the National Opera and Ballet auditorium as we gathered for the Gala. She introduced me to him and I had the opportunity to tell him how much I had enjoyed his work over the last 50 years. However, Gita went one better and actually took a selfie of herself with the great man. In her interview with Judith Mackrell, Laura Esquivel compared the art of the chef with that of the choreographer (see Like Water for Chocolate23 July 2022). Gita offered to cook for van Manen and as she is an artist in spice he would enjoy one of the best meals of his life were he ever to take her up on the offer.
Solodanced by Henrik Erikson, Alessandro Giaquinto and Matteo Miccini of the Stuttgart Ballet won the loudest and most sustained applause of the evening. It is a very short piece set to Bach's Violin Partita. Keeping up with the music requires great virtuosity and equal stamina. It was danced with energy, flair and fluidity. - an altogether brilliant display.
The first time I sawConcertanteit was performed by Northern Ballet. I wrote in Terpsichore:
"What can one say about a masterpiece? Especially when there is a YouTube video of the great man himself discussing his ballet. According to the clip van Manen staged the work for the Nederlands Dans Theater junior company (Dans Theater 2). He spoke very highly of the Leeds dancers (Bateman, Batley, Leebolt, Contadini, Lori Gilchrist, Nicola Gervasi, Prudames and Isaac Lee-Baker) as well he might for they were good."
The evening had begun under the baton of Matthew Rowe, a compatriot and (I believe) an old boy of St Paul's School. It ended under that baton of Northern Ballet's Director of Music, Jonathan Lo. As he was led onto the stage the applause was deafening. I felt very proud of him as well as Matthew Rowe. But the loudest cheers and most vigorous clapping were reserved for van Manen himself. They were in appreciation of the works that we had seen that night but also for his lifetime's achievement.
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