A Room for Dancing

I was not the only blogger in the Silvio Pellico Theatre at Trecate last week. Monica Bragagnoli who describes herself as "a simple but passionate ballet viewer" has a splendid blog called A Room for Dancing. Her latest article features the Gala for Alessia and contains some lovely pictures of the performance (see Gala per Alessia - Cristiano Principati e Giovanni Danzatori - Teatro Silvio Pellico Trecate 28 June 2016).

Other recent posts include the end of year show of La Scala's ballet and music students (see Accademia del Teatro alla Scala - Scuola de Ballo e Orchestra - Milano 13 June 2016), David Dawson's Swan Lake for Scottish Ballet in Inverness 6 May 2016 and the Vienna State Ballet in Vicenza 10 April 2016.

Monica started the review of Gala Les Etoiles which included the Royal Ballet's Thiago Soares and
Marianela Nuñez on 10 Jan 2010. She is an excellent photographer and her photos are exquisite. I have included the publication in my blog roll.

The Leeds CAT End of Term Show

I mentioned the Centres for Advanced Training in Dance ("CAT") in The Lowry CAT on 27 May 2016. As I said in that post there is also a CAT in Leeds where advanced training is offered to  by the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Northern Ballet. As a Friend of the Academy of Northern Ballet I have been invited to the end of year show for 2016 this afternoon which I look forward to seeing very much.

The show will take place in the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre at 15:00 and 19:30. In previous years the over 55 ballet class and other classes have performed in that show and I took part in those performances (see The Time of My Life 28 June 2014 and My Second Ballet 5 July 2015). Timetabling arrangements at Northern Ballet have prevented our rehearsing to take part in this year's show.

Not a lot of details have been given about this afternoon's show but as the CAT programme aims to attract and develop the talents of some of the best young dancers from Leeds and surrounding districts it should be a very good show indeed.

My Second Ballet

Yesterday I danced in  my second ballet. It did not have quite the same edge as my first time on stage because I already knew what it would be like to dance in a commercial theatre (see The Time of My Life 29 June 2014). Nevertheless, it was still a thrill.  One of the reasons why it was such a thrill was that I knew that I would be dancing before people who mean a lot to me. In particular, Fiona, the teacher who coaxed me back into class a month after I had lost my spouse to a horrible disease when my life was at a very low ebb.

The performance in which I appeared was the over 55 class's contribution to Northern Ballet Academy's end of year show. Northern Ballet Academy does great work in the community. Consequently, there are a lot of classes many of which were represented in the show.  There were so many that we had to be organized in four performances each with a separate cast.  Our's was the last performance which began at 16:30. It included students from the CAT (Centre for Advanced Training) programme as well as some younger kids such as Fiona's daughter who is already something of a pro at the tender age of 9 having already danced Pammy in the Great Gatsby, the young Ondine and one of the mice in The Nutcracker.

As happened last year, we were mustered in the lobby of Northern Ballet at 14:45.  Our teacher and choreographer, Annemarie Donoghue, led us to one of Phoenix's studios on the 6th floor. We had a short class of pliés, tendus, glissés and cloches at the barre and then a couple of run throughs of our piece to the music. To our great surprise and delight we got most of it right. Annemarie took us down to the theatre where we rehearsed a couple of times on stage. Annemarie corrected a few details but otherwise we were OK.

We returned to our studio where we waited for our call which came very quickly. Rather than take the goods lift which gave us our only anxious moment last year we crept down the back stairs and waited our turn. There were some children on stage before us dancing to Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock. They finished their routine and we found our way on to the stage in the dark. The lights came on and our music began. The programme described it as Lullaby by Lulaby.   Now I must confess I have never heard of Lulaby and neither (so it would appear) has Google, YouTube. iTunes or Spotify. One of the members of our class who is a retired teacher attributed it to Thomas Schoenberger but I can't confirm that. Be that as it may it is a lovely composition which I have enjoyed listening and dancing to.

The choreography was very different from last year's. It was less spectacular but required much more concentration.  We started in groups of three.  The left hand dancer of each group raised her arm and she was followed sequentially by the middle dancer and the dancer to her right. That was mirrored by the dancer on the right, followed by the middle dancer and the dancer on the left. We then followed a weaving movement that reminded me of a figure of eight of the Dashing White Sergeant or Eightsome Reel in Scottish country dancing. We repeated that exercise with more épaulements and figures of eight. We advanced, retired and turned to the right. We retired, advanced and turned to the left.  We then courued on demi-pointe flapping our arms like wings. Annemarie told us to think of ourselves as swans.

As the music changed we broke into two lines, the front line to do some jumping and the back line to do balancés. The jumpers retired and we advanced doing balancés to the right and left followed by several pas de bourrés. We retired to the wings as the jumping group did their sautés.  The balancés group entered stage left with two temps levés.  We entered from the right with two more and ran across to the front of the stage where we waited for the next music change.

In the final movement we formed our two lines again and repeated the épaulement exercise but this time in the style of a Mexican wave, We concluded with a lovely port de bras exercise that we had done in class for several weeks before the show.

The applause was deafening. We curtseyed and exited and made our way to the stairs but were told to stop before we had reached the first landing. We learned that we would be required for a curtain call of the whole company. That had not happened the year before and I felt very proud.  While waiting for our call Fiona's daughter spotted and greeted me. It was lovely to see her.  The children were called on first.  Then I ran on followed by the rest of my class.  The CAT dancers came on last.  There were speeches and prizes and finally the curtain fell.

I think our performance was more polished than last year though one of my guests said he preferred last year's show because it lasted longer and there was more jumping.  Another said that we had performed better in the technical rehearsal. I wanted to learn what Fiona thought about our show but she had warned me that she had another appointment to attend and I never got to see her. She has however texted me this morning to say "well done for yesterday" and that I had "smiled the whole way through." I am glad if that was so because I was pleased to be there and I had hoped to communicate my pleasure to the audience in the way that Ruth Brill and Rachael Gillespie do.

Annemarie told us that there was some doubt as to whether we could run a show next year because there will not be time for a choreography class. However, she also told us that there will be one final chance to perform on the 24 Sept 2015 as part of a new community project to bring the arts to older people who are living on their own. Performances are very important for any ballet student including very elderly ones like me because ballet is a performing art which belongs in the theatre rather than the rehearsal studio. I do hope that September will not be my swan song.

Please don't bring TOO MANY rotten eggs or tomatoes

Tomorrow, for three and a half glorious minutes, I shall forget I am one of these:

And I shall pretend that I am one of those:

The corps de ballet in Swan Lake

Photo  Paata Vardnashvili
Source Wikipedia

I am dancing at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds on the same stage that my favourite dancers from Northern Ballet, Ballet Black, MurleyDance and so many other companies have graced. Just think. My feet will tread where Kenneth Tindall, Cira Robinson, Damian Johnson and Sarah Kundi and all the other stars in my firmament have trod. The thrill will be for me what opening the batting for Yorkshire at Headingley would be like for a Sunday cricketer.

I am taking part in Northern Ballet Academy's End of Year show.  All the classes at the Academy will be represented from tiny tots to old crocks. There are so many of us that there will be four performances with four separate casts. Ours takes place at 16:30 and our class (the over 55s) will appear at about 17:15. If you come to our show you will see some really talented young people as well as us. This is what Mel wrote about us last year (The Dance DID go on - Northern Ballet Academy Show 2014 29 June 2014). And this is how it felt to dance with them last year (see The Time of my Life 28 June 2015).

Our instructor and choreographer, Annemarie Donoghue, has chosen some lovely music for us. She has created a dance that covers some of the exercises that we have learned in class this year. Gita will review the show for Terpsichore. The house is pretty full but there may still be some tickets if you call the box office on 0113 220 8000.

The Time of My Life

Standard YouTube Licence

I have just danced in my first ballet and I am over the moon. I don't have a programme but I think it is called something like "And the Dance Goes On".  I danced it as part of the Over 55 class's contribution to the Northern Ballet Academy's end of year show. We performed in the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre which is where I have seen Northern Ballet, Ballet Black and MurleyDance.

Our music was Shostakovich's Waltz for Flute, Clarinet and Piano "The Return of Maxim" 1937 Op 45. If anyone is interested, it forms part of the soundtrack of a film by the same name which I have tried to watch. Our choreographer was our instructor Annemarie Donoghue.

Annemarie had asked us to meet her in the foyer of Northern Ballet at 14:15.  It was very crowded and I sat with my guests who had just arrived from London until she appeared.  She led us up to a rehearsal studio where we did some pliés, tendus and ronds de jambe at the barre.  We then rehearsed the ballet twice from  the top before we were led down to the stage for a final rehearsal.  After that rehearsal we were led back to a waiting area on one of the landings where we applied our make up and adjusted our hair and costumes.

After a wait that seemed to last for hours we were summoned to the stage. We piled into a goods lift which afforded the only anxious moment because the doors shut but the lift refused to move.  Happily it juddered back to life and we crept by the back entrance into the wings.  Some young women were on stage as we came in. The music stopped.  We heard applause.  The lights went out.  The girls slid past us and we heard the first few bars of our tune.

The ballet began with pairs of dancers running across the stage.  I was one of the second pair on the right.  I saw the second pair prepare to set off from the left and followed them.  Another pair joined us from behind. At the count of 7 we started swaying.  My teacher in Huddersfield had coached me in swaying a few days earlier.  She told me to imagine that I was stroking a delicate and precious fabric. Her voice came back to me as if in a recording.  

Next we broke out of line and began a movement that had been taught in the one rehearsal that I had to miss.  It consisted of a curtsy, balancé, turn, hop, chassé, pas de bourrée, soutenu and scarper.  I know I missed some steps and was flat footed but hell's bells who was counting.

Next I had to run across the stage with another lady. Originally that was to have been a temps levé but the choreographer wisely turned it into a run.

Then the final movement.  Four of us dashed across the stage from the left and stood with our arms in open fifth. One of our colleagues wove round us and we turned in the same direction as her run. Then the lady in front of me and I circled each other and set off in opposite directions.  One temps levé  to the right, a turn, two to the left, turns dehors and dedans and then back to our original positions.

In the last movement my partner led me to the front of the stage where she knelt.  I ran round her from the left and right.  We got up, more swaying each row in opposite directions, a soutenu, more swaying, another soutenu and eye contact.  

The music stopped.  We curtsied. And again we scarpered, ecstatic and excited but quite exhausted.

Waiting for me on my return to the waiting area was a beautiful bouquet from Mel.  

Being on stage in front on a paying audience in a commercial theatre of a major city was delicious.  It was altogether different from rehearsal and very different from class. Strangely it was very like advocacy and the part of my brain that switches on when I go to court kicked in on stage. Just as you can never betray lack of confidence to a judge or opponent however weak your case or however appalling your witness you can't let your smile slip on stage. But I wasn't acting. I really did want to be there. The same buzz that I get in court was there on stage. I was as happy as Larry.

I have no idea what the audience thought of us. I don't think anyone threw a tomato or egg at us or if they did they missed. Mel was there and she has offered to review us for this blog. Somehow I don't think she will encourage me to give up my day job.  I hope she will be kind.

Nervous? Shhhhh...... Northern Ballet's Over 55 Class End of Term Show

Today I went behind the scenes of the Stanley and Audrey Theatre for the first time. It was the technical rehearsal for the our class's turn in the Academy of Northern Ballet - End of Year Show 2014 and I am one of the dancers would you believe. Only last week I saw Tobias Batley, Martha Leebolt and all the other great dancers on that stage. And I am going to be following them. You have no idea how proud that makes me feel.

Proud but apprehensive because this is a first for me. When I was at prep school I dreamed of being Perry Mason, winning the Nobel Prize, opening the batting for England, even of being Prime Minister but never in my wildest dreams did I dare to believe that I would ever dance in a ballet in a major theatre in a great city before a paying audience. I didn't even dream of it last September when I took my first lessons with Annemarie (see "Realizing a Dream" 12 Sept 2013).

So what made me so have a go? Well I saw David Wilson of Dave Tries Ballet in Stockport in February (see "Good Show - Bristol Russians' Cinderella in Stockport"  19 Feb 2014). He and the other members of his company were having so much fun. Ballet is a performing art and while we can't all be as good as Antoinette Sibley or Anthony Dowell we can all perform. I was tempted again when I saw the wonderful Chelmsford Ballet especially after I met Annette Potter, Marion Pettet and Jessica Wilson. I'm an associate member of that company and I can hardly let the side down. The tipping point was when Gail Gordon of Chantry Dance hauled me on stage and filmed me and the camera didn't protest (see "Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance"  10 May 2014).

So I have been working very hard with my teachers Annemarie at Northern Ballet, Fiona at Team Hud and Lucy at Hype. I'm 65 years old. I've got no coordination. I'm overweight. But I'm passionate about dance and will give it my best shot. Mel will be in the audience to review the show - not just our contribution but the whole Academy's. Though she is my friend I respect her integrity and trust her not to pull her punches. So I think the consensus on Sunday morning will be don't give up the day job. Just as well that my clerk always has something for me to do on Monday morning.