Powerhouse Ballet August Update

Leeds Company Class 28 July 2018

© 2018 Powerhouse Ballet: all rights reserved

Last week's class with Annemarie Donoghue of Northern Ballet was the best class ever in terms of numbers with 21 attendees, and it was also very enjoyable.  But the excitement generated last week has been quite overtaken by events,

On 31 June 2018 I wrote that we had been offered a slot at Move IT in Manchester on 16 or 23 Feb.  I had originally planned to stage the pas de six from Bournonville's Napoli because there seemed to be nothing in the piece that I had not been taught at one time or another by my teachers at Northern Ballet or KNT.  However, Beverley Willsmer, who had actually danced that pas de six, warned me that it was nothing like as easy as it looked.   She advised us to commission our own work if we could.

As a result of her warning, I wrote on Powerhouse Ballet's website:

"I thought of the pas de six from Napoli but Beverley who has danced that work tells me that it is nothing like as easy as I had supposed. I should be very grateful for suggestions from members of the company and indeed anyone else."

I was wondering where on earth I could find a choreographer as I penned that article.

As soon as I had published that article,  the eminent dancer, choreographer and teacher, Terry Etheridge, contacted me through Facebook with an offer to create a ballet for us.   This was an exceptional opportunity and I grasped it with both hands.  Not only has Terry enjoyed an impressive career as one of the first members of the company that is now Northern Ballet, a soloist at Festival Ballet, artistic director of Hong Kong, head of dance at Urdang, principal of Rambert school and guest choreographer for the Royal Swedish Ballet school, he has many years experience of teaching and creating ballets for dancers just like us for he is resident choreographer of Duchy Ballet in Cornwall.

One of the dancers with whom Terry has worked at various times in his career is our ballet mistress, Beverley Willsmer.  She has also danced with Festival Ballet as well as in Germany and she was ballet mistress to Chelsea Ballet which is another amateur ballet company.   I am proud to say that I danced with Beverley in my very first show at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds in 2014.  Until Jonathan Barton advised me last April that one can watch a performance or one can do a performance but not both at the same time (see Visiting Taynuilt 4 May 2018) I used to position myself close to Beverley at the barre in the hope that some of her brilliance would rub off onto me. I am not sure that any did though I certainly learned a lot from her.

Terry will be in  Leeds on 15 and 16 Sept 2018.   He will hold an audition in the form of a class on 15 Sept from which he will select his cast.  He will invite the dancers he chooses back the next day to create the ballet.  I shall take thorough notes and so will Beverley.   We shall film the choreography at the end pf the session. 

Beverley will then invite the cast back for rehearsals starting immediately after each company class beginning with the 22 Sept in Liverpool.   Other rehearsals will take place in Leeds on 27 Oct immediately after Jane Tucker's class, Manchester on 1 Dec immediately after Karen Sant's and Leeds on 26 Jan 2019 immediately after Fiona Noonan's. We might even be able to squeeze in a rehearsal on 28 Nov immediately before or immediately after our workshop with Ballet Cymru.  Yet more rehearsals will be arranged by Beverley as and when necessary.  If you want to be in the show and can commit to the rehearsals here is the link to our Evenbrite page. We have room for only 6 more dancers so if you want to audition don't leave it too late to register.

The show is only one of a number of great events for you.   Don't forget Yvonne Charlton's master class on 22 Sept in Liverpool and Ballet Cymru's workshop. Fiona Noonan, who has CRB clearance, will also teach a class for  younger dancers.  We need to find a Clara (aka "Marie"), her horrible little brother who smashes the nutcracker, his even sillier little chums who disturb the girls with their drums and trumpets while they are playing with their prezzies, mice and some toy soldiers for The Nutcracker which we hope to dance at least in part next year.

Powerhouse Ballet

Last week I saw a brilliant performance of The Snow Queen by the Chelmsford Ballet Company which I reviewed in Chelmsford's Dazzling Snow Queen,  A couple of weeks earlier I saw an innovative performance of The Nutcracker by Duchy Ballet of Truro in which a Sugar Rum Cherry replaced the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Wouldn't it be lovely to do something like that in the North I mused on the long trek home. With great teachers throughout the region, lots of able and enthusiastic adult dance students, top professional companies for inspiration and great ballet schools, we ought to be able to do at least as well.

I canvassed the idea on Facebook and found that lots of other people with the same idea. We discussed how to get started.  We decided that a good way would be advertise a free class at a convenient venue with a teacher who is well known on both sides of the Pennines and see who turns up.  I have already received an expression of interest from an excellent teacher who meets that criterion and I have shortlisted some possible studios.

As I hope that the company will straddle the Pennines I have provisionally called the project "Powerhouse Ballet".  If folk don't like that name we can easily call it something else after we get started.  For now I have registered the domain name "powerhouseballet.co.uk" and set up a website in that name. Over the next few days I shall talk to dance agencies, the RAD,

If anyone wants to discuss this project call me on 07966 373922 or message me through my contact form.

No Ordinary Nutcracker - Duchy Ballet's 20th Anniversary Performance

Sara-Maria Barton as Sugar Rum Cherry

Author Zoe Green Photography

© 2018 Duchy Ballet
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Duchy Ballet  The Nutcracker Hall for Cornwall, 10 March 2018, 19:30

In my very first blog post just over 5 years ago I reviewed Ballet West's performance of The Nutcracker at the Festival Theatre in Pitlochry.  The ballerina in that performance was Sara-Maria Barton and she danced brilliantly. It is a long way to Pitlochry from Clegg and Compo Land but that show was well worth the journey. Today I travelled approximately the same distance in the opposite direction to see another performance of The Nutcracker - this time by Duchy Ballet. Again, Barton was the lead dancer.  Once again she danced brilliantly as did everybody. Yet again, the show was worth every single millimetre of the journey.

Tonight's show was no ordinary Nutcracker.  Shortly after the house lights dimmed and the music started my row of the stalls was bathed in light as Mr and Mrs Stahlbaum's guests stepped in front of us. In a questionnaire that was circulated to the audience, we were asked "What was the most memorable part of Duchy Ballet's Nutcracker and why?" Not an easy question to answer because there was much that was memorable but I wrote down that entrance because it invited the audience into the show allowing us to feel part of the story.   It was the first of many clever touches by the choreographer and producer, Terence Etheridge.

Another difference in Etheridge's version is that Clara was quite grown up. Her role was danced appealingly on Saturday night by Grace Hazeldine. Drosselmeyer - slightly sinister in most productions and sometimes a little dotty - was danced dashingly by Jamie Constance.  In this production, he was a tall, slender and handsome ballet student - not a wizened wizard or batty inventor.  There were some lovely little touches such as Clara gently cradling her nutcracker, Bethany Hoskins, Kira Allen and Amy Shakerley as mechanical ballerinas, Stuart Strongman and Amy Robinson as a soldier automaton  and his vivandière and some of the youngest dancers holding a Roman numeral turning in sequence to represent the passing of the hours up to midnight.

Strongman led his soldiers into a fierce battle with the rodents led by Riley McLoughlin. In my review of Scottish Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker I said that Lez Brotherston's vermin are the best in the business (see Newcastle Nutcracker (16 Feb 2018). Well Duchy Ballet's were pretty fearsome too. But for Clara's intervention they would have won the day in Truro. She seemed to show a pang of remorse after she had dispatched King Rat which made me warm to her all the more.

The first act ended traditionally with a blizzard of snowflakes with Laura Miners as their queen. Joined on stage by young dancers bearing lanterns they were quite charming.  Nothing like last week's "beast from the east".

Although Etheridge had made the changes that I mentioned above, tailored the choreography and tweaked the libretto to suit his dancers, the first act would have been recognizable to Petipa and Ivanov.  The music was Tchaikovsky's. The story was based on Hoffmann and Dumas.  The second act was rather different.  For a start there was live music provided by the talented students of Truro School Senior Jazz Orchestra conducted by their teacher Peter Thompson.  Instead of Tchaikovsky's composition they played Duke Ellington's adaptation of Tchaikovsky's score. In place of the kingdom of the sweets there was a jazz café imaginatively designed by Sandra Goodenough.  In substitution of a Sugar Plum Fairy there was a Sugar Rum Cherry danced quite deliciously by Barton.

I should stress, however, that though the link with Tchaikovsky, Petipa and Ivanon was stretched it was never strained to breaking point. Tchaiovsky's tunes remain recognizable in Ellington's variations. In traditional productions the Spanish dance represents chocolate, the Arabian coffee and the Chinese tea.  Etheridge extended the analogy to all the divertissements so that we had "Manhattan Sunrise", "Sassy Sangria", "Bucks Fizz" and "Liquorice Cocktail" as well as other concoctions to the dance of tje mirlitons, flowers and all the other familiar pieces.  All the divertissements delighted me but if I had to choose a favourite it would be the Chinese dance.  It is seldom done well because the music is tingly and often it is clowned.  Etheridge created a children's dance which suited both mood and music.  I should add that I was greatly impressed by the strength and skills of the waiters, Strongman, McLoughlin and, Constance though I am not sure that their dance could be described as a divertissement.

It was a joy was to see Barton again.  I had greatly enjoyed her performances as Sugar Plum, Odette-Odile and Juliet for Ballet West (see Ballet West's "The Nutcracker" 25 Feb 2013 and Thinking our Loud about Ballet West 8 Feb 2016, Swan Loch - Ballet West's Swan Lake, Pitlochry 1 March 2014 3 March 2014 and Ballet West's Romeo and Juliet  1 Feb 2015). She has now moved to Glasgow to pursue other interests and no longer performs with that company.  Despite outstanding performances by Natasha Watson and Uyu Hiromoto, I had missed her very much.  Well, her presence last night in Cornwall more than made up for her absences over the last two years in Scotland.  In a rôle created especially for her she seemed to dance better than ever.  Certainly, she delighted me more than ever.

Because this year is the 20th anniversary of Duchy Ballet, Kay Jones, the artistic director, came on stage after the curtain call. She congratulated the cast and the musicians from Truro School on their performance.  She acknowledged the massive contributions of Sianne Strasberg, Maureen Pascoe and Terence Etheridge to the company.   She announced that the Hall for Cornwall will close for several years  from July for extensive renovations during which time the company will require a new temporary home and perhaps new venues.  She appealed to the audience to complete the feedback questionnaire that I mentioned in the second paragraph so that informed decisions could be made as to how the company should use that time.

As I noted in Ballet in Cornwall 17 Sep 2016, Duchy Ballet is very important to Cornwall as it provides stage experience for talented students and an opportunity for Cornish residents to see high quality ballet locally. However, Duchy Ballet is also important to the rest of the country for three reasons.  First, students who have danced with Duchy Ballet study, work and teach elsewhere.  Secondly, the company has developed an audience in Cornwall not just for its own performances but also for those of Birmingham Royal Ballet's southern tour and other companies too.  Thirdly, Duchy Ballet has created works on Cornish themes like The Mermaid of Zennor and the Mousehole Cat that might otherwise never have been made.  It is therefore in everybody's interest to support the company. For those who wish to do so there are Friends of Duchy Ballet, "Sponsor a Dancer" and other fund raising schemes.

Duchy Ballet's Auditions for the Anniversary Nutcracker

Later today Duchy Ballet, Cornwall's classical ballet company, will hold auditions for its annual show at Poltair School in St Austell. The timetable and other particulars of the auditions appear on the Info page of the company's website. I hope everyone who takes part has a good day.

The company will dance The Nutcracker in March which it first performed in 1998.  According to the Performances page

"Duchy Ballet was formed to celebrate the opening of a long awaited theatre in Cornwall in November 1997. Our first production just three months later, with a live orchestra, and professional soloists was 'The Nutcracker'."

As it will be the 20th anniversary of that first performance, next year's show is likely to be special. I shall make every effort to attend and review it.

I wrote about the company in Ballet in Cornwall 17 Sept 2017 when I was on holiday near Looe last year. In that article, I discussed Cornwall's cultural identity based on a strong literary and musical tradition upon which the company has drawn from time to time for the subject matter of its ballets. At that time I had not actually seen the company but I took an interest in it because I have connections with Cornwall having spent two significant periods of my life there as well as many holidays.

I saw Duchy Ballet for the first time last March when it performrd The Sleeping Beauty.  I was very impressed as you can see from my review, Cornwall's Coup: Duchy Ballet's Sleeping Beauty 19 March 2017.  The lead roles were danced by Tom Thorne and Laura Bosenberg of the Cape Town City Ballet but, as I noted in my review

"....... the company had its own stars. Terence Etheridge, who choreographed the show, was a magnificent Carabosse in the tradition of Robert Helpmann. The lilac fairy (danced, I think by Alabama Seymour) was delightful. Matthew Phillips was a great bluebird and he was partnered well by Amy Robinson. Jasmine Allen was a charming white cat. I need to credit the wardrobe, those who made the sets, the lighting designer - I could go on but it's late and I have a long journey tomorrow. The company won a standing ovation for its performance and that is all I need to say."

I later learned that Seymour had been offered a place at Rambert's school which delighted but did not surprise me at all (see A Spark of Excellence 23 March 2017).

Even though Truro is not a big city and Cornwall does not have a large population, the performance that I saw was well attended and there had already been others earlier in the day and the day before.  I mention that because the info page mentions sponsorship and advertising opportunities which must be worth considering for businesses based in, or doing a lot of business, in Cornwall.

Finally, the company relies on volunteers for technical, wardrobe, chaperoning, front of house and other jobs. I can say from experience that preparing for a performance is always great fun.  If you live in Cornwall this is your opportunity to experience the excitement of the theatre.

A Spark of Excellence

Alabama Seymour

(c) 2917 Fieldgrazer Productions
Reproduced with kind permission of Fielfgrazer Productions

In The Importance of Performance 20 March 2017, I wrote that one of the rewards of watching shows by companies like Duchy Ballet well outside the big cities is that you sometimes spot a star in the making. The first time I saw Xander Parish was at the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School gala at the Grand Opera House in York on 29 Oct 2007 (see Charles Hutchinson's Review: A Summer Gala of Dance and Song, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday 31 July 2007 The Press). I saw many fine young dancers that night but he stood out from the rest.

There have been other times when a young dancer has stood out in the same way.  The last occasion was on Saturday when I saw The Sleeping Beauty by Duchy Ballet at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro on Saturday (see Cornwall's Coup: Duchy Ballet's Sleeping Beauty 19 March 2017). Many dancers impressed me that evening but the young woman who danced the Lilac Fairy stood out from the rest. I wrote: "I think I saw a spark of excellence in the lilac fairy on Saturday."

I was, therefore, delighted but not surprised to receive a press release from Charlie Fripp, the company's press officer, entitled Cornish Girl wins place at a prestigious ballet school which announced that the artist who had danced the Lilac Fairy had been accepted for training by the Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance. That "Cornish girl" was Alabama Seymour as I had guessed from the photo in the programme.

The press release stated that Ms Seymour comes from Chacewater which is a small village just outside Truro. She is studying dance at Truro College and has trained at Capitol School of Dance with Sian Strasberg.  Kay Jones, who is Principal at Capitol and Artistic Director of Duchy Ballet said:

“Alabama is one of the many talented dancers who have come through Duchy Ballet and gone on to dance as a career and we’re so excited to be able to offer so many dancers here in Cornwall the opportunity to dance on a stage like the Hall for Cornwall.”

Ms Seymour acknowledged the value of that experience:

"It is a real honour to win a place at Rambert School. Duchy Ballet has been an amazing start to my career and I’m so grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had with the company and I am looking forward to the thrill of performing in front of more than two thousand people at the Hall for Cornwall.”

Having seen her on stage I congratulate Ms Seymour for an excellent performance on Saturday and wish her well at the Rambert and beyond.  As I noted in The Importance of Performance, I don't want to embarrass her or tempt fate but I don't think I have been the last of her.

The Importance of Performance

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I spent last weekend driving to Truro and back to see Duchy Ballet (see Cornwall's Coup: Duchy Ballet's Sleeping Beauty 19 March 2017).  I shall spend this weekend driving to Chelmsford to see my company dance Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I have emphasised the possessive adjective because I am proud to be a non-dancing associate member of the company and the only reason why I have never auditioned for dancing membership is that Chelmsford is just a tad too far for rehearsals.

It would have been cheaper and easier to have whizzed down to London and back by Hull Trains, Virgin or Grand Central to see Project Polunin at the Wells or even the Pite, Wheeldon and Dawson triple bill at the Royal Opera House and cheaper and easier still to have stayed in Leeds to see another performance of Northern Ballet's Casanova  (which I strongly recommend, by the way - see Casanova - "it has been a long time since I enjoyed a show by Northern Ballet as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night" 12 March 2017) but I would have missed something important.

Performances like the one I saw in Truro on Saturday and the one I expect to see in Chelmsford are important because they give a purpose to all those years of exercises at the barre and in the centre.  Ballet, like Shakespeare, is intended for the stage. Without performance, class is just a workout - about as arid as cramming Romeo and Juliet for an exam.  Performances are important not just for children and young adults but for students of any age.  I shall never forget the thrill of my first performance at Northern Ballet Academy's end of term show in 2014 (see The Time of my Life 28 June 2014).

However, students will take performances seriously only if audiences take them seriously.  Such audiences should include not just mums, dads and siblings but also regular ballet goers and even the occasional ballet blogger.  The attendance of a critical audience is particularly important when principals of leading companies perform in a student show as Elena Glurdjidze and Arionel Vargas of English National Ballet did in the Bristol Russian Ballet School's Romeo and Juliet (see Good Show - Bristol Russians' Cinderella in Stockport 19 Feb 2014) and Tom Thorne and Laura Bösenberg of the Cape Town City Ballet did on Saturday.

There is sometimes a reward for audiences who make it to civic theatres in remote parts of the country. Sometimes you see stars of the future as I did when I saw Xander Parish for the first time in York in 2007. Even as a student it was clear that he was going places.  I think I saw a spark of excellence in the lilac fairy on Saturday and also in Odette-Odile in Greenock last month (see Ballet West at the Beacon 13 Feb 2017). I don't want to embarrass or tempt fate for either of those two promising young women but I don't think I have seen the last of either of them.

Cornwall's Coup: Duchy Ballet's Sleeping Beauty

Tom Thorne and Laua Bösenberg in The Sleeping Beauty

Photo Zoe Green Photography
(c) 2017 Duchy Ballet: a;; rights reserved 

Duchy Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Hall for Cornwall, Truro, 18 March 19:30

Cornish folk are as different from Yorkshire folk as it is possible to be. Whereas denizens of my adopted county make exaggerated claims of excellence for everything even when it is quite ordinary, Cornish folk tend to hide their lights under a bushel even when they have something to be proud of. There seemed to be genuine surprise that anyone would drive from Holmfirth to see their show. "You mean to say you have driven nearly 400 miles just to see us" I heard more than once last night. "Well, yes," I replied, "it is a long way but not nearly as far as Cape Town from where your guest artists have flown." And how else am I to see a company that attracts the likes of Roberta Marquez and Laura Bösenberg. Nobody would say that in Yorkshire about the Huddersfield Choral Society which is indeed good. If you want to see the Choral sing The Messiah in Huddersfield Town Hall well you have to come to Huddersfield - if you can get a ticket, mind - and that's that.

Duchy Ballet is beginning to get some recognition outside Cornwall. Vanessa Roebuck wrote two and a half columns about them in the education section of this month's Dancing Times  (page 122 if you want to look it up) but that is not comparable with the attention that other youth ballets get and Duchy Ballet is at least as good. 

Why do I say it is good?  I offer two reasons.  It takes children, young people and those not so young from an enormous county and coaxes the best out of them but it never asked the impossible. Yesterday's production involved some tricky choreography - especially for the young soloists who carried it off magnificently - but it skipped the rose adagio for the obvious reason that the company would have to train up four strong male dancers and rehearse them for some time with Bösenberg which would have been asking far too much of them. Instead, several new divertissements were introduced for different age groups of children who were brilliant.  Secondly, it involves a wide section of the local community. Truro is not a big city but the Hall for Cornwall which seats well over 900 was not far short of full and there had been several other performances that weekend. There were deafening cheers for the corps. You could see families' involvement from the lovingly sewn costumes and the cleverly constructed forest to the slickness of the front of house.

Turning to the show itself I was impressed by the guest artists.  Rachael Gillespie of Northern Ballet, who had trained with Tom Thorne at Central, wrote: "Tom is a lovely guy and beautiful dancer." I did not get a chance to meet him though I am sure she is right but I can confirm that he is a beautiful dancer.  He is tall and very strong and commands the stage effortlessly.  Bösenberg is attractive in a different way. A winning smile combined with virtuosity, she follows in the tradition of Mason and Nerina.

Of course, the company had it's own stars. Terence Etheridge, who choreographed the show, was a magnificent Carabosse in the tradition of Robert Helpmann. The lilac fairy (danced, I think by Alabama Seymour) was delightful. Matthew Phillips was a great bluebird and he was partnered well by Amy Robinson. Jasmine Allen was a charming white cat.  I need to credit the wardrobe, those who made the sets, the lighting designer - I could go on but it's late and I have a long journey tomorrow.   The company won a standing ovation for its performance and that is all I need to say.

My congratulations to all involved - especially to the artistic director, Kay Jones, and Terence Etheridge whom I met briefly. I will follow the company and its talented young dancers with considerable interest.  I will write more about them by and by as I get to know this company better.

Tom Thorne in Truro

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In Thinking Big out West 11 Jan 2017 I introduced readers to Laura Bosenberg who is Senior Principal Dancer at the Cape Town City Ballet (see Meet the Company on the company's website). My article embedded a clip of a remarkable duet between Rosenberg and Tom Thorne.  If you scroll down the Meet the Company page you will see that Thorne is also a Senior Principal with the Cape Town City Ballet.

I mentioned Rosenberg because she will dance Princess Aurora this weekend in Duchy Ballet's production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro.  What I did not appreciate until earlier this morning is that Duchy Ballet will host Thorne as well as Rosenberg. I learned that news from a picture of the two of them on Duchy Ballet's Facebook page which links to a feature in Cornwall Life.

There is not a lot of information about Thorne on the Cape Town City Ballet's website though it mentions that he trained at Central School of Ballet so I did a lot of furious Googling. I found this rather amusing clip of his pushing a journalist through floor exercises in Ballet Basics with Thomas Thorne and this preview of the Cape Town City Ballet's production of The Sleeping Beauty with took place in Cape Town last September (see Artsvark Presser Cape Town City Ballet presents The Sleeping Beauty.

The Cape Town City Ballet proudly displays a roundel on its home page bearing the words "The South African National Ballet". That country has given the world John Cranko, Dame Monica Mason, Nadia Nerina and Phyllis Spira to name a few and it is still sending us promising young dancers such as Mthuthuzeli November and Mlindi Khulashe. I do not believe that Thorne and Bosenberg are dancing anywhere else in the UK on this trip. To my mind the most interesting place in the UK for ballet goers this weekend will not be Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Newport or even London but Glasgow.

Varna

Stoyan Bacharov Dramatic Theatre, Varna

Photo Mark Ahsmann
Source Wikipedia
Creative Commons Licence

Cornishman Owen Morris is one of the artists of the State Ballet of Varna. Owen comes from Liskeard which is very close to Looe where I have spent many holidays as a child and adult over the last 60 years (see Ballet in Cornwall 17 Sept 2016). In response to a message that I was coming to Truro to see Duchy Ballet's production of The Sleeping Beauty on 18 March 2017, he wrote:

"Terence Etheridge first introduced me to ballet and coached me And taught me for a while and encouraged me to train at ballet west and he used to teach sara and Jonathan at ballet west 👍small world !! Come out to Bulgaria next where I am working with ballet of the State Opera Varna doing some cool ballets I think you would enjoy, plus it's a holiday destination 😜"

He added:

"I have only been here three weeks but I'm out here till the summer recently did Don Quixote last week ! Big dance culture out hear in Bulgaria !! ......"

Owen has done well to find work at Varna because audiences there are likely to know a thing or two about ballet as the city holds a biennial International Ballet Competition whose winners include Ekaterina Maximova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sylvie Guillem and Chi Cao.

Varna is the third largest city in Bulgaria.  It is situated on the Black Sea coast some 250 miles east of the capital, Sofia. It is a major port, naval base, university town and seaside resort. Nearly 420,000 people live in the Greater Varna area. Its twin town in the United Kingdom is Liverpool which is another city where audiences know a thing or two about ballet (see Dawson's Swan Lake comes to Liverpool 29 May 2016) including, most particularly, one of this blog's valued contributors.

According to its website. Owen's company has recently performed The Nutcracker, Don Quixote in which Owen had a role and Giselle.  I think they were performed between the 5 and 10 Jan 2017 as the Ballet in Bansko season, an event promoted by the city's mayor. The website does not announce any forthcoming performances but it lists some of those presented last year which include The Sleeping Beauty in October, a gala in July with dancers from the Bolshoi, as well as the works performed in January.

According to Wikipedia, the Bulgarian National Ballet was founded in 1928. It now occupies an impressive building with a doric colonnade in Sofia.  Forthcoming performances include a children's version of Cinderella this Friday and Saturday, Lilly and the Magic Pearl (another ballet for children choreographed by Masha Ilieva) on Sunday, La Bayadère on 11 March, Carmen and Rhapsody in Blue on the 19 and 31 March, Giselle on 26 March, La Dame aux Camélias on 2 April and Petrushka and The Firebird on the 7 and 8 April 2017.

While researching Bulgaria's dance culture I came across a company called the Sofia Ballet which describes itself as "the first private classical ballet company formed in Bulgaria, created mainly for realization of tours abroad."  its dancers come from the Sofia National Opera and Ballet, Bucharest National Opera and Ballet, Chisinau National Opera and Ballet, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, Macedonian Opera and Ballet and other companies. Its repertoire appears to include the usual 19th-century Russian classics.  The website does not list its previous or future engagements but if they ever come to the UK I shall make a point of watching them.

As I always like to feature up and coming dancers, Owen has very kindly agreed to give me an interview and I shall now go away and think of some sensible questions to ask him.

Thinking Big out West

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I first learned about Duchy Ballet on 29 March 2014. The reason I can date it so precisely is that I wrote in The Guys of the Golden West 30 March 2014:

"Other Golden Guys are Duchy Ballet whose existence I discovered only yesterday. This evening and yesterday they were performing The Mousehole Cat & Other Ballets at The Hall for Cornwall in Truro. Roberta Marquez of the Royal Ballet appeared as a guest artist. According to the company's website Duchy Ballet was formed to celebrate the opening of The Hall for Cornwall with the aim was of establishing a youth ballet company for Cornwall providing the opportunity to train, rehearse and perform within a professional setting. The company's choreographer is Terry Etheridge who was a guest choreographer of the Chelmsford Ballet Company some years ago and inspired and taught Andrew Potter who danced Drosselmeyer in that company's recent production of The Nutcracker (see "The Nutcracker as it really should be danced - No Gimmmicks but with Love and Joy" 20 March 2014). Potter acknowledged his debt to Etheridge on twitter this morning:

"Mr Etheridge, Found me, taught me and inspired me."

Having seen Potter's performance I congratulate Etheridge on a very good job."

I mentioned Terence Etheridge and Duchy Ballet again on 17 Sept 2016 in Ballet in Cornwall while I was on holiday in Looe.  I added that their next production will be The Sleeping Beauty at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro. 

Today I learned that Aurora will be danced by Laura Bosenberg, one of the senior principals of the Cape Town City Ballet. To get some idea of how she dances watch the YouTube clip of her performance in Camille with Tom Thorne, one of the male principals of the company.  Founded only 3 years after the company that eventually became the Royal Ballet the Cape Town City Ballet is one of the oldest ballet companies in the Commonwealth.  According to Wikipedia John Cranko was a member as was Phyllis Spira Africa's one and only prima ballerina assoluta. Margot Fonteyn has danced with the company as have Carla Fracci, Beryl Grey, Nadia Nerina and many other famous stars.

I suppose I should not be surprised.   A company that can attract a principal of the Royal Ballet of the stature of Marquez thinks big. It is not only in America that they think big out West.

Ballet in Cornwall

The peninsula in the far south west of our island is a magical land that I know well. I am told that I took my first steps on the sands at St, Ives where my parents lived when my father taught at Redruth. They returned to Cornwall for a few years while I as at St Andrews. During that time my address in St Austell was one of the remotest in the student directory. I have also spent many holidays and weekends in the duchy particularly in Looe and its environs.

"I can't believe that I am in England" remarked my friend on her first trip to Cornwall to which I replied "You are not." Administratively it may be part of England but it has an identity that is quite distinct despite centuries of emigration to the Americas, Antipodes, other parts of the British Isles and the rest of the world and a massive influx of migrants and visitors from every part of the world over the last 100 years or so. That identity is based largely on culture with a strong literary and musical tradition inspired by a rich folklore with its tales of mermaids and pixies.

Drama and dance are part of that tradition including the famous passion plays and furry dance. Duchy Ballet, Cornwall's national ballet company, has drawn on that tradition from time to time with such works as The Mousehole Cat and The Mermaid of Zennor (see the Productions page of the Duchy Ballet website). Some of those works were created or staged by Terence Etheridge who has enjoyed a distinctive career as a dancer and choreographer with some of the world's leading companies including the London Festival Ballet which is now known as the English National Ballet.

According to Kay Jones, the artistic director of Duchy Ballet, the company started because
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many children and indeed adults in Cornwall had never seen a full length classical ballet. Thanks largely to Jones, Etheridge and their collaborators that lacuna has now been filled.The company performs a full length work at the Hall for Cornwall every year which gives young Cornish dancers valuable stage experience. Some of those young people have been accepted by the Royal Ballet School, the Rambert School, Northern Ballet School and other well known ballet schools (see the "Springboard" column of the About page on the Duchy Ballet website).

According to the company's Facebook page, its next performance will be The Sleeping Beauty which it will dance on 17 and 18 March 2017. Somehow Team Terpsichore will get a reviewer to that show for Duchy Ballet is just the sort of initiative that this website and its associated blogs are keen to support.  The company seems to have created an audience for dance for the Hall for Cornwall is visited regularly by the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Rambert and other companies. Also, Plymouth, whose hinterland includes much of South East Cornwall, has always been visited by the leading national touring companies.

Of course, most of those who study ballet have careers or ambitions that lie outside the stage and it is good to see that there are many ballet schools in Cornwall some of which offer classes to adults (see the Dance Schools page of Duchy Ballet). The dance agency for Cornwall is Dance and Theatre Cornwall and Plymouth Dance is the dance agency for Plymouth and surrounding districts.