Northern Ballet's Ability Programme

One of the reasons why I am a Friend of Northern Ballet and a Friend of the Northern Ballet Academy is that it caters not just for those who are about to dance Siegfried and Odette-Odile in Swan Lake but everybody. Gita and I have both written about the Over 55 class (see Gita Mistry "I felt elongated and taller and stronger too" 14 June 2015 and my "We're in the Paper" 25 April 2015). The clip, Paul's Day, shows the work that the company and academy do for other groups who will never dance on the main stage of Covent Garden but can still enjoy and derive enormous personal satisfaction and confidence from dance.

Now although Paul and folk like him may not make it to the Royal Opera House they can still perform on stage in one of the principal dance venues of the nation.  On 15 July 2015 Northern Ballet will host Expressions at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre. This is described as "a sharing which brings together inclusive dance groups from the North of England, giving talented dancers with disabilities the chance to showcase their skills to an audience on a professional stage." It will include performances from Northern Ballet’s Ability course in which Paul participates, local dance organizations and by the professional dance company Flex Dance.

Now I am going to try to get along to this show if I possibly can because accessible dance can be good dance as you will see from my reviews An Explosion of Joy on Ballet Cymru's collaboration with Gloucestershire Dance in Llandudno last September and No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015 on Scottish Ballet's work with Indepen-Dance. Tickets for Expressions are free but you do have to book in advance.

My Personal Ballet Highlights of 2014

Choosing  highlights from 2014 has not been easy. I have seen a lot of ballet over the last year and have even danced in one (see The Time of my Life 28 June 2014). I've seen several of the world's most famous companies and many of the world's most acclaimed dancers. I've taken class from some wonderful teachers some of whom have danced principal roles. I've seen some of the great names of ballet at events organized by the London Jewish Cultural Centre and the London Ballet Centre. As it is impossible to compare these experiences objectively I have used just one criterion. What experiences in ballet have given me most pleasure in 2014?

I have to start with Ballet Black because I saw their triple bill no less than four times last year. It consisted of three works: Limbo by Martin Lawrence, Two of a Kind by Christopher Marney, and A Dream within Midsummer Night's Dream by Arthur Pita. I loved them all but my favourite was the Marney. Marney is a choreographer I particularly admire (see my appreciation Christopher Marney 15 March 2014). I was thrilled to meet him when he spoke to London Ballet Circle and again at the premier of Dogs Don't Do Ballet in Harlow in October. I saw Ballet Black perform those works in London, Southport where I was lucky enough to meet Cassa Pancho and several of her dancers for the first time,  Nottingham and Leeds. They got better and better each time so it was their last performance at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds that I enjoyed the most. That was the first of my personal ballet highlights of 2014.

The Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre was the venue in which my over 55 class danced as part of the end of year show. To dance on the same stage as some of my favourite artists was a terrific experience. Literally the time of my life but I doubt if it was for anyone else so I shan't count that. Instead I shall mention Northern Ballet's mixed bill which consisted of Lubovitch's Concerto 622, van Manen's Concertante and Kenneth Tindall's The Architect. I am a fan of all those choreographers, particularly Hans van Manen who is one of the resident choreographers of the Dutch National Ballet of which I am now a Friend.  But it was Tindall's The Architect that thrilled me most that day. A few days earlier I had contributed to an appeal by Hannah Bateman to raise funds on Kickstarter to film The Architect which I supported  (see They Made It!  20 June 2014). It was a great pleasure to meet Bateman and Tindall at the 10th anniversary gala for the CAT gala. 

Tindall like Marney trained at Central. Another talented young choreographer from that school is Paul Chantry who is one of the founders and artistic directors of Chantry Dance Company. I owe them and in particular their dance director Gail Gordon a personal debt of gratitude for coaxing me onto stage at Lincoln Drill Hall on 9 May 2014 (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 10 May 2014) for that was the first time I had danced in public. Without that experience I would never have have put my name forward for the Northern Ballet Academy end of year show. That day was memorable in several other respects. I met Mel Wong and two other talented young dancers. I helped make and dance in a ballet which is now on Vimeo. I saw a great performance of Sandman by Paul Chantry and his wife Rae Piper. But best of all I got to know Chantry Dance Company which does great educational and outreach work as well as great shows (see Chantry Dance - Making Connections 30 Aug 2014).

Another company that does great outreach work as well as great shows is Ballet Cymru which has a close connection with the London Ballet Circle. In June I saw their Beauty and the Beast in Lincoln which was a great show but an even better show was Stuck in the Mud which they performed on the streets and by the beach of Llndudno in collaboration with Gloucestershire Dance. Ballet Cymru has some wonderful dancers and it was a great pleasure to see them again but it was the contribution of the Gloucestershire dancers that impressed me on that occasion. It was my first experience of accessible dance and I immediately saw its value for an audience. Instead of overcoming disability the dancers add a new dimension to dance. Seeing that performance and later meeting the choreographer Marc Brew was definitely a highlight of 2014.

Marc Brew works in Glasgow which is the home of Scottish Ballet, the first ballet company that I got to know and love (see Scottish Ballet 20 Dec 2013). Last year I saw two great performances by that company, Romeo and Juliet in May which promoted me to become a Friend of the company and The Crucible with Ten Poems in October. If I allowed a company more than one highlight they would be five and six from last year. I anticipate that Peter Darrell's The Nutcracker which I shall see next week will be one of the highlights of 2015.  As I have to chose one from Scottish Ballet it has to be Krzysztof Pastor's Romeo and Juliet.

Two other performances of Romeo and Juliet were highlights for me in 2014, First, the Mariinsky's at Covent Garden with Xander Parish in the leading role. I was lucky enough to meet Xander Parish when he spoke to the London Ballet Circle a few days after the show. My ballet teacher's daughter's birthday fell just a few days afterwards. I presented him with two cards - one from the Royal Ballet's shop and the other from Northern Ballet's and he paid us the compliment of choosing the Northern Ballet one.

The other Romeo and Juliet that thrilled me was English National Ballet's Romeo and Juliet in the round at the Albert Hall. The principal roles were danced by Friedemann Vogel and Alina Cojocaru. It was a bittersweet moment for me because I feared that would be the last time I would see Sarah Kundi whom I have followed ever since she was with Northern Ballet. I was overjoyed to learn that she had been recruited by English National Ballet (see Saved for the Nation 17 July 2014). In November I saw her and my other favourite dancers from the company in company class (see Coppelia in Oxford  2 Nov 2014), Kundi is not just a fine dancer but also an entertaining blogger and I strongly recommend her notes on tour.

For a while Kundi danced with MurleyDance and it was she who drew that company to my attention. I saw their triple bill in Leeds on 1 Dec 2013. Although I had come to see Kundi I was impressed by the other dancers and David Murley's choreography. I saw the company again in October when they danced Hail Britannia 28 Oct 2014. They had evolved tremendously.  It was almost a different company.  I liked all the works but my favourite was Anaish Parmar's Shaadi.  That was about an Indian wedding and I loved the way the choreographer combined east and west. There was Indian music but also I'm getting married in the Morning. There were wonderful jumps and pointe work.

I mentioned van Manen and Pastor above. They are two of the reasons why I have become a Friend of the Dutch National Ballet. A third is the Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company who came to London in May. I had already seen them in Amsterdam and they were even better at the Linbury.  As before there were superb performances by Michaela DePrince and Sho Yamada and my favourite ballet of the show was Ernst Meisner's Saltarello. I have featured the Junior Company earlier this month and I am looking forward to seeing them again in their opening show in Amsterdam on 6 Feb 2015.

I saw the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden twice last year as well as several HDTV transmissions in the cinema. Because they are the gold standard I expect a lot from them and my reviews have been a little more critical than those of other companies.  It goes without saying that two of the best performances of the year by a country mile were Giselle in January and The Winter's Tale. As I have to choose one show from each company it has to be Giselle  with Carlos Acosta and Natalia Osipova. I think that is because I already knew Giselle and although I find Act II superstitious and creepy it contains the most sublime choreography I know. Although I was a trifle disappointed when I first saw Winter's Tale I got to appreciate it when I saw it in the cinema and on TV on Christmas day and I now like it very much indeed.

My favourite ballet of 2014 was Gillian Lynne's re-creation of Robert Helpmann's Miracle in the Gorbals for Birmingham Royal Ballet which I was at Sadler's Wells in October. I had seen Helpmann dance with Frederick Ashton in Cinderella and he also presented the gala to Sir Frederick which I saw when I first became interested in ballet. Miracle in the Gorbals broke new ground in many ways just as its almost exact contemporary Appalachian Spring did in the USA. Even though Lynne's production was a re-creation rather than a revival its performance was something of a miracle in itself and a joy to behold.

Post Script

What will be my ballet highlights for 2015? Here are some of my suggestions: Looking Forward to 2015 - My Choices 29 Dec 2014.

An Explosion of Joy

Stuck in the Mud, Llandudno 20 Sept 2014

(c) 2014 Jane Elizabeth Lambert

If a dancer contracts an illness or suffers an injury that confines him to a wheelchair then it is the end of his career is it not. Not necessarily. Yesterday I saw a dancer in pointe shoes - I think it was Suzie Birchwood but if I am mistaken I apologize - as beautiful and graceful as any, approach a stage in a wheelchair. She was lifted onto the stage and danced. She thrilled us - not as one who had overcome a disability - but as a dancer. She delighted us with her port de bras, her battements, her pointe work but most of all with her expression of joy.

The ballet that I saw was Stuck in the Mud, a collaboration between Ballet Cymru, Gloucestershire Dance and other organizations.  It was performed in Llandudno as part of the Llawn Festival not in a theatre but in the railway station, the town square and beside the sea. Choreographed by Marc Brew this was one of the most joyful works that I have seen all year. I previewed the work in "Stuck in the Mud" doesn't mean you're stuck" 25 June 2014 embedding into my post extracts of a performance at Blackfriars Priory.

The show opened on a temporary stage in the station concourse. First Ballet Cymru's dancers mounted the stage: Lydia Arnaux. Annette Antal. Andrea Battagia, Nicholas Cappelle, Krystal Lowe, Daniel Morrison, Robbie Moorcroft and Mandev Sokhi whom I had last seen at Lincoln in June in Beauty and The Beast. They danced to the music that you can hear in the YouTube trailer which was composed by Jack White. This is the first time that I had noted White's work and I have spent much of the morning working through the clips on the Quick Player panel to his website. White has posted some photos of the performance of Stuck in the Mud in Swansea to his website ("Stuck in the Swansea Mud" 13 July 2014). You can see a picture of the opening scene in the bottom panel. This was a classical sequence with the women in pointe shoes. The dancer whom I believe to be Birchwood entered during that scene.  You can see her sitting by a pillar in White's photo. I have already remarked that she danced with with skill, with grace and with feeling.

There was a change of mood and music. In the space between stage and audience there entered a group of dancers some of whom were quite young. The programme does not identify them but the website mentions collaboration with TAN Dance, Hijinx Theatre and Dawns i Bawb so I guess they must be members of one or more of those organizations. Each of the dancers had a label such as "idiot", "freak" and "bossy". They shuffled about the space rather like Lowry's matchstick men peering at their own and their neighbours' labels disconsolately. Then they peeled off the labels, screwed them up and threw them in the air in an explosion of joy and danced exuberantly.

We were shepherded out of the station by stewards bearing enormous coloured flags and conducted to a square with a statute of a march hair a few hundred yards away. This square had two features - a statue of the March Hair from Alice in  Wonderland and a tree which reminded me of the one in the second act of the Royal Ballet's The Winters Tale except that this was a real tree. First there was a vigorous duet by Lowe and Sokhi which you can see in the photo above. Sokhi had impressed me as the Beast in Lincoln and I have been a fan of Lowe ever since I saw her dance as one of the Montagues in Romeo a Juliet in Kendal last year. Then the community dancers performed under the tree bedecked with what appeared to be Wellington boots and other curious fruit again and that again reminded me of Wheeldon's choreography.

I don't know what happened next as I lost the lady with the pink flag for a few minutes as I was distracted by Lowe and Sokhi. I think we were supposed to be in two groups. I went in the direction where I had last seen my group but couldn't find them. Then I heard a French horn and followed its sound to a beach where I saw Lowe slowly roll up over the pebbles gently unravelling an enormous length of material.

The last scene was a Victorian band stand before which a temporary surface had been laid and it was there that a wonderful integration of the cast occurred. There were dancers in wheel chairs and dancers on foot. There were the professionals and the rest.  They came together in a wonderful swirl of movement.  What delighted me was that every jete and turn of the able bodied dancers was answered by an equivalent movement from those in wheel chairs. All the dancers impressed me but I have to say a special word for Alice Sheppard who was magnificent. She amazed me with her virtuosity. If I had to pick a star of the show she would have been it.

After the show I managed to catch Marc Brew for a a few minutes  He told me about his company and its dancers, how he works with disabled and able bodied and gets them both to do wonderful things. He listed his other work including his recent commissions. Brew told me that he was based in the Tramway in Glasgow near Scottish Ballet. He spoke about his collaboration with companies in Scotland, particularly Scottish Dance Theatre in Dundee and also with the great percussionist Evelyn Glennie. I asked about his future work and he said that his next big production would be in May. I must say that I like Marc Brew. I like his work. I like his approachability - his willingness to talk to a complete stranger on a beach - but most of all I like his willingness to make dance accessible for all. I may not be disabled but I am old, I am fat, I am bereft of talent yet I love to dance as much as any ballerina.

Stuck in the Mud was not the only dance I saw yesterday in Llandudno. While writing up my notes of my interview with Marc Brew I noticed a lady and gentleman with a walking stick in Victorian dress with glitter balls for heads proceed along the prom. A few minutes later three women in 1940s bathing dresses and bare feet marched towards the band stand the leader with a whistle sounding out the time "bleep - bleep - bleep, bleep, bleep" reminding me of my CCF days in the 1960s.  I followed them and saw them dance a couple of routines to wartime music. All the time they were in bare feet and I really felt for them. It wasn't warm yesterday and the metalled surface of the prom was not exactly a dance floor.

Llandudno was in festive mood yesterday. I saw a lion in union jack colours accompanied by another in the colours of the Scottish saltire. I mentioned the March Hair. A statue of Alice was outside the railway station and the Mad Hatter was by the prom. The Llawn Festival continues today and there will be two more performances of Stuck in the Mud this morning and afternoon. After Llandudno the show will be staged in Cardiff. Do go and see it, It is well worth seeing.

PS Here is a short video of the performance

Stuck in the mud from John Whittle on Vimeo.

"Stuck in the Mud" doesn't mean you're stuck

I came across Ballet Cymru's collaboration with Gloucestershire Dance while writing my review of Beauty and the Beast (see "Diolch yn Fawr - Ballet Cymru's Beauty and the Beast" 24 June 2014). Gloucester Dance (GDance) describes itself on its website as a "production and training company specialist in inclusive practice" which aims "to effect real change and to address barriers to participation in, and progress through, the arts sector".

The collaboration shown in the YouTube video above is called "Stuck in the Mud". As GDance says:

"Mud is sticky and mucky and icky. But it’s fun to jump in, play with, and grows and makes beautiful things."

There is certainly beauty in the dance that the two companies have created.  Ballet Cymru and GDance are bringing Stuck in the Mud to the Llandudno Arts Weekend on the 20 and 21 Sept and I hope to be there to see it for myself.

Stuck in the Mud is not the only inclusive dance project in the UK. I am proud to say that Northern Ballet has an accessible dance programme and it supported Big Ballet. As it said in its press release "The door is always open with Northern Ballet"

"The Company has been pioneering accessible ballet since it was founded nearly 45 years ago and works hard to ensure the joy of dance is available to everyone to experience."

 My collaborator Mel  danced in Big Ballet and she is perfecting her art. So inclusive ballet is worth supporting. And I speak as a 65 year old overweight badly coordinated transsexual woman who has the nerve to strut out onto the stage of the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre next Saturday.  If that is not an example of inclusive ballet I don't know what is. One that includes canines perhaps? Everyone knows that Dogs don't Do Ballet but perhaps Christopher Marney and Ballet Black know different.