Powerhouse Ballet August Update

Leeds Company Class 28 July 2018

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Last week's class with Annemarie Donoghue of Northern Ballet was the best class ever in terms of numbers with 21 attendees, and it was also very enjoyable.  But the excitement generated last week has been quite overtaken by events,

On 31 June 2018 I wrote that we had been offered a slot at Move IT in Manchester on 16 or 23 Feb.  I had originally planned to stage the pas de six from Bournonville's Napoli because there seemed to be nothing in the piece that I had not been taught at one time or another by my teachers at Northern Ballet or KNT.  However, Beverley Willsmer, who had actually danced that pas de six, warned me that it was nothing like as easy as it looked.   She advised us to commission our own work if we could.

As a result of her warning, I wrote on Powerhouse Ballet's website:

"I thought of the pas de six from Napoli but Beverley who has danced that work tells me that it is nothing like as easy as I had supposed. I should be very grateful for suggestions from members of the company and indeed anyone else."

I was wondering where on earth I could find a choreographer as I penned that article.

As soon as I had published that article,  the eminent dancer, choreographer and teacher, Terry Etheridge, contacted me through Facebook with an offer to create a ballet for us.   This was an exceptional opportunity and I grasped it with both hands.  Not only has Terry enjoyed an impressive career as one of the first members of the company that is now Northern Ballet, a soloist at Festival Ballet, artistic director of Hong Kong, head of dance at Urdang, principal of Rambert school and guest choreographer for the Royal Swedish Ballet school, he has many years experience of teaching and creating ballets for dancers just like us for he is resident choreographer of Duchy Ballet in Cornwall.

One of the dancers with whom Terry has worked at various times in his career is our ballet mistress, Beverley Willsmer.  She has also danced with Festival Ballet as well as in Germany and she was ballet mistress to Chelsea Ballet which is another amateur ballet company.   I am proud to say that I danced with Beverley in my very first show at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre in Leeds in 2014.  Until Jonathan Barton advised me last April that one can watch a performance or one can do a performance but not both at the same time (see Visiting Taynuilt 4 May 2018) I used to position myself close to Beverley at the barre in the hope that some of her brilliance would rub off onto me. I am not sure that any did though I certainly learned a lot from her.

Terry will be in  Leeds on 15 and 16 Sept 2018.   He will hold an audition in the form of a class on 15 Sept from which he will select his cast.  He will invite the dancers he chooses back the next day to create the ballet.  I shall take thorough notes and so will Beverley.   We shall film the choreography at the end pf the session. 

Beverley will then invite the cast back for rehearsals starting immediately after each company class beginning with the 22 Sept in Liverpool.   Other rehearsals will take place in Leeds on 27 Oct immediately after Jane Tucker's class, Manchester on 1 Dec immediately after Karen Sant's and Leeds on 26 Jan 2019 immediately after Fiona Noonan's. We might even be able to squeeze in a rehearsal on 28 Nov immediately before or immediately after our workshop with Ballet Cymru.  Yet more rehearsals will be arranged by Beverley as and when necessary.  If you want to be in the show and can commit to the rehearsals here is the link to our Evenbrite page. We have room for only 6 more dancers so if you want to audition don't leave it too late to register.

The show is only one of a number of great events for you.   Don't forget Yvonne Charlton's master class on 22 Sept in Liverpool and Ballet Cymru's workshop. Fiona Noonan, who has CRB clearance, will also teach a class for  younger dancers.  We need to find a Clara (aka "Marie"), her horrible little brother who smashes the nutcracker, his even sillier little chums who disturb the girls with their drums and trumpets while they are playing with their prezzies, mice and some toy soldiers for The Nutcracker which we hope to dance at least in part next year.

Paris Opera Ballet's Don Quixote

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Opera National de Paris  Don Quixote Opera Bastille 25 Dec 2017, 19:30

Although Don Quixote is not one of my favourite Petipa ballets it does have some spectacular choreography. Similarly, while I greatly prefer his score to La Bayadère, Minkus's score has some lovely tunes including the Queen of the Dryads's solo and the rumbustious final pas de deux.  Also, Don Quixote makes a change from The Nutcracker which the Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and Scottish Ballet are all serving up for Christmas at home.

I had only seen the Paris Opera ballet once before in the Palais Garnier some 45 tears ago. I remember a grand défilé by the ballet students. I was told by my companion, Pamela (who had some to Paris to study with Madame Preobrajenska at the Salle Wacker) that the students were referred to disparagingly as les petits rats.  The stage seemed massive. Much bigger than Covent Garden's.  However, I can't remember anything else about the show which means that it could not have impressed me very much.  My second experience of the company came last night when it performed Don Quixote at the Opera Bastille.  I can safely say that I won't forget that show in a hurry.

Spectacular choreography needs virtuoso dancers and Isabella Boylston is a virtuoso par excellence.  She launches into grands jetes almost as soon as she appears on stage and hers seemed as graceful and effortless as any I have seen before. She danced Kitri who ends the show with spectacular fouettés.  I have seen plenty of those from lots of Odiles but the excitement that Boylston generated with hers at the Bastille last night could not have been exceeded by Legnani herself.

Boylston was partnered by Mathieu Ganio who was magnificent. He danced Don Basilio in which I had previously seen Carlos Acosta. Though I greatly admired Acosta in that role, Ganio surpassed him both as a soloist with the spectacular jumping and turns in his final solo and in the way that he helped Boylston to shine. That is the sort of partnership of which legends are made like Sibley's with Dowell.  Whether it can develop and flourish with Ganio in Paris and Boylston in New York is anybody's guess but if I ran the Paris Opera Ballet or American Ballet Theatre I would do my best to make sure it did.

We saw lots of other excellent performances last night: Erwan Le Roux as Sancho Panza, Fanny Gorse  as the street dancer, Amandine Albisson as the queen of the Dryads and Yann Chailloux as Don Quixote himself. Everyone was impressive not least the corps de ballet which was one of the most polished and disciplined that I have been fortunate enough to see.

With costumes  by Elena Rivkina and sets by Alexandre Beliaev the production was gorgeous. The Opera Bastille was designed as an ideal venue for ballet and although it lacks the charm of Covent Garden or the majesty of the Garnier it is probably one of the best places in the world to see a full length ballet by a major company. 

I sat towards the back of the stalls and enjoyed a perfect view.  The theatre has been designed to ensure easy access and egress.  If you want a drink you enter a cordon where you wait your turn.  No ostentatious waving of bank notes or sharp elbowing here. Having paid about £10 less for seats in the stalls than I was charged by Covent Garden for the back amphitheatre I was ready to sing the Bastille's praises .................  until I was stung for €5 for a tonic water and €12 for a programme (albeit a very thick and informative programme much of it in English).  Like a budget airline the essentials are cheap enough and if that's all you want well all well and good. But if you want any extras - even a postcard from the well stocked theatre shop - caveat emptor.

More Good News from Wales: Swansea Students' Show

Swansea Grand Theatre

Photo Fanrailuk
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Yesterday I mentioned that the Welsh composer Jack White who has written the scores of Cinderella and Stuck in the Mud for Ballet Cymru and has recently been commissioned to write a score for the National Dance Company of Wales has published a recording of Cinderella on his website and very reasonably invited the public to contribute what they can for licences to download and play his work. Today I bring more good news from the principality, My fellow adult ballet student, Sophia Komninou is taking part in a show at Swansea Grand Theatre on 18 July and she has kindly invited me to watch it. As Swansea is the gateway to the Gower Peninsula which has some of the finest coastline and countryside in Europe if not the world I will be there if I possibly can.

The show will be presented by the Irenie Rogers Classical Ballet Academy or Ballet Academy Swansea for short. According to Sophia, the show will include the greater part of act 2 of Giselle, the Dance of the flowers from The Nutcracker and various other pieces from the adult ballet and younger students. There are videos of previous performances on the Academy's Facebook page and I think you will agree that the standard is pretty high. I am particularly impressed with the scenes from La Bayadere which, as it happens, Sophia and I studied together in KNT;s intensive from Jane Tucker Manchester last summer (see La Bayadere Intensive Day 3: No Snakes 17 Aug 2016).

Sophia describes herself on twitter as a "feminist, amateur ballet dancer and ballet geek, foodie, crafter and curious". Dance, crafting and food are only her spare time activities by the way. She is primarily an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in nutrition and dietetics with a specialization in obesity and weight management.who teaches infant and chi;d public health at Swansea University.

Over the next few days I hope to find out more about adult dance classes in Swansea in order to compile a directory of such classes in Wales. I already know that Krystal Lowe teaches an adult ballet class at Ballet Cymru's premises at Rogerstone near Newport between 18:00 and 19:30 on Mondays (see Ballet Classes for Adult Beginners on the Ballet Cymru website) and that Louise Lloyd gives classes between 18:15 and 18:30 on Tuesdays at the Dance House in the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff (see the Adult Beginners' Ballet page of the National Dance Company's website).  As I get to hear of more classes I will publish them in the blog.

Statistics

Since I started this blog on 25 Feb 2016 I have posted 804 articles and received over 200,000 page hits. Our 10 most popular articles have been as follows:

1. A Romeo and Juliet for our Times 7 Nov 2016
2. Meet Gavin McCaig of Northern Ballet 3 Sep 2014
3. The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company's best Performance yet 8 Feb 2015
4. Thinking out Loud about Ballet West 8 Feb 2016 
5. Ballet West's Romeo and Juliet 1 Feb 2015 
6. The Nutcracker as it really should be danced - No Gimmicks but with Love and Joy 20 Mar 2014
7. Michaela's Masterclass 8 July 2015 
8. Mandev Sokhi 10 Oct 2015
9. Ballet Cymru's Summer Tour 22 May 2016 
10. A Unique Opportunity to learn a Bit of The Nutcracker 12 Oct 2016

Readers seem to be most interested in Ballet Cymru with three articles in the top 10. That may be because the company is about to start a short season in London and dance Darius James and Amy Doughty's Little Red Riding Hood at the Cardiff Millennium Centre on 4 Dec 2016. Sadly one of the articles in the top ten mourned the loss of the talented Mandev Sokhi.

The Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company is also very popular with readers who enjoyed my review of the opening night of the Junior Company's tour of the Netherlands in 2015.  There was also a lot of interest in one of my very favourite young dancers, Michaela DePrince, who visited London last year and this to deliver master classes at Danceworks. 

In fact, there was considerable interest in the young. I was delighted to see Northern Ballet's Gavin McCaig listed at number 2.  Actually, he led the field for well over two years until Ballet Cymru claimed the number one spot a few days ago. Reviews of Ballet West's Romeo and Juliet and The Nutcracker by Ballet West were also very popular as was my review of the same ballet by Chelmsford Ballet.  And still talking about The Nutcracker I am delighted that my preview of Jane Tucker's workshop on the ballet for KNT at the Dancehouse Theatre (which I attended) was also in the top 10.

For only the third month ever we have received more than 10,000 hits in one month and we still have a few days of November to run. My main audiences outside the UK seem to be the USA, Russia, Germany, France and the Netherlands in that order.  Once again, I should like to thank all my contributors, Joanne Goodman, Peter Groves, Janet McNulty, Gita Mistry, David Murley, Alison Winward and Mel Wong for all their posts. The blog would have been much less interesting without your articles. I should also like to thank all who have supplied photos and other content especially Richard Heideman of the Dutch National Ballet,  György Jávorszky of the Hungarian National Ballet, Rae Piper of Chantry Dance and Jenny Isaacs and Patricia Vallis of Ballet Cymru.

Ballet West's "The Nutcracker"

Pitlochry

Val Vannet

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For those who do not know Pitlochry, it is a small town in Perthshire just outside the Cairngorms National Park. Overlooked by Ben y Vrackie, on the banks of the River Tummel and not far from the Queen's View with its magnificent panorama of Loch Tummel and Schiehallion  Pitlochry is surrounded by spectacular scenery.  The town has many attractions but the one that distinguishes it from everywhere else in the Highlands is the Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Between May and October every year it holds a summer theatre festival under the strapline "Stay 6 Days, See 6 Plays."  I have been coming to the summer festival on and off for the last 40 years and I can recommend it strongly.  You will find the programme for this year's season right here.

The theatre stages the occasional show in the Winter and I was intrigued to receive a mailing for a performance of "The Nutcracker by Ballet West". Now I had heard of a company by the name of Ballet West in the United States which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year but if that company ever came to the United Kingdom I would have expected it to tour major cities rather than towns in the Highlands of just over 2,500 souls.  It occurred to me that there might be a  company from the West Country which is where Scottish Ballet originated,  I googled "ballet, west, uk" and was surprised but delighted to find a company and school in Taynuilt.  Delighted because where could be more idyllic to study dance than by the banks of a real lake (or more properly loch) which might even host the occasional swan?

Now "Nutcracker" is a ballet I know very well.  Every Christmas I used to see the London Festival Ballet's production at the Festival Hall.   I have seen several other companies' productions, including one by the Cairo Opera Ballet in their new opera house.  More recently I saw David Nixon's production for Northern Ballet in Leeds and the Royal Ballet's which was streamed to cinemas just before Christmas.   I had travelled a long way on Saturday to see Ballet West's production and I am glad to say that I was not in the least disappointed.

This is a very young company and also a manifestly Scottish one.  I loved the reel at the Christmas party in the first Act.   Other touches that I appreciated were a clog dance reminiscent of Simone's in Fille and automatons as in Coppelia in the first act and some extra divertissements such as the Sailor's solo and Mother Ginger and her children in the second.   It is also refreshing to find a ballet with naughty little girls as well as naughty little boys making a nuisance of themselves.  Usually it is just young Fritz or Hans who gets ticked off for damaging the nutcracker,   Another bit of humour was the servants snatching a furtive dram after their employers had had their party.

Altogether I loved the choreography which I now know to have been created by the late Alexander Bennett.   All I know about him is as what appears on the company's website:

"Born in Edinburgh, Mr Bennett achieved international acclaim in the Ballet Rambert and the Royal Ballet. Throughout his years as a principal dancer in both companies he partnered such distinguished ballerinas as Dame Margot Fonteyn & Lynn Seymour, and worked with many of the great choreographers including Peter Darrell, Sir Peter Wright and Sir Robert Helpmann. This production was the last full-length work completed by Mr Bennett."

I shall find out more.

A ballet is made by the virtuosity of its principals who in this production were:

• Sara-Maria Smith who danced Sugar Plum - a particularly demanding role with its pointe work and fouettés in the pas de deux; 
• her partner Jonathan Barton, and 
• Isaac Bowrey who danced Drosselmeyer. 

They all danced well. The website says that Smith and Barton are graduates of Ballet West's school but says nothing about Bowrey whom I liked best of all.

Finally I loved the sets. This is a complicated ballet with a Christmas party, snow scene and a ball room and lost of different costumes from mice and toy soldiers to Chinese, Russians and flowers. Not easy for a great theatre like Covent Garden as we learned from the cinema production. Harder still for the different often tiny stages upon which this company has to perform. Whoever designed the backdrops and costumes did a very good job. The backdrops were much more solid looking than most though Bowrey had to free some fabric which snagged on an expanding Christmas tree.   Particularly impressive were the costumes for the mice whose heads resembled shock troops' helmets and particularly charming were the rainbow skirts for Mother Ginger's daughters.

Was there anything I did not like? Not much. I would have appreciated a programme instead of just a cast sheet. I only found out the name of the choreographer by calling the company and I still do not know the name of the set designer. Some of the divertissements were under-rehearsed and there were a few slight mishaps which hardly anybody noticed and nobody minded. It has to be remembered that Ballet West is a school as well as a company which reaches out to the public. It appears that everyone is allowed a go. There was no orchestra but then this ballet was performed in a theatre designed for drama and the theatre's speakers were pretty good.

The company has one more show to perform on its current tour of Scotland at The Howden Park Centre near Livingston in West Lothian on 1 March. If you live in the area I urge you to see them because you are in for a treat. Surprisingly they have no immediate plans to tour the rest of the United Kingdom though they have advertised a tour of China. I do hope they come to London because I think audiences there will take them to their hearts.