Yoshida Coming Home

Author Scillystuff Licence CC BY 3.0 Source Wikimedia Commons

 

Miyako Yoshida trained at the Royal Ballet School and spent most of her career dancing in the United Kingdom, first with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and later the Royal Ballet.  She rose quickly to principal and has won all sorts of awards, including the Order of the British Empire.  She is now Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Japan, which she will bring to London between 24 and 27 July 2025.

The company will perform Giselle at Covent Garden.  It will be Yorshida's own production with designs by Dick Bird and lighting by Rick Fisher. Judging by the YouTube video of Yoshida's rehearsal, audiences are in for a treat.  The National Ballet is located in the recently opened New National Theatre in Tokyo, which it shares with the National Opera and the National Theatre of Japan.  There are 75 dancers in the company, which enables them to perform everything from The Nutcracker to Kaori Ito's Robot, l'amour éternel.

The company has its own ballet school, which offers a two-year full-time course to prepare students for a professional career.  The school also offers a two-year preparatory course for younger students.  Details of the curriculum and profiles of some of the students appear on the ballet school webpage.

The National Ballet is not the only company in Japan; The Tokyo Ballet and the K-Ballet are also prominent companies.  According to Wikipedia, ballet was introduced into Japan by the Italian ballet master Giovanni Vittorio Rossi in 1912.  Rossi trained several Japanese pupils, some of whom entertained troops and factory workers during the Sino-Japanese War, much in the way that Vic-Wells, Rambert and other companies did here (see Yukiyo Hoshino Use of Dance to Spread Propaganda during the Sino-Japanese War Athens Journal of History Vol 1 Issue 3 pp 191 - 198).

World Ballet Day is coming

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One of the compensations of Autumn is World Ballet Day in which five of the world's top companies present their offerings and those of their guests. This year it falls on 5 Oct 2017.

The day begins in Melbourne with the Australian Ballet. We have a special interest in that company as they hosted Amelia Sierevogel earlier this year.  She told us all about her experiences with that company in Melbourne City of Dance 23 May 2017.  The Australian Ballet is sharing its slot with three other companies with which we have a connection, namely the Queensland Ballet, the Hong Kong Ballet and the West Australian Ballet.

We welcomed the Queensland Ballet to London in 2015 (see A dream realized: the Queensland Ballet in London 12 Aug 2015).  Gita and I also had the honour of meeting its legendary artistic director, Li Cunxin, when he visited the London Ballet Circle. Amelia and I have another connection with that company since our teacher, Fiona Noonan, trained and danced with them. Another favourite teacher, Jane Tucker, danced with the Hong Kong Ballet who are also guests of the Australian Ballet. The third guest that we follow with interest is the West Australian Ballet who are dancing David Nixon's The Great Gatsby in Perth this month.

The baton passes to the Bolshoi whose Taming of the Shrew delighted audiences in London last year (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2017). The choreographer of that work was Jean-Christophe Maillot whose company Les Ballets de Monte Carlo will share the Bolshoi's slot. The Bolshoi's other guests are the Netherlands Dance Theatre who are well known and greatly appreciated here.  The Bolshoi will rehearse for us Balanchine's Diamonds and The Golden Age and introduce us to The Moscow State Academy of Choreography.

Next comes London with the Royal Ballet and four of our other great companies all of whom I know well and admire greatly. The Royal Ballet will rehearse Anastasia, La Fille mal gardée, The Sleeping Beauty and a new ballet by Charlotte Edmonds. Students from the Royal Ballet School will dance Concerto and the company will dance Anastasia.  The Royal Ballet's guests include some of the world's greatest companies including The Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, La Scala, the Stuttgart Ballet and the Vienna State Ballet. This should be the highpoint of the day.

Across the Atlantic to Toronto with the National Ballet of Canada. They will be rehearsing Cinderella and Onegin and interview the great Karen Kain. Wayne McGregor and Robert Binet.  Their guests include the Miami City Ballet whom Gita saw in February (see Gita Mistry Attending the Ballet in Florida: Miami City Ballet's Program Three 6 March 2017) and the Boston Ballet who were in London in 2013 (see High as a Flag on the 4th July 7 July 2917).

Finally to San Francisco, one of the oldest and finest companies in America who also promise rehearsals of Diamonds and Cinderella as well as Liam Scarlett's Frankenstein, Helgi Tomasson's Haffner Symphony and a new work by Yuri Possokhov. Their guests include the Houston Ballet which suffered badly from Hurricane Harvey (see Houston Ballet  30 Aug 2017). I take a special interest in that company partly because of its many connections with this country. partly because Li Cunxin started his career there but mainly because the outstanding young artist, Emilie Tassinari, has recently joined the corps.

Every year seems to be better than the last and this year promises to be the best of all. Nobody can watch the whole feast on one day but, happily, recordings remain on YouTube for months after the event.  It takes about a year to savour it all.

Welcome Silver Swans

Author Marek Szczepanek
Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported  

The top item of my RAD newsletter features Angela Ripon in a dance studio above the headline "Silver Swans Take Flight". The article announces that the RAD is piloting ballet classes for the over-55s in the UK and elsewhere to be taught by specially trained instructors under the SILVER SWANS trade mark and that Angela Ripon is promoting them.  No classes have been arranged just yet but the RAD's website shows a map of the UK where those instructors are located. The most northerly is in Billingham and the most southerly in Helston unless you count Jersey which also has a teacher at Saint-Ouen. The RAD map complements Sophie Rebecca's more comprehensive map of adult ballet classes in the UK some of which also cater for the over 55s.

The RAD's initiative seems to have been a long time in the making.  I reported on three taster classes in Haslingden, Richmond and Glossop marketed by the RAD under the SILVER SWANS sign as long ago as 12 Feb 2014 (see Migrating Swans - Dance Classes for the Over 50s in the North 12 Feb 2014). Interestingly, the first use of the words SILVER SWANS to refer to dancers of a certain age appears to have been by the BBC.   Those words appeared in the headline for an article about a Scottish Ballet class for older dancers by Emma Ailes as long ago as 18 Oct 2013 (see 'Silver Swans' taking to the barre later in life for ballet lessons 18 Oct 2013 BBC).

If you are over 55 and want to return to dance after a gap of many years or even take up ballet for the first time, you do not have to wait for the RAD.  Northern Ballet Academy has been running several beginners and improvers classes a week for dancers over the age of 55 in Leeds for many years.  As you can see from the class timetable, it now runs classes for beginners and improvers over the age of 55 at its studios in Leeds on Tuesdays and Fridays as well as two classes in Gomersal on Monday mornings. I started the beginners' class in Leeds almost exactly 4 years ago. If you are wondering what to expect on your first day. I wrote about my first experiences in Realizing a Dream on 12 Sept 2013. You can actually watch a video of our class in action and find links to lots of other articles on dancing in later life in We're in the Paper 15 April 2013.

I know for a fact that there are similar classes in London run by Rambert which seem to attract royal patronage (see Mercury Movers 60+ on the Rambert website), Birmingham (see Move into Ballet on the Dance Exchange website), Newcastle (see Ballet Beginners on the Dance City website) and Glasgow (see Regenerate on the Scottish Ballet website). For the more ambitious or extrovert there are elder companies in Glasgow and London which perform before a paying public (see Caledonian Cousins 9 June 2015 and Sage Dance Company 19 June 2017) and indeed Canberra (see Growing Old Disgracefully in Morley 28 Sept 2015).

One other thing to note. I have found out that there is not much difference between an over 55 improvers class in Leeds and any other adult ballet class.  We do exactly the same barre and centre exercises and the teacher expects exactly the same degree of effort and commitment from us as she does from her other students.  I discovered that by accident when I strayed into Christopher Hinton-Lewis's class after I was prevented from attending my over 55 class by a fallen tree on the A1 (see It's an Ill Wind - Review of Northern Ballet's Beginner's Class 8 Dec 2013). So if there is no over 55 class in your town, don't be afraid to join an all age class as you will not feel out of place.  I discovered KNT in my home town of Manchester three years ago and have never looked back. I do not know a more congenial group of classmates or more encouraging teachers on the planet (see So Proud of Manchester - KNT Danceworks Complete Beginners Class 29 Aug 2014).

So I wish RAD and their students every success with their SILVER SWANS venture. I shall be very pleased to assist them in any way I can. If anyone who takes a SILVER SWANS class would care to review it for me I shall be very glad to publish it. I encourage everyone of every age who loves ballet to check out their local dance school for an adult ballet class.  I remember a poster a few years ago with the words "You can't buy happiness but you can buy a ballet class which is kinda the same thing." That is just so true.

Ninette de Valois

Today is St Patrick's day. Ireland has given the world many great artists in every medium and genre over the centuries.  I can think of no better way of celebrating Ireland's national day than by remembering one of the finest of those artists, Dame Ninette de Valois.

Dame Ninette was born in Blessington on 6 June 1898. Although she is best known for establishing the Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School, she contributed much to the arts in Dublin. At the request of W B Yeats, she helped to establish the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet and choreographed several ballets for the Abbey theatre to scores by contemporary Irish composers. She was honoured for her services to the arts in Ireland by the Irish Catholic Stage Guild in 1949 and by an honorary doctorate from the University of Dublin in 1957.

Yet another country that honours Dame Ninette is Turkey for she founded the Turkish State Ballet and the Turkish State Ballet School and created the first full-length ballet for the national company.

I should like to wish all my readers whether Irish or not, and, in particular, Fiona Noonan who led me back to ballet, a very happy St Patrick's Day.

So what is the rest of Europe watching over Christmas?

Author Ssolbergj
 Source Wikipedia
Creative Commons Licence

"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 Guide 31 Oct 2016). There are, of course, alternatives. The Royal Ballet itself is staging The Sleeping Beauty from 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 Again 3 Dec 2016) and The Red Shoes Second Time Round 4 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 Gretel 23 Dec 2013). Elsewhere in England Northern Ballet's Beauty and the Beast is in Leeds (see Much Less Beastly - Indeed Rather Beautiful 18 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 Coppelia 12 Dec 2016 and Pictures of Coppelia 15 Dec 2016).

Both the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky are staging The Nutcracker over the Christmas and New Year holiday season (see the Bolshoi's Schedule of Performances and the Mariinsky Theatre's Playbill) but the Royal Danish Ballet offer Christopher Wheeldon's Alices Adventures in Wonderland, the Paris Opera Jiri Kylian at the Garnier and Nureyev's Swan Lake at the Bastille, the Stuttgart Ballet Don Quixote and La Scala Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet.

Two other bits of news.  

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. 

Working off the Christmas Pud

Author Musical Linguist
Source: Wikipedia
Creative Commons Licence

Good old Danceworks. I could give Lesley Osman and her teachers a hug right now. The only days they will be closed will be Christmas Day, Boxing Day and News Year Day which is reasonable enough. The rest of the time between now and the first week of January they will be open for business and you will find their Christmas timetable here. I can't wait till Monday 9 Jan 2017 when Northern Ballet and KNT reopen so I shall be packing some shoes, leotard and tights when I trek down to London for my grandson's birthday on the 28 Dec.

The other studio that I attend in London is Pineapple and they will shut between 22 Dec and 3 Jan 2017. There are, of course, a lot of other dance studios and teachers in London which I have not checked out and many of them are listed by London Dance.

Outside London, term starts at Birmingham DanceXchange on 9 Jan as it does at Northern Ballet and KNT in Manchester. Dance Studio Leeds reopens on 3 Jan 2017 and there will actually be some classes on that day though most will re-start later in the month.  Term also starts on 3 Jan  2017 at Dancecity in Newcastle. In Glasgow, Scottish Ballet's classes appear to start on various dates from the second week of January.

Should any dance studio or accredited teacher run a class in any dance style anywhere in the UK between now and 9 Jan 2017 I will publicize it here, in Facebook and on twitter. Indeed, I shall even try to attend and review it if it is at all possible.

Ruth Brill's Arcadia

Pan

Autor Mikhail Vrubel

Source Wikipedia

One of the works to look out for in the coming year will be Ruth Brill's Arcadia.  it will launch at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham on the 5 and 6 May 2017 and continue to Poole on the 9 and 10 and Truro on 12 and 13 May. It will also be included in the Three Short Stories mixed bill to be performed in Birmingham between 21 and 24 June 2017.

Although there is an interesting article on Birmingham Royal Ballet's website on working as a female choreographer, there is not much on Arcadia.  We know the music is by John Harle and the designs are by Atena Ameri but that is almost as much as the company is willing to say. All it will add is:

"Finally, in Arcadia the ancient god Pan is unleashed, as Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Ruth Brill makes her first commissioned piece to a new score composed by renowned saxophonist John Harle."

Brill is a fine dancer who is beginning to make her mark as a choreographer.  Here is a list of her ballets since 2013:

• Hit on all Sixes (Choreographic workshop, 2013)
• Butterfly Effect (Elmhurst School for Dance, 2013)
• Rhapsody in Blue (Birmingham Royal Ballet, 2014)
• Matryoshka (Birmingham Royal Ballet, 2015)
• Tempo di Polacca (Elmhurst School for Dance, 2015)
• Sound of Strength (Rugby World Cup welcoming ceremony for England, 2015)
• 'Flash Flock' - community flash mob, The Bullring for Birmingham Weekender Festival, 2015)
• Pennies from Heaven (A Winter Less Ordinary Festival, 2015)
• Arcadia (Birmingham Royal Ballet, to premiere spring 2017).

The only one that I have seen so far is Matryoshka but you can see from my blog that I liked it (see  Birmingham Royal Ballet in High Wycombe 31 May 2015. Chookas from all of us at Terpsichore, Ruth.

A Birmingham Bayadere

It goes against the grain for a Mancunian to say anything nice about Birmingham but I gladly make an exception for the Birmingham Royal Ballet. It is a great national institution that deserves generous support from every part of the UK including the North of England (in which regard it helps that that company's artistic director hails from Honley (see My Home and Bintley's 12 May 2015)).

This year Birmingham Royal Ballet is appealing for funds in The Big Give for a new production of La Bayadere. A Birmingham Bayadere!  How could I possibly resist that?  How could anyone? Less than two weeks ago I flew to Amsterdam to see the Dutch National Ballet's brilliant production (see Dutch National Ballet's La Bayadere 14 Nov 2016) and a few weeks before that I endured 3 days of relentless pain to learn some of the choreography (see La Bayadere Intensive Day 3: No Snakes 17 Aug 2016).

BRB needs £450,000 to stage the ballet (see Budget Project Costs on the Big Give website) and the Big Give Christmas Challenge is an excellent opportunity to raise some of those funds because every penny that is contributed by members of the public between 29 Nov and 2 Dec is matched by a similar amount from the Big Give's philanthropists.  The company seeks to raise £45,000 in this week's Big Give campaign.

Now there are a lot of other charities appealing for funds in this year's Christmas Challenge including Balletboyz, who like English National Ballet, are appealing for support for its classes for people suffering from Parkinson's Disease (see Parkinson's CAN dance and ENB's Big Give to Dance for Parkinson's 25 Nov 2016) and Ballet Cymru, which is appealing for funds for a new roof and solar panels for its premises. They are all worth supporting and I hope the public will support those appeals just as generously as it would have done anyway.

However, La Bayadere is very special,  As the company says in its "Need" statement

"In world ballet, the presentation of a handful of the most popular classical works has become the norm, with two hazardous effects. Dancers, creatives and audiences alike can stagnate, losing interest in the art form they care about leading to dwindling attendances and an unsustainable Company."

Investing in La Bayadere is part of the solution. It will further expand Birmingham Royal Ballet's repertory and further its reputation for maintaining the heritage of the ballet tradition. The plan is to launch the ballet at The Hippodrome next Autumn and then take it on tour to the Lowry, London, Sunderland and Plymouth. We shall benefit from this appeal and not just the company:

"All ballet enthusiasts will benefit from a classical ballet being restored to its original glory.
The maintenance of the classical ballet canon will also ensure new audiences are encouraged into the auditoriums and classrooms, keeping ballet truly alive."

Will the company invite Natalia Makarova to stage the version that she created for Amercian Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet or will Bintley do his own?  Will the great Celine Gittens dance Nikiya and Tyrone Singleton  be her Solor?  And who will be Gamzatti, the Brahmin and the Golden Idol? I will make discreet enquiries and let you know what I find out.

BUT FIRST WE HAVE TO RAISE SOME DOSH FOR THESE FOLKS.

The Good Nutcracker Guide

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Those who like The Nutcracker have a choice of three versions this year since all three of our flagship companies are staging the ballet this Christmas. The Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet offer their own versions of Sir Peter Wright's production in London and Birmingham respectively while English National will tour with Wayne Eagling's.

My first choice is the Royal Ballet's. I prefer the story where the fight between the mice and toy soldiers is confined to a dream in Act I and Act II is one great divertissement.  In Wayne Eagling's the battle is central to the story and continues into Act II as the mouse king follows Clara and Drosselmeyer by grasping the gondola of their balloon. In the Dutch National Ballet's version, which is also by Eagling and most recently performed last year, the work is actually called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.   I suppose it becomes a sort of metaphor for the struggle between good and evil.  Another big difference between Wright's versions and Eagling's is that Clara morphs into the Sugar Plum in the latter.

There are some differences between the Birmingham and London versions of Wright's ballet. The Royal Ballet's designs are by Julia Trevelyan Oman whereas BRB's are by John Macfarlane. There are also differences between Eagling's versions for the Dutch and English National Ballets in that ENB's designs are by Peter Farmer whereas Het's are  by Toer van Schayk. However, van Schayk influences the choreography of the English version.

Audiences who want to see the Royal Ballet can catch it at Covent Garden between the 23 Nov and 12 Jan 2017. It will also be streamed to cinemas throughout the UK and the rest of the world on 8 Dec 2016. BRB's will run from 25 Nov 2016 to 13 Dec 2015 at the Birmingham Hippodrome. English National's will start in Milton Keynes between 23 and 26 Nov 2016, proceed to the Liverpool Empire between 29 Nov and 3 Dec 2016, and finish its run at the Coliseum between 14 Dec and 7 Jan 2017. It will also be performed in Southampton between 29 Nov and 2 Dec 2017.

It has been some time since I last saw either of Sir Peter's versions because I could find no reviews in the archives of my blog but I can offer you a review of Eagling's for ENB from three years ago (see Cracking 14 Dec 2013). I remember that performance particularly because it was almost the last time that I saw Vadim Muntagirov and Daria Klimentova dance together. I have seen and reviewed several other versions since including the revival of Peter Darrell's for Scottish Ballet (see Like meeting an old friend after so many years 4 Jan 2015) and David Nixon's for Northern (see Northern Nutcracker 19 Dec 2015) but neither of those companies is running a version of The Nutcracker this year. There is also some background information on The Nutcracker on my resource page for the ballet which I really should update.

A Dark Side to The Nutcracker?

Ivan Vsevolozhsky's original costume sketch for The Nutcracker

Source Wikipediadia

The dark side of Giselle is obvious with its ghosts of jilted girls or laid-off garment workers. Christopher Hampson's Hansel and Gretel is a bit gruesome with the witch being tumbled into a furnace. Even Swan Lake is a bit dodgy with Siegfried's jumping into the lake. But The Nutcracker is alright surely with its divertissements, Sugar Plum Fairy and girls singing "La, la, la, la, la" in the Snowflakes scene.

Well maybe not if Margaret Fleming-Makarian is correct. She  has written and published a 161-page treatise called The Original Nutcracker Ballet - A Hidden Allegory in which she argues that there are hidden meanings in the work. According to John Riley who has reviewed her work in the summer 2015 Digest of the Society for Cooperation in Russian and Soviet Studies

"These include postEnlightenment ‘rationalisations’ of the human body as automata, early attempts at dream interpretation and comparative religion’s analysis of pagan, Christian and occult symbolism."

He continues:

"the major theme is early nineteenth-century Napoleonic expansionism, and the resultant pan-European upheavals and changes in society and geopolitical power, particularly the German–French–Russian relationship."

Now this may not be so strange as it seems as Russia was undergoing a period of rapid economic and social change at the end of the 19th century with the emergence of a new class of manufacturers and merchants. That phenomenon was a theme of many English and French novels of the time and it would not be unreasonable to expect it in some other art form elsewhere in Europe. It is certainly the case that Drosselmeyer like Rothbart and Carabosse are outsiders. Rothbart disguises himself as a wealthy merchant when he presents Odile to the princely court. Are the magician and witch in The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty code for the manufacturers who disrupted the existing order with their factories and technologies based on steam and steel?

Well, perhaps, and then again perhaps not but there will be an opportunity to hear Ms Fleming-Makarian and to explore and test her arguments on the 25 Nov at 19:00 when she will discuss The Hidden Allegory of Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker' in a talk to the Society for Co-operation in Russian and Soviet Studies at 320 Brixton Road, London, SW9 6AB. The venue is served by the 3, 59, 133, 159 and 415 bus routes and the nearest underground stations are Brixton and the Oval.

According to the Society's website:

"Margaret Fleming-Markarian spent her professional life teaching dance. Now retired, she researches the classic ballets, drawing upon her practical experience, as well as early training at the Benesh Institute of Choreology, and academic education in European and Art History at the University of Edinburgh. Centring her research on the Sergeev choreographic scores in the Harvard Theatre Collection and the Royal Academy of Dance Library in London, she seeks to build a meaningful visual context for the original classic choreographies through their original designs and sets preserved in St Petersburg."

For those who want simply to dance The Nutcracker  Jane Tucker of Northern Ballet Academy will teach an intensive workshop for KNT in the studios of the Northern Ballet School in Manchester on 28 and 29 Oct 2016 (see A Unique Opportunity to learn a Bit of The Nutcracker 12 Oct 2016). The last I heard was that the Saturday class for beginners is full though there may be vacancies through cancellations and there is still room in the advanced class on Friday.

If you just want to see The Nutcracker, the Royal Ballet will dance it at Covent Garden between 23 Nov 2016 and 12 Jan 2017 (see Royal Opera House's website), the English National Ballet at Milton Keynes, Liverpool and London between the 23 Nov 2016 and 7 Jan 2017 (see English National Ballet's website), Birmingham Royal Ballet in Birmingham between the 25 Nov and the 13 Dec 2016 (see Birmingham Royal Ballet's website) and the Ballet Ireland are taking it on tour to Coleraine, Newtonabbey, Cookstown and Enniskillen as well as many venues in the Republic of Ireland between 5 Nov  and 23 Dec 2016 (see the company's website). There is also a students' production of Act II by pupils of the Danceworks International Ballet Academy in London on 12 and 13 Dec 2016.

For background information and links to other resources on The Nutcracker visit my page on the ballet.

PS. I am very grateful to Colman Reilly for tweetng that the Irish National Youth Ballet will dance The Nutcracker at the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire, between the 9 and 11 Dec 2016. That is the handiest possible venue for visitors from Liverpool and North Wales and it is not too far from any part of Northern Ireland.

Shobana Jeyasingh's New Material

I first came across Shobana Jeyasingh Dance when I saw Bayadère – The Ninth Life at the Linbury last year (see La Bayadère - The Ninth Life 29 March 2015). That was a fascinating juxtaposition of an early Western perception of Indian dance and a modern Indian perception of one of the classics of Western dance. As I remarked at the time:

"I had come to the performance expecting a transposition of the story of the ballet into bharatha natyam or some other Indian dance idiom but it was nothing like that. That would have been too easy and it is clear from the list of her works on her company's website that Jeyasingh doesn't do easy. Instead, it compared and contrasted a modern Indian's perception of one of the classics of Western dance with Théophile Gautier's perception of Indian classical dance."

Shortly after Bayadere - The Ninth Life had completed its tour, the company launched Material Men which it described as "a virtuoso piece for two dazzling performers of the Indian diaspora" with "contrasts in style between classical Indian dance and hip hop, as well as a shared history rooted in colonial plantations, are the starting points for this absorbing dance work."

I did not see that work when it went on tour last Autumn because it did not come to the North but it appears to have gone down well with the press and public which is not surprising if you look at the pictures of the show on the company's website.

I received a newsletter from the company yesterday which announced that Material Men will tour again. This time it will come close as it will open at the Djanogly Theatre in Nottingham on 7 Feb 2017 before visiting Ipswich, Southampton, Birmingham and Glasgow. The work will be danced as part of a double bill with Strange Blooms which was launched in 2013.

Judging by the trailer and the little bit of Jeyasingh's work that I have seen already it will be gripping and absorbing but not easy. However, as I said when I reviewed Bayadere - The Ninth Life that artist does not do easy.

Where can I get a Ballet Class in August?

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Not in Brum for a start!

"Classes are currently on Summer Break!" proclaims the DanceXchnage's website. "Our NEW autumn term starts Monday 19 September – Saturday 10 December 2016." And they try to make out they are the nation's second city.

No such problem in the real second city. Danceworks has classes through the summer as you can see from their timetable. Sodoes Pineapple.

Classes don't stop at Leeds, or Liverpool or indeed Newcastle-Under-Lyme according to Picturesinthefirelight. 

But in Manchester our modern Ithaca, there are classes throughout the year at KNT in the Dancehouse Theatre's studios. And for the next few days something wonderful will happen.

I don't know whether there are still places on these intensives. I suspect not. But if you don't enquire on info@kntdanceworks.co.uk  Tel: 07783 103 037 you certainly won't be able to come.

Thanks George

George Osborne MP

Source HM Treasury

Open Government Licence

In his Spending review and autumn statement 2015 the Chancellor of the Exchequer made three funding announcements which should benefit the performing arts in general and dance in particular:

• a £78 million capital investment in The Factory, Manchester plus £9 million per year revenue funding from 2018-2019;
• a £4 million grant to the Birmingham Dance Hub; and 
• support for the National College for the Creative and Cultural Industries at the Backstage Centre in Thurrock.

I have already discussed the Factory and its potential in The Factory begins to take Shape 26 Nov 2015 and Let's bring the Royal Ballet to The Factory Manchester 11 Dec 2014. Architects have been appointed and the first artist's impressions have been published in the Manchester Evening News. Work should start on the Quay Street site in the next few months. The location is particularly handy for Manchester's legal profession as it is not far from the Civil Justice Centre. It should be finished by 2018.

In Arts Council England’s analysis of its investment in large-scale opera and ballet which I mentioned in How Arts Council England supports Dance 10 Oct 2015 the Arts Council announced increased funding for Birmingham Royal Ballet. Although not expressed as a condition of the extra funding, the analysis added:

"We are proposing that, in addition, we ask the company to work with the City of Birmingham, Dance Xchange, the Hippodrome and other interested parties to make Birmingham into a regional dance centre, building a broad dance culture in the City, capable of increasing audiences and attracting and retaining talent in the city."

No specific announcement has been made as to the Birmingham Dance Hub unlike Leeds which published a consultancy brief for plans for a dance hub which should be delivered by January 2016. However, the Birmingham bub is likely to be based in the Hippodrome which houses Dance Xchange (DX). DX describes itself as

"a power house of dance with excellence, innovation, participation and inclusion at its heart – and, together with Birmingham Hippodrome and Birmingham Royal Ballet, is part of the largest dance partnership in Britain."

In its About Us page it refers to its performance programme, classes and its production facilities. It is safe to assume that Birmingham Royal Ballet and Elmhurst will be evolved and we look forward to hearing how the participants will use the Chancellor's £4 million.

The offer of support for the new National College for Creative and Cultural Industries is much vaguer than the other two projects and is said to subject to due diligence even though the plans for the College seem to be pretty advanced (see Jane Lambert National College for the Creative and Cultural Industries 7 Dec 2015 IP East). The College will be housed in the Backstage Centre where the Royal Opera House's production facilities are already located and it should receive its first students in September 2016 (see Creative and Cultural Trading Ltd.'s press release of 11 Dec 2015). The College will train the technical and management staff needed for ballet and the other performing arts.

Team Terpsichore will be watching all three projects like a hawk and will report any news on them and similar projects in other cities as and when it happens.

Duology - Chantry Dance releases new details of its Autumn tour

DUOLOGY Tour: 'Vincent - a stranger to himself' rehearsal trailer from Rae Piper on Vimeo.


On 13 May 2015  I mentioned Chantry Dance Company's  Duology, a double bill which they will take on tour  (see Chantry Dance's Autumn Tour 13 May 2015). It will consist of Vincent - a stranger to himself' and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.  The company has now published more details of the show and released the above video.

As its title suggests Vincent - a stranger to himself is about the life and loves of Vincent Van Gogh. It explores the man behind the self-portrait, his relationships with the women in his life and his art. The work is choreographed by Paul Chantry and Rae Piper and directed by Gail Gordon. Piper has also designed the sets and costumes. In addition to Chantry and Piper the cast will include David Beer, Rebecca Scanlon, Sorrel de Paula Hanika and four young dancers from the company's associates programme.

Starting from Mozart's famous and much loved music Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is said to be designed to invite each member of the audience to create his or her own interpretation of the dance imagery. Instead of being just passive observers he or she will participate actively in the work.  I am intrigued to imagine how this will work but, knowing Chantry and Piper as I do, I am confident that it will work.

Each performance will be followed by questions and answers which will lead no doubt to lively discussion. For those in the auditorium who are new to contemporary dance it should be a good introduction to the art. For those who are already familiar with this genre, their understanding and appreciation should deepen. If I understand the advanced publicity correctly, each evening is likely to be an education rather than just a performance.

The venues for the tour are:

10 Sept - The Guildhall Arts Centre, Grantham 01476 406158
11 Sept - The Arts Centre, Stamford 01780 763203
19 Sept - Elmhurst, Birmingham: 0121 472 6655
24 Sept - Swan Theatre, Worcester 01905 611427
26 Sept - Square Chapel Arts Centre, Halifax 01422 349422
2 Oct - The Tramshed, London 020 8854 1316.

This is a popular company with a growing reputation and following so don't leave it too late to book your seat.

The King Dances

Between the 17 and 20 June 2015 Birmingham Royal Ballet will dance David Bintley's latest ballet, The King Dances at the Birmingham Hippodrome. It will be part of a double bill to celebrate Bintley's 20 tears as the company's artistic director. The other ballet will be Carmina Burana which Bintley created in 1995.

According to the company's website:

"In 1653 the 14-year-old Louis XIV of France danced the role of Apollo the sun god in Le Ballet de la nuit, and earned himself forever the soubriquet the Sun King. In The King Dances, David Bintley re-imagines the very beginnings of ballet, when men were quite literally, the kings of dance."

The dance is also imagined in Gérard Corbiau's film Le Roi danse an extract of which appears above.

Le Ballet de la nuit was the subject of the 6th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium which took place at New College on 21 April 2004.  Papers of that symposium have been compiled and edited by Michael Burden and Jennifer Thorp and published under the title Ballet De La Nuit by Pendragon Press (see europeanbookstore.com).  The book appears to be out of print but the following abstracts can be viewed on New College's website:

• Elizabeth Woodrough  The passing of the hours - time, structure, rhythm and light in Benserade’s verses for the Ballet de la Nuit
• David Parrott Art, power and performance: Cardinal Mazarin and cultural patronage at the court of Louis XIV
• Catherine Massip  The musical context of La (sic) Ballet de la Nuit: Apollo ex machina in French Drama
• Lionel Sawkins Sources for the music of Le Ballet de la Nuit, and
• Jennifer Thorp Dance and Dancers in the Ballet de la Nuit.

Although Jennifer Thorp says in her abstract that no choreography from the actual Ballet de la Nuit survives we do know that its purpose was to impress. 

The image of the young Louis dressed in gold as Apollo rising through the stage was intended to be an allegory of the political and religious doctrine of the divine right of kings. To understand why it was asserted in 1653 it should be remembered that France's neighbour to the North was a republic or Commonwealth having executed its own king in 1649 and France was just emerging from its own civil wars known as the Frondes in which royal authority had been challenged by the commons (le fronde parlementaire) and nobility (le fronde des nobles). Because of its concentration of music, colour, drama and movement ballet has long been seen as an instrument of state power which perhaps explains why France acquired a royal ballet in 1689 - the year of the glorious revolution in England and Wales - while England had to wait under 1956 for the equivalent institution.

There was however another style of ballet in France known as the comédie-ballet which appears in several Molière plays. In Le Malade Imaginaire the hypochondriac Argan is admitted as a medical man in a song and dance routine to the following chorus of bad Latin and worse French:

"Vivat, vivat, vivat, vivat, cent fois vivat,

Novus doctor, qui tam bene parlat!

Mille, mille annis, et manget et bibat,

Et seignet et tuat!"*

Now that is something I would really like to see on stage. I wonder whether any choreographer will rise to the challenge.

* Long live, long live, long live, long live, 100 times long live the new doctor who speaks so well. May he eat and drink for a thousand, thousand years. May he prescribe and kill."

Ballet Economics

Population densities of the UK from 2011 Census

Source Wikipedia

One of the questions that I would have liked to have asked David Bintley when he spoke to the London Ballet Circle on Monday but didn't was "Why don't we ever see Birmingham Royal Ballet in Leeds?" They come to Manchester twice a year but the nearest they get to Leeds, Sheffield or Bradford is York. I would also like to put the same question to the business managers of English National Ballet, Scottish Ballet and Ballet Cymru.

I suspect their answer may be that Northern Ballet is based in Leeds and the other great companies don't want to tread on their toes. That probably explains why Northern Ballet will dance in Edinburgh but not in Glasgow, Manchester and Milton Keynes but never Birmingham. It may even be a condition of their funding from the Arts Council or other bodies. I shall have to do some digging to find out.

But if that is the explanation I think it is flawed. Northern Ballet has cultivated an audience for dance in Leeds which is hungry for more. Cassa Pancho said something to that effect when I first met her. Ballet Black had been performing in Southport to an appreciative but not particularly massive crowd. Their show had been a sell out at The Linbury the previous February and they usually fill the Stanley and Audrey Theatre. Yet Southport is in Merseyside, which is itself part of a much bigger urban area. Though it is at the North-Western end of the conurbation it is well connected to the rest of North West England by road and public transport.

Manchester is one of our greatest cities but I have attended excellent performances at The Lowry where the auditorium has been much less than full. Manchester. Now Manchester has great cultural institutions such as The Hallé and The Royal Exchange but, sadly, no longer has a major resident ballet company and that seems to make all the difference.  I am told that the Birmingham Royal Ballet has created a massive audience for dance at the Hippodrome and I have seen and felt the audience at The Tramway in Glasgow (see No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015).

If major companies struggle to fill seats in Manchester it must be even harder to sell tickets in sizeable towns and cities in the remoter parts of the country. Maybe you could get a good audience for The Nutcracker but you might struggle for anything else.

I am not a great fan of public sponsorship of the performing arts. The Arts Council was the brain child of Lord Keynes (see John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet 3 March 2013) and on this matter as on many others I am no Keynesian. There seem to be all sorts of shadowy figures such as the National Dance Coordinating Committee which I heard about for the first time only the other day but have found impossible to google. So much better, indeed so much fairer, to let companies follow their audiences and perhaps to grow them.

Post Script

Janet McNulty writes:

@jelterps I've tried to post a comment on the blog. @BRB perform in Salford not Manchester and they stopped coming to Leeds long before Nb

— Janet McNulty (@JanMcN) May 15, 2015