The Importance of Performance

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I spent last weekend driving to Truro and back to see Duchy Ballet (see Cornwall's Coup: Duchy Ballet's Sleeping Beauty 19 March 2017).  I shall spend this weekend driving to Chelmsford to see my company dance Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I have emphasised the possessive adjective because I am proud to be a non-dancing associate member of the company and the only reason why I have never auditioned for dancing membership is that Chelmsford is just a tad too far for rehearsals.

It would have been cheaper and easier to have whizzed down to London and back by Hull Trains, Virgin or Grand Central to see Project Polunin at the Wells or even the Pite, Wheeldon and Dawson triple bill at the Royal Opera House and cheaper and easier still to have stayed in Leeds to see another performance of Northern Ballet's Casanova  (which I strongly recommend, by the way - 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) but I would have missed something important.

Performances like the one I saw in Truro on Saturday and the one I expect to see in Chelmsford are important because they give a purpose to all those years of exercises at the barre and in the centre.  Ballet, like Shakespeare, is intended for the stage. Without performance, class is just a workout - about as arid as cramming Romeo and Juliet for an exam.  Performances are important not just for children and young adults but for students of any age.  I shall never forget the thrill of my first performance at Northern Ballet Academy's end of term show in 2014 (see The Time of my Life 28 June 2014).

However, students will take performances seriously only if audiences take them seriously.  Such audiences should include not just mums, dads and siblings but also regular ballet goers and even the occasional ballet blogger.  The attendance of a critical audience is particularly important when principals of leading companies perform in a student show as Elena Glurdjidze and Arionel Vargas of English National Ballet did in the Bristol Russian Ballet School's Romeo and Juliet (see Good Show - Bristol Russians' Cinderella in Stockport 19 Feb 2014) and Tom Thorne and Laura Bösenberg of the Cape Town City Ballet did on Saturday.

There is sometimes a reward for audiences who make it to civic theatres in remote parts of the country. Sometimes you see stars of the future as I did when I saw Xander Parish for the first time in York in 2007. Even as a student it was clear that he was going places.  I think I saw a spark of excellence in the lilac fairy on Saturday and also in Odette-Odile in Greenock last month (see Ballet West at the Beacon 13 Feb 2017). I don't want to embarrass or tempt fate for either of those two promising young women but I don't think I have seen the last of either of them.

Cornwall's Coup: Duchy Ballet's Sleeping Beauty

Tom Thorne and Laua Bösenberg in The Sleeping Beauty

Photo Zoe Green Photography
(c) 2017 Duchy Ballet: a;; rights reserved 

Duchy Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Hall for Cornwall, Truro, 18 March 19:30

Cornish folk are as different from Yorkshire folk as it is possible to be. Whereas denizens of my adopted county make exaggerated claims of excellence for everything even when it is quite ordinary, Cornish folk tend to hide their lights under a bushel even when they have something to be proud of. There seemed to be genuine surprise that anyone would drive from Holmfirth to see their show. "You mean to say you have driven nearly 400 miles just to see us" I heard more than once last night. "Well, yes," I replied, "it is a long way but not nearly as far as Cape Town from where your guest artists have flown." And how else am I to see a company that attracts the likes of Roberta Marquez and Laura Bösenberg. Nobody would say that in Yorkshire about the Huddersfield Choral Society which is indeed good. If you want to see the Choral sing The Messiah in Huddersfield Town Hall well you have to come to Huddersfield - if you can get a ticket, mind - and that's that.

Duchy Ballet is beginning to get some recognition outside Cornwall. Vanessa Roebuck wrote two and a half columns about them in the education section of this month's Dancing Times  (page 122 if you want to look it up) but that is not comparable with the attention that other youth ballets get and Duchy Ballet is at least as good. 

Why do I say it is good?  I offer two reasons.  It takes children, young people and those not so young from an enormous county and coaxes the best out of them but it never asked the impossible. Yesterday's production involved some tricky choreography - especially for the young soloists who carried it off magnificently - but it skipped the rose adagio for the obvious reason that the company would have to train up four strong male dancers and rehearse them for some time with Bösenberg which would have been asking far too much of them. Instead, several new divertissements were introduced for different age groups of children who were brilliant.  Secondly, it involves a wide section of the local community. Truro is not a big city but the Hall for Cornwall which seats well over 900 was not far short of full and there had been several other performances that weekend. There were deafening cheers for the corps. You could see families' involvement from the lovingly sewn costumes and the cleverly constructed forest to the slickness of the front of house.

Turning to the show itself I was impressed by the guest artists.  Rachael Gillespie of Northern Ballet, who had trained with Tom Thorne at Central, wrote: "Tom is a lovely guy and beautiful dancer." I did not get a chance to meet him though I am sure she is right but I can confirm that he is a beautiful dancer.  He is tall and very strong and commands the stage effortlessly.  Bösenberg is attractive in a different way. A winning smile combined with virtuosity, she follows in the tradition of Mason and Nerina.

Of course, the company had it's own stars. Terence Etheridge, who choreographed the show, was a magnificent Carabosse in the tradition of Robert Helpmann. The lilac fairy (danced, I think by Alabama Seymour) was delightful. Matthew Phillips was a great bluebird and he was partnered well by Amy Robinson. Jasmine Allen was a charming white cat.  I need to credit the wardrobe, those who made the sets, the lighting designer - I could go on but it's late and I have a long journey tomorrow.   The company won a standing ovation for its performance and that is all I need to say.

My congratulations to all involved - especially to the artistic director, Kay Jones, and Terence Etheridge whom I met briefly. I will follow the company and its talented young dancers with considerable interest.  I will write more about them by and by as I get to know this company better.

Tom Thorne in Truro

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In Thinking Big out West 11 Jan 2017 I introduced readers to Laura Bosenberg who is Senior Principal Dancer at the Cape Town City Ballet (see Meet the Company on the company's website). My article embedded a clip of a remarkable duet between Rosenberg and Tom Thorne.  If you scroll down the Meet the Company page you will see that Thorne is also a Senior Principal with the Cape Town City Ballet.

I mentioned Rosenberg because she will dance Princess Aurora this weekend in Duchy Ballet's production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro.  What I did not appreciate until earlier this morning is that Duchy Ballet will host Thorne as well as Rosenberg. I learned that news from a picture of the two of them on Duchy Ballet's Facebook page which links to a feature in Cornwall Life.

There is not a lot of information about Thorne on the Cape Town City Ballet's website though it mentions that he trained at Central School of Ballet so I did a lot of furious Googling. I found this rather amusing clip of his pushing a journalist through floor exercises in Ballet Basics with Thomas Thorne and this preview of the Cape Town City Ballet's production of The Sleeping Beauty with took place in Cape Town last September (see Artsvark Presser Cape Town City Ballet presents The Sleeping Beauty.

The Cape Town City Ballet proudly displays a roundel on its home page bearing the words "The South African National Ballet". That country has given the world John Cranko, Dame Monica Mason, Nadia Nerina and Phyllis Spira to name a few and it is still sending us promising young dancers such as Mthuthuzeli November and Mlindi Khulashe. I do not believe that Thorne and Bosenberg are dancing anywhere else in the UK on this trip. To my mind the most interesting place in the UK for ballet goers this weekend will not be Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Newport or even London but Glasgow.

Thinking Big out West

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I first learned about Duchy Ballet on 29 March 2014. The reason I can date it so precisely is that I wrote in The Guys of the Golden West 30 March 2014:

"Other Golden Guys are Duchy Ballet whose existence I discovered only yesterday. This evening and yesterday they were performing The Mousehole Cat & Other Ballets at The Hall for Cornwall in Truro. Roberta Marquez of the Royal Ballet appeared as a guest artist. According to the company's website Duchy Ballet was formed to celebrate the opening of The Hall for Cornwall with the aim was of establishing a youth ballet company for Cornwall providing the opportunity to train, rehearse and perform within a professional setting. The company's choreographer is Terry Etheridge who was a guest choreographer of the Chelmsford Ballet Company some years ago and inspired and taught Andrew Potter who danced Drosselmeyer in that company's recent production of The Nutcracker (see "The Nutcracker as it really should be danced - No Gimmmicks but with Love and Joy" 20 March 2014). Potter acknowledged his debt to Etheridge on twitter this morning:

"Mr Etheridge, Found me, taught me and inspired me."

Having seen Potter's performance I congratulate Etheridge on a very good job."

I mentioned Terence Etheridge and Duchy Ballet again on 17 Sept 2016 in Ballet in Cornwall while I was on holiday in Looe.  I added that their next production will be The Sleeping Beauty at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro. 

Today I learned that Aurora will be danced by Laura Bosenberg, one of the senior principals of the Cape Town City Ballet. To get some idea of how she dances watch the YouTube clip of her performance in Camille with Tom Thorne, one of the male principals of the company.  Founded only 3 years after the company that eventually became the Royal Ballet the Cape Town City Ballet is one of the oldest ballet companies in the Commonwealth.  According to Wikipedia John Cranko was a member as was Phyllis Spira Africa's one and only prima ballerina assoluta. Margot Fonteyn has danced with the company as have Carla Fracci, Beryl Grey, Nadia Nerina and many other famous stars.

I suppose I should not be surprised.   A company that can attract a principal of the Royal Ballet of the stature of Marquez thinks big. It is not only in America that they think big out West.