Photos from Birmingham Royal Ballet's Northern Tour

Robert Parker as Captan Belaye in Birmingham Royal Ballets Pineapple Poll

Photo Roy Smiljanic
© 2017 Birmingham Royal Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

I reviewed the Birmingham Royal Ballet's performance of Solitaire, 5 Tangos and Pineapple Poll at York on 12 May 2017 in Birmingham Royal Ballet's Northern Tour 2017 13 May 2017. I now have some lovely photos of scenes from the triple bill which I am delighted to share with you thanks to Mr Lee Armstrong. the company's design executive. I should stress that the photos were not taken at the performance that I reviewed but they will give you a good idea of the costumes, scenery and choreography.

The artist who danced Captain Belaye in York was Matthias Dingman. The artist in the photograph above is Robert Parker who is the Artistic Director of Elmhurst Ballet School.  Parker would be very well cast for the role of a sea captain as he is qualified in real life to be an airline captain. According to his biography, he acquired a commercial pilot's qualification in 2008. Last week Northern Ballet and Phoenix hosted a dancers' career development workshop at Quarry Hill helping dancers explore their career options when they retire from the stage (see Evolve in Leeds 4 May 2017). Even though he has returned to dance as Artistic Director of a leading ballet school, his qualification shows that dancers really can do anything.  I would quite happily board a 747 in the knowledge that its captain has reliably supported high flying and fast moving ballerinas through countless fish dives. Incidentally, I last saw Parker at the 25th anniversary of the Birmingham Royal Ballet's move to the Hippodrome and David Bintley's 20th anniversary as the company's Artistic Director (see In Praise of Bintley 21 June 2015).

In my review of Solitaire I mentioned how much I enjoyed "Desmond Heeley's gorgeous costumes - especially the red bodice of Baselga's tutu - and his draping golden sun backcloth design" which you can see in the photo below

Miki Mizutani in Solitaire

Photo Bill Cooper
r© 2017 Birmingham Royal Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Readers will recall that Dame Ninette de Valois asked Sir Kenneth MacMillan to create Solitaire at very short notice using sets and costumes that had been designed for The Angels by Cranko.

Finally, two glorious shots from 5 Tangos also taken by Bill Cooper:

Birmingham Royal Ballet 5 Tangos

Photo Bill Cooper
r© 2017 Birmingham Royal Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Birmingham Royal Ballet 5 Tangos

Photo Bill Cooper
r© 2017 Birmingham Royal Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Birmingham Royal Ballet's Northern Tour 2017

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Birmingham Royal Ballet, Solitaire, 5 Tangos and Pineapple Poll, York Theatre Royal, 12 May 2017, 19:30

As I mentioned in Doing the Splits 8 May 2017, the Birmingham Royal Ballet splits into two. One group of dancers visits theatres in the North of England and North Midlands which this year includes Durham, York and Nottingham while the other goes to Cheltenham, Poole and Truro. Yesterday, I caught the dancers on the Northern Tour at York Theatre Royal in a splendid triple bill consisting of MacMillan's Solitaire, van Manen's 5 Tangos and Cranko's Pineapple Poll.

Each of those works was created by one of the greatest 20th-century choreographers. John Cranko was only 24 when he staged Pineapple Poll in 1951. Kenneth MacMillan was slightly older in 1956 when Ninette de Valois asked him to create Solitaire at very short notice using sets and costumes that had been designed for The Angels by Cranko. While in retrospect in looks like an early work because his career has lasted so long, Hans van Manen had already been working for over 20 years when he made 5 Tangos for the Dutch National Ballet in 1977.

I had already seen 5 Tangos performed by the Birmingham Royal Ballet in High Wycombe (see Birmingham Royal Ballet in High Wycombe 31 May 2015) and Scottish Ballet in Glasgow (see No Mean City - Accessible Dance and Ballet 26 April 2015). I had also seen two performances of Pineapple Poll, one of which was by the Birmingham Royal Ballet when it was still known as the Royal Ballet Touring Company at a matinee at Sadler's Wells together with Ashton's Les Rendezvous and Facade, and the other by the Chelmsford Ballet (see A Delight Indeed 27 March 2015). Solitaire, however, was new to me and what a treat it turned out to be.

According to the Kenneth MacMillan website, Solitaire was subtitled  "A kind of game for one".  The site describes it as  "a sequence of dances knit together by Malcolm Arnold’s Eight English Dances and by the continuity provided by Margaret Hill’s appearance in each one."  Margaret Hill danced the lead role in the original production.  Referred to only as "the girl", she opens and closes the work appearing in one capacity or another in every scene. The other dancers are her playmates though it is hinted that they may not be real. They enter the stage, dance a scene and disappear as suddenly as they came on. Yesterday "the girl" was danced delightfully by Arancha Baselga who was joined on stage by 16 other dancers in various scenes. My enjoyment of the ballet was greatly facilitated by Arnold's music which included much that was familiar including the signature tune to "What the Papers Say" on Radio 4 on Sunday night. I also enjoyed Desmond Heeley's gorgeous costumes - especially the red bodice of Baselga's tutu - and his draping golden sun backcloth design,

Yesterday, the Dutch National Ballet's online magazine ran a feature on van Manen entitled Hans van Manen: een levende legende the meaning of which is obvious. A link appeared on Facebook which has already attracted 426 likes, 29 shares and lots of comments including this one from me:

"Just seen Birmingham Royal Ballet dance van Manen's 5 Tangos in York this evening. It was great. Jenna Roberts, Matthias Dingman and Maureya Lebowitz were in the cast. They did the great man justice."

That just about says it all. I love this work, the designs and Piazzolla's music, the choreography, the vigorous and expressive dancing and all the connotations with Argentina, one of my favourite countries, and the Netherlands where van Manen is a national living treasure and the subject of a great deal of blogging by me.

Pineapple Poll with its synopsis based on W S Gilbert's ballad The Bumboat's Woman's Story, Charles Mackerras's arrangement of a selection of Gilbert and Sullivan's favourite tunes and Osbert Lancaster's intricate designs was a wonderful way to round off a wonderful evening. Yesterday it occurred to me that this work may well have inspired Ashton to create Fille and Balanchine to create Union Jack. There is certainly a link in Osbert Lancaster in that he created the designs for both Poll and Fille and the exuberance of Mackerras's arrangement finds resonance in Hershey Kay, Maybe my imagination but why not. Matthias Dingman was the gallant Captain (later Admiral) Belaye. Easy to see why the girls' hearts were aflutter. Laura Kay (who had earlier delighted the audience as a playmate in Solitaire) danced his sweetheart Blanche. Laura Purkiss was her interfering aunt, Mrs Dimple, who doubles as Britania at the end. Nao Sakuma danced Blanche's rival, Pineapple Poll.  Kit Holder was the hero of the piece rising from pot boy to naval officer and Poll's husband without even having time to remove his apron. There were lots of other favourites in the cast including the magnificent Valentin Olovyannikov who delighted me in The Taming of the Shrew last year (see Birmingham Royal Ballet performs my favourite ballet at last 23 June 2016).

Birmingham Royal Ballet are giving two more performances today plus a talk and they are also opening their company class to the public. Next week, they move on to Nottingham. I would have been back today had I not been dancing in my own ballet this evening. If you can get a ticket for the matinee or evening performance in York tonight or Nottingham next week I strongly recommend the show.

Doing the Spits

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This is the time of the year when the Birmingham Royal Ballet splits into two. One lot goes to Durham, York and Nottingham while the other goes to Cheltenham, Poole and Truro. I like to see both shows whenever I can but Cheltenham clashed with my only chance to see Northern Ballet's Casanova again before it goes to London. Also, the show in the southern tour's repertoire that I most want to see is Ruth Brill's Arcadia and that will come back to Birmingham as part of Three Short Story Ballets between the 21 and 24 June 2017.

For once I think the North will get the better end of the deal because it brings Pineapple Poll by John Cranko, my all time favourite choreographer ever, and 5 Tangos by Hans van Manen, my favourite living choreographer as well as Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Solitaire.

Pineapple Poll, created for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1951 as part of the celebrations for the Festival of Britain when Cranko was only 24, shows the genius of the man. With the possible exception of Graduation Ball (see Please, pretty please, will somebody revive this lovely ballet 2 Jan 2016) it is the happiest, jolliest, prettiest one act ballet ever and a personal favourite. I have only seen it twice. Once quite recently by the Chelmsford Ballet as part of their double bill with Marney's Carnival of the Animals (see A Delight Indeed 24 March 2015). And once at Sadler's Wells with what was then the Royal Ballet Touring Company in the late 1960s and 1970s.

The first occasion was the one and only time my mother and I could ever persuade my father to attend the ballet. An erudite and urbane Mancunian and a fine economist he regarded the ballet with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. Suspicion because he regarded it as an instrument of Soviet soft power which was certainly one of the reasons for the Bolshoi's first tour of London in 1956 and contempt because he regarded the classical tutu and gentlemen's tights as bordering on the indecent. He sat very quietly through the show with a half benign and half sarcastic grin. At the end of the performance, my aunt asked him whether he had enjoyed it. "Up to a point", he replied. With Union Jacks everywhere Pineapple Poll was far subversive and there are no tutus in sight. He admitted to a certain admiration for the athletic prowess and nimbleness of the dancers and indeed the beauty of the women but he was less kind about the middle-aged matrons who made up the audience. "I should like to see them try to do some of the jumps that those girls cam do" he added.

Like Graduation Ball, Pineapple Poll is a wonderful period piece with sets and costumes by Osbert Lancaster and music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Enjoy the YouTube clip which would have been made not long after the ballet was created with such stars as Merle Park, David Blair, Stanley Holden, BrendaTaylor and Gerd Larsen. Birmingham Royal Ballet will dance it at the Theatre Royal York this Friday and Saturday and then in Nottingham on the 16 and 17 May. It really is a treasure.