Chantry Dance goes North

Sale, Greater Manchester

Photo Alan Halfpenny
Creative Commons Licence
Source Wikipedia

When I first mentioned Chantry Dance Company's new full-length ballet in The Sandman Cometh - Chantry Dance's New Full Length Ballet 20 Nov 2016 I wrote:

"They have not yet published their venues but I hope that they will make at least one stop in the North next year. We were sorry not to see them in our region this year. They were missed."

When Chantry Dance did announce their list of venues they were all in the Midlands and South East (see The Sandman Tour 27 Jan 2017.

Yesterday the company announced that it would add the Waterside Arts Centre in Sale and the Victoria Theatre in Halifax to its list (see the "What's On" page on the company's website). The Waterside is a particularly good venue as it is close to the Metrolink station and a multi-storey car park in one of the more pleasant suburbs of Greater Manchester. I attended two performances of Ballet Black's Dogs Don't Do Ballet last May and found it an excellent venue for dance (see As Fresh as Ever: Ballet Black's Dogs Don't Do Ballet in Sale 7 May 2016 and I never tire of Dogs Don't Do Ballet 8 May 2016). Halifax is a town in which Chantry Dance has performed in the past though at a different venue. It is, incidentally, also the first place where Northern Ballet set up when it left Manchester.

Chantry Dance is more than just a dance company.  It also runs a number of educational and outreach programmes as well as the Chantry School of Contemporary and Balletic Arts in Grantham. It was through one of those programmes that I first made the acquaintance of Paul Chantry, Rae Piper and Gail Gordon who are the prime movers of the company as well as Mel Wong who subsequently contributed several interesting articles to this publication (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 10 May 2014). Because of that work I tweeted:

@ChantryDance @WatersideArts it would be nice if you could look into doing a workshop or giving a class to local students while you are here

— Terpsichore (@jelterps) March 13, 2017

They replied:

@jelterps @WatersideArts we're hopefully running the YCC there for dance students & already looking into other participation possibilities x

— ChantryDanceCompany (@ChantryDance) March 13, 2017

"YCC" stands for Young Choreographers Celebration which is described in detail on the company's website. A few years ago I looked into the possibility of bringing Chantry Dance to Manchester or Leeds for a day workshop and actually went so far as to find a venue but the costs and risks were daunting. However, if the company does offer some sort of workshop, class or other event in Manchester or Yorkshire I will publish details of it.

This company that can fill a venue in London as well as small towns in the East Midlands. It has a choreographer who trained at Christopher Gable's Central School of Ballet where two of my very favourite young British choreographers, Christopher Marney and Kenneth Tindall, and many of my favourite dancers such as Hannah Bateman, Rachael Gillespie, Dominic North and Sarah Kundi also studied. It has coached one of the finalists in the Youth America Grand Prix (a competition that boosted the career of Michaela DePrince). It is certainly worth seeing.

The Sandman Cometh - Chantry Dance's New Full Length Ballet

Rae Piper and Paul Chantry

(c) 2014 Chantry Dane Company: all rights reserved

A tantalizingly short announcement:

"CDC presents a NEW, full length contemporary ballet for a 2017 UK Tour:
THE SANDMAN
Links for ticket bookings coming soon..."

But a redolent one. I first met Paul Chantry, Rae Piper and Gail Gordon of Chantry Dance at the Lincoln Drill Hall on 9 May 2014. It was a very special day for me for several reasons. I made the acquaintance not just of Paul, Rae and Gail but also of Mel Wong. I also danced in public for the first time which gave me the confidence to put my name forward for the Northern Ballet Academy end of term show (see The Time of My Life 28 June 2014). Chantry Dance was running a workshop at the Drill Hall in the morning and a performance of two short one act ballets called The Sandman and Dream Dance in the afternoon. I wrote about the workshop and reviewed the show in Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance on 10 May 2014.

I don't know whether the full length ballet that the company will present next year has anything to do with the work that I saw in Lincoln but, if it does, it will be beautiful. I suspect it may be related for the umbrella and costumes in the above photo look very much like those in the pictures that Mel took two and a half years ago. If so, the ballet will be based on the tale of Ole Lukøie by Hans Christian Andersen which I summarized in my article. My recollection of the ballet is as follows:

"Choreographed by Gail Gordon the Sandman was danced by Paul Chantry who entered in front of the stage in the shadows. He mounted the stage which had a single prop: a hat stand and the sandman's two umbrellas. Paul is a tall, elegant dancer and he circled the stage magisterially with his wide ronds de jambe and battements. From the left entered his subject, Rae Piper, clad in a simple navy print shift. Rae has the most expressive face and she expressed joy under the multicoloured umbrella but with utter dismay to the plain one. Producing from his pocket a medicine bottle Paul sprinkled the sleep inducing drops over Rae's eyes. In the absence of programme notes I cannot recall the score but it was beautiful and Gail Gordon's choreography interpreted in perfectly."

Of course, there will have to be at least a second act and roles for many other characters but Chantry Dance are good at narrative dance as they showed not just in the work they danced in Lincoln but also in the works they danced at Gravity Fields or took on tour (see Gravity Fields - Chasing the Eclipse 28 Sept 2014, The Happy Prince in Halifax 21 Nov 2014 and Duology 29 Sept 2016).

Paul, Rae and Gail are not just simply performers, they are also educators. They ran a Young Choreographers Celebration 2016 Award Winners’ workshop earlier this year which they recorded in this video and they will include curtain raiser performances from young choreographers around the country as part of the Young Choreographers Celebration 2017 in the programme that they will take on tour.

They have not yet published their venues but I hope that they will make at least one stop in the North next year. We were sorry not to see them in our region this year. They were missed.