Red Riding Hood Workshop at the Barbican with Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa and Ballet Black

Red Riding Hood Workshop

(c) 2017 David Murley: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the author

Ballet Black, Red Riding Hood Workshop, Barbican Pit Theatre, 25 Feb 2017

David Murley

On Saturday the 25th February 2017, Ballet Black held a workshop, or Weekend Labs referred to by the Barbican. Aside from my own excitement of getting to dance some of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s steps, there was the unexpected, the unseen. What was going to happen? How many people were going to turn up? Were only students going to be present? Was it going to be a positive and encouraging environment? Etc. Despite graduating from college 15 years ago, all of these thoughts still run through my mind. 

Red Riding Hood Workshop

(c) 2017 David Murley: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the author

The morning started off with ballet class by the incomparable Damien Johnson, a senior artist with Ballet Black. The group who turned up for 9h30 on an overcast Saturday morning was an intimate one comprised of six. We were three women and three men. Essentially perfect. Johnson did not waste any time and put us all through our paces, offering positive corrections and beautiful enchaînements to execute. Lopez Ochoa arrived smiling during pirouettes exercise in the centre. Although we were only six, you could feel the concentration level in the studio magnify and thicken. With an intensified level of concentration, the rest of centre flew by and before we knew it we were put into male/female couples to learn some of Lopez Ochoa’s choreography from her creation Red Riding Hood for Ballet Black’s newest Triple Bill Premiere at the Barbican commencing on the 2nd March 2017. 

We had the opportunity to learn snippets from three different scenes from Lopez Ochoa’s creation. The first scene was when the Wolf meets Red Riding Hood. The second was the Wolf’s solo and some partner work with one of the lady wolves. Lastly, was a brief outtake when Red Riding Hood goes to visit Grandma. What all of us took away from the workshop is the Wolf has some serious moves! Fluid, stylish, sensual, rhythmic and hypnotic the Wolf winds, twists and jêtés his way from one of the stage to the other causing the other characters to swoon and faint upon first gaze. Not to mention, oozing his way around Red Riding Hood effortlessly tempting her. Unsurprisingly, the Wolf wins, and Red Riding Hood is well on the pathway to growing up. 

Throughout the course of the workshop, Lopez Ochoa was engaging, positive, uplifting and encouraging. Lopez Ochoa interacted with all six of us and spent quality time giving us what would appear to be a semi-private lesson. Invaluable. We received lots of attention. Despite having left school years ago, I learned so much, which is undoubtedly awesome, hands down inspiring and humbling. The atmosphere was professional, and all involved in the workshop had a cohesive energy. For me, it felt like we were specially selected from somewhere beyond our control and comprehension. We were all of similar mind set and similar approach. The Weekend Lab flowed with ease. Honestly, the six of us lucked out numbers wise. Another two couples would have easily changed the dynamic. 

In my opinion, the six of us were an interesting, knowledge thirsty, personable and undoubtedly artistic group of individuals. Two of us were professional dancers, having already graduated. However, I was at one end of the spectrum having completed my training 15 odd years ago, and she graduated from Central School of Ballet last year. We had two dancers still in training. One was in full-time training at Central School of Ballet and the other was in the midst of her Textile and Biology A-levels and studying dance at DuPont School of Dance in Leicester. The remaining two workshop participants were non-dancers. One the midst of her studies at The Royal College of Art currently focusing on sculpting and the other remaining gentleman who dances at the weekend for his own pleasure. Everyone gave their best that day, and danced to the fullest of their abilities, and no doubt like myself, learned something too. Aside from us Weekend Lab participants being receptive to the experiences that lie before us that day, the welcoming attitude, professionalism and preparation from Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Ballet Black dancers Damien Johnson and Mthuthuzeli November tremendously helped the day unfold to be what was a delightful, fun-filled and an educational success. 

I, personally, would love to see Ballet Black hold another Weekend Lab/workshop. If they do, I highly recommend you attend and savour the experience. They are a company to be valued and cherished.

Danza Contemporánea de Cuba

 Standard YouTube Licence

In Double Latin  7 Jan 2017 I mentioned the forthcoming tour of the UK by Danza Contemporánea de Cuba. While writing Beautiful Ballet Black 14 Jan 2017 I remembered that Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, who choreographed A Streetcar Named Desire for Scottish Ballet and Little Red Riding Hood for Ballet Black, will also contribute Reversible to the Cuban tour.

The above trailer gives us a taste of what to expect from in the programme. There is a bit more detail including comments from each of the choreographers and two of the dancers in The Spirit of the Cubans | Danza Contemporánea de Cuba UK Tour 2017.

The tour starts at Royal Concert Hall Nottingham on 14 and 15 Feb and moves on to the Lowry 17 and 18 Feb, Theatre Royal Newcastle 21 and 22 Feb, Barbican 23 Feb, Millennium Stadium 28 Feb and 1 March, Theatre Royal Plymouth 3 and 4 March, Brighton Dome 7 and 8 March, Eden Court, Inverness 10 March, Festival Theatre Edinburgh 14 and 15 March and Marlowe Theatre Canterbury 17 and 18 March.

Beautiful Ballet Black

Yesterday I received this very welcome message from Cassa Pancho:

"Dear Jane

We are delighted to be returning to the main stage of the Barbican in March with our new triple bill!

This year, we are presenting a new ballet by the celebrated British choreographer, Michael Corder who has created a sparkling new quartet, House of Dreams to the music of Debussy, a re-staging of our 2012 audience hit, Captured created by Martin Lawrance and our story ballet is Red Riding Hood, choreographed by the multi-award winning Annabelle Lopez Ochoa who gives us a fairy tale with a surprising twist (and helium balloons!) with costumes from Yann Seabra who designed our fabulous Swarovski tutu for Cristaux last year.

We have over 3000 seats to fill, so please help us spread the word! If you can't make it to London, take a look at our Spring tour dates at the end of this email.
Barbican triple bill premiere: 2nd-4th March 2017: https://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=20245

We look forward to seeing you at a show soon!

Best regards from Cassa & all at Ballet Black"

There followed a list of venues where they are going in the first half of this year.  The list includes Finchley, Winchester, Worthing, Birmingham, Ipswich, Salisbury and Nottingham (see the Performances page of their website for full details). Nowhere in the North as yet but they usually visit Leeds in the Autumn and there is every hope that they may be tempted back to the CAST and Lowry.

Michael Corder is described by the Birmingham Royal Ballet as "one of Britain's most successful choreographers and directors" who has created over 50 original works which have been performed by The Royal Ballet, The Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, The Dutch National Ballet, The Boston Ballet and The Norwegian National Ballet and many others. He studied at the Royal Ballet School and joined the Royal Ballet in 1973. As a dancer, he performed many leading roles with the Royal Ballet and also as a guest artist with other major companies.

Martin Lawrence is an associate choreographer with Richard Alston Dance Company.   He trained at Coventry Centre for the Performing Arts and London Contemporary Dance School. He danced with Richard Alston Dance Company from 1995 - 2007 and was appointed rehearsal director of that company in 2007. His first commission was  Thimble Rigging for the Meltdown Festival in 2000. Since then he has created work for Richard Alston, Scottish Ballet and Ballet Manilla as well as Pendulum, Captured and Limbo for Ballet Black. I reviewed Limbo in Extra Special - Ballet Black at the Linbury 26 Feb 2014 27 Feb 2014 and mentioned it again in What could be more thrilling than a Ride on a Roller Coaster? A performance by Ballet Black! 24 May 2014, Best Ever - Ballet Black at the Nottingham Playhouse and Ballet Black at Home in Leeds 7 Nov 2014.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is a freelance choreographer based in Amsterdam. She trained at the Royal Ballet School in Antwerp and danced with various Europen companies before specializing in choreography in 2003 (see her Biography page on her website). Her works include A Streetcar named Desire for Scottish Ballet which I reviewed in Scottish Ballet's Streetcar 2 April 2015.  Cassa's description of Little Red Riding hood is intriguing and I look forward to comparing Lopez Ochoa's version with Darius James and Amy Doughty's for Ballet Cymru which I saw in Newport on 21 May 2016 (see Ballet Cymru's Summer Tour 22 May 2016) and Cardiff (see Ballet Cymru's "Sleeping Beauty Moment" 5 Dec 2016) and which David Murley reviewed in Little Red Riding Hood comes to London 2 Dec 2016).

On 25 Feb 2017 Lopez Ochoa will hold a one-day practical workshop on Red Riding Hood for students in higher education and training, emerging artists and professionals which will explore ballet technique generally and the repertory of the new ballet.  The cost is only £65 plus a 60p booking fee and the fee includes a ticket fo the show. There are also a number of bursary places.   To apply for a place

"Please send a CV (feel free to include images/video links) and a short written statement (200 words) on how this Weekend Lab will benefit your practice to: weekendlabs@barbican.org.uk
The closing date for applications is 5pm on Friday 27 January; you will be notified one week later if you have been offered a place."

That seems like a golden once-in-a-lifetime-never-to-be-forgotten opportunity to me and I wish everyone who applies for a place the very best of luck. If I were an able young dancer I would jump - nay perform grands jetes en tournant, tours en l'air and any number of entrechats - at that chance.

Finally, I could not leave a discussion of Ballet Black without reminding my readers that Damien Johnson was one of my outstanding male dancers in 2016. As it is not easy to compare a principal in a company like the Royal Ballet, Dutch National Ballet or the Bolshoi with a senior artist of a specialist company like Ballet Black I divided the award into two, one for principals and soloists of major companies who dance leading roles in full-length ballets and the other for the rest.

I did not draw a similar distinction for women dancers but partly because I did not have time but mainly because I could not decide between Cira Robinson, Sayaka Ichikawa and Isabela Coracey all of whom are outstanding.  All I can say is that it would have been one (or more likely all) of them.

I don't think I would be flattering them or exaggerating by saying that Ballet Black is one of the most attractive companies in any of the performing arts that I have seen in over 60 years of theatregoing.

Scottish Ballet's Streetcar

Scottish Ballet has always occupied a special place in my affections for the reasons I explained in Scottish Ballet 20 Dec 2013, Peter Darrell 9 March 2014, Elaine McDonald in her own words 11 March 2014 and Scottish Ballet and Ballet West 3 Oct 2014. Yesterday I found fresh reason to love that company last night when I saw A Streetcar named Desire at Sadler's Wells.  This was a collaboration between theatre director, Nancy Meckler and choreographer, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. The result is quite extraordinary: high drama as well as great ballet. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.

The ballet is based on the play by Tennessee Williams. I say based because there are bits of the ballet that do not appear in the play such as Blanche Dubois's marriage and her late husband's suicide but these are necessary in order to set the ballet in context.  In the play there are four main roles: Blanche Dubois, once the heiress of the great Southern mansion Belle Rêve, her sister Stella who has thrown in her lot with the uncouth Stanley Kowalsk and his mate Mitch who courts Blanche for a while. Commencing the ballet with the marriage enables Meckler and Lopez Ochoa to create a firth: Blanche's late husband Alan who shoots himself in despair after Blanche discovers his apparent affection for another man.

Blanche is not nice to know.  Her rejection of Alan leads leads directly to his suicide. She is arrogant and disdainful of the hospitality that her sister and brother show her initially by taking her off the street. Stanley may be a brute but we can well understand why he doesn't like his sister in law. Playing dance music while he and his friends try to relax over a game of cards. She gets Mitch to change the the light fittings without so much as a by your leave. Finally she tries to turn Stella against her husband.  She takes to the bottle. She has a succession of unhappy relationships. Eventually she tries to seduce the delivery boy. But for all her faults we can't help feeling sorry for her as her dignity  like her clothes in the rape scene- is stripped away in layers. In the penultimate scene she is left naked quivering on the floor. A very powerful image.

Two fine young dancers have created that role - Eve Mutso and Luciana Ravizzi.  Last night I sa Ravizzi, She comes from Buenos Aires - a city which, like the Southern states in the 1940s has known better days. It is the city of the tango - the mournful music of the Italian immigrants so far from home. That city has more than its fair share of tragic heroines. Most particularly María Eva Duarte de Perón whom we know as "Evita". I was conscious of those connotations as I watched Ravizzi dance last night.

Whereas I had some sympathy for Blanche I had much less for her sister Stella. One of the few wise and brave things that Blanche did was to try to save her sister from Stanley. To no avail for she threw herself into his arms no matter what the abuse. In the end she connived at Blanche's committal to the psychiatric hospital  That role was danced by Sophie Laplane who portrayed that poor conflicted soul exactly.

Christopher Harrison danced the loutish Stanley. He was menacing in every movement. He walked in a slow, threatening swaggering gait. His gestures were staccato even when playing cards,  His manhandling of Blanche in the rape scene was harrowing. A first class performance in every respect. Remi Andreoni danced the gentle Mitch with sensitivity. Andrew Peasgood was the ghostly blood stained spectre of Blanche's husband.

There were two other elements that made the show: Peter Salem's magnificent score and Niki Turner's designs. The loss of Belle Rêve was symbolized by the porticoed mansion collapsing into a pile of rubble, Brilliant theatre! One of several images from the performance that I doubt that I shall forget in a hurry

Scottish Ballet spent only three days with us. It was lovely to see them but I wish it were longer. I would love to have seen Mutso's interpretation of the role of Blanche. In her interview with Christopher Hampson in Uncut which I mentioned in Object of Desire 7 March 2015 and also in Mark Monahan's programme note Becoming Blanche, she describes the research she carried out to understand the role. She read the play, saw it on stage and studied the film. I would imagine her performance would be quite different.

The company is now taking the production to the United States and it will be interesting to see what the Americans make of this transposition of a classic of their literature. I think they will be as impressed as I have been and I certainly hope so.