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Another departing artist who will be greatly missed is Northern Ballet's first soloist Victoria Sibson (see Saying Farewell3 May 2018) . Like Moira Shearer who was the subject of my Christmas Day appreciation in 2016, Sibson has the most beautiful hair and features that must be a choreographer's canvass. I have never had the good fortune of meeting her. Now that she is about to go I don't suppose I ever shall. But if dancing is any indication of personality, I imagine she is full of fun and just lovely in every possible way.
The notice announcing Sibson's departure does not mention where she is going or what she will do when she leaves the company but I wish her well in all that she sets out to do. She has given me a lot of pleasure over the years for which I am very grateful.
"Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker" exclaims the Royal Ballet's trailer. The Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Ballet seem to agree for they are staging the ballet too (see The Good Nutcracker Guide31 Oct 2016). There are, of course, alternatives. The Royal Ballet itself is staging The Sleeping Beautyfrom today as well as The Nutcracker on other days and there is also The Red Shoes at Sadler's Wells which I reviewed when it was at the Lowry in the metropolitan borough of Salford in the county of Greater Manchester (see Red Shoes Bourne Again3 Dec 2016) and The Red Shoes Second Time Round4 Dec 2016).
Outside London Scottish Ballet are dancing Hansel and Gretel in Edinburgh which will be wending its way around Scotland early in the New Year before making an appearance in Newcastle where I hope to see it and Belfast in February. I saw the ballet in 2013 and enjoyed it very much (see Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel23 Dec 2013). Elsewhere in England Northern Ballet's Beauty and the Beast is in Leeds (see Much Less Beastly - Indeed Rather Beautiful18 Dec 2016) and Ballet Theatre UK will resume their tour of England with Romeo and Juliet after Christmas.
From my Pennine eyrie just to the east of Manchester the great continental cities are nearly as accessible as London and in many cases rather less expensive when you get there. I have already expressed the view that the Dutch National Ballet's Coppelia at the Music Theatre in Amsterdam is the best Christmas show within reasonable travelling distance of Manchester (see Brandsen's Coppelia12 Dec 2016 and Pictures of Coppelia15 Dec 2016).
Our contributor Mel Wong who has spent the last 15 months in Hungary is now back in the UK - for the time being at any rate. She is working on an article on Ballet Eifman which we look forward to reading.
In a circular announcing that today is the fifth anniversary of the formation of BalletcoForum, Simonetta Dixon of that forum wrote proudly that "a real community has been established" and "friendships have been forged through BalletcoForum." I can certainly attest to that. Mel is one of those I met in that way. Linda Morris is another. Aileen is a third. Helen or Don Q Fan is one more. Michelle Richer yet another. And, of course, last but not least, Janet McNulty. There are several others who are friends on Facebook and followers on twitter. Today also happens to be the third anniversary of my subscribing to the forum. Although I have had the odd run-in with a moderator and a heated exchange of views with subscribers from time to time I always read my daily email from BalletcoForum with interest. Well done them and long may they continue.
Wishing all my readers around the world a merry Christmas and happy New Year.
Standard YouTube Licence Northern Ballet, Beauty and the Beast, Leeds Grand Theatre, 17 Dec 2016, 19:30 To my great delight and surprise, I enjoyed every single moment of David Nixon's Beauty and the Beast.Delight is obvious. Ballet is expensive. One goes for a good time - not to be bored out of one's skull. Surprise? Well that is because I saw the ballet on 30 Dec 2011 and while I was not exactly bored I was not in rapture either:
"As for Nixon's choreography the first two acts reminded me of early McMillan - works like Anastasia which are not performed very often nowadays for a reason. But the last Act reminded me of Balanchine and I think it was that Act which saved the ballet. The pas de deux between Beauty - danced exquisitely by Martha Leebolt - and the beast showed just what the choreographer can do. Also impressive were Victoria Sibson and Hannah Bateman who danced the fairies, Hironeo Takahashi, the beast's servant and the coryphées, Michela Paolacci, Ayana Kanda, Christie Duncan and Isabella Gasparini who were four sprites. The last Act of the ballet could well stand as a work in its own right. I hope to see that Act many times again but I would happily skip the first two acts with its old bus and bailiffs" (see Ballet and Intellectual Property - my Excuse for reviewing "Beauty and the Beast"31 Dec 2011 IP Yorkshire).
Funny how something like an old bus can make such an impression. Sir Matthew Bourne's curtain climbing Aurora sent me up the wall in his Sleeping Beauty (see Why can't I be nicer to Matthew Bourne?6 Apr 2013) and it took The Car Men to bring me down again (see Motoring25 June 2015). Similarly, bikes on stage belong in Ashton's Enigma Variations - not in Swan Lake (see Up the Swannee17 March 2016).
The old bus was still there last night but I didn't mind it at all. I could appreciate its part in the story. True, bed and breakfast accommodation or a flat on the top but one floor of a tower block where the lift does not work and stairwells are strewn with syringes and reek of urine might be a more usual destination under the Homelessness Act 2002 but, hey, this is theatre. Surely a choreographer or dramaturge is entitled to some poetic licence. Except for placing the story in the present with bailiffs, a removal van and, of course, the old bus Nixon kept pretty close to de Villeneuve's story which is essentially Cinderella in reverse with Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy and dashes of King Lear thrown in for good measure (see Beauty and the Beast Storyon Northern Ballet's website).
So why the change of heart second time round? Well, it helped that some of my favourite dancers were in the show. Ayami Miyota was Beauty and Mlindi Kulashe a most magnificent beast. Joseph Taylor was the handsome Prince Orian or the beast before he was taught some manners by La Fée Magnifique danced by the striking Victoria Sibson who also performed that role when I last saw that ballet 5 years ago. Abigail Prudames, another of my favourites, danced La Fée Luminaire (the good fairy) delightfully. Hironao Takahashi, who had danced Alfred 5 years ago, was Beauty's father, a good choice, in my view, because Takahashi has acquired gravitas and dignitas with seniority. Alfred, or the beast's faithful retainer, was danced by Matthew Koon. Yet another of my very favourite dancers, Rachael Gillespie, danced one of Beauty's feckless sisters. The other was Mariana Rodrigues who also danced well. Indeed, everybody did last night so congratulations to all.
I think the choreography has also changed a bit. The show seemed tighter, tenser and more dramatic. Apparently, 20 minutes has been cut. A conclusion reached on Friday night by me and Janet McNulty after a lengthy correspondence on Facebook over whether the ballet had three acts in 2011 or just two as it has now. Janet insisted that it had two even though I distinctly remembered two intervals and wrote that there were three acts in my review less than 24 hours after seeing the show. Janet seemed so sure and she will have seen the show several times in 2011 as well as several times more on this run. I feared early signs of senile dementia 5 years ago until my mind was put at rest by one of Janet's friends who found the 2011 programme which mentioned three acts. I can't remember exactly what has been cut and, clearly, neither can Janet but all the good bits remain, The joyful duet between Beauty and Orian with its fish dive at the end. The beast's thrilling one-handed lift with Beauty spreadeagled several feet above the ground. The amusing dance of the goblins (Matthew Topliss, Jonathan Hanks, Jesse Milligan and Lorenzo Trosello. Equally amusing little touches like Beauty taking tea from a cup while the bear lapped up his from the saucer like a dog.
Beauty and the Beast will be at The Grand until the 7 Jan 2017. I am glad to recommend it. There seem to be quite a few seats available for most performances although the theatre was quite full last night. While the best Christmas ballet this year remains Ted Brandsen's Coppeliafor the Dutch National Ballet by a country mile and Peter Wright's version of The Nutcracker for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden is definitely #2, Beauty and the Beast is still a good one. I saw glimmers of the old Northern Ballet Theatre more than once last night.
Standard YouTube Licence
Last September Northern Ballet opened their new season with Jonathan Watkins's 1984 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse which they then took on tour They danced Wuthering Heights in Bradford and finished with a brilliant Nutcracker at Christmas. Thus year they are reviving three works: Nixon's Wuthering Heights at the WYP. They are taking Jean-Pierre Maillot's Romeo and Juliet to Sheffield, Canterbury, Belfast, Woking and Bradford. The Christmas show at The Grand will be Nixon's Beauty and the Beast which they will also dance at Norwich, Nottingham, Newcastle and Southampton.
"Batley and Leeboilt were good too as they always are but their performance lacked fire. It was like watching World Ballet Day or even company class. Old ladies like me who sacrifice their widow's mite for ballet (now increased by 133% - see The Increasing Prince of Friendship 14 Oct 2015) expect to float when we leave the theatre as I did on Friday when I saw Ballet Black (see Ballet Black's Return to Leeds21 Nov 2015) or on 12 Nov 2015 when I left the Linbury after seeing Phoenix (see The Phoenix Soars Over London13 Nov 2015). The reason I floated was that Ballet Black and Phoenix danced as though they were inspired as did Bateman, Takehashi and Gillespie yesterday. I swapped a ticket in the centre of row B of the Stanley and Audrey Burton for yesterday's performance of Ballet Black for one at the side of the top of the auditorium for Friday so that I could see the last performance of Wuthering Heights in Bradford. Had it not been for Bateman, Takehashi and Gillespie I think I would have regretted the exchange."
If Northern Ballet wanted to open their 2016/2017 season with a work inspired by a Brontë novel, my choice would have been Cathy Martson's Jane Eyre which I saw in Richmond at the beginning of June (see Northern Ballet's Jane Eyre: the best new Ballet from the Company in 20 Years2 June 2016). That was a reminder of the old Manchester based Northern Ballet that welcomed me back to the North in 1985. The company offered real treats in those days such as Gillian Lynne's A Simple Manand Christopher Gable's Christmas Carol (see my review of its 2013 revival Christmas Carol - "A Fine Performance Filled with Joy"19 Nov 2013). Save for the opening in Doncaster Jane Eyre has not been performed in Yorkshire and it would have suited the Quarry well as it is a more intimate auditorium than The Grand. I had to travel 200 miles to see a ballet based on a novel by a Yorkshire author. I do hope they bring it home soon.
"Beauty and the Beast is not an easy story to choreograph. Scottish Ballet had a go with Thea Musgrave's score many years ago. I reviewed for "Aien" (St Andrews University student newspaper) when it was premiered at The King's Theatre in Edinburgh in 1969. Ballet Cymru also seems to have had a version in its repertoire. Another link with IP, incidentally, since Ballet Cymru is based in Newport, the same town as the Intellectual Property Office. And, of course, there is the Birmingham Royal Ballet's version. But none of those versions has ever achieved the popularity of works like Coppelia, Giselle, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake. Will David Nixon's version do any better? The answer is that I am just not sure."
"Well I like them all but in different ways. Musgrave's for the music. Birmingham's for the sets and costumes but also Bintley's choreography. Nixon's for the last Act. Ballet Cymru's for its spirit."
The one thing I remember most about Nixon's ballet is that the family piled into a derelict bus which I found risible but I also remember some great dancing from Martha Leebolt, Hannah Bateman and Victoria Sibson and a sublime final act. Here is what I wrote at the time:
"As for Nixon's choreography the first two acts reminded me of early McMillan - works like Anastasia which are not performed very often nowadays for a reason. But the last Act reminded me of Balanchine and I think it was that Act which saved the ballet. The pas de deux between Beauty - danced exquisitely by Martha Leebolt - and the beast showed just what the choreographer can do. Also impressive were Victoria Sibson and Hannah Bateman who danced the fairies, Hironeo Takahashi, the beast's servant and the coryphées, Michela Paolacci, Ayana Kanda, Christie Duncan and Isabella Gasparini who were four sprites. The last Act of the ballet could well stand as a work in its own right. I hope to see that Act many times again but I would happily skip the first two acts with its old bus and bailiffs."
A curious choice for a Christmas show. I would have preferred G able's Christmas Carol or indeed his Cinderella but I will be in the audience for the final act.
Of course, the show that everybody is anticipating with relish is Kenneth Tindall's Gasanova which opens in Leeds on 11 March 2017. It will then tour Edinburgh, Sheffield, Norwich, Milton Keynes, Cardiff, The Lowry and London. This is Tindall's first full length ballet. His shorter works such as Luminous Junc•tureand The Architect, have attracted favourable critical comment including some from me (see Angelic - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill9 June 2013 and A Wonderful Evening - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill 21 June 201423 June 2013). I like Tindall as you can see from my appreciation of 28 Feb 2015. I am therefore looking forward to this work very much indeed.
From 18:00 this evening Ballet Cymru will hold a gathering at its studios in Rogerstone to celebrate the life of its dancer and education officer Mandev Sokhi. This event is for "anyone and everyone to come and pay their respects to this wonderful person, who gave such a lot and had so much passion for dance."
Mandev will be remembered tonight far beyond Newport and indeed well beyond Wales for he danced wth Ballet Cymru in every part of the United Kingdom. Clearly it will not be possible for all his admirers to make their way to Wales tonight but there are two very good ways in which we can show our appreciation of the man. First, there are still a few tickets left for Ballet Cymru'striple bill in London on the 29 and 30 Nov. I saw it in Newport on 6 Nov 2015 and reviewed it in "The Pride of Newport and the Pride of Wales"8 Nov 2015. I am seeing it again on Monday. Another way to remember Mandev is to become a Friend of the company as I did after my visit to its studios last month. You can also make a donation or sponsor one of its productions or activities. The company has been nominated for a National Dance Award so it is well worth supporting (see Ballet Cymru Am Byth1 Nov 2015).
One of my favourite dancers was Mandev Sokhi. He danced with Ballet Cymru, one of my favourite companies. Last week I visited Ballet Cymru's rehearsal studios at Rogerstone with the London Ballet Circle and met him and his fellow dancers for the first time. Imagine my thrill at shaking his hand.
Earlier today I saw this notice on Ballet Cymru's website:
"It is with huge sadness that Ballet Cymru has to announce the sudden death of dancer and Education Officer, Mandev Sokhi. Our love, thoughts and prayers go out to Mandev’s family and his wife Iselin. If anybody, especially any of our Associates or anybody involved in our Education Programme needs any help or support during this difficult time please contact us or come in and see us."
Memories of Mandev flooded back. Last week I saw him dance in the company class at the end of which Darius James invited each of the dancers to do his or her party piece. Mandev impressed us all with his turn. After class Mandev was one of the prince's friends in a rehearsal of Cinderella, a production that I had seen in Lincoln earlier this year (see Ballet Cymru's Cinderella15 June 2015). Last year I photographed Mandev with Krystal Lowe at Llandudno in Stuck in the Mud (see an Explosion of Joy21 Sept 2014).
"A cacophony of noise announced the arrival of the Beast onto the stage, and it was a Beast unlike any I had ever seen before. Brilliantly brought to life by Mandev Sokhi (who managed to convey a sense of pathos despite his alien form), this creature was literally skin and bone. I applaud Ballet Cymru for creating a truly physically repellent character that was at times reminiscent of Max Shreck's Count Orlok and Harrison Birtwistle's Minotaur. Sokhi's Beast carried a great burden, shaking, stumbling and contorting his way across the stage during the introductory scenes before re-coiling into an insectoid like form when faced with the purity and honesty of Lydia Arnoux's Beauty. As a fellow dancer I couldn't help but admire Sokhi's stamina and dance talent when, after his unveiling as a handsome prince, he bounded into a serious of bravura steps and pas de deux. This was no mean feat after bending over double for 75% of the production, especially when partnering the petite Arnoux."
It was a magnificent performance.
As I noted in Ballet Cymru at Home5 Oct 2015 Ballet Cymru is still a small and tightly knit company. Almost a family. This will hit them hard. I offer my most sincere and deepest sympathies to everyone in the company, to all Mandev's other friends and acquaintances but, above all, to his wife (who is also a dancer) and family.
Birmingham Royal Ballet, Quatrain, Matryoshka, Beauty and the Beasrm Swan Lake, Facade, Wycombe Swan
Last Wednesday I saw the programme for Birmingham Royal Ballet's Northern Tour in Shrewsbury (see Vaut le Voyage - Birmingham Royal Ballet in Shrewsbury28 May 2015). Yesterday I saw the programme for its Southern Tour at the Wycombe Swan Theatre in High Wycombe. This was also a mixed bill which offered new work as well as old favourites but unlike the programme for the North the southern programme included extracts from two of the company's full length ballets, Beauty and the Beast and Swan Lake.
As I said in It Takes Three To Tango19 May 2015 I had been attracted by new ballets from Kit Holder and Ruth Brill. I had recently seen and enjoyed two other works by Holder and also two ballets based on the music of the Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. I have always admired Brill as a dancer and I knew of her interest in choreography from a talk that she gave last year but I had never seen any of her ballets. I had expected much from both choreographers and I am glad to say that my expectations in each case were greatly exceeded.
Even though the music for Holder's Quatrain was by Piazzolla it was very different from 5 Tangos and Fatal Kiss. There was no red and black or sultry tango dancing. In fact, nothing specifically Argentinian at all. In so far as it reminded me of anything at all it was Ashton's Symphonic Variationswith its simple costumes and geometric patterns on the backdrop. In the case of Quatrain the backdrop can best be described as four converging planes which made me think of strips of graphene for some reason or other on a dark blue background. These were echoed in the dancers' costumes which were the same colour though the patterns were a different geometric design.
The choreography was fascinating with some unusual movements such as the men appearing to sit on the women while they were on all fours as though they were settees, the women appearing to rest on the backs of the men as they adopted the same position moments later and one of the women flexing her toe in the face of a man. You can see what I mean from the video that I have embedded above.
Karla Doorbar, Momoko Hirata, Céline Gittens and Yoaqian Shang danced the female roles and Jonathan Caguioa, Jamie Bond, Yasuo Atsuji and Mathias Dingman the male ones. A very strong cast for a very demanding ballet. The work was in four movements no doubt representing the Four Seasons of Buenos Aires which was the title of the score but the ballet also owed more than a little to Vivaldi which was acknowledged in the quotation at the very end of the work.
In a talk that she gave with Jonathan Payn in the theatre's Oak Room just before the show, Brill explained that Matryoshka (the title of her ballet) is the name given for the Russian dolls that fit inside one another. She had chosen Shostakovich's Waltz No 2 which conjured up images of swirling crinolines and beaux in evening dress. Crinolines don't come cheap and obscure the dancers' legs and feet. She stripped her costumes down to essentials which were red crinoline frames against white petticoats for the women and black trousers, shirts and red cummerbunds for the men.
The choice of music and designs was inspired. They gave great scope for Brill's choreography with her serious jumps for the men and fetching and feminine gestures and movements for the women. Having danced to another work of Shostakovich's on the one and so far only occasion that I have been inflicted on the public I can say from personal experience that his music is fun to perform. Certainly, Brill's dancers - Laura Day, Miki Mizutani, Lewis Turner, Caguioa and Yaoqian Shand in the Polka and Vallentin Olovyannikov, Rory Mackay and Gittens in the Waltz - looked like they were having fun. Brill said that she had created the ballet earlier this year expecting it to be a one off. That would have been a pity. I am so glad that David Bintley chose to include it in the Southern programme. I am sure that Matryoshka will become a popular item in the company's repertoire.
The next work in the programme was a Bintley ballet - Beauty and the Beast which I saw at The Lowry last September (see Bintley's Beauty1 Oct 2014). The scene that the company had selected was the pas de deux when Belle first meets The Beast towards the end of Act I. Doorbar was Balle and Atsuji The Beast. They danced beautifully and the crowd loved them.
Beauty was followed by the pas de quatre from Act I of Swan Lake. Although the original choreography was by Petipa there has been a lot of input from Bintley and his predecessor as Artistic Director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet Sir Peter Wright. In that scene Siegfried (danced by Tyrone Singleton) is pondering his new responsibilities now that he has come of age which includes finding a princess to marry. His companion Benno (Dingman) tries to distract him by introducing two courtesans (Angela Paul and Laura Purkiss). This scene links Siegfried's birthday celebrations and his swan hunt where he meets Odette and it contains some real pyrotechnics with lots of jumps for Benno and some tricky turns and pointe work for the courtesans. Despite their charms Siegfried is not in the mood for womanizing though he is up for shooting a few swans with the new bow that his mother had given him for his birthday. No ballet company can go far wrong with Swan Lake. Everyone knows and loves the music. There is nothing like a few fouettés and tours en l'air to delight an audience.
The last part of the programme was Façade, Frederick Ashton's ballet based on William Walton's setting of Edith Sitwell's nonsense poems. This is another favourite. It was first performed in 1931 by Ninette de Valois's Vic-Wells Ballet, the precursor of both the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet. It is a very funny, whimsical work with colliding highland dancers, a saucy milkmaid and even a tango to make up for the one that I had expected but didn't find in Quatrain. Turner, Day and Doorbar danced Scottish Rhapsody. Brill was the milkmaid in Yodelling (charming and cheeky in pigtails and dirndl) with Joshua Lee, Jared Hinton and I think Mackay though the programme said Edivaldo Souza da Silva. Hirata danced the Polka. Payn and Caguioa danced a hilarious foxtrot with Jade Heuson and Purkiss. Lorena Agramonte, Alys Shee and Yaoqian Shang danced the Waltz with Mimi Hagihara and hung around for Bond and Dingman in striped blazers and boaters to perform the Popular Song. Finally Paul and Mackay danced the Tango Pasodoble to strains of Beside the Seaside. A few minutes after the curtain fell the audience heard a muffled cheer from the stage. I don't know whether we were supposed to hear it but we did and it amused us and delighted us all the more.
I have already mentioned the talk before the show. I find such talks very useful though I rarely manage to attend them. Payn and Brill introduced themselves and told us how they came into dancing and summarized their careers to date. Then they talked about the show. Brill also told us how she had created Matryoshka. Though I try not to have favourites we balletomanes just can't help ourselves. I do delight in watching her dance because she loves to dance. I suppose all dancers who reach that standard must do so but she radiates her joy even more than most. I have had the pleasure of meeting her briefly off stage through the London Ballet Circle on two occasions and can report that she is as graceful with her public off stage as she is delightful as a dancer.
It was good also to hear Payn. He too delighted me on stage last night. He explained that he was standing in for Holder who had done similar talks in the other venues. Holder asked to be excused last night because yesterday was the Cup Final and he is an Aston Villa supporter. I hope he is not too disappointed with the result. His team did very well just to reach Wembley. If it is any comfort to him he delighted a lot of folk in High Wycombe last night.
I should say a word about the theatre. It is situated on the edge of the town centre with its own car park which operates an ingenious number plate recognition system. Motorists don't need to pay and display or even pick up a ticket. The registration number is stored in the computer and you key in that number into a touch screen terminal when you leave. The computer calculates the charge which you pay in coins. Alternatively, you can pay on-line. I do wish other car parks operated that system. There is a restaurant and bar with very helpful staff and managers, They served up cranachan - one of my favourite puddings - which I last savoured with Michelle Hynes of Inksters at a restaurant in Merchant City in Glasgow in 2010. I like this theatre very much and I look forward to returning in the Autumn to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Giselle.
When I reviewed the Birmingham Royal Ballet's show in Shrewsbury I mentioned my own connections with Shropshire. On the long drive south I listed to Peter Day's Saturday Classics. Imagine my delight when Day chose John Betjamen's A Shropshire Lad.
I have now seen both the Northern and Southern programmes of the Birmingham Royal Ballet this month and I enjoyed them both enormously. I have even attended a talk by David Binttey, I look forward to his Carmina Burana and The King Dancesin Birmingham on 20 June 2015.
Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont's Beauty and the Beasthas more than a little in common with Cinderella. It is also a story about a beautiful young woman who is put upon by her somewhat unattractive elder sisters and let down by her father - I suppose that's also true of King Lear now I come to think of it - who after lots of trials and tribulations also finds her prince. From a female point of view the story is slightly more palatable in that it is the man rather than the woman who has to break free of his circumstances. Cinderella is at least human even if she is a scullery maid whereas the beast is sub-human.
The other respect in which Beauty and the Beast shares something in common with Cinderella is that it has never really taken off either as a ballet or a fairy tale in the way that other stories have. It is even Cinderella to Cinderella which is well established in so many companies' repertoires with its wonderful Prokoviev score (even though David Nixon discarded it in his version of the ballet (see Northern Ballet's Cinderella - a Triumph!27 Dec 2013)). Having said that many companies have a version of Beauty and the Beast though they are all different (see the list as it stood in 1997 in the programme notes for Ballet Met's version by David Nixon). The first one that I saw was Peter Darrell's with its score by Thea Musgrave shortly after Western Theatre Ballet moved to Scotland. Three years ago I saw David Nixon's for Northern Ballet which I reviewed in my IP Yorkshire blog ("Ballet and Intellectual Property - my Excuse for reviewing 'Beauty and the Beast'"31 Dec 2011 IP Yorks). Most recently I saw Ballet Cymru's in Lincoln ("Diolch yn Fawr - Ballet Cymru's Beauty and the Beast"24 June 2014).
I saw Birmingham Royal Ballet's version at The Lowry one and a half times on the 26 and 27 Sept 2014. The reason for the half is that I rolled up at the box office shortly before 19:30 on Friday night only to be told that the performance had started at 18:30. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Nobody had thought to tell me when I booked the seat by telephone the day before. If I'd been the woodsman with powers of transmutation I would have turned the person responsible into a very inferior life form if not a block of stone. Not that I could have made it at 18:30 even if I had known of the early start because some of us actually have to do some work occasionally even on Fridays. To be fair, the box office did offer to swap my ticket for the matinee but I had arrived dolled up in a dress having driven 25 miles across the Pennines and I considered it somewhat perverse to drive 25 miles back again just because the Lowry had not seen fit to tell me, and I'd not seen fit to ask, what time it started. So I watched what was left of the show and bought a ticket for the following matinee.
On its web site the BRB promised us Brandon Lawrence, Maureya Lebowitz (whom I had admired as Lise in Fille (see "Fille bien gardée - Nottingham 26 June 2014"27 June 2014)) and Ruth Brill who are all favourites of mine. Now we did get Ruth Brill as one of the sisters but the Beast was Yasuo Atsuji and Beauty by Momoko Hirata. Now I make no complaint at that cast change because those guys were good and they danced beautifully together but it is a bit disconcerting to see a completely different pair of principals from the ones you had expected as the curtain rises. The day before I had seen two other favourites, Elisha Willis and Tyrone Singleton, as Beauty and the Beast who were also splendid in those roles but in a very different way. I can now understand why folk like Janet McNulty sit through the same show night after night (and sometimes matinee and evening on the same day) with different casts and never seem to tire of it. One dancer whom I saw on both Friday and Saturday was Marion Tait who danced the grandmother. She has been dancing for as long as I have been following dance and she is wonderful. I loved the wedding scene especially when she used her walking stick as a weapon.
One of the strengths of the Birmingham Royal Ballet is that its sets and costumes are sumptuous and this production was no exception. The action moves from a comfortable town house to a forest and from a forest to the Beast's castle. There is some delightful robotry going on as wine glasses are replenished and chairs recline without any human intervention. Philip Prowse was the designer who put that all together
I was not quite so enthusiastic about Glen Buhr's score at first but it grew on me the second time round. The waltz in the ball at the Best's castle at the start of Act II in the video above was one bit that I really liked. There was a lot of percussion but not a large orchestra was required. They had more than enough room to spread themselves out in The Lowry's already roomy orchestra pit.
There was some gorgeous choreography particularly the final pas de deux between Belle and Beastie after he is changed back into human form. Bintley is the closest modern choreographer to Ashton. He uses the same lifts and flourishes. That is why I like the BRB so much.
"Now", asked my awkward friend, "you've seen four Beauties and the Beast which one do you like best?" Well I like them all but in different ways. Musgrave's for the music. Birmingham's for the sets and costumes but also Bintley's choreography. Nixon's for the last Act. Ballet Cymru's for its spirit. BRB's Beauty moves on to the Hippodrome tonight and if tickets are still available I'd gladly recommend it.
When I saw Ballet Cymru's Romeo a Juliet last year I wrote:
"I would really like to see more of James's choreography. I have seen a lot of ballet over the last 40 years or so. I rarely get as excited about a company as I did on Saturday."
LPAC is a complex of studios and auditorium that houses the School of Performing Arts of the University of Lincoln. The university campus stands a few hundred yards from Brayford Pool, a massive expanse of water caused by the broadening of the River Witham in the city centre. It is a wonderful feature that reminds me very much of Perth in Western Australia where there is a similar broadening of the Swan River. Like Edinburgh Lincoln has an old town and a new town though I am not sure that the locals use that terminology. As in Edinburgh the new town has the department stores and offices while the old town has a cathedral and castle. And again like Edinburgh there is a steep hill leading up to the castle and cathedral which is actually called "Steep Hill".
If you mount Steep Hill and enter the cathedral you will find a mischievous wee beastie called the Lincoln Imp who seems to have caused quite a lot of havoc in the East of England in times gone by. The mention of the imp brings me very neatly to Darius James and Amy Doughty's production of Beauty and the Beast. The ballet opened with the company standing still on stage. Then words appeared on the backdrop about children and myth and a quotation from Jean Cocteau who is of course the author of the screenplay and director of La Belle et la Bête.
The ballet follows Cocteau's film somewhat more closely than the de Villeneuve story which makes for strong roles for the beast Mandev Sokhi and Beauty Lydia Arnoux. The beast's costume is a wonderful concoction which looks like something from outer space. The head looks like a cow's skull with horns and his feat are rails. How Sokhi managed to dance in that beats me. Ballet Cymru has very kindly provided me with some pictures of him which Mel will use in her critique of the ballet but if you want to get an idea of his appearance take a butcher's at the holding page of Ballet Cymru's temporary website. Though a small company it is a pretty good one with some talented dancers. The dancers had to double as Beauty's family and the Beast's attendants. All performed well, Nicholas Capelle as Beauty's father, Daniel Morrison as her suitor, Andrea Battaggia as her spendthrift brother, Robbie Moorcroft as his friend and Krystal Lowe, Natalie Debono and Annette Antal as Beauty's sisters.
As in Romeo a Juliet the designer Steve Denton made skillful use of the projector to effect scene changes from the happy homestead where Beauty lives with her family to the entrance and the interior of the beast's castle. I also loved David Westcott's score. I have reviewed three productions of Beauty and the Beast over the years: Peter Darrell's for Scottish Ballet in Aien (the St Andrews University student newspaper in 1970), David Nixon's for Northern Ballet in 2011 in IP Yorkshire and finally this production. Of the three I liked Ballet Cymru's the most and I think that is largely because I enjoyed Westcott's composition so much.
As soon as the show was over I tweeted
I have seen three Beauties and Beasts over the years but @balletcymru's this evening was by far the most enjoyable.
— Jane Lambert (@nipclaw) June 22, 2014
Neither Mel nor I wanted to go home straight after the show so we bounded up Steep Hill as though the Beast was behind us. There we were rewarded with a view of the floodlit cathedral in the twilight. So Diolch yn fawr Ballet Cymru for a lovely day.
Tomorrow I go to Glasgow to see Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel. I am looking forward to it tremendously, partly because a new work by Christopher Hampson is a delight in itself but also because Scottish Ballet has a special place in my affections.
Although I had an interest in ballet when I was at school in West London - maybe because of a wonderful exhibition of costumes and scenery from the Ballets Russes or perhaps because I had got to know some of the students of the Royal Ballet School as they were just across the Cromwell Road from us - it was at St Andrews that my interest developed into a passion. The Professor of Art History was John Steer who had come to us from Bristol. There he had got to know Western Theatre Ballet and it was through him that I got to know that company.
The company had a wonderful choreographer in Peter Darrell as well as wonderful dancers like Bronwen Curry, Ashley Killar, Kenn Wells and my favourite Elaine McDonald. I began to follow them even while they were still at Bristol.
A year after Steer came to St Andrews the company moved to Glasgow and changed its name to Scottish Theatre Ballet. I do not know whether Steer had anything to do with that move but he was very close to the company and eventually became its chair. Once when Scottish Theatre Ballet visited Dundee Steer actually introduced me to the cast. I even had the privilege of giving two of them a lift to their lodgings. One was Kenn Wells. I cannot remember who was the other. Steer actually brought them to our university. They performed in the Buchanan Theatre in Market Street, on 15 Feb 1971, the day we adopted decimal currency.
The first of Darrrell's full length works that I saw was Beauty and the Beast. I reviewed it for Aien our student newspaper. I saw the ballet at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh shortly after they had moved to Scotland. I also remember chartering a bus for our ballet club of which I was a founder member. The dancing was superb and I can remember Thea Musgrave's score which Darrell had commissioned. I could not find the ballet in the company's current repertoire which is a pity.
Darrell and Steer are now dead and I was very sad to learn today that Elaine McDonald is not in good health. I was even sadder to learn that my world had intruded into hers when she sought a judicial review of the richest borough in England's decision to withdraw her carer to save a few thousand pounds. But I have seen a film clip of her taken shortly after the appeal. Despite her infirmity she retains her elegance and bearing as a star.
A lot has happened to Scottish Ballet since I left St Andrews. Tarama Rojo has come and gone and it now has an excellent artistic director in Hampson. It has won critical acclaim around the world. It is one of the UK's strongest companies. I now have other loves in ballet but it was Scottish Ballet that was my first love.
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