Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin nearly Five Years on

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Birmingham Royal Ballet Aladdin The Lowry, 23 Sept 2017, 19:30

Shortly after I started this blog I reviewed Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin (see my review of 1 March 2013). I saw it just after I had started taking ballet lessons with Fiona Noonan several months before I entered the over 55 class at Northern Ballet. Although I had seen a lot of ballet before 2013 I had not actually done very much. I have since learned that however much ballet you see from the stalls or dress circle you really don't know what you are talking about until you try your hand at it. Then your admiration for those who make their living from the art soars beyond bounds.

In March 2013 I wrote:

"Having developed my love of ballet while Frederick Ashton was the Royal Ballet's choreographer I am very hard to please. But pleased I was. The pas de deux that Bintley created for Aladdin and the Princess danced yesterday by Jamie Bond and Jenna Roberts reminded me a lot of Ashton. So did the powerful roles for the djinn (Matthias Dingman), Mahgrib and Sultan (Rory Mackay). Also, the sweet role for Aladdin's mother danced delightfully by Marion Tait - no Widow Twankey she. Other lovely touches - and very familiar to Manchester with our famous Chinese quarter - were the lion and dragon dances. It is probably unfair to single out any of the other dancers because all excelled but I was impressed particularly by Céline Gittens who danced Diamond. Finally, Davis's score with its oriental allusions was perfect for Bintley's choreography."

I saw many of the same dancers in the same roles last night. Would I still like it especially as I had been looking forward to Stanton Welch's La Bayadère which had to be axed when Birmingham City Council reduced its grant to Birmingham Royal Ballet? (see A Birmingham Bayadère 26 Nov 2016 and How Nikiya must have felt when she saw a snake 31 Jan 2017)

Well, I am glad to say that I liked Aladdin even more last night and I think I have to thank my teachers in Leeds, Manchester, Huddersfield, Sheffield, London, Liverpool, Cambridge, Budapest and, half a century ago, St Andrews for that as they taught me how to appreciate ballet. As before I loved Carl Davis's score. I was impressed by Sue Blane's costumes, Dick Bird's sets and Mark Jonathan's lighting. I was thrilled by David Bintley's choreography. Most of all I was dazzled by the dancing.

César Morales was a perfect Aladdin alternating from an awkward adolescent to the sultan's splendid sun in law. Jenna Roberts was as lovely as she had been when I had last seen her in that role. Iain Mackay was a magnificent magician (why does Salford feel it has to boo him at the curtain call just because he is cast as a baddie?)  Aitor Galende. clad and coloured from head to toe in blue was a noble djinn. Tom Rogers was every inch a sultan.  Marion Tait is always a delight. One of my all-time favourites. It was appropriate that many of my other favourites appeared as jewels for gems they are. The incomparable Céline Gittens, glittered as a diamond, Chi Cao glowed as an emerald, Samara Downs and Alys Shee gleamed as gold and silver, Yasuo Atsujii and Yijing Zha radiated as rubies, Karla Doorbar shone as onyx as indeed did the whole cast.

I attended the performance with a friend who has seen a lot of ballet and attended a lot of classes though she likes the other performing arts and other dance forms at least as well. She also saw the 2013 show with me and said she enjoyed last night's performance even more. Sitting next to us were a couple for whom ballet was still a new experience. In fact, for one them it was his first live show. I was curious to see whether he would take to it. He told me that he found difficulty with the first act but enjoyed the second and third very much. On balance he enjoyed the whole experience.

I hope to see Stanton Welch's La Bayadère one day even if I have to fly to Texas to do so.  As one of my favourite young dancers has just moved from HNB to the Houston Ballet I hope to do so soon, I was sad to learn that the company had suffered so much from Hurricane Harvey.  As I said in Houston Ballet  30 Aug 2017 we in the North know the damage flood water can do. I am sure that company will emerge stronger than ever as Northern Ballet did. I shall look out for the Houston Ballet on World Ballet Day and give it a special cheer.

A Second Miracle

Sir Robert Helpmann

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In Dancing in the Blitz: How World War 2 Made British Ballet David Bintley spoke of Sadler's Wells Ballet's contribution to maintaining morale during the second world war. Much of the credit belongs to Sir Robert Helpmann who was one of the few male dancers to avoid conscription. He was also a considerable choreographer creating  Comus Hamlet, The Birds and Miracle in the Gorbals during that period. The last of those ballets was a particular favourite possibly because it was a story about the conflict between good and evil which would have reminded the public why they were fighting.

The story is based on Jerome K. Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back which is a Christian allegory. Jerome's work is set in London and is about the efforts of a Christ figure ("the stranger") to improve the lives of the residents of a boarding house that had been made miserable by a grasping landlady and a well off businessman. The residents listen to the stranger and follow his advice. That upsets the businessman who bribes the residents to turn against the stranger.

Jerome's short story was transposed to Glasgow by Helmpann's partner Michael Benthall who wrote the scenario for the ballet. A young woman throws herself in the river and is dragged out unconscious. A clergyman tries unsuccessfully to revive her.  He covers her with a shroud and leaves her for dead. A stranger appears and revives her. The crowd acclaims the stranger as a miracle worker much to the annoyance of the clergyman whose shortcomings are revealed when he follows a prostitute to her lodging.  He encourages some local gangsters to set about the stranger who is left to die alone on stage with only the a beggar for company.

The music for the ballet was provided by Sir Arthur Bliss a recording of which you can hear on YouTube.   The sets and costumes were designed by Edward Burra (see Pallant House Gallery's Painting the Stage). The cast of the first performance on the 26 Oct 1944 at The Prince's theatre (now the Shaftesbury) included Moira Shearer, Leslie Edwards, Celia Franks, Gerd Larsen, Stanley Holden, Gillian Lynne and Helpmann himself who danced the stranger.

The ballet was included in the repertoire every year between 1944 and 1950 and was taken on tour. It then disappeared from the Sadler's Wells Ballet's repertoire though critics were still referring to it when I first took an interest in ballet in the late 1960s. For some reason the public forgot it in contrast to Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring which was first performed in Washington just four days later and which has much in common with Helpmann's work. No doubt that is because Helpmann developed his acting career though I have seen him dance with Sir Frederick Ashton in Cinderella in the early 1970s. He also compeered Sir Frederick's retirement gala on 24 July 1970 which I was lucky enough to attend.

It was therefore something of a second miracle to see the revival of this work at Sadler's Wells on 18 Oct 2014. Revival is perhaps not quite the right word for as Dame Gilian Lynne said in The Inspiration which was reprinted in the programme: "There are very few people left alive from that 1944 creation and not one of us remembers a step." Lynne has re-created the ballet to Bliss's music in the style of Helpmann and it certainly looks authentic to me. It appears that Burra's set and costume designs did not survive but Adam Wiltshire seems to have come close. The sense of period was conjured by the sounds of an air raid - the drone of an aircraft, explosions, anti-aircraft fire and a siren - all in total darkness before the first few bars of Bliss's score.

Miracle was sandwiched between MacMillan's La Fin du Jour and Bintley's Flowers of the Forest as part of Birmingham Royal Ballet's Shadows of War programme. Each of those ballets is an important work in its own right and therefore merits a separate review. The company had cast some of its strongest dancers for the performance. The stranger was danced by César Morales, the clergyman by Iain Mackay, the prostitute by Elisha Willis and the suicide victim by Delia Matthews.   Even some of the minor roles were danced by accomplished dancers - Marion Tait and Ruth Brill as two of the old ladies - and Yatsuo Atsuji, Brandon Lawrence, Rory McKay and Valentin Olovyannikov as gangsters.

The only other work of Lynne's that I have seen is "A Simple Man" which she choreographed for Northern Ballet to mark the centenary of L S Lowry's birth nearly 30 years ago (see "Northern Ballet's 'A Simple Man'" 14 Sept 2013). That is another ballet set in the back streets of another great industrial city in times gone by. There is much in Miracle that reminds me of A Simple Man. I wonder how much of Simple Man derives from Helpmann.

Other Reviews

Robert Hugill  Miracle in the Gorbals 18 Oct 2014 Planet Hugill