Fille bien gardée - Nottingham 26 June 2014

Birmingham Royal Ballet - La Fille mal gardée trailer from Rob Lindsay on Vimeo.

La Fille mal gardée is the oldest ballet that is still performed regularly. It was first staged in the Grand Theatre of Bordeaux two weeks before the storming of the Bastille, the event that precipitated the French Revolution. In another sense it is a very modern ballet. It has no shades or wilis, no wicked magicians who transform girls into swans, no kings or queens, princes or princesses. It takes place not in some mythical or exotic land but in rural France. Normandy judging by Osbert Lancaster's backdrops, It is about a young man and a young woman in love who find a way to be together despite the best efforts of the young woman's mother to marry her off to the wealthy but in every other way unsuitable village idiot. For those who have yet to see the ballet, here's the story guide,

The version of the ballet with which British audiences are most familiar was choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton in 1960 to an arrangement of the music of Ferdinand Hérold by John Lanchbery with sets and costumes by Lancaster. He created powerful roles for the lovers in which he cast Nadia Nerina and David Blair but he also created amusing character roles for Stanley Holden as the social climbing mother and Alexander Grant as the halfwitted suitor. I never saw Nerina but I did see Merle Park and Doreen Wells in the title role as well as Holden and Grant.  Ashton's ballet contains some of the best known and best loved scenes such as the clog dance and the "Fanny Elssler pas de duex".

The Birmingham Royal Ballet has taken La Fille mal gardée on a summer tour which David Bintley describes as part of a "small celebration" of the work of the Royal Ballet's founder Frederick Ashton. I caught it at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham which is a delightful building with a more than passing resemblance to the Grand Theatre in Bordeaux. The lovers were danced by Maureya Lebowitz and Chi Cao, the mother by Rory Mackay, the halfwit by Kit Holder and his dad by Jonathan Payn.

Lebowitz was a delightful Lise - witty and pretty - just like Park as I remember her.  It took me longer to warm to Chi Cao.  He is a powerful dancer and I loved his turns and jumps. But Colas has a funny side. For example he likes his drink and he's also a  bit cheeky. Chi Cao played it very straight which is by no means wrong as there are some who would like that interpretation. As for the character dancers I loved them all, particularly MacKay as widow Simone.

Leaving the theatre, everyone seemed to smile or grin. It's a feel good ballet that I have already seen many times and hope to see many times again. Nobody - not even the London Royal Ballet does Ashton as well as Birmingham. They are Ashton's heirs and they have kept their Fille very well indeed. 

Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin

The Lowry, Manchester, 28 Feb 2013

It is not every day that a new ballet is premièred.  Between the end of February and the beginning of March 2013 there will have been two:

• Birmingham Royal Ballet's Aladdin at the Birmingham Hippodrome on the 15 February; and
• Northern Ballet's The Great Gatsby at The Grand Theatre in Leeds tomorrow.

I hope to see The Great Gatsby in Leeds on 7 March 2013 and I shall review it as soon as possible afterwards. Yesterday evening I saw Aladdin at the Lowry in Salford, near Manchester.

The Birmingham Royal Ballet is one of the world's great ballet companies.  Founded by Ninette de Valois the company was and remains the Royal Ballet touring troupe.   It adopted its present name in 1990 when it moved from Sadlers Wells to the Birmingham Hippodrome.   It is directed by David Bintley who choreographed Aladdin.

Aladdin is one of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights which are rarely read to children nowadays. Most of us in the United Kingdom will have been taken to a pantomime by the name of Aladdin which is about as far removed from the original story as a value burger is from a cow.   I remember being taken to The London Paladium or some other West End theatre in the late 1950s or early 1960s where the principal characters - Aladdin, Widow Twankey (his mother) and Wishee Washee (his brother) -ran a Chinese laundry. There was very little of that in Bintley's work.   It was far closer to Andrew Lang's compilation which was to be expected given the production's funding from the Houston Ballet Foundation and its original creation for the National Ballet of Japan.

Having said that there were certainly members of last night's audience who thought they were at a pantomime which manifested itself in an initial booing of Iain Mackay who danced The Mahgrib (or wicked magician) magnificently though those boos were quickly transformed into well deserved applause. More annoying, there was an intolerable level of coming and going, shuffling in the seats, unwrapping of sweets and even illicit photography  which required more than a little concentration to blot out.

Fortunately, the brilliance of the work did blot out those distractions.   Bird's sets and Blane's costumes were captivating.  You can get some idea of that brilliance from the Creating Aladdin website - the hustle and bustle of a Chinese street, the stalactites and stalagmites of the cave that glowed in different colours as the scene progressed, Aladdin's home, the Sultan's palace, Aladdin's castle after his marriage to the Princess Badr and Morocco.

However, it is the choreography, music and the artistry of the dancers that generate magic for audiences and for me and my companion it all worked wonderfully.   Having developed my love of ballet while Frederick Ashton was the Royal Ballet's choreographer I am very hard to please.   But pleased I was.   The pas de deux that Bintley created for Aladdin and the Princess danced yesterday by Jamie Bond and Jenna Roberts reminded me a lot of Ashton.   So did the powerful roles for the djinn (Matthias Dingman), Mahgrib and Sultan (Rory Mackay).   Also, the sweet role for Aladdin's mother danced delightfully by Marion Tait - no Widow Twankey she.   Other lovely touches - and very familiar to Manchester with our famous Chinese quarter - were the lion and dragon dances.   It is probably unfair to single out any of the other dancers because all excelled but I was impressed particularly by Céline Gittens who danced Diamond.   Finally, Davis's score with its oriental allusions was perfect for Bintley's choreography.

This show will stay at The Lowry until tomorrow after which it will move to Plymouth, Sunderland and the Coliseum.   If you are near any of those venues - or even if you are not - you should try to see this work.   I think it will become an audience favourite along with the 19th century classics which very few modern works do.