Although I read in Dance and Dancers about a performance at the Royal Northern College of Music by a new company called Northern Dance Theatre when I was an undergraduate at St. Andrews, it was only in 1987 that I saw them for the first time. I could not have had a better introduction because it was Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man with Christopher Gable as L S Lowry and Moira Shearer as the artist's mother.
They were two ballet heroes from my childhood. Shearer had retired before I took an interest in ballet though clips and photos of her remained long afterwards. Gable, on the other hand, was one of the biggest stars in the 1960s when I started to attend the ballet. I saw him several times and admired him greatly.
At about the same time as I saw A Simple Man or perhaps shortly afterwards Gable was appointed Artistic Director of the company now known as Northern Ballet. As I said in my review of Moriconi and Gable's Romeo and Juliet on 5 April 2024, "[s]ome of my favourite works were created while Gable was the Artistic Director of the company and I have always regarded that time as a golden age." I added that it gave me great pleasure to see Romeo and Juliet again and that I very much looked forward to seeing A Christmas Carol again in November.
I actually saw it on the last day of the year and I was not disappointed. We had an excellent cast:
I have waited a long time to see this show again. The company danced to packed houses most nights in Leeds. I hope it will keep its place in the repertoire.
Northern Ballet Romeo and JulietSheffield Lyceum Theatre 4 April 2024 14:00
Northern Ballet has two fine productions of Romeo and Juliet in its repertoire. One was created by Jean-Christophe Maillot which I reviewed in Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet - different but in a good wayon 8 March 2015 and Romeo and Juliet after the Shrewon 15 Oct 2016. The other was choreographed by Massimo Moricone and directed and devised by Christopher Gable. Moricone and Gable's was premiered in 1992 to considerable critical acclaim but it had not been performed for many years. It was revived in Leeds last month and is now on the second stage of a nationwide tour. I watched the matinee performance of the ballet in Sheffield yesterday.
There are many different versions of Romeo and Juliet inthe world's ballet companies Some like Lavrovsky's and MacMillan's follow Shakespeare quite closely. Others like Pastor's and Sir Matthew Bourne's leave Shakespeare way behind. Moricone and Gable's followed the play faithfully as can be seen from the "Romeo & Juliet Story" page on Northern Ballet's website but there were some original details that enhanced the understanding of the story. In Juliet's bedroom, the nurse reminds Juliet that she is growing up by pointing to changes in her body. In Act II Mercutio is provoked into challenging Tybalt because Tybalt drags a young woman by her hair. I do not know whether those touches were suggested by the choreographer or director but Gable will have developed an intimate understanding of Romeo and Juliet from dancing the lead role with Lynn Seymour in MacMillan's work.
Yesterday's cast included both premier dancers of the company as well as my first choices for the lead roles. When I had the opportunity to learn Juliet's dance at KNT's choreographic intensive in 2016, our teacher Jane Tucker, who had danced in the same production of the ballet, set the scene as follows:
"You are 12 years old. This is your first ball. You are so excited you can hardly contain yourself. All eyes are on you. You want everybody to be you."
I have seen many Juliets in my time including Fonteyn and Seymour and while they have dazzled me I have never been able to think of them as 12-year-olds. Sarah Chun did remind me of that little girl bubbling with excitement and playfully teasing her nurse as she prepared for that first grown-up ball, Similarly, Jonathan Hanks with his youthful features was ideally cast for Romeo. In the play, those kids grow up almost overnight and so did Chun and Hanks in the ballet. They are both remarkable dance actors. I really warmed to them. I see that in her bio Sarah Chun said that Juliet would be her dream role. Yesterday, she lived that dream and she was brilliant.
An important role but one which is often discounted is the nurse or as we would describe her nowadays the nanny. She appears in all three acts and she has to project all kinds of emotions from playfulness in the first bedroom scene and she romps around with her young charge to fear as she tries to protect Juliet from her grief-stricken and angry parents. Her role was danced by Harriet Marden. She has been in the company for some time and I must have seen her countless times but this is the first time I have mentioned her in my reviews but I am sure it will not be the last. I shall now be looking out for her. She showed considerable talent as a character dancer. I loved the way she crossed herself before she grabbed Juliet's note from between the thighs of one of Romeo's buddies.
It was a treat to see Abigail Prudames, one of my favourite dancers in the company. I have watched her progress through the company's ranks with great satisfaction. She danced Lady Capulet with exceptional energy and passion. Her anger upon learning of Tybalt's death in his duel with Romeo was palpable.
Tybalt was danced by Joseph Taylor (another artist I have long admired) who portrayed his character perfectly. Having met him in real life I know that he is anything but the privileged, headstrong, thuggish young blade who received his comeuppance after bullying young women and knifing Mercutio when he was off his guard but Taylor projected that character faultlessly, He is a great dance-actor as well as a virtuoso.
One other artist who deserves special mention is Jun Ishi who danced Mercutio. Again this is the first time that I have mentioned that artist in my reviews but it will not be the last as I shall follow his career with interest in the future. The audience gasped with relief as he rose to his feet after the stabbing. We relaxed as he took a swig from a bottle. We despaired as he sank lifeless to the floor.
Everybody in the cast performed well and if I mentioned every member by name this review would resemble a telephone directory. All I can do is to congratulate everyone in the show on a magnificent spectacle.
It was of course not just the dancers who made it a good show. I have already mentioned Gable and Moricone but I should not forget John Longstaff There were several details in the music which reinforced the story which I had not noticed in other productions. I am not sure whether the peel of thunder immediately before the overture was part of the orchestration or Gable's direction. I was a little discombobulated when I first heard it but it made perfect sense in the context of the hail storm at the end of Act II.
I must also praise Lez Brotherston's designs. The opening scene featured a fragment of the maxim "Amor vincit omnia" which of course is the theme of the ballet. Love did not quite conquer all from the point of view of the young lovers though maybe it did eventually in the embrace of Lords Capulet and Montague just before the curtain fell. I learnt for the first time from the programme that many of the costumes from the original show had been destroyed or damaged in the flood. I know that Peter Pan had been lost but I was not aware that Romeo and Juliet had also been affected. It required a major effort to restore the ballet and it says a lot for a company that undertook that work.
I first got to know Northern Ballet Theatre when Christopher Gable danced with Moira Shearer in The Simple Man. Some of my favourite works were created while Gable was the Artistic Director of the company and I have always regarded that time as a golden age, It gives me great pleasure to see Romeo and Juliet again and I am very much looking forward to watching A Christmas Carol in November.
Standard YouTube Licence Northern Ballet Cinderella Grand Theatre, Leeds 21 Dec 2019 19:00
I attended Northern Ballet's Cinderella at the Grand on Saturday the day after I saw The Wizard of Ozat the Leeds Playhouse. I could not help reflecting that the two shows had more than a little in common, Both rely heavily on special effects. Both had wizards and cuddly dogs. The only difference between the scene in which Dorothy acquires the slippers of the wicked witch of the east and Cinders her glass ones was in the colour of the footwear. Anyone looking for h a rollicking good spectacle in Leeds has two from which to choose this Christmas.
For that reason, Northern Ballet's Cinderella may not be for everyone. Anybody expecting Prokofiev's glorious music or the folk tale of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm will not find them in this version. A new score was commissioned from Philip Feeney who had previously composed the music for a Christopher Gable's version of Cinderella. As Feeney remarked in the programme notes, the ballet was set in imperial Russia. I think I detected allusions to Petrushka in the winter market and crystal lake scenes. Unlike most versions of Cinderella,her torment begins with the death of her father and not that of her mother, Instead of a fairy godmother or birds Cinderella is rescued by a magician.
As in Wuthering Heights, Nixon has a young heroineand a grown-up one. A flashback to Cinderella's childhood worked rather well in that it provided an explanation for the stepmother's antipathy towards Cinderella. Cinders had pestered her father to retrieve a shawl from the other side of a stream where a shoot was taking place. As he picked it up he was struck by a stray shot. It is much easier to understand a widow's anger at such needless loss of life than resentment at the rejection of a bunch of flowers as in Christopher Wheeldon's version of the ballet.
Any version of Cinderella is about grief and jealousy. These are heavy subjects that need to be leavened now and then. There is plenty of scope for levity in Cinderella. Sir Frederick Ashton and Sir Robert Helpmann were a hoot as the ugly sisters in the Royal Ballet's version in the early 1970s (see Sir Frederick Ashton - A Most Lovably Monstrous Ugly Sister), So, too, was Sarah Kundi (a former Northern Ballet dancer) as the stepmother who gets tighter and tighter at the royal ball in Christopher Wheeldon's (see Cinders in the Round13 June 2019). There is also the shoe matching scene. Wheeldon has knights in armour in the queue to try the shoe. Darius James and Amy Doughty dress Cinderella's brother as a girl and attempt to saw lumps off his foot in Ballet Cymru's version. There was nothing like that in Nixon's version. Apart from the magic with which the wizard transformed Cinderella's kitchen that reminded me of the easy peasy lemon squeezy advert and the illuminated "Cinders" sign on the sleigh I can't remember much to laugh about in Northern Ballet's Cinders.
Having said that, I had come to watch a ballet and not a pantomime, Dancers who particularly impressed me yesterday include Miki Akuta as young Cinderella, Antoinette Brooks-Daw as the stepmother, Jonathan Hinks, Matthew Topliss who danced the magician or wizard and Cinderellas dad and Sarah Chun in the title role. This was the first time I had noticed Chun in a leading role and she performed it with flair. I shall look out for her in future. Another quality I noticed on Saturday was Brooks-Daw's acting. Scenes that stood out were her picking up and tossing down Cinderella's shawl immediately after her husband's death and the purposefulness with which she tries to separate her stepdaughter from the prince at the ball.
I have not praised everything that Nixon has produced but this is one ballet that I like a lot. This is the second time I have seen it. On the first occasion I described it as a triumph (see Northern Ballet's Cinderella - a Triumph27 Dec 2013). Though not perfect in every respect, Cinderella is one of the best works in Northern Ballet's repertoire. It is just over halfway through a nationwide tour that started last September and ends in June. It stays at the Grand until 2 Jan and will then visit Leicester, Milton Keynes and the Lowry. If you can reach any of those venues, it is well worth seeing.
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