Chelmsford's Dazzling Snow Queen

Lucy Abbott and Scarlett Mann as the Snow Queen's Wolves

Author Andrew Potter
Copyright 2017 Chelmsford Ballet Company - all rights reserved

Reproduction licensed by kind permission of the company

Chelmsford Ballet Company Snow Queen The Civic Theatre, Chelmsford, 24 March 2018, 19:30

I have been coming to Essex to see the Chelmsford Ballet Company's annual show since 2014. All the shows I have seen have been good but every show that I have seen since 2015 has been better than the last.  When I reviewed Alice's Adventures last year in An Adventure Indeed 26 March 2017 I wrote:

"Every show has been excellent but Alice's Adventures which I saw last night was by far the best."

Well, this year the show was even better than ever.

Not only that but it was in a different class. The company presented a production that would have been a credit to any professional company with original choreography, elaborate sets, lavish costumes and beautiful dancing as well as an efficient and welcoming front of house team. Every aspect of the production was impressive right down to the design and content of the programme. Even more remarkably. the members of that company did it at least largely (and probably entirely) by themselves.

I am a non-dancing associate member of Chelmsford Ballet Company and, even though I had no part in it, I am enormously proud of that production and everyone who contributed to it. Most of all, I am proud to be associated with an institution that has contributed much to the cultural and social life of Chelmsford and Essex for nearly 70 years.

The ballet to which I refer was The Snow Queen.  It was created by Annette Potter, the company's artistic director.  The libretto followed Hans Christian Andersen's story closely which meant that there were lots of scenes with plenty of roles for dancers of all ages and all levels of experience.  Her music was selected from Glazunov's 4th and 5th Symphonies and The Seasons.  The choice of those pieces was inspired for they fitted the story beautifully.

The central characters in the ballet are Kai ("Kay" in this production) and Gerda.  Kay was danced by James Parratt who had impressed me in Chris Marney's War Letters when he was still a student (see
Images of War: Ballet Central's "War Letters" and other Works 29 April 2016. He impressed me again last Saturday with his portrayal of a troubled and distracted young man. In the story he is charmed by the wicked snow queen but I saw something more in his performance. It was a study of personality change, a condition that caused him to turn against Gerda and withdraw from his community.

He was led back by the faithful Gerda whose role was danced delightfully by Georgia Olley. This was the first time that I had noticed Olley and I hope that it will not be the last for she is very talented. She does not appear to be a guest artist so she must be a dancing member of the company living in or within commuting distance of Chelmsford. I forgot to ask where she trained and whether she has ambitions to dance professionally but I would be in the least surprised if she does.  She can dance and she can act.  She deserved the loud applause that she received when she took her curtain call.

The other principal character was the snow queen danced splendidly by Samantha Ellis. She seems to get all the regal roles for she was the queen and schoolmistress in Alice's Adventures.  She was attended by two wolves whose costumes were magnificent. Lez Brotherston could not have done better. They looked so lifelike that I would have forgotten that they were human not lupine had it not been for their pointe shoes. Their roles were performed by two of the company's most experienced and able dancers, Lucy Abbott and Scarlett Mann, who had delighted audiences as the lilac fairy and Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty two years ago.

One performer who wins everyone's hears is every production is the company's chairperson, Marion Pettet. If anyone asked me what is meant by stage presence I would send that person to Chelmsford for Pettet has it in spades. She has enchanted me every time I have seen her whether as Mrs Stahlbaum, Britannia, Carabosse or in the prologue in Alice. She was Gerda's grandmother last Saturday, a role that she performed with her usual flair.

There was another grandmother in the ballet who could easily have been eclipsed by Pettet but wasn't. Debbie Snell was Kay's granny and she was impressive too. So, too, was Andrew Potter, another fine dancer who opened the show as the head troll. Potter took the picture of the wolves above. A talented artist in at least two art forms.  Other soloists who delighted me were Olivia Riley as the first river nymph, Stacey Byrne as the woman who knew magic, Holly Scanlan as the crow, Darci Wilsher as the reindeer and James Fletcher (another guest artist) as the Laplander who rescued and revived Gerda.  Everyone in the cast - trolls, ice maidens, villagers, nymphs and gypsies - danced well.

I lost count of the number of scenes - the trolls' workshop, the square in Kay and Gerda's home town, Gerda's grandmother's home. the snow queen's castle, the river where Gerda rested, Lapland - maybe more. Each had elaborate scenery lovingly painted and constructed.  Every detail from the Romanesque arches of the trolls' workshop to the houses in the street and the turrets of the snow queen's castle was a work of art. Perhaps the masterpiece was the snow queen's sleigh. Those who designed, painted and constructed those backcloths and properties deserve special congratulations.

So too, does, Ann Starling, the costume design and wardrobe manager. I have already commended her wolves but all the costumes were great, particularly the snow queen's robes and head dress and the outfits for the crow and reindeer.  Gerda wore the prettiest dirndl. Everybody had fun costumes to wear

Next year marks the company's 70th anniversary and they will celebrate it with a new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Annette Potter.  I can barely contain my excitement. But there are plenty of things to do before then including a special workshop for dancing members with our patron Chris Marney and Ballet Central on 22 April 2018 (see What's coming up on the company's website). I urge my readers, particularly those in South East England, to check them out.

An Adventure Indeed

John Teniel's White Rabbit

Chelmsford Ballet Company Alice's Adventures Chelmsford Civic Theatre, 25 March 2017, 19:30

I have been coming to the Chelmsford Civic Theatre for the Chelmsford Ballet Company's annual show since 2014 (see The Nutcracker as it really should be danced - No Gimmicks but with Love and Joy 20 March 2014, A Delight Indeed 22 March 2015 and A Real Beauty: Chelmsford Ballet's The Sleeping Beauty 25 March 2016). Every show has been excellent but Alice's Adventures which I saw last night was by far the best.

Although the company has staged ballets based on Alice in Wonderland twice before (see the list of productions on the company's website), this was an entirely new production with a new plot, new choreography and new designs with some amazing computer generated graphics and inspired dancing. Save for the score which was Carl Davis's arrangement of various works by Tchaikovsky for English National Ballet's 1995 production of Alice in Wonderland everything was created by members of the company. Annette Potter, the company's artistic director, contributed the story and choreography, Ann Starling the designs and Phil Rhodes the special effects.

The ballet began with a prologue where Alice and her sister took a stroll in a park. There they took tea at an open air café called Hatter's run by a rather eccentric proprietor of the same name. There they spotted a hurried and forgetful businessman with a predilection for carrots, a bossy schoolmistress with a party of children, a sleepy urchin, a street vendor selling carrots among other things and a pair of workmen manhandling a tree. Alice was drawn to a hole in which the workmen tried to plant the tree. She stood on the brink. Then a gauze curtain fell onto which images of Alice floating through space were projected. The curtain rose to show her recumbent on the floor of a strange land with food that made her grow and drink that made her shrink. All the individuals that Alice had seen in the park were transposed to this land. The businessman became a giant white rabbit, the café proprietor the Mad Hatter, the schoolmistress the Queen of Hearts, the urchin the dormouse and the vendor the duchess. Alice took tea with the Mad Hatter, met Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, played croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs and encountered all sorts of other characters narrowly escaping decapitation at the command of the Queen only through a rapid return to the real world where she emerged from what had become a rather disturbing dream.

Annette Potter had a cast that ranged in skill and experience from the company's guest artist, Andrei Teodor Iliescu, to some very young ballet students and she had to create dances for them all.  Her choreography was incredibly ingenious. Here are just two examples. The experience of growing after eating the food labelled "East Me" was achieved by Alice's stretches on pointe. The experience of shrinking by splits on the floor. Potter drew out Iliescu's virtuosity while allowing everyone in between from the youngest student to Alice and the other soloists to shine.

There were a lot of dancers in the show and each and every one excelled from the tiniest hedgehog upwards. Sadly I shall omit some names that deserve substantial credit. All I can say is that you were all stars. You must have felt that from the loud and sustained applause at the reverence and at many points throughout the show.

Iliescu was magnificent as the white rabbit and carrot crunching businessman. Tall and slender all eyes were drawn to him, particularly his graceful jumps and turns. I had last seen him in Leeds in Chris Marney's Scenes from a Wedding for Ballet Central (see Dazzled 3 May 2015). According to the programme, Iliescu came to Central after Sara Matthews spotted him in Lausanne (see his performance as Albrecht in the 2013 competition). He was offered a full scholarship and has been here ever since.

Iliescu was partnered delightfully by Darci Wilsher whom I had last seen in Marney's Carnival of the Animals for the 2015 show. She was the perfect Alice, a role that demanded not only a mastery of technique but also of mime and drama.

Andrew Potter was a splendid Hatter. A great character dancer, he had impressed me as Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker. I understand that Gary Avis was in the audience on Thursday night. I think he would have been reminded of himself. Samantha Ellis was a fearsome queen and schoolmarm but also occasionally a fetchingly flirtatious young woman whom we couldn't hate. Isabelle Fellows was a fine dormouse, Stacey Byrne an impressive duchess, Scarlett Man a beautiful bluebell, Megan Roberts and Alice Brecknell were a hilarious Dum and Dee and Lucy Abbot an equally amusing half stoned caterpillar.  No show by Chelmsford Ballet would be complete without an appearance by Marion Pettet. She entered in the prologue, a small role but one that she performed with her usual aplomb.

The sets and costumes deserve a special mention. They literally jumped out of Teniel's illustrations. I particularly liked the Cheshire cat which glided above the stage from a gantry. The company has a genius of a special effects designer in Phil Rhodes. I can think of at least one choreographer inspired by film not a million miles from Leeds but who is now in Germany who would have been mightily impressed had he seen those computer generated effects.

This is the company's 70th year and it has achieved a lot. It has launched more than a few careers in dance including that of Cara O'Shea, one of my favourite teachers at Northern Ballet Academy who is also a talented choreographer (see my review of Small Steps and Other Pieces - Leeds CAT End of Term Show 2 July 2016). Chelmsford Ballet will also have inspired three generations of kids to step up to the barre and created a considerable audience for dance in Essex. It is a great example of what dancers, teachers and other artists in a medium size town can do. We have the same building blocks in great profusion in the Northern Powerhouse. Would it not be wonderful to follow Chelmsford Ballet's example there.

Looking forward to a great year at Chelmsford

Marion Pettet as Britannia, Pineapple Poll 2015

Photo Amelia Potter
Copyright Chelmsford Ballet Company 2015, All rights reserved

Reproduced with kind permission of the company

I am very proud to be an associate member of the Chelmsford Ballet Company. It is one of the oldest ballet companies in the United Kingdom and has launched the careers of some of the country's most talented artists and teachers. I travel half way across the country to attend its events and I have never been disappointed.

The reason I am thinking of that company today is that members' subs are due for renewal this month. Associates like me who have the excuse of distance to mask our lack of talent are asked to pay only £14, Dancing members have to pay £27 unless they are in full time education in which case they get a a £5 discount. That is hardly going to break anybody's bank.

A lot of activities are promised for the next 12 months.   A Sleeping Beauty workshop on the 27 September and company classes on the first Sunday of most months for dancing members. A Let's Make a Ballet workshop for students between the ages of 7 and 14 on the 18 Oct 2015. The AGM before the end of October. There is usually a Christmas concert in conjunction with the Brentwood Choral Society. And finally the piece de resistance which is the annual performance in The Chelmsford Civic Theatre,

This year the company will dance Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty, This is one of the most ambitious ballets that any company can undertake. It is probably the best known and best loved ballet in the modern repertoire, particularly in England where it will always be associated with the reopening of Covent Garden on 20 Feb 1946. The score is riddled with earworms and there are so many lovely dances. Not just the pas de deux of the Prince and Aurora but also such favourites as the Bluebird and Puss in Boots. The performance will take place between the 16 and 19 March 2016.

There is one important link with Northern Ballet. One of our most popular teachers Cara O'Shea danced Aurora in a previous production of The Sleeping Beauty. I was lucky enough to take one of her classes last year (see A Treat for us old Ladies 27 Feb 2014) and I saw how she coaxed every ounce of effort from her children's class at the Northern Ballet Open Day 15 Feb 2014.

I think we can all look forward to a great year at Chelmsford,