Digwyddiad Cyntaf yng Nghymru - February Company Class in Myndd Isa

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I was inspired to found Powerhouse Ballet by the examples of the Chelmsford Ballet Company in Essex and the Duchy Ballet in Cornwall,  As Huddersfield is about the same size as Chelmsford and has good road and rail connections with Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield I thought about basing the new company in Huddersfield and calling it the Huddersfield Ballet,  I decided to broaden it to Powerhouse Ballet because the original concept of the Northern Powerhouse was a Leeds to Liverpool agglomeration as a counterweight to London (see my article Creating a Northern Counterweight to London is good for the Nation 5 April 2014 IP Northwest).  That is why I resolved to alternate monthly events between Yorkshire and the Northwest.

We held our first company class in Huddersfield in May 2018 and attracted 11 dancers "from Salford in the west and York in the east, from Harrogate in the north and Birmingham in the south and points in between" (see We have a Company 27 May 2018 Powerhouse Ballet).  We held our second class in Manchester in June and attracted four beautiful dancers from Wales.  Two of them, Holly Middleton and Alicia Jelley, were chosen by Terence Etheridge to dance in his ballet Aria.  They rehearsed assiduously for 6 months even though they are busy young women with careers and families.  The distances they had to travel were enormous as rehearsals alternated between Leeds and Manchester and on one occasion York.

During that time I promised them events west of Manchester including at least one in Wales just as soon as they could be arranged.  The pandemic and the closure of our studios in Liverpool and Manchester delayed the delivery of that promise until 25 Feb 2023 when we held our first company class at Elite Studios in Myndd Isa near Mold.  The class was delivered by Alicia Jelley who teaches at the studios. It included Sarah Lambert, Sue Pritchard, Holly Middleton, a very gifted local dancer and me.  It was not a big class but it was a very good one.  Alicia worked us very hard at the barre, in the centre and in the choreographic exercises.

Elite Studios is an excellent venue.  It is very close to the A55 and there are acres of free parking in the village centre and behind the studio.  There is a Sainsbury's local with an ATM and a fish and chip shop that would delight Gareth the Orangutan nearby.  The studio has two well-equipped studios with fixed barres and well-sprung floors, ample changing facilities for both men and women and excellently maintained bathrooms.   We shall certainly be back. 

As soon as it can be arranged I plan to hold a residential summer school which will alternate between the university cities of York and Bangor.  According to Christie Barnes, York St John University could host the York school.  We have already held a Giselle workshop and a rehearsal for Aria there.  The Bangor venue could be a recently opened youth theatre called Frân Wen.  We have already recently received an expression of interest from its management.  There is a lot of work to be done and I am not sure that I will be ready by this summer but we have made a start,

National Dance Company of Wales's Spring Tour

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When I saw the National Dance Company of Wales in Huddersfield last year, I wrote in Cambriophilia 19 March 2016:

"One of the reasons I am a Cambriohile is that Wales has a great ballet company in Ballet Cymru. I am delighted to say that it also has a fine contemporary dance company in the National Dance Company Wales."

The NDCW is on the move again with a double bill consisting of Caroline Finn's The Green House and Roy Assaf's Profundis (see Spring Tour 2017).

Caroline Finn is the company's artistic director and I have reviewed two of her works:

• Bloom which she created for Phoenix Dance Theatre (see Phoenix in Huddersfield 27 Nov 2015); and
• Folk which I reviewed in Cambriophilia.

The company' website sets the scene on The Green House as follows:

"What happens when we prune ourselves to perfection? Caroline Finn takes us on a nostalgic journey, asking us to peer into The Green House. On a twisted TV set, characters discover the fine line between fantasy and reality."

It also has this to say about Profundis:

"Playful, vibrant and provocative. Profundis dares us to ask questions about what things are, and what they are not."

The Spring tour will cover just about every part of Wales but will make only two forays into England (Shrewsbury 21 Feb and Newcastle upon Tyne 18 March 2017) and one into Scotland (Dundee 13 May 2017).

Powys Dance

Powys is huge. It accounts for 25% of Wales. It stretches all the way from the county that we used to know as Merioneddshire to erstwhile Monmouthshire. It straddles the English border to Machynlleth by the Irish sea. It stretches from the Brecon Beacons almost to Snowdonia.

Powys was created by the Local Government Act 1972, the same monstrous legislation that abolished our Saxon ridings and left us "Cleveland" and "Humberside" in its stead. Save for early medieval historians and archaeologists whose research or teaching concerned the 5th-century Celtic kingdom by that name, nobody spoke of "Powys" before that Act came into force.

But never mind, the people of that massive local government entity have created institutions with which folk from its ancient market towns and rural villages can identify. One of those institutions is Powys Dance (or Dawns Powys if you prefer).

Powys Dance is the dance authority for this municipality and claims on the About page of its website to have "been a part of the cultural fabric of the Powys arts scene for 35 years." Its mission is "to inspire more people to enjoy participating in dance" and, if the following video is anything to go by, it succeeds in that objective.

What We Do at Powys Dance from Powys Dance on Vimeo.

Classes are offered to kids, young people and adults with disabilities at very reasonable rates. These include ballet, Pilates and yoga at an impressive looking studio and auditorium at Llandrindod Wells.

Powys Dance's blog shows that the county is visited by the National Dance Company of Wales (see National Dance Company of Wales @ The Hafren: Class + Performance 24 Oct 2016) and I see from Ballet Cymru's website that that company will dance Romeo a Juliet at the same venue on 9 Dec 2016. Having seen that performance in Kendal three years ago (see They're not from Chigwell - they're from a small Welsh Town called Newport 14 May 2013) and the National Dance Company in Huddersfield (see Cambriophilia  19 March 2015) I can tell the ballet and dance fans of Newtown that they are in for a treat.