Casanova Revived

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Northern Ballet Casanova  Leeds Grand Theatre 11 March 2022 19:30

I saw Northern Ballet on stage for the first time since its 50th anniversary gala on 4 Jan 2020.  It was very good to see them again.   Although I try not to be partisan and support the other classical and contemporary companies of the United Kingdom, the Dutch National Ballet and great companies around the world as well as I can, Northern Ballet is my home company.  I live 25 miles from Leeds. I have attended whenever possible Northern Ballet's over 55 and evening classes since 2013. I have seen most of its shows since I was captivated by Dame Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man. Through those connections, I have got to know and like many members of the company.

Several of those artists were in last night's performance of Casanova.  It was a particular pleasure to see Hannah Bateman as Madame de Pompadour.  I had taken part in a virtual flower throw for her early in the lockdown because it had not been possible to attend the Grand for a real flower throw in what I had understood to be her final performance for Northern Ballet. Bateman has long been my favourite female artist in that company.  She founded The Ballet Retreat which I have always promoted but never attended largely because I fear I would not be good enough for her.  She is in the very restricted sense that I use the term a true ballerina.

Other dancers in the show whom I know well and like a lot included Abigail Prudames as Bellino, Ashley Dixon as Senator Bragadin and Gavin McCaig as an inquisitor and other roles. The title role, however, was danced by Lorenzo Trosello. Yesterday was the first time I had noticed him in a major role and I was impressed.  I particularly admired his interaction with Prudames who danced Bellino.  That appears to me to be the most demanding female role.  She was also impressive.  They certainly excited the crowd most of whom rose to their feet at the reverence.

Casanova is not a particularly easy story to follow.  I had seen it several times and written quite a lot about it in Casanova Second Time Round in the articles linked to that post, but even I had to refer to the synopsis in the programme at times.  Tindall is a dramatic choreographer - perhaps most remarkable for his work with groups and the corps than for his solos and duets.  He makes his dancers create shapes that are almost sculptural.  His narrative is cinematic. Christopher Oram's designs are breathtaking as is Muzzey's score.  The success of this ballet is down to the choreographer's eye for talent and ability to bring it all together.

The house was less than full last night but the folk who did attend were vociferous and enthusiastic. Perhaps more used to Elland Road, I thought, than the theatre. When the Ukrainian national anthem was announced my friend and I stood up. Though we were joined by one or two others as the playing continued most seemed content to sit it out.  It was quite a contrast to the audience at The Lowry last week.  They did however stand and even ululate at the curtain call.  It was certainly a good show though not good enough for me to lose my sense of proportion.

The show will remain at the Grand until 19 March.  It opens at the Lyceum in Sheffield on 22 March and then moves on to Sadlers Wells and The Lowry in May.  It is one of the best works in Northern Ballet's repertoire and if you can get to any of those theatres you should see it.

Casanova Second Time Round

The Lowry

Photo Andrew Dunn
(c) 2004 Andrew Dunn: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2 Licence
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Northern Ballet, Casanova. The Lowry, 6 May 2017, 19:30

I was pretty complimentary about Kenneth Tindall's Casanova when it opened in Leeds on 11 March 2017 (see Casanova - "it has been a long time since I enjoyed a show by Northern Ballet as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night" 12 March 2017). I liked last night's show at the Lowry even better.

I think there are three reasons for that.

The first is that we had a very strong cast that included both of Northern Ballet's remaining premier dancers, Javier Torres and Pippa Moore as well as personal favourites like Hannah Bateman, Abigail Prudames, Antoinette Brooks-Daw and Mlindi Kulashe in important roles.

The second reason for last night's success is that the dancers will have grown used to their roles over the last two months and danced in the confidence that audiences around the country and most of the critics like the show.

Thirdly, I think the dancers were lifted by the venue. The Lowry is a great auditorium, certainly for audiences because seating is comfortable commanding good views of the stage from just about every part of the house, but I think also for performers as the stage is large and it is well equipped for scenery changes and special effects.

The company danced before a receptive crowd and though the house was less than full the warmth of the applause at the end when more than a few rose to their feet more than made up for it. Manchester audiences may be a little bit more critical than Leeds ones as they see Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and visiting companies from abroad such as the National Ballet of China and Alvin Ailey as well as Northern Ballet. If a show does well in the second largest conurbation of the United Kingdom it will probably do well anywhere. As the old saying goes, "what Manchester does today, the world does tomorrow."

As I have written a lot about Casanova already, I won't bore readers with a rehash of the plot or the work of the various contributors. They can get all that from Northern Ballet's website and the bibliography below. I will concentrate on the dancers and what made last night's performance even better than the first night.

As I noted above, we had a very strong cast. Giuliano Contadini was the poster boy of the show and deservedly so for he danced Casanova very well but Torres was cast perfectly for the role. Powerful, athletic and passionate, he was how I had always imagined the historical Giacomo Casanova. There is a point towards the end when he has to hold a very uncomfortable pose for what must seem like an age. That was when I appreciated just how good he was.

Another inspired bit of casting was Prudames as Bellino. One of the most touching scenes of the ballet - touching in both senses  - is where Contadini gradually winds her confidence. It was demonstrated at the preview with a commentary from Tindall by Contadini and Dreda Blow (see Casanova Unmasked 16 Feb 2017). Prudames made it work even better for she showed the vulnerability of her character and the sensitivity of their encounter given the disparity in power.

Yet another powerful performance came in the first act where MM (described in the blurb as "an aristocratic nun" and danced by Bateman) seduces Casanova thereby giving the inquisition the excuse they need to throw him into the Leads, the prison on the other side of the Bridge of Sighs.

Constraints of time and space prevent my commending everyone individually, All, dancers and musicians, did well last night.  I congratulate everyone who took part in the show.

As the orchestra pit of the Lowry is a bit more spacious than most I was able to glimpse the orchestra occasionally as it tackled Kerry Muzzey's score. Percussion is important particularly towards the end of the show and I was drawn to the percussionist seated on the back row of the pit as he sounded out the change of mood. Thr Northern Ballet Sinfonia was conducted by Daniel Parkinson last night who interpreted the music well. I am not sure that I appreciated the score as much as I did last night the first time round. Yesterday I particularly liked the first act where there were hints of the 18th century without pastiche.

I also appreciated the sets and lighting more and noticed things like the sort of white smoke that rises from the Sistine Chapel when a new pope is found which opened the show. I am not sure of its significance. I assume it was used in the Grand but, for the life of me, I just can't remember it.  It was, however, very effective owing moe than a little to the cinema which I know to be Tindall's passion (see "A Many Sided Genius, Tindall on Casanova 4 March 2017). Not everything worked quite so well. If, as I hope, this ballet has a second run, t I hope that Tindall takes another look at the flashback scene with its falling pages reminiscent of the snow scene at the end of Nixon's Wuthering Heights. A fine bit of choreography deserves a stronger and more original ending.

It was very good to see Northern Ballet west of the Pennines where the company began. As a Mancunian, I took pride in Northern Dance Theatre's existence long before I ever saw them dance. And when I did see them dance I saw them first in Manchester which is where they performed some of their best work. It would be good to see more of them in our city and there is no reason why they should not do so. After all, the Australian Ballet has a strong base in Sydney as well as Melbourne and the Miami City Ballet has homes in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as well as Miami. As I have said many times, the company is called Northern Ballet, not Leeds City or even Yorkshire Ballet. If Birmingham Royal Ballet can manage two seasons a year in our city region I see no reason why Northern Ballet could nit do the same if it really wanted to do so.

Bibliography: Reviews and Insights

20 April	Louise Levene	Casanova, Milton Keynes Theatre, UK — a blur of conquests	Financial Times
19 April	Bruce Marriott	Northern Ballet – Casanova – Leeds	Dance Tabs
7 April	Judith Mackrell	Casanova review – too much plot, not enough passion for Northern Ballet's limp lothario	The Guardian
12 March	Mark Brown	Casanova is an impressive and exhilarating evening's ballet – review	Daily Telegraph
12 March	Jane Lambert	Casanova - "it has been a long time since I enjoyed a show by Northern Ballet as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night"	Terpsichore
4 March	Jane Lambert	"A Many Sided Genius" - Tindall on Casanova	Terpsichore
16 Feb	Jane Lambert	Casanova Unmasked	Terpsichore
24 May 2016	Jane Lambert	Casanova	Terpsichore

Casanova - "it has been a long time since I enjoyed a show by Northern Ballet as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night"

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Northern Ballet Casanova Grand Theatre, Leeds, 11 March 2017, 19:30

I started to take an interest in Northern Ballet when I first read about it in Dance and Dancers in 1969. I seem to remember that it was called Northern Dance Theatre in those days.  The first performance by that company that I actually saw was Gillian Lynn's A Simple Man in 1987 (see Northern Ballet's "A Simple Man" 14 Sep 2013). I have followed the company ever since - remaining loyal to it even after it moved to Halifax. I have therefore seen a lot of performances by Northern Ballet over the years. It is a very long time since I saw a show by Northern Ballet that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night. It is certainly the best I have seen from Northern Ballet since the company crossed the Pennines.

Casanova is Kenneth Tindall's first full length ballet. He had already impressed the public and critics with his such works as The Architect and Luminous Junc•ture but as he agreed in his interview with me "the jump from one-act to full-length is an exponential and qualitative leap - not merely doubling or tripling of effort" (see "A Many Sided Genius" - Tindall on Casanova 4 March 2017). In my judgment Tindall has landed successfully in making that leap.  I liked every aspect of the production: Tindall's choreography, the story that he created with Casanova's biographer Ian Kelly, Kerry Muzzey's score, Christopher Oram's designs and, of course, the dancers.

The ballet focusses on two episodes of Casanova's life. The first is his youth in Venice where he is introduced by Father Balbi to the Kabbalah, a proscribed text, which brings him to the attention of the Inquisition or secret police. They imprison him in the Piombi. The second episode is his exile in France where he meets Madame de Pompadour and Voltaire. At various times women flit in and out of his life - two young girls Nanetta and Marta Savorgnan, a nun known as MM, Bellino and Henriette. Sex is in the story - it could hardly be avoided in view of the detail in which Casanova wrote about it and his popular reputation - but it is not the only story. The politics of the time, the repression of women of which Bellino and Henriette were victims, and other issues were also addressed.

Oram had cleverly projected Venice and Versailles in his set designs. I was reminded of the richness of St Mark's with a brief appearance of the Bridge of Sighs and the confines of the prison house crashing down on Casanova in the last scene of the first act. I was reminded of the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles in the second. Although it was not referred to as such in the programme, there was actually an epilogue representing his employment as a librarian in Prague, There he wrote his life story at the behest of his shrink as a therapy for depression. That episode was represented by a shower of falling paper and the entry of the characters he had encountered in his life.

Muzzey's score suited the story and decor well. It was rhythmic. I noticed several of those around me silently tapping out the beat with their fingers. I even caught myself doing it too at times. It was emphatic.  I particularly admired Muzzey's use of percussion. It was lyrical. In some of the softer scenes, he would repeat a refrain. Maybe not an earworm but nevertheless quite beautiful and memorable.

At the preview, Casanova Unmasked on 15 Feb, I realized that there was great depth and quite a lot of detail to Tindall's choreography. Not all of it is immediately obvious. The duet between Casanova and Bellino where Bellino tests Casanova and learns to trust him might well have escaped me had Tindall not explained it in the preview. However, there were some bits of the choreography that were eloquent. The binding of Bellino's breasts so that she could pose as a castrato and the joy of her womanhood that she expressed once those bandages had been removed. Of course, Bellino was not trans but it is a relief all trans-folk know.

Casanova was danced by Giuliano Contadini. A good choice, I thought. He is tall, athletic, muscular and, of course, Italian. I am not sure that he resembled the historical Casanova whose portrait accompanies my article but he was the right chap for Tindall's ballet. At the end of the performance, he was presented with flowers - a gesture that rarely happens in England but was entirely appropriate on this occasion. My only regret is that his leading ladies, Dreda Blow who danced Bellino, and Hannah Bateman, his Henriette, did not get any for they deserved flowers as well.  So, too, did the other women in Casanova's life such as Abigail Prudames and Minju Kang, Casanova's young initiators and Ailen Ramos Betancourt who danced the nun, MM. There were powerful performances by Javier Torres as Casanova's patron, Brigadin, and Mlindi Kulashe as his persecutor.  As I said earlier today in Facebook, at another time and in another place, yesterday's performance might well have earned a flower throw.

There has been a lot of hype for Casanova as there was last Autumn for Akram Khan's Giselle but in this case, the hype was entirely justified. All my expectations were met. All my hopes fulfilled. Northern Ballet danced in a way that I had not seen them dance for many years. I was not in the most receptive mood for ballet when the show started as I had run from Quarry Hill in my least comfortable but most fashionable heels over slippery pavements having languished for 45 minutes in a traffic jam caused, so far as I could see, quite gratuitously by appalling traffic management on the part of the local authority. It is to the artists' credit that I left the theatre on a high.

Casanova Unmasked

Venice, Birthplace of Giacomo Casanova

Photo Cocao
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Northern Ballet, Casanova Unmasked Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds, 15 Feb 2017, 18:00 - 19:30

In my capacity as a Friend of Northern Ballet, I attended Casanova Unmasked last night. It was a preview of the work by the choreographer, Kenneth Tindall, and two of his collaborators, Ian Kelly his dramaturge and David Nixon his ballet master.  They were assisted by Giuliano Contadini, Dreda Blow, Hannah Bateman, Gavin McCaig and other dancers of the company.

The proceedings were streamed live over the internet and have been recorded at Northern Ballet - Casanova Unmasked on the company's YouTube channel. Unfortunately, the sound quality is not perfect. The sound is very faint throughout the video and appears to have been lost altogether at several points. However, the video is still worth watching. This article is intended to help those who were not in the theatre to appreciate that film. I have also written a brief introduction to the subject matter of Tindall's ballet and provided links to some of his source materials in Casanova, 24 May 2016.

The company's artistic director, David Nixon, made a short speech in which he introduced Kenneth Tindall. He spoke of his early recognition of Tindall's choreographic talent and how he had fostered it. Tindall had been a principal of the company and knew it well. It was, therefore, fitting that Northern Ballet should commission Tindall's first full-length ballet.

Tindall, in turn, introduced Ian Kelly. Tindall explained that Kelly had written the definitive biography of Casanova. He had approached Kelly for a licence but Kelly showed such interest in the project that Tindall invited Kelly to collaborate with him instead. In a fascinating presentation delivered without notes, Kelly brought to life the historical Casanova. Casanova is remembered nowadays as a libertine but he was so much more. He was a polymath with interests ranging from mathematics to gastronomy. He is remembered for his sexual exploits because he described them in minute detail (together with a lot of other things) in his autobiography which he wrote for therapy rather than publication. Kelly told us that Casanova's relationship with women was not as exploitative as might be thought. Intriguingly, Kelly said that Casanova had helped the women he knew "along their way". That gave me the impression that in some respects Casanova was a proto-feminist.

Among Casanova's relationships that Kelly discussed was the one with Bellino,  She is described on Northern Ballet's website as a "woman masquerading as a man in order to work as a castrato (castrated male) singer." Casanova and Bellino were represented on stage by Giuliano Costadini and Dreda Blow. In an exceptionally clever piece of choreography that I might never have interpreted without Tindall's commentary, the dancers recreated the couple's meeting, the tentative relaxing of their masks and the creation of trust between them. The development of trust was demonstrated by some rather scary looking tombés (I use that term in the loosest possible sense because I do not know how else to describe her fall) by Blow into the arms of Costadini. In the questions and answers that followed, Blow was asked how she felt when she performed that step. She replied that it was not easy at first but she had worked with Costadini before and gradually perfected it.

After the Q and A in which Bateman and McCaig joined Contadini and Blow. we were shown another extract from the ballet. This was by members of the corps representing Casanova's fellow seminarians when he was studying for the priesthood. There followed a fencing exercise which somehow transformed itself into a music lesson, the foils becoming violin bows. Altogether very ingenious and very attractive choreography.

There was another Q & A, this time with Tindall, Kelly and Nixon.  I asked Tindall about the mechanics of his collaboration with the composer Kerry Muzzey who was following the event in the United States. I asked him whether he worked as Petipa had with his composers specifying the phrases he needed for particular steps. Tindall replied that the collaboration went both ways. Having written music for film, Muzzey could envisage the interpretation of his work which Tindall had found useful.

After the presentations, Nixon invited the audience to drinks.  In some ways, this was the most valuable part of the evening because it afforded an opportunity to meet the collaborators and dancers informally and explore the work in greater depth. I had a particularly rewarding conversation with Ian Kelly about his methodology as history is forensic but theatre is expressive. Kelly well understood the difference having read history as a first degree.  I expect his work to be scholarly as well as entertaining.

The drinks were served in the atrium of Northern Ballet and Phoenix Dance Theatre's studios at Quarry Hill. Those who have entered the building will remember a landing where costumes are occasionally exhibited. Last night costumes from Casanova were arranged along that landing. Nixon reminded us that these come at a cost and that there is an appeal for wigs and costumes to which I invite all my readers to contribute.

Casanova

Giacomo Casanova

Author Francesco Giuseppe
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Yesterday's announcement of a new full length ballet on the life of Giacomo Casanova by Kenneth Tindall cheered me and perhaps a lot of other well wishers of Northern Ballet. With the exceptions of Jonathan Watkins 's 1984 and Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre which are about to appear in London there seem to have been rather a lot of revivals, and not always my favourite ones. I have often heard it said that narrative ballets are the company's strong suit but the performances that I have enjoyed the most have been the mixed programmes which are normally staged at the Stanley and Audrey Burton and Linbury at this time of the year. Two of the best ballets from those programmes have been  Luminous Junc*ture and The Architect both of which were created by Kenneth Tindall.

A ballet created on a biography rather than an English literature set book makes a refreshing change in itself. Tindll's collaborator on the scenario is Ian Kelly who has written a biography of the adventurer (see Kathryn Hughes's Naughty nuns and peeping Toms, Kathryn Hughes admires the energy and brio in a new life of Casanova 16 Aug 2016 The Guardian). For the score Tindall has chosen Kerry Muzzey who contributed The Architect of Mind to Tindall's Architect  (see Kerry Muzzey’s “The Making of: The Architect” on Vimeo). Christopher Oram will design the sets and costumes.

The ballet will open in Leeds on 11 March 2017 and then tour the country before finally reaching London on the 9 May 2016. Interestingly it will visit The Lowry rather than The Palace where the company usually perform when it passes through Greater Manchester. Parking is better there and the booking fees are much more reasonable. It is not clear who will dance the ballet but as Tobias Batley and Martha Leebolt will be on leave of absence next year Javier Torres would be an obvious candidate for the the title role. There should also be a fair number of female roles too.  As and when I get more info about this work I shall let you know.

In the meantime, if you want to know more about the subject of the ballet Giacomo Casanova was a prodigious autobiographer, A translation of his autobiography can be downloaded from the Gutenberg Project.