Northern Ballet's MacMillan Celebration

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Northern Ballet A Celebration of Sir Kenneth MacMillan Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, 7 Oct 2017, 19:30

Kenneth MacMillan died on 29 Oct 1992. On the 25th anniversary of his death, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, The Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet and Yorke Dance Project have joined in a national festival of his work. The focus of this celebration was a special season at Covent Garden to which each of those companies contributed.

Before going to London, Northern Ballet performed three of MacMillan's works at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford between the 5 and 7 Oct 2017:

• Las Hermanas;
• Concerto; and
• Gloria.

The company will dance them again in Leeds on 16 and 17 March 2018. 

These were not the jolliest of works for a Saturday night. One ended with a suicide.  Another was about the First World War.  Concerto was abstract but it can hardly be described as a bundle of laughs. MacMillan did create more cheerful ballets such as Elite Syncopations.   It would have been good to have included something like that in the programme.  There may have been some in the audience who had never seen MacMillan's work before.  Those audience members would have gained a better impression of the extent of his genius had some of his lighthearted work been included.

Las Hermanas means Sisters in Spanish and it was based on La casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca which is subtitled Drama de mujeres en los pueblos de España ("Drama about women in rural Spain"). Though set in Andalusia on the eve of the Spanish civil war it was first performed in Argentina just before Juan Domingo Perón came into power. Melancholy runs through this work like the name of a seaside resort through a stick of rock.

As in Lorca's play, there are five sisters who range in age from 20 (Adela) to 39 (Angustias) plus their mother (Bernarda) but, unlike the play, there is a powerful male role for Angustias's fiancé, Pepe. Bernarda is in mourning for her second husband and she insists that her daughters mourn too. They sit at home without companionship as their lives tick by. Pepe enters the home,  He dances first with Angustias but she is tight and tense. Adela is more receptive but she is spotted by one of he sisters who betrays her.  Overcome with shame, Adela hangs herself. 

MacMillan created the work for the Stuttgart Ballet. His cast included Marcia Haydée, Birgit Keil, Ray Barra and Ruth Papendick who were among the most celebrated dancers of their time.  Appropriately,  Northern Ballet deployed its "A" team. Hannah Bateman was the eldest sister and Javier Torres her fiancé. Minju Kang was the wilful Adla, Pippa Moore the spiteful jealous sister and Victoria Sibson the tyrannical mother. Rachael Gillsepie and Mariana Rodrigues were the fourth and fifth sisters.  

Another impressive feature of this performance was the elaborate set by Nicholas Georgiadis, Georgiadis collaborated with MacMillan on many of his ballets including his Romeo and Juliet which is a masterpiece of theatre design. According to Kenneth MacMillan's website, it was Nicholas Georgiadis, who suggested the balletic possibilities of Lorca’s play.

I would be lying if I said I enjoyed the work. It is chilling, depressing and very dark. But I was very impressed by the dancers, the technicians who recreated and assembled Georgiadis's magnificent designs, the lighting staff and everyone who was involved in the production. Artistically and technically it was one of the best performances by Northern Ballet that I have ever seen.

Concerto was another work that MacMillan created while in Germany. This time it was for the Berlin Opera Ballet. His dancers included Didi Carli, Falco Kapuste, Lynn Seymour, Rudolf Holz and Silvia Kesselheim. Its score is Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2.  The work consists of three movements. The first consists of a leading lady, a leading man and six soloists. The second movement is a pas de deux. The third movement has a leading lady and the corps. According to MacMillan's website, the original performance was danced against a plain background the dancers in tunics of olive and ochre. Northern Ballet's sets and costumes were redesigned by Lady Deborah MacMillan with the dancers in brighter colours.  On 7 Nov 2017 Antoinette Brookes-Daw and Matthew Koon were the leading dancers in the first movement, Abigail Prudames and Joseph Taylor danced the pas de deux and Dominique Larose was the leading lady of the third movement.

MacMillan created Gloria for the Royal Ballet in 1980 after he had ceased to be its artistic director. It is an elegy to the youth who died or were injured in the first world war. Inspired by Vera Britten's Testament of Youth with music by Poulenc it is a highly emotional, haunting and intensely spiritual work. The males are soldiers (or perhaps spirits of soldiers) clad in khaki and very insubstantial looking helmets. If the men could be taken for ghosts the women are unambiguously ghostlike glad head to foot in white or grey. The dancers rise over a ridge as though clambering out of a trench to charge the enemy lines. On World Ballet Day, David Nixon contrasted the stage of the Alhambra with that of the Royal Opera House where the ridge looked real.  Lorenzo Trosello danced a solo, Mimju Kang and Giuliano Contadini a pas de deux. Sarah Chun, Ashley Dixon, Nichola Gervasi and Sean Bates a pas de quatre and Dreda Blow joined Hannah Bateman, Abigail Prudames and Dominique Larose in a dance for four women.

Sadly, the Alhambra was less than full on 7 Oct 2017 and I think that was because of the programming. While audiences do not expect to be jollied every time they go to the theatre there is only so much doom and gloom a body can take - especially with all the other horrible things that are happening in the world. It would also have been nice to have had a programme. I received a cast list eventually but only after I had hunted down a duty manager.

But these are niggles. Anybody who stayed the course was rewarded by some exquisite dancing. My standing order for another year's sub to the Friends of Northern Ballet went through last week. It is money well spent.

The Golden Age

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Bolshoi Ballet The Golden Age, streamed from the Bolshoi Theatre, 16 Oct 2016, 16:00

The history of The Golden Age is almost as fascinating as the ballet itself and could easily be the plot of a ballet in its own right.  As Katerina Novikova told cinema audiences briefly in the interval, this ballet was originally about football. It was originally a three act ballet which was choreographed by Vasili Vainonen, Leonid Jacobson and V. Chesnakov and first performed in Leningrad (St Petersburg) at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre on 26 Oct 1930.

Wikipedia gives the following information on the plot:

"The ballet is a satirical take on the political and cultural change in 1920s' Europe. It follows a Soviet football team in a Western city where they come into contact with many politically incorrect bad characters such as the Diva, the Fascist, the Agent Provocateur, the Negro and others. The team fall victim to match rigging, police harassment, and unjust imprisonment by the evil bourgeoisie. The team are freed from jail when the local workers overthrow their capitalist overlords and the ballet ends with a dance of solidarity between the workers and the football team."

The score was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich when he was only 24. He wrote a profusion of danceable music as  Jean-Christophe Maillot has shown with his masterly The Taming of the Shrew (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2016). Even I have danced to one of his works, namely Shostakovich's Waltz for Flute, Clarinet and Piano "The Return of Maxim"1937 Op 45 (see The Time of My Life 28 June 2014 which Mel reviewed very generously in The Dance DID go on - Northern Ballet Academy Show 2014 28 June 2014). Apart from being a great composer, Shostakovich was something of a football fan describing the so called "beautiful game" as the "ballet of the masses". Rather more flattering than John Osborne's description of ballet as "poofs' football" (see page 387 of John Heilpern's John Osborne: A Patriot for Us Google Books).

Apparently the original ballet was performed 18 times before it was pulled by the Soviet authorities and never staged again. Shostakovich's beautiful score remained forgotten for many years like The Sleeping Beauty until it was revived in 1982 by Yuri Grigorovich and Isaak Glikman. They produced a new libretto based on the rivalry between Boris, a young fisherman, and the criminal, Yashka, for the heart of Rita, a cabaret dancer which is complicated by the jealousy of Yashka's moll, Lyuska, who competes with Rita for Yashka's attention. The synopsis is set out in some detail on the Bolshhoi's website.

The fascinating part of Grigorovich's plot is that it is set in 1923 immediately after the civil war when Lenin revoked some of the controls of war communism to incentivize agricultural and industrial production in order to feed the Soviet who were suffering a catastrophic famine. That relaxation was known as the New Economic Policy ("NEP"). It achieved its economic objectives very quickly but led to all sorts of inequalities and imbalances and ultimately crime which are the backdrop to the ballet. The NEP was reversed in 1928 after Joseph Stalin came to power and many of those who responded to the incentives provided by the policy were destroyed over the next few years in Stalin's purges.

In their version of The Golden Age, Grigorovich and Glikman created powerful roles for the protagonists, Boris, Rita, Yashka and Lyuska, as well as some great character roles and some spectacular dances for the corps. Simon Virsaladze created some gorgeous sets and costumes for the 1982 production. I caught the tail end of Ms Novikova's conversation with a wardrobe mistress who described how those costumes had been lovingly preserved all those years in the hope of a revival. Audiences were given a glimpse of the workmanship in close ups of the dancers while waiting to take their curtain calls at the end of the show. Grigoroivch appears to have borrowed some of Shostakovich's music from other shows - or perhaps the other way round - for I recognized Tea for Two which ends The Taming of the Shrew at the start of Act II of The Golden Age.

Boris was danced by Ruslan Skvortsov whom I had last seen as "the prince" (otherwise known as Siegfried) in Swan Lake in London (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016). Nina Kaptsova danced Rita. I think yesterday was the first time I had seen her but I hope it will not be the last. More familiar was Mikhail Lobukhin who danced Yashka.  I had seen him before at least in HDTV transmissions.  Another face that I think I recognized was Ekaterina Krysanova who was Lyushka.

The choreography had so many breathtaking lifts and jumps not to mention spectacular fouettes, grands jetes en tournant and other virtuosity not only for the principals and soloists but also for the corps that it is hard to single anything out for special attention. However, I loved the first pas de deux between Boris and Rita in Act I where they fell in love and was riveted by Lyushka's passion at the end of Act II where she throws herself at Yashka and is stabbed for her pains. We are used to praising the Bolshoi's dancers for their technique but the four principals are also superb dance actors.

The ballet appeared to receive a rapturous curtain call in Moscow which must have been echoes in cinemas around the world. There was clapping even at the National Media Museum in Bradford, hundreds of miles from Moscow, even though it could not possibly have been heard on the Bolshoi's stage. Our Yorkshire audience floated out of the Cubby Broccoli on a cloud as elated as if we had been there. A wonderful compliment to the engineers of Pathe-Live as well as the magnificent artists in Moscow who brought us that great spectacle.

The Mariinsky Theatre's Primorsky Stage

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Vladivostok is 4,067 miles from St Petersburg as the crow flies yet it appears to host an outpost of the Mariinsky Theatre known as the Primorsky Stage. I understand that Primorsky means "Maritime" in Russian and the portion of the map coloured red on the above map is the Primorsky Krai of which the principal city is Vladivostok.

According to the Mariinsky's website, The State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theatre is the most modern theatre in the Far East and one of the newest in Russia. It was built for the APEC summit in 2012. The theatre has its own resident company which includes several foreign dancers including the American Joseph Phillips whom Cheryl Angear interviewed in Ballet News some years ago (see Cupcakes & Conversation with Joseph Phillips, Corps de Ballet, American Ballet Theatre Ballet News 12 Feb 2012).

Its repertoire includes Swan Lake, Giselle, The Nutcracker, Le Corsaire and The Firebird which we have all seen plus The Fourteenth which appears to take its name from Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony setting to music several poems by various authors. The Fourteenth had its première on the Primorsky stage on 19 Jan 2014.

Maybe not everybody's cup of tea (personally I prefer the composer's Tea for Two which is incorporated into Jean-Christophe Maillot's Taming of the Shrew) but the fact that there is a modern opera house with what appears to be a first class company in this naval town at the far extremities of the Russian Federation is remarkable. I am not sure that I shall ever get to see this theatre or its dancers but I'm curious and I have been to Japan three times which is even further away.

It takes Three to Tango

The most fascinating country I have ever visited is Argentina. I have made two visits there and travelled from Iguazu Falls in the North to Tierra del Fuego in the South, the Tigre delta to Mount Aconcagua and from the simple Welsh settlement in Dolavon to Alpine Bariloche. On each of my visits I have learned to love the tango and, in particular, the music of Astor Piazzolla.

In the last few weeks I have seen two ballets that have been set to Piazzolla's music.  Scottish Ballet performed van Manen's 5 Tangos and Northern Ballet Daniel de Andrade's Fatal Kiss.  Here's what I wrote about 5 Tangos:

"I have been a van Manen fan for as long as I have been following ballet and I love his work but I enjoyed 5 Tangos more than any of his works that I had seen before. I have been to Buenos Aires on two occasions twice and have been fascinated by the tango which is far more than a social dance style. It is a genre of music and indeed poetry as well as dance as I mentioned in my review of Scottish Ballet's Streetcar earlier this month. Van Manen paid faithful homage to that art form using music by the Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla. The dancers - the women clad in red and black and the men in black - executed his choreography with flair. They were led by Luciana Ravizzi who had danced Blanche at Sadlier's Wells. She is a Porteña, proud and elegant and yesterday she was magnificent. Clearly, the Glaswegians treasure her. She received three enormous bouquets at the end of the show."

See  No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015. I reviewed Fatal Kiss in Between Friends - Northern Ballet's Mixed Programme 10 May 2015 and Sapphire 15 March 2015.

Now there is a chance to see another ballet set to Piazzolla's music. Kit Holder has choreographed Quatrain for Birmingham Royal Ballet to Piazzolla's The Four Season's of Buenos Aires. Holder is an impressive talent. I first noticed him in Ballet Black's To Fetch a Pail of Water (see Ballet Black's Best Performance Yet 17 Feb 2015) and I was bowled over by Hopper which he created for Ballet Central (see Dazzled 3 May 2015).

Holder is not the only promising young choreographer from Birmingham Royal Ballet. Ruth Brill who enchants me with her dancing has choreographed Matryoshka to music by Dmitri Shostakovich. Last year my over 55 class danced to music by the same composer and it was lovely. Matryoshka was created last year for Symphony Hall and it won a lot of compliments. I very much look forward to seeing it too.

Birmingham Royal Ballet are dancing those works as part of their southern tour which starts tomorrow in Truro and is zigzagging its way through the South West taking in Poole, Cheltenham and Wycombe. I'm traipsing down to Bucks for the show next week. I shall also see the northern tour in York tomorrow. Should be good.

The Time of My Life

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I have just danced in my first ballet and I am over the moon. I don't have a programme but I think it is called something like "And the Dance Goes On".  I danced it as part of the Over 55 class's contribution to the Northern Ballet Academy's end of year show. We performed in the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre which is where I have seen Northern Ballet, Ballet Black and MurleyDance.

Our music was Shostakovich's Waltz for Flute, Clarinet and Piano "The Return of Maxim" 1937 Op 45. If anyone is interested, it forms part of the soundtrack of a film by the same name which I have tried to watch. Our choreographer was our instructor Annemarie Donoghue.

Annemarie had asked us to meet her in the foyer of Northern Ballet at 14:15.  It was very crowded and I sat with my guests who had just arrived from London until she appeared.  She led us up to a rehearsal studio where we did some pliés, tendus and ronds de jambe at the barre.  We then rehearsed the ballet twice from  the top before we were led down to the stage for a final rehearsal.  After that rehearsal we were led back to a waiting area on one of the landings where we applied our make up and adjusted our hair and costumes.

After a wait that seemed to last for hours we were summoned to the stage. We piled into a goods lift which afforded the only anxious moment because the doors shut but the lift refused to move.  Happily it juddered back to life and we crept by the back entrance into the wings.  Some young women were on stage as we came in. The music stopped.  We heard applause.  The lights went out.  The girls slid past us and we heard the first few bars of our tune.

The ballet began with pairs of dancers running across the stage.  I was one of the second pair on the right.  I saw the second pair prepare to set off from the left and followed them.  Another pair joined us from behind. At the count of 7 we started swaying.  My teacher in Huddersfield had coached me in swaying a few days earlier.  She told me to imagine that I was stroking a delicate and precious fabric. Her voice came back to me as if in a recording.  

Next we broke out of line and began a movement that had been taught in the one rehearsal that I had to miss.  It consisted of a curtsy, balancé, turn, hop, chassé, pas de bourrée, soutenu and scarper.  I know I missed some steps and was flat footed but hell's bells who was counting.

Next I had to run across the stage with another lady. Originally that was to have been a temps levé but the choreographer wisely turned it into a run.

Then the final movement.  Four of us dashed across the stage from the left and stood with our arms in open fifth. One of our colleagues wove round us and we turned in the same direction as her run. Then the lady in front of me and I circled each other and set off in opposite directions.  One temps levé  to the right, a turn, two to the left, turns dehors and dedans and then back to our original positions.

In the last movement my partner led me to the front of the stage where she knelt.  I ran round her from the left and right.  We got up, more swaying each row in opposite directions, a soutenu, more swaying, another soutenu and eye contact.  

The music stopped.  We curtsied. And again we scarpered, ecstatic and excited but quite exhausted.

Waiting for me on my return to the waiting area was a beautiful bouquet from Mel.  

Being on stage in front on a paying audience in a commercial theatre of a major city was delicious.  It was altogether different from rehearsal and very different from class. Strangely it was very like advocacy and the part of my brain that switches on when I go to court kicked in on stage. Just as you can never betray lack of confidence to a judge or opponent however weak your case or however appalling your witness you can't let your smile slip on stage. But I wasn't acting. I really did want to be there. The same buzz that I get in court was there on stage. I was as happy as Larry.

I have no idea what the audience thought of us. I don't think anyone threw a tomato or egg at us or if they did they missed. Mel was there and she has offered to review us for this blog. Somehow I don't think she will encourage me to give up my day job.  I hope she will be kind.

Tempestuous Choice - Amsterdam or Leeds?

As I mentioned in "Amsterdam or London?" earlier today the Dutch National Ballet are dancing "The Tempest" between the 18 and 29 June. Having seen Pastor's Romeo and Juliet two weeks ago I would love to see it but I come only travel to the Netherlands on a weekend. I have tickets for Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill on the 21 June 2014 which includes van Manen's Concertante as well as a new work by Kenneth Tindall and on the 29 there is Northern Ballet Academy's Tenth Anniversary Gala. Also, and don't laugh too loud, I am dancing myself on the 28 June in Northern Ballet Academy's end of term show in the same theatre as the Mixed Bill and the Gala.

Northern Ballet danced Concertante last year and I loved it (see "Angelic - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill" 9 June 2013). Since then I have twice seen the wonderful dancers of the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company dance Kwintet and I have even seen the great choreographer take a bow at the Stadsshouwburg with my very own eyes (see "And can they fly! The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company at Covent Garden" 30 May 2014 and "The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013" 25 Nov 2013). I very much want to see it again.

The last performance of The Tempest in Amsterdam coincides with Northern Ballet Academy's Tenth Anniversary Gala. I am a pupil at that Academy as well as one of its Friends (see "Realizing a Dream" 12 Sept 2013) and I became a Friend after seeing its great teachers at work at the Northern Ballet Open Day on the 16 Feb 2014. Like every other company's ballet school our Academy trains the very best of the best for the stage but it also reaches out to old ladies like me (and from time to time the occasional sprightly gentleman) as well as students whose movement and expression are challenged in many other ways. It is a great institution and I would urge everyone to consider supporting it as a Friend.

The gala on the 29 June sounds fun:

• a "decadent" afternoon tea (what can they be putting in the tea or adding to the butties?)
• a gala performance by the CAT students (if you want to know what "CAT stands for ask the Academy and not me); and finally
• a drinks reception.

Quite a lot for £50 I think you will agree.

And the 28 June is my big day.  Vlad the Lad and his mum and dad are travelling up from London to see me. Having been thrilled by the magnificent Michaela DePrince on Thursday and being besotted by Ballet Black's wonderful dancers I am afraid my darling girl is in for something of an anticlimax when she sees me on stage. But never mind! We shall be dancing to some lovely music by Shostakovich (the soundtrack from the Soviet film the Return of Maxim). It is something I never dreamed would ever happen to me. To dance on the same stage where I have seen Martha Leebolt, Tobias Batley, Sarah Kundi, Cira Robinson ......

However, I will be back in Amsterdam for Swan Lake in September and Jewels and Cool Britannia next year. If I can only navigate my way to the Friends page on the Dutch National Ballet site I will gladly subscribe 50 euros to become their Friend too.