Beautiful Ballet Black's 2020 Season

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Beautiful Ballet Black has been so successful that it sold every seat in the house for its performances at Stratford and Leeds.  I am on the waiting list at the Stan and Audrey but at #13 I am not holding out much hope of getting one for their show next week. 

I shouldn't grumble because I saw their wonderful performance of The Suit at Sadler's Wells on 30 Oct and the triple bill at The Barbican in March which I described as "stunning".  Moreover, I have just received an email which I believe to have been sent to all Friends of Ballet Black alerting me to the sale of tickets for the launch of the company's new season at The Barbican between the 26 and 29 March 2020. Two new ballets will be presented by the company's Mthuthuzeli November and the Royal Ballet's Will Tuckett.  November created Ingoma which is one of the works on the current tour while Tuckett has contributed Depouillement which attracted me to Ballet Black in the first place.

I also note from the email that Ballet Black has acquired a new dancer, namely Alexander Fadayiro.  I am not sure whether I have had the opportunity to see him dance.  I do not remember him in The Suit but I could well be mistaken.  However, I see that he has danced with New Adventures and that he trained at the Central School of Ballet.

If you love Ballet Black as much as I do I would strongly recommend its Friends Circle.  The subscription is only £40 a year which is about the cost of an extra theatre ticket.  Friends are invited to rehearsals and often have an opportunity to discuss the work with the artists after the show.  I cannot attend many of those events as they take place in London but it is a practical way to support the company, acknowledge its work in the past and promote its values and aspirations.

Finally, there is the merchandise page.  I bought the "I ❤ Ballet Black" tee-shirt the first time I saw the company at the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham in 2013 and I have worn it proudly everywhere there are balletomanes from Taynuilt in Argyll to Trecate in Piedmont.  I have made it my business to make folk aware of the beauty in many senses and at many levels of Ballet Black.

Birmingham Royal Ballet and Ballet Black's Mixed Programme at Sadler's Wells

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Birmingham Royal Ballet and Ballet Black (A Brief Nostalgia, The Suit and Nine Sinatra Songs) Sadler's Wells 30 Oct 2019 at 19:30

As a fully paid-up Friend of Ballet Black and a big fan of Birmingham Royal Ballet and Cathy Marston, I decided to nip down to London on Wednesday to see their combined triple bill. I say "nipped" with some caution. It was easy enough to get down to the Smoke but coming back was quite a different matter. The East Coast mainline has deteriorated considerably since its re-nationalization by LNER and it is now a shambles. It took an hour for the 23:30 from King's Cross to amble from Doncaster to Leeds by way of Pontefract and goodness knows where else with the result that I arrived home at 04:00 yesterday morning.

Happily, the show made it all worthwhile. I arrived at Sadler's Wells just in time for a talk by Kit Holder of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Tom Harrold who had composed the score for the first work, A Brief Nostalgia, and Cassa Pancho, founder and artistic director of Ballet Black.  I am very glad that I did because Tom's talk prepared me for A Brief Nostalgia and helped me appreciate it properly.  He explained that he was a Scottish composer living in Manchester and this commission had been his first work for the theatre. The ballet was a collaboration between the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Queensland Ballet. The companies had chosen Jack Lister, to choreograph the work and Tom described their long-distance collaboration.  Lister had wanted to express a mood that is expressed in Portuguese by the word saudade.  Deborah Jones's programme note described it as "a delicate, complicated feeling that has melancholy and pain built in but also has room for the beauty of remembering emotions, people or objects of personal value." She added that an American academic had offered "a word for 'the presence of absence," as an apt translation.

In the questions and answers that followed, a member of the audience asked why the ballet was entitled "A Brief Nostalgia". I guess he meant why a ballet addressing such a nuanced and complex topic should have been given such a prosaic title. Tom could not really answer the question but warned that it was quite a "dark ballet".  "Oh dear!" I thought to myself as I remembered what The Suit is all about. "Happen we are in for a right barrel of laughs."

The piece when it came to be performed was not too bad. It was certainly not as miserable as a marital breakdown and a suicide.  For a start, I liked the score and I was even more impressed with the lighting design for shadows on the sets exaggerated the dancers' line and movements. There were also some dramatic moments such as when the cast dashed in and froze in arabesque. It was the lighting which actually punctuated the phases of the ballet. It began at ground level while the later scenes lit up the space above the artists' heads.

There were six pairs of dancers: Brandon Lawrence with Delia Matthews, Matthias Dingman with Maureya Lebowitz, Tzu-Chao Chou with Momoko Hirata, Max Maslen with Samara Downs, Lachlan Monaghan with Alys Shee and Kit Holder with Beatrice Parma. The only downside with the lighting is that it was hard to make out who was who on stage. The only one that I could identify positively before the reverence was Brandon Lawrence and that is only because I have seen a lot of him lately. They all danced well and richly merited the applause with even a few Russian style growls.

The work that I had come primarily to see was The Suit.  I am a big fan of Ballet Black both for their outstanding artistry but also for their work in bringing ballet to every section of our community including those that have not been represented in ballet proportionately.  I am also a fan of Cathy Marston having seen her Jane Eyre and Victoria for Northern Ballet and Snowblind for the San Francisco Ballet recently and, of course, The Suit at least four times.  Of her works that I have seen live, The Suit is by far the best in my humble opinion.  However, I have seen a lot of videos of her work in Berne which I should like to see on stage.

It is one respect a very depressing work.  It starts happily enough with Philomom, the husband, José Alves, and Matilda, his wife, Cira Robinson in marital bliss. The alarm clock sounds and Philemon has to go to work. He gets up, shaves, showers and dons a suit with the rest of the cast playing washbasins, showers, wardrobes and mirrors. He says goodbye to his wife still in her nightie and absent-mindedly leaves his briefcase behind. The next few minutes show his commute to work. He meets all sorts of folk such as stylish ladies like Isabella Coracey and Sayaka Ichikawa, one of whom earns a wolf whistle. and little old ladies bent double over their walking sticks such as Marie-Astrid Mence, in real life probably the youngest members of the troupe. Suddenly, it dawns on him that has left his case behind. He returns to the house and finds it is not all it should be. Matilda is still in bed but she is not alone.

Philip Feeney's music changes dramatically from regular rhythms to sounds more akin to sirens. He freezes.  His home is shattered. Momentarily he is broken. When he recovers his composure he is a changed man.  Matilda may have deceived him but she must have been bored looking after the home while Philemon was in the city. When good-looking Simon, Mchuthuzeli November, paid her attention it would have required a lot of resolve to resist him.

Simon had darted out of the house in his underwear leaving his suit behind. It was through that suit that Philemon exacted his terrible revenge. For the rest of the marriage, he tortured his wife with the garment forcing her to treat it as an honoured guest even taking it for walks around the neighbourhood. Everyone would have known that she had erred.  She felt scorn and shame. For a brief moment, there seems a to be a chance of reconciliation but his anger gets the better of him and he shoves her away.

She wanders the home desolate and then spots the tie. She wraps it around her neck connecting the end to a beam. There then follows one of the most chilling scenes possible in theatre. That beautiful woman perishes before our eyes and then rests lifeless. I had seen that ballet four times and know that Cira springs back to life for the curtain call but I can't help shaking and feel the tears welling up in my eyes.  No, this is not a comfortable ballet to watch.  In fact, it is shocking.  But it is compelling watching.

We needed cheering up and that is just what we got with Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs.  Each of the girls is beautifully dressed and coiffed wearing heels instead of pointe shoes.  Karla Doorbar who accompanied James Barton in his last performance with the company wore the most scrumptious costume.  Before the show Kit Holder told the audience that this was to be Barton's last appearance with the company and invited us to give him an extra burst of applause which we did.  I was sad for a while but then overjoyed to learn that he has not retired but is on his way to Glasgow to join Scottish Ballet. Readers will tire of my saying that that was the first company that I got to know and love. They will know that I am an even bigger fan of Scottish Ballet than I am of BRB,  Far from saying goodbye I look forward to seeing more of him in his new company.

I have never really listened much to Frank Sinatra but I have heard a lot of his music in lifts, waiting rooms and on the telephone waiting to be put through to the right extension in the course of a lifetime.  There is something comforting in the banal and the artists of the Birmingham Royal Ballet made us forget the horror of the previous piece with their wit, their charm and their virtuosity. Although the ballet is called Nine Sinatra Songs we actually got eight for My Way is played twice. The first time with three couples - Rachele Pizzillo, Emma Price and Yaoquian Shang with Rory Mackay, Edivaldo Souza da Silva and Alexander Yap.  The second time was the finale with the whole cast.

I have followed Ballet Black for as long as I have kept this blog and seen them grow. Watching them perform in one of the world's premier dance auditoriums with de Valois's foundation I thought they had come of age,  Interestingly one of the audience members had reminded me of their appearance of the pyramid stage of Glasto.  That must have earned them a lot of fame but I think the shows at The Hippodrome and Sadler's Wells would have given them even more kudos.

Later this month Ballet Black will perform Pendulum, Click! and Ingoma in Oxford, Stratford, Leeds and York in the next few weeks, I described that triple bill as stunning when I saw it at The Barbican earlier this year.   I recommend it strongly.

Another Look at Victoira

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Northern Ballet Victoria 6 April 2019 Curve, Leicester

"How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen!"  The Oxford Essential Quotations attributes that remark to A Laugh A Day Keeps the Doctor Away by the American humorist, Irvin S Cobb which was published in 1924.  It is said to have been overheard at a performance of Antony and Cleopatra in which Sarah Bernhardt played Cleopatra.

The conversation is probably apocryphal but the reason why the quotation is remembered is that the home life of Queen Victoria was unremarkable.  Of course, there was sex.  How could it be otherwise with 9 children? But it was almost certainly within marriage notwithstanding speculation over her relationships with John Brown and Abdul Karim.  Queen Victoria gave her name to an age of momentous cultural, economic, political, scientific, social and technological change throughout the world but, as a constitutional monarch, she had very little to do with any of that.

According to "Creating Victoria" in the programme the idea of a ballet about Queen Victoria was David Nixon's.  He asked Cathy Marston whether she would be interested in making such a work, Evidently, someone mentioned the TV series for Marsrion spent part of a weekend watching a recording of the series before deciding to accept.

To make a full-length ballet about a home life that is a byword for respectability and normality must have been something of a challenge. Marston responded to that challenge by selecting incidents from the queen's life that she had recorded in her diary.  Those incidents were presented not as they had happened but as they had been perceived by Princess Beatrice upon reading her mother's diary for the first time. An impression was given that some of those incidents bordered on the scandalous for there were for there were several scenes where Beatrice tore pages from the diary.

On the whole, I think Marston's approach worked well, particularly in the second act.  There were moments of great beauty such as the passionate duet of the queen and prince consort towards the end. There were also some comic moments such as the childbirth scenes with Mlindi Kulashe delivering baby after baby.  Some of the scenes in the first act were still lost me even though I had seen them before and had read and digested the synopsis.  Someone - I could not work out who it was - drew a revolver and shot John Brown. I could find no reference to that in the synopsis.  It certainly did not happen in real life for Brown died in his bed in Windsor.  I had a vague recollection from my criminal law studied that Queen Victoria survived an assassination attempt because it was from that incident that we have got the M'Naghten rules but it seems to have nothing to so with that. I concluded that the assassination must have been an analogue for character assassination. There were several other analogues in the piece such as the ritual kissing of the queen's feet.

The cast I saw in Leicester was almost the same as the one I saw in Leeds (see A Great Send-off for a Great Lady 17 March 2019).  Abigail Prudames was the queen, Joseph Taylor the prince consort, Pippa Moore was Beatrice and Kulashe doubled as John Brown as well as an obstetrician.  All the cast danced well but I particularly enjoyed their interaction with a curious piece of furniture that I can best describe as a Victorian round sofa and their tussle over the red dispatch boxes.  Everybody in the show danced well and it would be unjust for me to select any for special praise,

Steffen Aarfing's set worked well.  A semicircular structure doubled as a gallery in a palace and the stacks of a library.   I am not quite so satisfied with the costumes.  The queen's white gown with its blue sash was effective. The red and cream costumes of the corps were less so.  Philip Feeney's score was pleasant enough. It was said to be derived from the music of the period.   I am sure that must be so but I struggle to remember a note of it even though I have heard it twice.

Though the auditorium was far from full the audience seemed to appreciate the show.   There was some cheering and the curious masculine growls that one sometimes hears in live streaming from the Bolshoi and even Covent Garden.   Several folk in the stalls rose to their feet which does not happen quite so often in England as in other countries.  I think Northern Ballet can chalk up Saturday evening's performance as a success.

The ballet's tour continues to Edinburgh, Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Belfast and it will be streamed to cinemas throughout the nation on 25 June 2019.  I think it is worth seeing and probably more than once since I appreciated it more the second time around.   Marston is a master of her craft and while I still prefer The Suite and Jane Eyre I appreciate Victoria.   Her many fans (of whom I am one) can look forward to her Snowblind which the San Francisco Ballet will bring to London at the end of May and beginning of June.  We will have another chance to see The Suit in Birmingham in September

A Great Send-off for a Great Lady

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Northern Ballet Victoria, Leeds Grand Theatre, 16 March 2019, 19:30

Victoria may have been the title rôle but the star of last night's show was Pippa Moore who danced Princess Beatrice. That is not because the ballet is really about someone other than the character in the title like Coppelia or Don Quixote.  Queen Victoria has a very substantial role in Cathy Marston's ballet and it was danced beautifully by Abigail Priudames whom I admire greatly. But last night was the night the company and its audience said goodbye to Moore who is, for the time being, Northern Ballet's last remaining female premier dancer and one who enjoys great respect and affection.

At the end of the performance, Moore was presented with an enormous bouquet of flowers. Something that does not happen very often outside London (see Flowers for Dreda 9 June 2018). David Nixon came on stage and gave the best speech that I have ever heard him make (I have heard more than a few from him over the years) and handed Moore a picture of herself as Beatrice. I am a hard-bitten patent lawyer and I have seen some great moments in the theatre but I could feel the tears welling up inside me. Several members of the audience including yours truly rose to out feet.  Just as well that the curtain fell when it did because I am not sure for how much longer I could have contained my emotions.

The show in which Moore and Prudames danced was Cathy Marston's Victoria, a co-production between Northern Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada. The score was by Philip Feeney and the sets and costumes were designed by Steffen Aarfing.  There was some stunning choreography in the ballet of which the duets between the queen and John Brown, danced by Mlindi Kulashe, and the queen and Prince Albert (Joseph Taylor) were perhaps the most striking. I was particularly struck by the invocation of the saltire as the queen splayed her arms in open fifth and legs second in defence of Brown.  There were other touches that I loved like the relevés to convey excitement when Victoria met Albert for the first time.

However, regular readers of my blog will by now have sensed a "but" coming.  I cannot deny it is there but I don't want to exaggerate it.  Victoria was still a work of considerable merit.  I am a great fan of Cathy Marston even though I have not seen much of her work on stage. Most of her works that I have seen have been on YouTube.  When I saw Jane Eyre in Richmond in 2016 I described it as "the best new ballet from the company in 20 years." I think I was even more impressed with The Suit when I saw it for the first time (see Excellence - Ballet Black's Double Bill 17 March 2018). Though I admired it very much, Victoria did not have the same effect on me as Jane Eyre or The Suit.

I have asked myself "why?" as there was a lot of good in this ballet.  I think the weakness lies in the libretto.  This was a very complex story but I don't think that was the main problem.  It is never easy to create a ballet around a recent historical figure as Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Anastasia shows.  The only choreographer to have pulled it off in my humble opinion is Ted Brandsen with his Mata Hari  (see Brandsen's Masterpiece 14 Feb 2016). I think he succeeded because he kept the story simple with hardly any flashbacks, unlike Anastasia and Victoria.  Had I not read the synopsis I would not have had a clue as to what was going on and I think that would have lost me.

My only other criticism (and it is a minor one) is of the costumes for the corps.  They were clad in a stripey top and what appeared to be a red skirt for dancers of both genders.  From row P of the stalls, they looked like a crocodile of schoolgirls on an outing.  When I read the programme properly on the train to London later this morning I shall probably discover the significance of that apparel.  All I can say that it was less than obvious yesterday.

But this was still a magnificent evening. I would not have missed it for the world.  It is still a fine ballet and Cathy Marston is still one of my favourite choreographers.  I saw Anastasia when it was first staged in 1971 and have never had a desire to see it again. Unlike Anastasia, I am going to give this ballet a second view.   I am sure it will go down well at Sadler's Wells. It has already had a good press.  I have very heterodox tastes having no time whatsoever for The Favourite despite its many awards and nominations.  So see Victoria for yourself. Don't let my niggles at the plot and costume designs put you off

Ballet Black's Standing Ovation at the Nottingham Playhouse

Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror outside Nottingham Playhouse

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Ballet Black  Double Bill (The Suit and A Dream within a Midsummer Night's Dream) 16 May 2018 19:30 Nottingham Playhouse

Ballet Black received a well deserved standing ovation last night.  Such appreciation is commonplace in many parts of the world but not in this country - at least not outside political party conferences.  There were whoops and cheers from the audience as well as claps.  Ballet Black are obviously doing something right.

Yesterday's performance was very polished.  As I said in my review of the company's performance  at the Barbican, I had been worried that Damian Johnson might be irreplaceable but José Alves has performed the male lead roles in both The Suit and A Dream within A Midsummer Night's Dream admirably.  Like Johnson he dances with authority but he does so in his own way and just as impressively.

I particularly admired his performance as Philemon in The Suit.  Returning home to pick up his briefcase he finds his wife in bed with Simon. His countenance is like a book. First the disbelief.  "Is this actually happening?" The the shock as he collapses to the floor. The surge of anger that leads to the cruel humiliation of Matilda.  The role of Philemon was created for Alves and it is hard to imagine anyone else dancing it as well.

The wife was danced by Cira Robinson who is truly a ballerina in the traditional sense  and I think this is her finest role.  It would be impertinent of me to compliment her on her virtuosity or her dramatic skills for, as I say, she is a ballerina.  What do I mean by that?  The best way of putting it is that in most performances the artists portray their character but a truly fine artist - a ballerina - can become that character.  And so it was last night as Tilly was pushed beyond endurance.  My body shook as that beautiful woman in a simple blue dress convulsed and then hung still. Tears were welling up uncontrollably even though I knew she would snap back smiling and full or life for the curtsy just seconds away.

Seeing The Suit for a second time I noticed some interesting touches that I had missed before like dancers representing mirrors, wash basins or items of furniture.  By focusing on details such as old lady crossing the street and bumping into passers by, Marston seemed to conjure a crowd.  Mthuthuzeli November danced Simon, the owner of the suit. The rest of the company danced the chorus, commuters and passers by.

The Suit was a chilling but compelling work that left our emotions raw.  Pita's Dream applied the balm.  Yesterday must have been the sixth or maybe seventh time that I had seen that work and it never fails to charm me.   I always find something new.   Whereas The Suit focuses on Philemon and Tilly, everyone has an important role in Dream.  Robinson was Titania, of course, and Alves became Obron. Isabela Coracy amused us as Puck in her scouts uniform and green beard liberally scattering her glitter and dragging dancers by their legs around the stage. Sayaka Ichikawa and Marie-Astrid Mence charmed us as Helena and Hermia. Their Demetrius and Lysander were November and Ebony Thomas. Grunting and swaggering small wonder the girls preferred each other. November also played the one role that Shakespeare never envisaged, namely Salvador Dali in the quest for his missing moustache.

Ballet Black are about to visit Scotland where I took my first ballet class and was introduced to what is now Scottish Ballet.  One of their venues is Dundee Repertory Theatre which is just 12 miles from St Andrews where there is a Dance Club of over 100 members that I helped to found nearly 50 years ago (see St Andrews University Dance Club's 50th Anniversary Gala 5 May 2018). Should any of those students still be in town on 6 June 2018 I strongly recommend their crossing the Tay to see this show.

Fifty years after that first class at St Andrews, I attended class with the undergraduates of Ballet West (see Visiting Taynuilt 4 May 2018). A few days before my visit Scottish Ballet held a workshop at Taynuilt when they visited Oban to dance Highland Fling. Taynuilt is quite a trek from any of the venues where Ballet Black are to perform but I do hope that at least a few of the excellent young men and women I met last month can make it to Dundee, Inverness or Glasgow.

My next opportunity to see Ballet Black will be on 19 Nov when they will return to The Lowry.  They can expect a very warm welcome there

Excellence - Ballet Black's Double Bill

Ballet Black  The Suit and A Dream within Midsummer Night's Dream Barbican Centre 16 March 2018, 20:00

After seeing extracts of Cathy Marston's The Suit and Arthur Pita's A Dream within Midsummer Night's Dream at Ballet Black's rehearsal studios on 25 Feb 2018, I wrote that I was confident that this year's tour would be Ballet Black's most successful yet (see Visiting Friends - Ballet Black at Home  7 March 2018).  And so it has proved.  I don't think I have ever seen them dance better. I don't think I have ever seen their audience more thrilled.

I was led to Ballet Black by Sarah Kundi whom I admired greatly when she danced in Leeds. When she left Ballet Black I was desolate. How could the company be the same without her?  But it did and became even better (see Ballet Black is still special 7 Nov 2013).  A few years later it lost another of my favourite dancers, Kanika Carr with her beautifully expressive face and laughing eyes. Again, I felt bereft but the company recruited beautiful new dancers and was stronger still.  And then Damian Johnson, my male dancer of the year for 2017, returned to the United States. How could Ballet Black ever recover from his departure? For a moment I feared they couldn't (see Ballet Black post Johnson - Still a good performance but something was missing 19 Nov 2017).  But it has for last night's performance was outstanding.  Walking back to my hotel I realized that Ballet Black is like a living thing, greater than the sum of its parts and capable of regenerating itself even after it loses an important member.

Cathy Marston's The Suit is based on Can Themba's short story which was made into a powerful film in 2016 and stage play, Briefly it is about a husband who punishes his wife's infidelity by treating her lover's suit as though it were a living guest placing it at the table for meals and taking it outside for walks. The wife can endure only so much of this humiliation before she hangs herself on her lover's tie. Set in apartheid South Africa her oppression is compounded by the repression of the state. The austerity under which even highly educated Africans were obliged to live was represented by skeletal furniture and a percussive score.  Particularly effective was the crumbling wall of sound that accompanied the mind shattering discovery of a stranger in the marital bed.

The wife, Matilda or Tilly, was danced by Cira Robinson.   Perhaps her finest performance in any ballet and certainly the most dramatic.  José Alves was Philemon her husband.  Another stunning performance. Simon, the lover, the owner of the suit was Mthuthuzeli November.  The rest of the company danced neighbours in Sophiatown.   In the programme they are described as a "chorus".  The use of a chorus is a technique that I noticed in Jane Eyre, the other Marston ballet that I have seen recently.  The choreographer will no doubt correct me if I am wrong, but I think it is the balletic equivalent to Greek drama. I find it very effective.

After that stage suicide - not the first I have seen in the last few months (Las Hermanas in Northern Ballet's MacMillan Celebration and English National Ballet's Le Jeune Homme et la Mort in Tamara Rojo at Last! Le Jeune Homme et la Mort and La Sylphide) we needed a bit of cheer and Arthur Pita provided it with A Dream within A Midsummer Night's Dream.  This was the fifth time that I have seen that ballet and I love it.  I love Isabela Coracy's playful Puck in boy scout uniform, Titania's infatuation with Bottom (November), the delicious girlishness of Hermia and Helena (Marie Astrid Mence and Sayaka Ichikawa) and Oberon's grunting with his butterfly net. Alves danced Oberon beautifully, with gravitas tempered with levity.  I love the music and although I am still not sure how Salvador Dali fits into the story I love him and his moustache too.  In this staging of the work November glides in with a Dali dead.  I love the music, particularly the Yma  Suma and the stately Handel with the girls in classical tutus at the beginning and the end.

I had originally planned to see the double bill tonight and had a ticket for the centre stalls but on learning of the talk I asked the theatre to exchange it for whatever it had for yesterday so that I could attend the discussion.  Actually I did very well for I was in the centre of row B of the gallery commanding a great view of the stage with the most vocal and appreciative section of the crowd.  I am so glad that I stayed for the talk because Cira Robinson was magnificent.  She spoke about her art with passion.  I have always admired her. Yesterday my respect increased 200%. But there was another treat. Arthur Pita was in the audience and he spoke how Shakespeare had inspired his Dream and his love for every piece of the score.

Finally, on the way out to Silk Street I spotted some of the dancers. If they read this review they would have known how much I loved last night's performance. But yesterday I could tell them in person and that was so much more satisfying.

Visiting Friends - Ballet Black at Home

The View from outside the Feathers

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The day before I left for Amsterdam while the Beast form the East was still stalking its lair I visited Ballet Black for a rehearsal of extracts from Arthur Pita's  A Dream Within a Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cathy Marston's The Suit which the company will present at the Barbican between 15 and 17 March 2018. Every performance of that show is now sold out but the company will take it on tour to Newbury, Hatfield, Bristol, Nottingham, Inverness, Dundee and Exeter in Spring and no doubt Leeds and other venues in the North in the Autumn (see the Performances page of Ballet Black's website).

Pita's Dream is already a favourite with audiences and critics. I raved about it in 2014 when I saw it no less than 4 times in London, Southport, Nottingham and Leeds (see Extra Special - Ballet Black at the Linbury 26 Feb 2014  27 Feb 2014 and the links to other reviews and articles). The Suit also promises much with music by Philip Feeney and designs by Jane Heather.  As I don't want to spoil the anticipation of either ballet, all I will say at this stage is that Cira Robinson delighted me again as a regal Titania and Isabela Coracy as a playful Puck, Marston's work is dramatic and I was reminded of Jane Eyre and Rochester in the duet and the demons from Marston's work for Northern Ballet in the extract that was performed for us.

The rehearsal took place in Ballet Black's new studios at The Feathers Association in Lisson Grove. That's not a part of London that I know well and as Hull Trains delivered me to King's Cross with a couple of hours to spare I explored the neighbourhood.  It is largely residential with few places to eat though I managed to find a cafe a few hundred yards from the studios that served some excellent Moroccan specialities for a very reasonable price. The Feathers is positioned on a bridge above the railway tracks leading to Marylebone station from which the above photo must have been taken.

The visit was a special event for Friends of the company.  If you are not already a Friend, Thandie Newton, the company's patron, lists some of the benefits of membership:

"Internationally recognised for its vital message of giving black and Asian dancers the professional opportunities they merit based solely on their talent and dedication, Ballet Black continues to amaze. As a Friend, you will be making a valuable contribution to the sustainability of this small yet hugely significant company and will support its ongoing commitment to aspiring dancers and to its ever increasing and loyal audience. In return, Ballet Black will welcome you behind the scenes to watch Company rehearsals under the exceptional eye of Artistic Director, Cassa Pancho as well as with acclaimed guest choreographers. You will receive quarterly newsletters to keep you up-to-date about news, events and performances so you will never miss out."

After the show, the company invited us for tea and biscuits in their office where the dancers joined us. It was very pleasant to see them all again.  The only one I did not already know was Ebony Thomas who had impressed me in Leeds in November and I took the opportunity to introduce myself to him.

I am confident that this year's tour will be Ballet Black's most successful yet.  I shall watch the show on Friday 16 after which there will be a post show talk.   The next day there will be an open rehearsal and workshop as part of the Barbican OpenFest.  According to the blurb:

"Cassa Pancho (Artistic Director of Ballet Black) will conduct a Ballet Class for all ages on the Barbican Freestage, prior to Ballet Black's open rehearsal and performance on Saturday evening in the Barbican Theatre. This workshop is free and open to all, no prior experience necessary."

I can hardly wait.