Jack White - Composer of Ballet Cymru's "Cinderella" and "Stick in the Mud"

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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing the Welsh composer Jack White for the Menai Science Park (Bangor University's science park at Gaerwen on Ynys Môn or the Isle of Anglesey). The occasion was World Intellectual Property Day, with the theme IP and Music: Feel the Beat of IP.  My interview with Jack formed part of a webinar which I chaired and reported in Best World IP Day Ever on 8 May 2025 in NIPC Cymru.  The science park very kindly made a YouTube video of my interview entitled Jack White and Jane Lambert.

Jack told me that he was a Newport man.  He was born and went to school in that city.  He read music at Somerville College, Oxford and carried out his doctoral research at Cardiff University.  He first came to my attention when I saw Marc Brew's Stuck in the Mud in Llandudno (see An Explosion of Joy 21 June 2014).  Jack wrote the score for that work, and I have been one of his fans ever since.  My second opportunity to hear Jack's work was in Cinderella, which I reviewed in Ballet Cymru's Cinderella on 15 June 2015.  I loved his score.  Although I admire Prokofiev's score very much, I can understand why Darius James and Amy Doughty commissioned a new score from Jack for their production.  As I said in my review:

"it fitted the ballet like a glove. An arranger or even a musicologist would have had to have taken a meat cleaver to Prokofiev and the result might have been no more satisfactory than the operation on the feet of Cas and Seren."

I wrote a feature on Jack on 6 May 2017. 

Since that feature, Jack has won the Manchester Chorale's contest to find a new work to celebrate its 40th anniversary.  His winning entry, When Voices Rise, was recorded in St Ann's Church, Manchester and appears on the choir's YouTube channel.  This is my favourite work from Jack.   As I said in the interview,  I particularly enjoy the crescendos and cadences in the piece.

Jack is doing a lot of work for choirs now by adapting well-known songs like Love a Lady Tonight for choral use which he mentions in more detail in my interview. 

 

Ballet Cymru's Cinderella Second Time Round

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Ballet Cymru Cinderella Waterside Arts Centre, Sale 2 June 2018, 19:30

I expected great things from Wales's national ballet company (see Ballet Cymru 2018 Summer Tour 21 April 2018). I was not disappointed. Cinderella is the best work in Ballet Cymru's repertoire and their Cinderella is (in my humble, northern, rustic opinion) pretty well the best anywhere. But then what do I know? After all, I have only seen Ashton's, Bintley's, Bourne's, Gable's, Hampson's, Nixon's, Ratmansky's, Wheeldon's and probably one or two others that I have forgotten. While I love nearly all those other works, Darius James and Amy Doughty's is the one I love best.

There are four reasons why I love James and Doughty's version so much. The first is that it is very pure.  The libretto sticks closely to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's story which is actually quite short and very tight. So, too, is the ballet.  As I noted in Ballet Cymru's Cinderella 15 June 2015:

"This is a very tight production that adapts well to touring with ingenious costume and stage design and lighting. It is dramatic and poignant in parts but also witty. It is exactly the right length. It tells the story in full but does not drag for a second. It makes maximum use of the company's small but very talented troupe of dancers."

That brings me on to the second reason why that ballet is so good which is that James and Doughty give every character his or her moment in the spotlight. Let me give just one example.  In the first act Cas (Cinderella's stepbrother) spins Seren (her stepsister) spectacularly around the stage. Those names lead me to the fourth point. The ballet is very Welsh by which I mean that it is free of frippery and frivolity like a Calvinist chapel but, like the singing that might emanate from such chapel, emotionally very strong.  And most Welsh of all (the fourth reason why I love this ballet) is Jack White's simple, moving, beautiful score.

There have been a few changes to the production since 2015. The company relies heavily on its lighting design to set the scene and there seem to have been some new projections. There seem to be fewer voice overs from the Grimms' text. The ballet opens with the words:

"Dear child, remain pious and good, and then our dear God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you."

But I can't remember any others which is a shame because I think they were useful cues for the audience in the performance that I saw in Lincoln. I think there may have been some minor changes to the libretto. I remember a chair in which Cinderella's mother died which seems to have disappeared but I do not remember a bike for Prince Madoc or his chum Maldwyn which seems to have added this time.

The biggest change of all, of course, is in the dancers who have joined the company.  Beth Meadway was an enchanting Cinders. Before the show I noted on Facebook that she comes from Hull, the city of Xander Parish and Kevin O'Hare. Xander picked it up and reacted with a "like". Well, all I can say is that they would both have been proud of their fellow codhead.  Another dancer who impressed Gita, in particular, was Eka Mastrangelo. Gita, who has studied Indian dance as well as ballet, noticed how Eka moved. "She must have studied Bharatanatyam" remarked Gita during the interval.  And so it transpired when we met the cast briefly after the show. Eka also confirmed that she worked with her eyes which help to tell the story in Indian dance. Gita also had a fair old chinwag with Alex Hallas who comes from Baildon near Bradford, another city that has produced more top class dancers.  I congratulated Isobel Holland who doubled as Cinderella's dying mum and the bird that looked after her and Maria Teresa Brunello who danced Seren.

It was good also to see again the dancers we already knew: Robbie Moorcroft who danced Prince Madoc, Miguel Fernandes who danced Maldwyn and Dan Morrison who danced Cinderella's father.

Much as I love this ballet there is one aspect that saddens me deeply.  The last time I saw it was a  rehearsal of the second act that the company performed in its studio for the members of the London Ballet Circle (see Ballet Cymru at Home 5 Oct 2015).  Maldwyn was danced by Mandev Sokhi who died a few days later.  Mandev was a beautiful dancer. What was particularly poignant last night is that he had connections with Cheshire. He certainly trained there - possibly at the Hammond.  In Remembering Mandev Sokhi 27 Nov 2015 I wrote:

"Mandev will be remembered tonight far beyond Newport and indeed well beyond Wales for he danced wth Ballet Cymru in every part of the United Kingdom."

I suggested two practical ways of remembering him one of which was to attend an even that has now passed. The other is still available and that is to become a Friend of the company.  Ballet Cymru is a national treasure not just of Wales but of the whole United Kingdom and we owe it to ourselves to help it grow and flourish.

If you you live in Northwest England and missed the show last night you can still catch it tonight in Preston, Otherwise you will have to travel.  But like a restaurant in the Guide Rouge with three rosettes, this show is well worth the journey.

The Light Princess - a Special Ballet for a Special Company

Copyright 2017 Ballet Cymru: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

BalletCymru The Light Princess, Riverfront Theatre, Newport 20 May 2017, 19:30

In 2015 Ballet Cymru's Cinderella was my ballet of the year and its Tir was the runner-up (see Highlights of 2015 29 Dec 2015. Last year Gwenllian Davies was my young female dancer of the year for her magnificent performance as Juliet on 5 Nov 2016 (see The Terpsichore Titles: Outstanding Young Dancers of 2016 28 Dec 2016 and A Romeo and Juliet for our Times  7 Nov 2016). Quite remarkable, I think you will agree, for a small company in a city with a slightly smaller population than Huddersfield some 140 miles from London.

Yesterday I tried to put my finger on what made Ballet Cymru special and this is what I concluded.

First, the company is lucky to have as artistic directors Darius James and Amy Doughty who are two of the finest choreographers on the British stage. Their ballets with expansive upper body movements and sudden spins, whether chaînés, fouettés or pirouettes, are thrilling to watch. James and Doughty create their work in collaboration their dancers with the result that every movement showcases the artist's personality as well as the vision of the choreographers. Each of those artists is young at peak strength and energy, When James unfurls them, as he does at the end of company class, they are a wonder to behold (see Ballet Cymru at Home 5 Oct 2015).

Secondly, this company is unmistakably Welsh. Its dancers may come from all parts of the world and it visits nearly every part of the United Kingdon on tour but its credentials are entirely cymric.  The company's name, after all, is "Ballet Cymru" - never "Ballet Wales", the literal translation. There are Welsh characters even in Romeo a Juliet and Cinderella: Juliet's confidante in Romeo a Juliet is Cerys, Cinderella's half-witted step brother is named Cas and her step sister is called Seren. The backdrops projected onto the screen are created digitally from scenes of Wakes ranging from the subway under the arterial road near the Riverfront Theatre in Romeo a Juliet to Lake Bala in The Light Princess. More importantly, the company commissions scores from outstanding Welsh composers like Jack White who wrote the music for Cinderella and Stuck in the Mud and Catrin Finch who contributed Celtic Concerto as well as The Light Princess to the company's repertoire. I am most grateful to Ballet Cymru for introducing me to those composers.  I am now a fan of both.

Thirdly, James and Doughty make clever use of technology. I have already mentioned the projected backdrops which are designed for the theatres around this island which might struggle with conventional scenery. Yesterday, there were gently floating images as the overture concentrated our thoughts on weightlessness. We saw circus hoops courtesy, no doubt, of Citrus Arts who had previously worked with Ballet Cymru on Cinderella.  For those who had not read the programme or my preview, the synopsis in two languages flashed onto the gauze with occasional directions to the audience such as "hiss". Did you know that the Welsh for "hiss" is "his"?

Like The Sleeping Beauty, George McDonald's story begins with a christening for a princess to which three of her relations had not been invited. Like Carabosse those relations were witches but, instead of sending the royal household to sleep for 100 years (a fate that Exeunt's Anna Winter might regard as lenient (see Exeunt's Ballet Reviews - Mayerling and Casanova 12 May 2017) they made her weightless with the result that she had to be tethered with ropes. The king and queen consulted Kopy-Keck and Hum-Drum, Chinese experts in spells as to what might be done but they offered conflicting and equally useless advice. At a water carnival on Lake Bala, the princess discovered that she could acquire weight under water. She nearly floated away again when a visiting prince dived into the lake to rescue her for which gallantry he received no thanks at all from the princess. Realizing that their spell did not work in water the witches tried to drain the lake. They were foiled when the prince offered his body to plug the drain. The prince's willingness to sacrifice himself for the love of the princess broke the spell. A cartwheeling king and equally ecstatic queen allow the princess to marry her rescuer. All, no doubt, lived happily ever after.

Anna Pujol, who had delighted the Millennium Centre as Little Red Riding Hood before Christmas (see Ballet Cymru's "Sleeping Beauty Moment" 5 Dec 2016), danced the princess. She showed formidable strength and artistic versatility with her floorwork representing her swimming and her adeptness with hoops. Her prince, Andrea Maria Battagia, partnered her gallantly. I loved Robbie Moorcroft's performance as king (particularly his cartwheels) and was impressed by Beth Meadway, a recent recruit to the company, as queen. I was also impressed by another recruit, Miles Carrott, who complemented Miguel Fernnades and Natalie Debono as the vindictive, serpentine witches. Gwenllian Davies was one of the experts and the magnificent Krystal Lowe (anything but humdrum) was the other.  Davies showed that she can dance character roles as convincingly as she can dance Juliet. Daniel Morrison danced the butler and Ann Wall the nurse with their usual flair. Each of those roles offered the dancers a chance to shine and shine they did.

Something that made last night particularly special was the appearance of Catrin Finch in the orchestra pit. This was not the first time that the company had performed with live musicians.  The last time I saw them they shared the stage with the entire National Orchestra of Wales, but it was the first time that I had seen them with their own ensemble and the result was magic. Sadly, the musicians cannot follow the company everywhere so the performances at Bury St Edmunds, Llanelli, Milford Haven, Stevenage and Newcastle under Lyme will make do with recorded music.

Those performances will still be worth seeing.  This is the best ballet that I have seen from this company ever and it is the best new ballet that I have seen so far this year from any company.

Jack White

The brilliant young composer, Jack White, who wrote the score for Ballet Cymru's Cinderella which was our ballet of the year for 2015 against some incredibly strong competition (see Highlights of 2015 29 Dec 2015) and Stuck in the Mud for the same company (see An Explosion of Joy 21 Sept 2014) has just published his soundtrack for Cinderella on his website (see Cinderella soundtrack now available 2 May 2017).

Very fairly, Jack has invited his licensees to name their price for permission to download and replay his music. But please remember that "name your price" does not mean "pay nowt" even if you come from Yorkshire like these monkeys.

Hear nowt, see nowt, say nowt
Eat owt, drink owt and pay nowt
And if thou ever does owt for nowt
do it for th''sen

Author Tumi
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Copyright subsists in Jack's work and will continue to subsist in it at least in Wales and England for the rest of Jack's life plus 70 years and in some places even longer.  So as he has played fair with you, you play fair with him.

Jack tells me that he has recently been commissioned to write a score for the National Dance Company of Wales which will be premiered later in the year.

He likes writing for ballet and contemporary dance companies. I invite every artistic director and choreographer from Alaska to Australia to give Jack's music a listen.

Ballet Cymru's Cinderella

Photo: Sleepy Robot
(c) 2015 Ballet Cymru, All rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of 

I have seen a lot of versions of Cinderella over the years: Ashton's of course for the Royal Ballet but also Matthew Bourne's set in wartime London, Nixon's for Northern Ballet and a version danced by the Bristol Russian Youth Ballet Company which starred Elena Glurdjidze (see Good Show - Bristol Russians' Cinderella in Stockport 19 Feb 2014), Until yesterday evening I liked Ashton's version best but now I think I prefer Darius James and Amy Doughty's for Ballet Cymru. Perhaps I will change my mind again when I see Christopher Wheeldon's for the Dutch National Ballet at the Coliseum on 11 July 2015 as it looks lovely in the YouTube trailer, but for now this Welsh Cinderella is my favourite.

Ballet Cymru's Cinderella is choreographed by Darius James and Amy Doughty to a new score by Jack White. It is a co-production with the Riverfront Theatre in Newport in association with Citrus Arts. This is a very tight production that adapts well to touring with ingenious costume and stage design and lighting. It is dramatic and poignant in parts but also witty. It is exactly the right length. It tells the story in full but does not drag for a second. It makes maximum use of the company's small but very talented troupe of dancers.

In the inset of the programme someone has written in English and Welsh:

"We are a ballet company who like to do things a bit differently. We enjoy finding new ways to make what we do exciting, innovative and relevant."

This production was certainly innovative but it was also firmly based on the work of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The ballet opened with a voice over reading the words of Cinderella's dying mother (Krystal Lowe) as she was tended by her daughter (Allegra Vianello):

 "Dear child, remain pious and good, and then our dear God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you."

James made a few modifications to the story. He gave Cinderella a gawky, half witted step brother called Cas (Robbie Moorcroft) as well as a step sister called Seren (Lydia Arnoux) and as you will have probably guessed from the names of the step children he rooted his ballet in Wales. But then why not? The brothers Grimm did not mention a location or give names to their characters and Wales has no shortage of forests lakes, mountains, castles and even princes who marry commoners in real life. Overall, James took far fewer liberties with his literary source than did Bourne, Nixon settling his ballet in pre-revolutionary Russia, Ashton or indeed the traditional British pantomime.

The ballet proceeds as in the fairy tale with the marriage of the well meaning but ineffectual father (Andrea Battagia) to the mean and jealous step mother, Aerona (Natalie Debono). The family receives an invitation to Prince Madoc's ball. Incidentally, there really was a Prince Madoc in Welsh history who gave his name to the towns of Tremadoc and Portmadoc in Carnarvonshire (now part of the modern county of Gwynedd) and who is said to have discovered America several centuries before Columbus (see the entry in Wikipedia). Cinderella wants to go but her step mother gives her the Herculean labour of picking up within the hour a bowl of lentils which she peevishly scatters on the stage. As in the story, the birds come to her rescue. A voice over reads the rhyme:

"The good ones go into the pot,
The bad ones go into your crop."

They swoop and pick up the grains within the hour as stipulated by Aerona.

Of course, that is still not good enough for the step mother who forbids Cinderella from attending the ball on the pretext that she can't dance and has nothing to wear; but Cinderalla's mother now in the form of a bird presents her with a beautiful ball gown which it plucks from a tree by her mother's grave and off she goes. You may have noticed, gentle reader, the absence of a fairy godmother and a Cinders mobile morphed from a pumpkin drawn by mice in James's ballet but you won't find any of that in the Grimms' story either.

The family arrive at the reception by their separate ways and the stepmother and her daughter make a beeline for the Prince. He and his friends Maldwyn (Mandev Sokhi) and Math (Tim Hill) try to keep out of their way. At one point they comically crouch behind the furniture in an attempt to conceal themselves. But then the Prince spots Cinderella whom he had previously seen at her mother's graveside. He falls for her and they dance all night until she has to make her getaway losing her pointe shoe in her flight.

The prince and his entourage tour the town inviting the girls of the parish to try on the pointe shoe. Eventually, they reach Cinderella's house and her step sister tries on the shoe. Remarkably (as Arnoux is a very petite dancer) the shoe is too big so her brother sets about her with a meat cleaver to perform foot surgery without anaesthetic. There are squeals and squawks of pan from Arnoux but to no avail. The voice over, representing the birds, reads:

"Rook di goo, rook di goo!
There's blood in the shoe.
The shoe is too tight,
This bride is not right!"

Poor Seren hobbles about with a red ribbon representing a stream of blood.  Aerona then forces Cas into drag and he emerges with a crinoline frame rather like the ones that Ruth Brill uses in her ballet Matryoshka (see Birmingham Royal Ballet in High Wycombe 31 May 2015). He tries on the pointe shoe but he has no more luck than his sister despite also undergoing agonizing foot surgery.

Cinderella enters and produces the other shoe from under a cushion on the sofa. She tries on the lost shoe and of course it fits. Prince Madoc claims his bride. The birds chase Aerona and Cas away but perhaps it is not all bad news for the step family because the closing scene shows Seren dancing happily with Math.

This was an enchanting ballet and I could quite happily have sat through it all again there and then had that been possible. I loved White's score - maybe not quite as much as Prokofiev's - but then it fitted the ballet like a glove. An arranger or even a musicologist would have had to have taken a meat cleaver to Prokofiev and the result might have been no more satisfactory than the operation on the feet of Cas and Seren. I also loved Steve Denton's designs, particularly Aerona's headdress, which suggested horns as well as vulgarity in millinery. Denton made Seren look really plain which is an achievement because Arnoux is actually a very attractive young woman when not in costume. I loved Chris Illingworth's lighting design and the ingenious use of a projector to set the scene which is ideal for touring.  But most of all I loved the choreography and the dancing which had some unusual features like a remarkable three person lift and turn executed by the step family and some ape like acrobatics by Cas and Seren. There were great performances by all, particularly Lowe, who transformed herself convincingly from a dying woman into an angry bird.

I discussed the choreography with Darius James whom I met in the interval. He told me that the remarkable three person lift and turn had been a circus trick devised by Citrus. He also said that the cast rotates and that the different dancers interpret the roles quite differently. That is, of course, what one would expect but I would love to see it for myself. If I can, I will try to catch this production with a different cast somewhere else on its tour.

Ballet Cymru is a very special company. It is, of course, a national ballet company and while it is nothing like as big as English National Ballet or Scottish Ballet I don't think anyone could argue that it is not in its own way just as good. It does a lot of things that other companies don't do such as its collaboration with Gloucestershire Dance which produced an Explosion of Joy in Llandudno on 21 Sept 2014. Much of the credit for that triumph must go to the choreographer Marc Brew whom I featured in Special Brew on 28 April 2015. As I said in that feature and in my review of his Exalt Brew is now working with Ballet Cymru and I see from the programme that he has been appointed Associate Artistic Director. In our conversation James told me that the company will dance a new work by Brew together with TIR and Celtic Concerto in Newport, Llandudno and London later in the year. Even though we won't see the wonderful Cerys Matthews as she will be in Chubut to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the voyage of the Mimosa to Patagonia (see Y Wladfa in Wikipedia)  I can't wait to see it.

Ballet Cyrmu is a great national treasure not just for the principality but for the whole United Kingdom which is no doubt why the London Ballet Circle seem to pay it special attention despite their metropolitan provenance. If you get the chance to see a performance by this company then go. It is a good example of what a small touring company can do and provides an excellent model for others.

Ballet Cymru returns to Lincoln

Swans in Lincoln

Author Rept0nlx

Source Wikipedia

Ballet Cymru will be 30 next year and they have a lot to celebrate (see Our History on the company's website). They have some lovely dancers who have created some great ballets several of which I have reviewed in this blog (see  They're not from Chigwell - they're from a small Welsh Town called Newport 14 May 2013, Diolch yn Fawr - Ballet Cymru's Beauty and the Beast 24 June 2014 and An Explosion of Joy 21 Sept 2014, see also Mel Wong's review of Beauty and the Beast 24 June 2014). They have also created a number of ballets that I have not yet seen and would very much like to see such as TIR with music by Cerys Matthews. Under Milk Wood and How Green was my Valley.

On Sunday the company is returning to Lincoln - almost as far to the East from Wales as it is possible to get without leaving Great Britain - to dance Cinderella at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. The advance publicity for this show is irresistible which no doubt explains why there are hardly any seats left. The music is by Jack White who composed the score for Stuck in the Mud. The choreography is by Darius James and Amy Doughty and there is the most compelling picture of Krystal Lowe racing under the moon on the home page of the Centre's website.

I have a soft spot for Lincoln for it is where I first met Chantry Dance (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 10 May 2014). It is a beautiful city where they do a lot of dance including an impressive bachelors' degree course at Lincoln University. It should be a great evening.

Ballet Cymru's Cinderella

Two of my personal highlights of last year were Ballet Cymyru's performances of Beauty and the Beast at Lincoln and Stuck in the Mud in Llandudno. They are a lovely company with some lovely dancers. I am a particular fan of Krystal Lowe who like me spent part of her education in Los Angeles and also of Mandev Solkhi who was a magnificent beast in Lincoln last year.  I snapped both of them on the streets of Llandudno in September.

On 8 May 2015 Ballet Cymru are premièring a brand new version of Cinderella at the Riverfront Theatre in Newport. Newport was sent up terribly by the Jay Z Spoof Newport A state of Mind and also by the local response You're not from Newport but it is actually quite a pleasant place.  Just a few minutes drive from the centre is Caerleon Roman fortress and baths, one of the most important archaeological sites in Britain. It is also the southern end of the magnificent Wye Valley which is an area of outstanding natural beauty.  It has a Norman Castle though there is not much left of it and, of course, the UK Intellectual Property Office which is how I happen to know the place so well.

Ballet Cymru has commissioned its own score from Jack White who wrote the music for Stuck in the Mud. The ballet is choreographed by Darius James and Amy Doughty. The sets and costumes have been designed by Steve Denton. After its opening in Newport the show will tour England and Wales with one performance in Scotland at Ayr

Ballet Cymru has particularly connections with the London Ballet Circle. Darius James is one of the Vice Presidents. The Circle has organized at least one visit to Newport and encourages its members to attend its performances in London.

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.