Breaking Pointe

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When I visited Cork to see Swan Lake by the Cork City Ballet nearly two weeks ago, I received a full-length copy of Breaking Pointe from Colette McNamee the chair of the company's board.  The film was made to celebrate the first 25 years of the ballet company and consists largely of an interview with its founder and artistic director, Alan Foley.

The first question to Foley was how he started dancing.  He replied that he started when he was very young dancing behind closed doors to records in his parents' sitting room.  Later he was sent to ballet class where he did well in competitions throughout Ireland and beyond. Eventually, he met Joan Denise Moriarty who terrified him.  On their first meeting, he bolted out of her presence.  However, he returned and submitted to her discipline even though there were times when he found it chafing.

In 1989 the Vaganova Ballet Academy invited dancers from around the world to attend a summer school in Leningrad.  He applied without first seeking Moriarty's permission. To his great joy and surprise, he was accepted.  His teacher was about to reprimand him when the Irish national broadcasting corporation learned of his success and asked her for her reaction.  What else could Moriarty say other than that she was very proud of him? In some footage that must be quite rare, she warned him that he could expect to work.  Apparently, he lost two stone in weight while he was there.

Although he also received training in London and New York, Foley seems to have established some close links with Russia.  His lead dancers in Swan Lake were Russian nationals. The sound recording and many of the costumes for his shows came from that country. Foley remarked in the film that Russians and Irish folk share a similar temperament which is a notion that had occurred to me from my own friends and acquaintances from those countries quite independently some time ago. One of Foley's former collaborators, Monica Loughman, who is best known in this country for Big Ballet in which several of my friends and acquaintances participated, trained at the Perm State Choreographic College (Пермский государственный хореографический колледж).

Although I had attended a ballet at either The Gate or Abbey in Dublin as long ago as 1982 I had not been aware of the strength of the balletic tradition in the Republic of Ireland.  I should have been, of course.  Dame Ninette de Valois, who founded our national company and leading ballet school, was born in Co. Wicklow.  Indeed, the teacher who led me back to the barre after a gap of 50 years is an Irishwoman albeit that she trained in Brisbane. What I learned in Cork from a taxi driver who had never attended a ballet was that Moriarty had set up a ballet company and school in Cork as long ago as the 1940s.  She had been a considerable choreographer.  She is particularly well remembered for adapting Synge's The Playboy of the Western World to dance.

Although Foley seems to be adept at rallying support from businesses and politicians - as I mentioned in my review of Swan Lake the President of the Republic wrote a foreword for the programme - it has received no support from the Arts Council of Ireland for several years. I was flabbergasted to learn that.  Performing arts companies in the UK grumble about state miserliness but lesser institutions than the Cork City Ballet seem to get something. Kruschev knew the value of ballet as an instrument of soft power when he sent the Bolshoi to tour the West immediately after Hungary. Maybe we had learned that lesson even earlier when we send the Sadler's Well Ballet to the neutral Netherlands in 1940.  The Cork City Ballet is a valuable cultural asset which should be cherished.

In my introduction to Cork City Ballet, I wrote that the company did not seem to have a school or associates programme but having seen shots of eager children and classes all over Cork and surrounding districts I think I may have been wrong.  It may not be called an associates programme as such but Foley and his company definitely train the young.  And not just the young for adult classes are offered at the company's Firkin Crane studio every Wednesday. According to McNamee, they are often given by Foley himself.

I warmed to the Cork City Ballet the moment the curtain rose and I want to see it do well. I have found lots of personal links to the company.  I have already mentioned Big Ballet and Loughman. There are many others.  One of Powerhouse Ballet's best dancers trained with Katherine Lewis, the company's ballet mistress. Sadly Lewis died earlier this year but she appears in the film. One of the company's solo artists trained at Ballet West.  His principal was delighted to learn of the success of her alumnus.  I shall be back in Cork next year for The Nutcracker and I hope that a good number of my theatre-going compatriots will be tempted to join me.

No Excuses! If the Dancers in Big Ballet can do it so can I

St George's Hall, Bradford       Source Wikipedia

I was very suspicious of Channel4's Big Ballet for many reasons. First, I am not a fan of reality TV. I have never watched an episode of "Big Brother". I have watched the odd episode of "The Apprentice" but I get very cross at the bitchiness particularly when members of the losing team turn on each other. I have tried to watch "Dragons' Den" but am infuriated at the arrogance of the investors. The second reason I was suspicious is that I live in Yorkshire and I have seen far too many shows that take the mickey out of my county. I also dance for fun even though I am the wrong shape and size and have not the slightest natural aptitude.  The idea of gathering a bunch of plus size dancers to dance Swan Lake  struck me as the modern equivalent of watching the lunatics at Bedlam.

Nevertheless, I did watch highlights of the show on Channel4oD and was pleasantly surprised. Now this was not great ballet. The choreography was very simple. There was just one lift and nobody danced on pointe but it was not a shambles either. Far from it. When one considers the time available for training and rehearsal the dancers and their teachers, Wayne Sleep and Monica Loughman, did very well indeed.  Indeed, I drew some inspiration from them for myself. Until I saw the video I had blamed my wobbliness in arabesque and my very unsteady pirouettes on being the wrong shape and size but lo and behold folk who are even less well proportioned than me were getting arabesques and pirouettes right before my very eyes.  So I have no excuses.  I must just work harder.

The ballet was performed in St George's Hall in Bradford which is really a concert hall. I have seen opera there but never ballet.  That usually takes place at The Alhambra a few hundred yards away. The Halle and other visiting orchestras perform there and when they appear they seem very tightly packed together. How the dancers managed to move on a stage of that size beats me. If only for that they deserve a medal.

The story of Swan Lake was tweaked a little. Scene 1 was set in a New York art gallery in the 1920s which was fine except that I could not quite see the advantage of that setting since all the other scenes seemed to follow the story. There were some very clever adaptations of the music - the cygnets for example was used in part of the dance of Siegfried and Odile to underscore their intimacy as I think Sleep said in the preceding programme. I also liked the divertissements - particularly the Neapolitan dance - different choreography from when Sleep used to dance it but still good to watch.  All the artists did well but I particularly liked the men, AJ who danced Siegfried and Raj who was Rothbart.

The programme received a lot of help from Northern Ballet.  The dancers rehearsed in Quarry Hill, the music was provided by the Northern Ballet Sinfornia and David Nixon was in the audience. That is one of the good things about Northern Ballet. They cultivate excellence like every other company but they bring ballet to everyone: not just to elderly hippopotamuses like me but also to folk who have far greater challenges to overcome than simply being the wrong age, shape and size and bereft of any obvious talent.  When everything is taken into account I am very proud of my beloved Northern Ballet for facilitating this project and even more proud of my fellow Yorkshire folk who danced before a live audience and cameras on very little training. It has motivated me to work that much harder when Northern Ballet Academy reopens after its half term break.

Post Script
21 Feb 2013  Northern Ballet has just published s press release on its contribution to the series entitled  "The door is always open with Northern Ballet Big Ballet may have seen their last curtain call but the stage door is always open with Northern Ballet".

Related Articles
7 Sep 2013 "Adult Ballet Classes" on adult ballet classes throughout the UK
12 Sep 2013 "Realizing a Dream" on Northern Ballet  Academy's over 55 class
6 Dec 2013 "It's an Ill Wind - Review of Northern Ballet's Beginner's Class"
12 Feb 2014 "Migrating Swans - Dance Classes for the Over 50s in the North"
18 Feb 2014 "Northern Ballet Open Day" on the Academy and its teachers in acton

And for a little bit of background on Monica Loughman see "Ballet in Ireland" 8 Feb 2014

Ballet in Ireland

My interest in Ireland was stimulated by an email from Northern Ballet about the "Big Ballet" series on Channel 4 which started last Thursday.  I missed last week's programme because it clashed with "Inside Science" and "In Our Time" and I am going to miss next week's because a friend is taking me to see "Coriolanus" for a birthday treat. I love ballet but I am also interested in science, history and drama. As my time, like everybody's, is limited I judged I might get more satisfaction from Radio 4 than Channel 4 on the Jeremy Bentham measure. I might also add that as a somewhat unpromising and over mature ballet student I do not see anything weird or even unusual about people who are less or more than the optimum shape and size for a career in ballet getting as much enjoyment as they can from the art, as I do, and I wish them all well.

The email explained that while the programme was not about Northern Ballet, much of the filming takes place in Quarry Hill and the Northern Ballet Sinfonia will accompany the live performances at the end of the series.  The bit that startled me however was the reference to Wayne Sleep and "prima ballerina Monica Loughman". Now I have seen Wayne Sleep many times and I remember his Neapolitan dance with particular affection but I had not heard of Monica Loughman. Now although I do not know everything about ballet I do get to about 20 shows a year and I read the ballet columns of The Guardian, Independent and FT as well as Dancing Times and dip into Ballet News and the other blogs. Even though I have not seen every ballerina or even every prima ballerina I have usually heard of them and the name Monica Loughman did not ring any bells.

So I googled her. The first five results were:

• Monica Loughman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Irish ballet starlet Monica Loughman found love at Tesco checkout ...
• Big Ballet: Wayne Sleep & Monica Loughman stage Swan Lake using only plus-size dancers
Big Ballet's plus-size swans step out to prove dance suits all shapes, and 
• Monica Loughman Ballet - Ireland's Ballet Company

I had a look at her Wikipedia entry and found:

"Monica Loughman is now best known in Ireland for establishing a National ballet company. Ireland was one of the only countries in the world (apart from Liechtenstein) that did not have a full-time professional ballet company."

 Now I found that rather surprising because I spent my honeymoon in Ireland in 1982 and I remember an evening at either the Gate or the Abbey when my late spouse and I watched a very polished performance by a company that called itself the National Ballet of Ireland. Moreover, my teacher comes from Ireland though she trained in Brisbane, and Dame Ninette de Valois who founded the Royal Ballet came from the Emerald Isle.

So I checked out YouTube and found the footage of The Dying Swan from RTE above. Now although I was initially put off by the Tesco checkout story, Big Ballet and another TV show in Ireland called Ballet Chancers it is clear from this footage that Monica Loughman knows what she is doing.  So I scrolled down to the entry for Monica Loughman Ballet.

It appears that the company has four ballets in its repertoire:  The Nutcracker, La Sylphide, Giselle and Masterpieces of World Opera and Ballet. It has just finished touring the Irish Republic with The Nutcracker and it is planning to dance Swan Lake this year. I searched YouTube again and found these clips of Part I and Part II of La Sylphide from 2012 which I would gladly have crossed the Irish Sea to see had I been aware of those performances.  I should add that I much prefer La Sylphide to Giselle because it is set in Scotland which is still part of the United Kingdom (at least for now) and not in the Vosges or Black Forest and there is no monkeying about with the spirit world which gives me the creeps (see "Reflections on Gisellle" 29 Jan 2014).

Incidentally, while carrying out my searches I found the website for the National Ballet of Ireland which shows that I wasn't imagining things. It will dance Carmen in Limerick on 29 and 30 May 2014 and with tickets priced between 10 and 20 euros it seems very good value even after taking account of the Ryanair fair to get there.

Now a limerick

"Now there once was a Scotsman called James
With whom Madge had some fun and some games.
She gave him a scarf
For the sylph for a laugh.
Who died and Gurn took Effie back hame." 

"Hame" I think is how they pronounce home in Scotland (see The Steamie by Tony Roper).  Yeah I know it's terrible but you try and find a better rhyme for "James" and "games".

Post Script 9 Feb 2014

There will be a chance to see Monica Loughman's company, if not Loughman herself, as it will dance Giselle at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast on 4 or 5 April 2014, As I am curious and will qualify for a concessionary ticket I think I may just slip over.