Standard YouTube Licence Ballet Cymru has commissioned Charlotte Edmonds to create a new ballet called Wired to the Moon. to a score by Katya Richardson with sets and costumes by Eleanor Bull, It will be performed at the Pontio Centre in Bangor together with Patricia Vallis's Divided We Stand and Darius James and Amy Doughty's Celtic Concerto on 29 Nov 2019. I saw Divided We Stand in Cardiff earlier this year (see Made in Wales29 March 2919) and Celtic Concerto at Sadlers Wells (see Ballet Cymru in London 1 Dec 2015). I can recommend the evening for those two works alone. Having seen Edmunds's Fuse for the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company and her contribution to Northern Ballet's Tell-Tale StepsI think we can expect a very special evening.
The Pontio Centre is more than a theatre as I said in The Pontio Centre: A Resource for Inventors, Designers and Makers in North Wales14 Dec 2018 NIPC Inventors Club. There is also a cinema, restaurant, students' union, bars and cafés and, most importantly, the Hwb which is the Pontio innovation area. According to the Centre's website:
"Pontio Innovation is about equipping individuals and businesses with the tools they need to succeed in the modern economy. With a focus on transdisciplinary working and rapid prototyping, the Co-Lab, Media Lab, Hackspace and Fablab areas are equipped with cutting-edge technologies. It will boost the University’s cross-disciplinary teaching programmes and encourage collaborative work between students, staff and local businesses,"
Like the Menai Science Park (M-SParc) which I shall be visiting earlier in the day to give a talk to local entrepreneurs, inventors and creatives it is an initiative of Bangor University. New knowledge-based businesses are sprouting are springing up on both banks of the Menai Strait.
Many of the folk who have migrating or returning to Bangor and Anglesey will be attracted by the combination of coastal, mountain and pastoral landscapes that make Northwest Wales one of the most beautiful corners of the planet, but they also require the arts. That is why the Ponto Centre's facilities supporting regular visits by Wales's classical dance company and other world-class performing artists are crucial to the social and economic development of Northwest Wales.
I went to Amsterdam in 2013 to see Michaela DePrince whom I had first mentioned in April 2013 - several months before she joined the Junior Company, I saw her at the Stasshouwberg and was impressed:
"I had come to Amsterdam to see Michaela dePrince about whom I have written a lot. She appeared as Diana in Diana & Actaeon a ballet originally choreographed by Agrippina Vaganova for the Kirov in 1935. Soviet ballet was athletic and spectacular requiring enormous virtuosity. I had seen something of dePrince's virtuosity in her YouTube videos but she is even more impressive in real life. She is quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while."
But I was also impressed by the other 11 dancers. I have followed their careers and those of their successors ever since. I have seen many performances by several cohorts of the Junior Company but I don't think I have ever seen the Junior Company dance better than they did last night.
More satisfyingly, the audience loved them. London sees a lot of dance - possibly more than any city in the world with the possible exception of New York - and balletomanes in our national capital do not easily rise to their feet for anything. I have always stood up for the Junior Company but in London, I have often been the only one. Yesterday I was joined by others and there was certainly a lot of noise even from those who had remained seated.
The programme started with Ernst Meisner's No Time Before Time. That is one of my favourite ballets from one of my favourite choreographers of all time. Meisner's work touches my emotions in a way that only one other work has ever done. When I see Embers, for example, my eyes begin to water, I start to sniffle, my body begins to tremble. I deploy every single sinew to control myself. Only Fokine's Dying Swan has the same effect on me and that is at least partly because of its association with Pavlova. No Time before Time is exuberant and makes me want to join the dancers on stage. It has a beautiful score by Alexander Balanescu that echoed tin my brain all the way back home to Yorkshire. Lasr night's cast interpreted it differently from those who danced it at Lausanne and the Meervaart in 2016. Perhaps more sensitively and delicately but equally delightfully.
The next work was Charlotte Edmonds's Fuse which I had also seen at the Meervaart in 2016. Set to Armand Amar's Dam in Chinaand Paddy Fieldsit begins with three dancers who appear to be bound to each other with their bonds behind their back. As the music changes from vocals to percussion the dancers appear to break free. In a short speech before the show, Ernst Meisner explained that the idea for Fuse had originated on the Linbury stage the last time the Junior Company had visited London. They had been so impressed with Edmonds's work that the company had invited her to create a work for the Junior Company in Amsterdam. In a short video which was shown before the piece was performed Edmonds reflected on the encounter between different cultures, interests and traditions. "Fuse" in this context appears to mean the result of mixing rather than the ignition of explosive (though it could also have meant that). The first time that I saw that ballet, I wrote: "This was the first time I had seen Edmonds's work and I look forward to more." Since then I have seen more at Northern Ballet's Tell Tale Steps 2and I look forward to her work with Ballet Cymru.
Daniela Cardim's Cardim's What got you here was the only work that I had not seen before. It was a thought provoking piece but one that was not entirely bereft of humour. There was a commentary which started with a celebration of the genetic accident that each individual represents but continued with the chilling thought that well over 99% of all life forms that have ever existed are now extinct. There was an exchange of finger pointing that seemed to result in a realization that any responsibility for such mass-extinctions is pretty widely shared. There was the interesting discussion of the circularity of time and movement. If a traveller started in a straight line to travel to the end of the universe he would eventually return to his starting point. More disturbing was considering what would happen if we knew the world would be destroyed within 4 years by the explosion of a neighbouring star, Would farmers bother to plant crops or deliver them to stores? The work ended dramatically with the dancers pointing accusingly at the audience before retracting their fingers and directing them to themselves.
An interval followed Cardim's work in which members of the audience were equipped with tiny red and green torches for Juanjo Arques's Fingers in the Air.That was a work I had seen at the company's fifth anniversary show on 15 April 2018 (see "In the Future" - Junior Company's Fifth Anniversary Performance17 April 2018). This time the commentary was in English. The audience was asked to vote on whether the men or women should dance, whether we wanted to see solos or duets and whether we wanted the dancers to perform with or without lights. It did not matter because at the end we were shown what we had been missing but the audience voted for the women, duets and lights. The site of the whole company dressed in the same black leotards was compelling. Arques was in the audience. I greeted him just before his piece started. It happened to be his birthday, What a way to celebrate!
The last work was Hans van Manen's In the Future. I had seen that work in the fifth anniversary show and also at last September's gala. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, two new movements were added to In the Future. According to the programme notes, these were Winter and The Sound of Business which were part of David Byrne's Music for the Knee Plays album. I enjoyed Winter and the Sound of Business but I would have preferred to see them as separate pieces. Each of those works is a complete work itself in words and music as well as dance. It was, however, a spectacular way to end a very successful evening and a triumphant return to London.
The Junior Company will perform again tonight at 19:45. I do not know whether tickets are still on sale at the box office but if they are and you can reach the House in time I strongly recommend this show,
Tomorrow they will perform Fresas ("Strawberries"), a new ballet by Juanjo Arques on Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in 's-Hertogenbosch which was the artist's home town.
The above triptych hangs in the Prado in the choreographer's capital city. A neat link between the Netherlands and Spain.
Bart is now with the Norwegian National Ballet. I am sure I speak for everyone who saw him in London in wishing him a happy birthday and continued success in his career.
