Life with the Ribbon

Kimberley Hattersley-Barton and the Cast of Life with the Ribbon

© 2025 Kimberley Hattersley-Barton,  All rights reserved. 

 

Kimberley Hattersley-Barton and Friends Life with the Ribbon Unity Hall, Wakefield, 18:00 10 May 2025

For several years, I attended Jane Tucker's improvers class at Northern Ballet.  Although I had studied ballet for many years, I had never been very good at it even when I was young.  I had become even worse by the time I was taking Jane's classes because of the ravages of old age.  Nobody ever said anything to me, but I felt very much like Danny Kaye's ugly duckling.   But there was one young woman who always made me feel welcome, even though she was one of the better dancers.   Her infectious smile and occasional cheery wave across the studio immediately put me at my ease and emboldened me to persevere.  I shall always be grateful to her for her encouragement.

I learned that the young woman's name was Kimberley Hattersley-Barton and that she had been ill for much of her life.   It was only when she posted a notice on Facebook about a charity gala at the Unity Hall in Wakefield that I discovered the precise nature and full extent of her illness.  In her 27 years, she has already had no less than 5 cancer diagnoses, the first of which was when she was just a few months old. The purpose of the gala was to raise funds for three charities, Willow, Beads of Courage and When You Wish Upon a Star.  Each of those charities improves the lives of young persons who are suffering from serious illnesses.

For those who don't know Wakefield, Unity Hall is a prominent 3 storey building off Westgate.  Wakefield's main thoroughfare.  I have learnt that the building used to be the central stores of the Wakefield Industrial Society, which seems to have been some sort of cooperative society. Possibly because the building had been used as a storehouse, there is a cavernous space on the top floor which has been turned into an auditorium.   It was in that space that the gala took place.

The gala consisted of songs and dance routines arranged in two parts and interspersed with speeches and conversations.   There was rather more song than dance, but the dance contributions were impressive.  A troupe of young women referred to in the programme as the "Gala Dance Team" opened and closed the show. They also danced at several other points during the evening. If I am not mistaken, they are the women dressed in pink kneeling in the front row of the photo.   Kimberley joined in at least one of the Gala Dance Team's routines.  There was a remarkably talented young artist called Meg Finan who danced El Tango de Roxanne from Moulin Rouge as a solo.   She also danced to Bring Him Home from Les Misérables sung by Tyler Warren.  Finally, contemporary dance students from the Academy of Northern Ballet performed Revolve. 

Halfway through the first part, a ballet teacher and former dancer called Nic Smart, introduced himself as Kimberley's mentor, who had become a close friend.  Ballet is a tough and demanding discipline.  I once overheard Fiona Noonan (the teacher who led me back to the barre) tell another student that ballet is a tough taskmistress willing you to fail.   The physical and mental skills required to master the art form are valuable life skills.  Dance is obviously important to Kimberley.   It may well be one of the reasons for her resilience

Although this is primarily a dance blog, I must acknowledge the singers, who were also excellent. In the first part of the show, Jemma Alexander sang Let's Hear It for the Boy from Footloose and Take Me or Leave Me from Rent as a duet with Laura Pick.  In the second, she sang As If We Never Said Goodbye from Sunset Boulevard as a solo and For Good from Wicked as a duet with Laura Pick.  Laura Pick also sang No Good Deed and Defying Gravity from the same musical. Michael Markey sang All Coming Back to Me and Oh What A Night.   Aimée Good and Isabel Canning sang That's Life together.   Aimée Good had known Kimberley at secondary school, and she paid a very moving tribute to her former schoolmate. Isabel Canning sang Don't Rain on My Parade from Funny Girl.  Elliott Lee sang Stars from Les Misérables and You'll Be Back from Hamilton.   Tyler Lee sang Power of Love from Back to the Future.  Finally, Matthew Roddis belted our Cry Me A River in part 1 and Sweet Caroline in part 2 so compellingly that he brought many audience members to their feet.

The Life with the Ribbon gala was a resounding success, for which its producer, Kimberley, deserves much of the credit.   Everything had been rehearsed well.  The show ran to time, each item following on slickly from the one before.   The applause that the artists received at the curtain call was thunderous.  A lot of happy people descended onto Westgate that evening,

The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker in the Merrie City

Wakefield from Sandal Castle

Author Tim Green
Creative Commons Licence
Source Wikipedia

The Royal Ballet, The Nutcracker, streamed to cinemas 8 Dec 2016

Immediately after watching the preview of Calyx and mingling with the artists and guests on 8 Dec 2016 I galloped down to Leeds central station, jeté on to a train to Wakefield Kirkgate where I had left my car the previous day for a dash down to London to give a talk on IP Planning for Brexit and chasséd  on over to Cineworld which was streaming the Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker live from Covent Garden. I arrived at the cinema at 17:29 and presented my driving licence as proof of my antiquity to claim an old age pensioner's concessionary ticket for the show.

"You're too late, love" said the man at the ice cream concession dourly. "Picture started about 'half an 'hour ago. You'll have to come back tomorrow."

Would you believe that Wakefield, originally called Waca's Field, was once known as the "Merrie City"? No neither would I. Never believe everything in Wikipedia. On the other hand, having observed the young folks of Wakefield on the Saturday night pub crawl that the proprietor of the Springfield Beauty Salon once told me was known locally as the "Westgate Run", I would not be at all surprised to learn that its name derives from "Whackers' Field."

"It's not on, tomorrow", I protested. "It's not a picture but a ballet screening. And the only thing that I am likely to have missed is Darcy Bussell's patter, twitter hashtags and trailers for forthcoming shows."

"Oh well suit tha'sane, love", said the jolly ice cream vendor as he took my money

I entered the auditorium just as the orchestra was striking up the first notes.

According to the trailer on the Royal Ballet's website,

"The Royal Ballet celebrates Peter Wright’s 90th birthday with his much-loved production of this beautiful classical ballet, danced to Tchaikovsky’s magnificent score."

Sir Peter Wright is amazing. I met him briefly at the cast party after the Hungarian Ballet had premiered his version of The Sleeping Beauty at Budapest Opera House (see My Trip to Hungary 21 April 2016). He moved about the stage like a 20-year old as the cast took curtain call after curtain call and then gave an excellent impromptu speech to the cast, guests and production crew. In our brief conversation, he asked me where I came from and what I did for a living. To my great surprise, he had remembered that information for he introduced me at our next meeting which was the London Ballet Circle's 70th-anniversary celebration to a lady whom I shan't identify with a son who is reading law in Manchester (see 70 Years of the London Ballet Circle 10 May 2016).

As I said in The Good Nutcracker Guide 31 Oct 2016 we are spoilt for choice for versions of The Nutcracker this year but my first choice is the Royal Ballet's. If you can't make it to Amsterdam to see Ted Brandsen's Coppelia then Sir Peter Wright's Nutcracker really is the next best thing. Having said that, Birmingham's is pretty good, Wayne Eagling's is not bad if you don't mind the transposition of the Stahlbaums to the banks of the Thames and the rodent king's reappearance in Act II (see Cracking 14 Dec 2013). As for the other Christmas shows, Christopher Hampson and Scottish Ballet can do no wrong in my book (see Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel 23 Dec 2013 and the last Act of Northern Ballet's Beauty and the Beast impressed me when I saw it in 2011 (see Jane Lambert Ballet and Intellectual Property - my Excuse for reviewing "Beauty and the Beast" 31 Dec 2011 IP Yorkshire).

There seem to have been a few changes to the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker since the last time I saw it.  There is a new Chinese dance in the divertissements in Act II and the sets and costumes seem a bit fresher. Francesca Hayward was a beautiful Clara. I like versions where Clara (or, if you prefer, Marie) has something to do but I never want her to morph into the Sugar Plum. It's quite a demanding role because (a bit like Juliet) she has to persuade her audience that she is still a young girl but the dancing requires the skills and expertise of a principal. She was partnered admirably by Alexander Campbell as the Nutcracker. Two of my all time favourite dancers, Lauren Cuthbertson and Federico Bonelli dazzled us in the final pas de deux. I should mention in passing that there is a young man from Novara who reminds me very much of Bonelli with the Dutch National Ballet as well as a young woman from Bologna with more than a little of Ferri's flair. And my favourite of the show? Well, how could it be anyone other than Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer? He was also at the London Ballet Circle's 70th where I was able to tell him how much I had enjoyed his work when I shook his hand.

I have learned from experience that the best is the enemy of the good. Having seen Brandsen's Coppelia it is probably not a good idea for me to see any of the other Christmas shows just yet. In any case, the Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker was sold out weeks ago. But I will be well over that when Scottish Ballet bring Hansel and Gretel to Newcastle in February.

Spartacus - streamed live to Wakefield

Scene from the Bolshoi's Spartacus        Source Wikipedia

In my review of Don Quixote I compared the relationship between ballet streamed to a cinema and ballet in a theatre to that between hamburger and fillet steak (see "¡Por favor! Don Quixote streamed to Huddersfield" 17 Oct 2013). Well in today's HDTV broadcast of Spartacus to nearly 1,000 cinemas around the world we tasted some raw meat. Or at any rate steak tartare since the performance was brought to us by Pathé Live.

This show was an eye opener: a great score, great choreography and above all great dancing. There was spectacular athleticism from each of the male principals, sultry sexiness from one of the ballerinas and innocent tenderness from the other, a mighty duel and an even mightier battle.  It is a great shame that this ballet is not seen more often in this country.   It is an even greater shame that it is not in the repertoire of any British company.

I suspect that one reason for that is that Spartacus is perceived as a ballet of the Soviet era.  It was first performed by the Kirov (now the Mariinsky) in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1956 which was the year that Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest.  The production that we saw today was choreographed by Yury Grigorovich in 1968 - the year the Warsaw pact deposed Alexander Dubček.  The historical Spartacus has a special place in Communist mythology - though without the slightest basis in Roman history. He is said to have been one of Karl Marx's two heroes (see "Karl Marx's  Confession" 1 April 1865). The revolutionaries who very nearly took control of Germany at the end of the First World War called themselves The Spartacus League.

Very little is known of the historical Spartacus. He was a gladiator and he did lead an insurrection known as the Third Servile War between 73 and 71 BC but there is no evidence that he had a wife called Phrygia (which was a region of Anatolia) or that he worsted the politician and property speculator, Marcus Licinius Crassus, in single combat. The story upon which the ballet is based is a novel by Raffaello Giovagnoli and it bears as much resemblance to classical history as English history does to King Lear.

It is a very good tale, though, and for those who have yet to see the ballet this is the gist. Spartacus and his wife Phrygia are captured by the Roman general Crassus and brought to Rome as slaves. Spartacus is made to fight as a gladiator while Phrygia is forced into concubinage. In one of his fights Spartacus kills a friend. Overcome by remorse he stirs his fellow slaves into rebellion.  While rescuing Phrygia he confronts Crassus and challenges him to duel which Spartacus wins.  Though Crassus is at his mercy Spartacus lets him go. Humiliated at losing the duel, Crassus gets his concubine Aegina (another geographical name, this time an island near Athens) to infiltrate the rebel camp and distract the slaves while his soldiers creep up and ambush them. It is true that Crassus crushed the rebellion but he did that by cruelly disciplining his own soldiers and crucifying the slaves he captured along the Appian Way.

This story creates two powerful roles for the two male principals: Spartacus danced by Mikhail Lobukhin and Crassus danced by Vladislav Lantratov. There are two very different female roles - the proud, seductive, scheming Aegina danced by Svetlana Zakharova and the sweet Phrygia danced by Anna Nikulina who has a lovely smile on her web page but looked understandably the picture of misery in her role.

Having grown up during the cold war I had always thought that the Soviet Union was very straight laced. How, I wondered, could Grigorovich have got away with Aegina's seduction scene during that time.  That question  was actually put to the ballerina who first danced that role by the presenter, Katerina Novikova. She replied that she was told to tone it down the night the authorities were in the auditorium but then she could dance it normally.  The same question might also have been asked about Aram Khatchaturian's score. We in the UK know the adagio from signature tune for the TV series The Onedin Line but there is so much more to this lovely score parts of which reminded me of Bernstein.

Save for a break in transmission towards the very end this was a delightful transmission. I liked  the understated presentation with a single presenter and cameras in the slips and foyer during the intervals. It was a revelation to see Lobukhin limbering up with press-ups before the curtain rose and the shots of the audience in the foyer.  Seeing members of the audience in Moscow chatting or snapping one another with their mobile phones made us feel as though we were in the theatre.  And that is perhaps one of many reasons why people clapped tonight in Wakefield whereas they sat in stony silence in Huddersfield on Wednesday.  I think the Royal Opera House has lessons to learn.