Phoenix's 35th Anniversary Tour

Phoenix Dance Theatre, Triple Bill, West Yorkshire Playhouse, 17 Feb 2016

In 1981 David Hamilton, Donald Edwards and Vilmore James founded Phoenix Dance Theatre in Leeds (see the History page on the company's website). Yesterday David Hamilton attended the first night of Phoenix's 35th anniversary tour at the West Yorkshire Playhouse at the start of a year of celebrations of the 35th anniversary of the formation of the company.

There is a lot to celebrate. As the tour page puts it:

"From small beginnings in inner-city Leeds, Phoenix Dance Theatre has grown to be one of the UKs leading contemporary dance companies."

Phoenix contributes much to the cultural life of the North of England and the nation not only through its performances but also by its educational and outreach work which includes workshops on tour, academies for young people in Leeds and the North East and schools partnerships. The statistics are impressive. According to the programme for yesterday's performance there were 641 workshops engaging 2,379 young people in Leeds between 2014 and 2015 and a further 228 engaging 1,360 young persons outside the city with a total audience of 91,128.

Phoenix started its tour with a triple bill that consisted of Sharon Watson's Melt, Kate Flatt's Undivided Loves and Itzik Galili's Until.With/Out.Enough. I loved all three of those works but particularly Undivided Loves which focused on Sonnet 18:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Brilliantly accompanied by the music of Adriano Adewale who played his score on stage, the dancers Prentice Whitlow, Sam Vaherlehto and Marie-Astrid Mence explored the themes of love, jealousy and rivalry. I saw a preview of this work just before Christmas as I mentioned in Never attend a Ballet Class the Morning after the Night Before 21 Dec 2015. In the discussion after the performance I asked the composer who is Brazilian whether he had read the sonnets in Portuguese as Shakespeare belongs to every culture and not just the anglophone. Adewale proved that point at the end of the score with snippets of Portuguese and Finnish.

Melt is another favourite. It never fails to lift me.  When I reviewed it for Phoenix at Home 4 Oct 2015 I described it as a "joyful work" and a "dance in three dimensions". I explained that:

"Dancers formed patterns on the stage. Then they were hoisted up on ropes from which they swooped and twirled and turned. The programme notes mentions elements colliding and the choreographer talks about ice and fire from which I surmises the title Melt is derived. I saw only harmony and fluidity. If there were collisions they were controlled. The work is hauntingly beautiful not least because of the music chosen for the work: "We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues" by Wild Beasts from their 2009 album ‘Two Dancers‘. Watson, the company's artistic director, created Melt for the company's Reflected programme in 2011."

The dancers (Carmen Vazquez Marfil, Sandrine Monin, Vanessa Vince-Pang, Jack Thomson, Prentice Whitlow, Sam Vaherlehto and Marie-Astrid Mence) seemed to love this piece. I have never seen them dance better.

Until.With/Out.Enough is a co-commission with the Royal Opera House and I saw it at the Linbury on 13 Nov 2013 (see The Phoenix Soars Over London 13 Nov 2015. It was created by Irzik Galili to the music of Gorecki which cannot have been a an easy score to interpret.  The choreographer responded to that challenge ingeniously by working on the collective shape of the dancers so that the piece seemed to be almost as much a work of sculpture or architecture as a work of dance. Consequently lighting was particularly important in a piece such as this and it was designed impressively by Yaron Abulafia. In this piece were Natalie Alleston performed with Carmen Vazquez Marfil, Sandrine Monin, Vanessa Vince-Pang, Jack Thomson, Prentice Whitlow and Sam Vaherlehto.

As Phoenix has given so much to the nation the company has invited the public to donate 35 for 35. That can be
- £35 - "£1 for every year that Phoenix has been entertaining and inspiring dance audiences" for which contributors will receive a poster of the Company’s latest repertoire and an acknowledgement of support on its website;
- £3.50 per month which, if renewed for a second year, will earn automatic membership of the dancer's circle.
- a one-off donation of £350 which will be rewarded with membership of the choreographers' circle; or
- £3,500 bringing membership of the artistic director's circle.
Information  on making donations is available on the "Give 35 for 35 Years" page of the company's website.

Never attend a Ballet Class the Morning after the Night Before

While I was in Edinburgh I bought these very special cards for my very special ballet friends.  They show Bethany Kingsley-Garnet who danced Cinderella on Saturday and that is the costume she wore in the ballet. It was a lovely production as you can see from my review (see Scottish Ballet's Cinderella 20 Dec 2015). You may remember that Cinders had been warned to leave the ball before the end of the drivers' shift at Murine Motors otherwise they would take their Pumpkin stretched limo back to the garage and she would have to find her way home on the night bus. Cinders could have walked home when her mum was alive because the family lived in the New Town. She and her dad had to move to Craigmillar after he had taken to the bottle to relieve the stress that he suffered in a disastrous second marriage.

Cinders managed to change out of her party dress and even had time for a brief lift by the prince just before the Pumpkin drove off. That was more than I was able to do when I attended our chambers party on Wednesday. It was a seriously good party which was still going strong as I left for King's Cross to catch my train back to Leeds at 06:30. The reason I had to be on that train was that I had a ballet class at 11:00, cocktails at The Alchemist after class and an invitation to see one of Phoenix Dance Theatre's  new pieces at 17:00.

Leeds is 200 miles from London and the journey takes just over 2 hours. For the whole of that journey I felt I was doing pirouettes if not more fouettés than Legnani had ever accomplished in her life. As I say, it had been a very, very good party. I regained my composure on the walk to Quarry Hill and changed out of my party dress into my leotard.

The first exercise was pliés which are usually a doddle but when I tried to relevé in 5th at the end of the exercise my feet and ankles wobbled like a jelly. It was even worse when we tried tendus because we had to remember to stretch our inside leg after the exercise on our outside leg and then attempt to stretch outside leg and insider leg alternately en croix. Glissés were even worse because they required a pas de cheval st various stages. To say I was hopelessly confused is putting it mildly. After the usual ronds de jambe. grands battements and so forth and then it was time for centre work when my troubles really began. Even though my brain had been doing pirouettes all the way from King's Cross to Leeds could my body pull one off when it needed to do so. No way don Jose. It was hard enough to remember the preparation. We had a lovely port de bras which I just managed to struggle through. Then jumps which is the bit I usually like best. Finally, chassés, balancés, a complex exercise consisting of curtsey, arabesque,  pas de bourrés and balancé turns which is hard enough when I have had a good night's sleep and have been stone cold sober the night before. For once in my life cool down and reverence could not come soon enough.

Mel had been following  my tweets from Budapest. "How was class?" she asked solicitously. "I didn't injure myself or anyone else or even fall over" I replied "but that was about all the credit I could claim." We met for cocktails as arranged. Michelle Richer, one of the most prolific contributors to BalletcoForum, managed to join us from Lincolnshire.  She was accompanied by Adrian whom she had mentioned in the forum from time to time. In fact we met  on the train to Leeds. Although I stuck to mineral water my classmaters' cocktails were amazing. One of them ordered something that erupted with the violence of Vesuvius. Another produced dry ice like the wilis emerging from their tombs.

My over 55 ballet class was almost as gregarious as my chambers. We found a table on the terrace outside the cocktail lounge where we could observe le tout Leeds and there my fellows consumed the barman's concoctions until dusk. I stayed in Leeds for the new work for Phoenix by Kate Flatt called Undivided Loves which will be premièred at West Yorkshire Playhouse on 17 Feb 2016. We had a talk from the choreographer and another from Adriano Adewale, the composer, and finally a run through by Prentice Whitlow, Marie-Astrid Mence and Jack Thomson. As the work is still in progress I have promised to say nothing about it except that it is enchanting and I would urge my readers to see it.

I had forgotten to mention what I did between cocktails and the performance. I spent an interesting time at the British Art Show at Leeds Art Gallery. It is not everybody's cup of tea. Maybe not even Marcel Duchamp's but it is good to know what artists in other mediums are creating. I was attracted to Charlotte Prodger's "Northern Dancer"  but found out that it was all about a horse.