Dreda Blow

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It is always sad to say goodbye to a dancer - especially a leading lady - but I for one will miss  Dreda Blow prticularly.  According to Northern Ballet's news item, Saying Farewell, she will dance with the company for the last time at the Lowry on 9 June 2018.

I have chosen a clip from Romeo and Juliet because it was the work in which I first appreciated her qualities.  In Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - different but in a good way 8 March 2015 I wrote:

"I also saw another side of Dreda Blow. I had last seen her as Mina in Dracula in which I had admired her dancing but did not warm to her. .........  Casting Blow for the role was an inspiration. She was a perfect Juliet. Playful and feisty. Loving but conflicted. Brave but fearful. Blow is elevated to my pantheon of favourites."

I was of the same view when I saw her in that role a second time in Bradford 18 months later (see  Romeo and Juliet after the Shrew  18 Oct 2016).

Dreda Blow is a joy to watch.  She is of course a virtuoso but also so much more.  She has a lovely face with wonderfully expressive features.   Qualities that make her one of the finest dance actors that I know.  Some roles she has made her own.  I cannot imagine any other Jane Eyre but her.  When  I first saw her in that role in Richmond, I remarked:

"Hannah Bateman had tweeted that Blow was lovely in the title role and she was right. Blow is a fine dancer but I have never seen her dance better than she did tonight." (see Northern Ballet's Jane Eyre: the best new Ballet from the Company in 20 Years 2 June 2016)

I said very much the same when I saw her again in Sheffield last month (see Jane Eyre Second Time Round 18 April 2018). I have tried to think of the work in which I have liked her best,  The beautiful but vulnerable Bellino, perhaps, in Kenneth Tindall's Casanova perhaps or maybe her cheeky and playful role in Demis Volpi's Little Monsters (see Sapphire  15 March 2015).

The news bulletin does not say where she will go or what she will do after 9 June 2018 but I wish her all the best.  I thank her for all the pleasure she has given her audiences in her 11 or so years with the company.

PS   Dreda came to us from Amsterdam where she trained and began her career. Through the Junior Company I have made the acquaintance of several leading ballet teachers in the Netherlands. One of them added this lovely comment:
 
 

Maya Plisetskaya

Maya Plisetskaya 31 Oct 2011

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A lot of good things happened on 2 May 2015 for me personally in that I saw an outstanding performance by Ballet Central in Leeds (see Dazzled 3 May 2015) and for the public in general in that the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a daughter. But for me it was all overshadowed by the sad news from Moscow that the prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya had died in Germany.

Though I never met her I felt the loss deeply.  When I first took an interest in ballet in the 1960s there were two great names: Dame Margot Fonteyn in this country and Maya Plisetskaya in the Soviet Union. Of the two I found Plisetskaya by far the more interesting,

Here is a film about Plisetskaya and her art made at about that time I first heard of her.  It shows her at her peak dancing in some of her most famous roles: Odile, Juliet, the Dying Swan and above all Phrygia.  It also has some shots of her as a young student,

  

I admired her as an artist but also as a human being. She had an old fashioned loyalty to her country (which siome would say was misplaced as she lost her father in one of Stalin's purges) but she was not afraid of asserting herself from time to time.

In 1958 Plisetskaya married the composer Rodion Shchedrin who composed the score to The Little Humpbacked Horse and arranged several other works for her. Their marriage continued until the day she died.

She was a ravishingly beautiful woman even in her eighties as the photograph shows. Like Fonteyn she continued to perform long after the age most dancers have retired.

Nobody can live for ever. She had a very good innings. But that does not stop me from feeling very, very sad at her passing.