Ballet West Amplified

(c) 2018 Ryan James Davies: all rights reserved
Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright owner

Ballet West  Giselle and Rossini Cocktail  10 Feb 2018, 19:30 SEC Armadillo, Glasgow

I returned to Scotland yesterday as I said I would in A Very Special Giselle 4 Feb 2018 and Fizzing! Ballet West's Rossini Cocktail 6 Feb 2018 to see Ballet West's double bill again. This time they were in the Scottish Event Campus Armadillo which is a major auditorium with 2,000 seats. That is much larger than the Bradford, Alhambra (IMHO the best theatre for dance in Yorkshire) which has 1,456 seats and it is only slightly smaller than the main stage at Covent Garden which has 2,256.

When the company announced its intention of performing in the Armadillo for the first time in 2014 I was worried (see Scottish Ballet and Ballet West 3 Oct 2014). I had seen Ballet West perform The Nutcracker and Swan Lake in Pitlochry and I knew it was good. It attracted a big enough crowd to the Pitlochry Festival Theatre in an area that may not see a lot of ballet but Glasgow is altogether different. It is one of our major conurbations and hosts one of our leading ballet companies. I feared that Ballet West would be swamped on a massive stage and that it would rattle in an empty auditorium.

Clearly that did not happen for the company has come back to the Armadillo every year since its debut on Valentine's day 2015.  For those who do not know Glasgow the Armadillo is one of several buildings on the edges of the city centre known as the Scottish Event Campus. "Campus" is the right word for the space is huge. Much bigger than G-Mex or the Leeds Arena with its own railway station and several hotels. The Armadillo is one of the most comfortable theatres I have ever visited with seats like armchairs and masses of leg room. It is also one of the least fussy allowing members of the audience to come and go more as less as they please even while artists are dancing. I have mixed opinions about that.  Ballet West did not fill the auditorium but they attracted a very respectable turnout. I saw at least as many empty seats in the Alhambra for Northern Ballet's excellent MacMillan triple bill and there are times when even the Lowry struggles to fill its seats.

More importantly the company took possession of the massive stage and commanded it effectively. I feared the Glasgow associates who began the show with the first movement of the Rossini Cocktail might be daunted by the space and lights. Not a bit of it. Those young women in blue were as confident as they had been in Greenock.  I sat next to one of their mums in the auditorium and congratulated her on her daughter's performance.  Accepting my praise she was quick to point out that all the other students had done well, particularly in view of the short amount of time they had to rehearse.

First year full time students in Daniel Job's Rossini Cocktail

(c) 2018 Ryan James Davies: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the copyright owner

The associates were followed in the second movement of Rossini Cocktail by the first year full-time students. Now that I knew who they were I viewed their performance much more critically but I could not find fault. I was as impressed yesterday as I had been last week.   I particularly enjoyed the last bit when the dancers lean forward and advance towards the stage like a wave. From the grins on their faces they seemed to be having fun and certainly the audience did.

Giselle followed shortly afterwards with the same cast as last week.  My heart missed a beat when I heard the first few bars of the overture because it seemed to be far too fast but it had slowed down enough for the dancers by the time the curtain rose.  The backdrop, barn and Giselle's bothy that had fitted the Beacon's stage like a glove looked a little bit lost in the Armadillo but the performers seemed to enjoy the extra space for dancing.

As I noted last week it was a very dramatic production.  Hilarion (Joseph Wright) tore Giselle (Natasha Watson) and Albrecht (Dean Rushton) apart and showed her Albrecht's sword with the misplaced relish of the prosecuting attorney in Perry Mason.  This week my attention centred on Watson's reaction.

(c) 2018 Ryan James Davies: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the copyright owner

She is a superb actor and I mean superb.  All dancers have to act a little but it is formal and often strained. Watson's is real.  Her mad scene - or distraction on learning of her betrayal and humiliation if you prefer - is chilling.  She rips Albrecht and Bathilde apart.  I shuddered as she tore the locket that Bathilde had given her from her neck and grabbed the sword by its point.  Niamh Dowling (Giselle's mother) impressed me again.  So, too, did Rahul Pradeep who danced Bathilde's dad.  Tall and slender he was every inch an aristocrat.  Congratulations to them and also to all the dancers who had impressed me last week and did again last night.

The last scene was enchanting.  Mist (dry ice) wafted across the stage.  Lights flashed.  Myrtha (Uyu Hiromoto) glided onto the stage. She was as regal last night as she had been the week before.  I have been a fan for some time and yesterday I had the chance to meet her.  It is as hard to pick stars in dance as it is winners at Aintree but occasionally a student or member of the corps seems to stand out from his or her peers.  Xander and Demelza Parish did so at the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School gala in York on 31 Dec 2007 (see "Review: A Summer Gala of Dance and Song, Grand Opera House, York"31 July 2007 The Press) . So, too, Michaela DePrice did in Amsterdam in 2013 (see The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013 25 Nov 2013). I saw the same signs in Hiromoto yesterday. Now I could be wrong but I was right about the Parishes (especially Xander) and I was right about DePrince though she was already in the Junior Company and on her way to great things when I first saw her.   However, Hiromoto was not the only fine dancer.  Once again I need to commend Sarah Nolan as Moyna and Storm Norris as Zulme as well as Wright, the hapless Hilarion, and all the corps of wilis.

Next year the company will tour Scotland with The Nutcracker.  I hope one year they may dip their toes into England for, as I said at the end of my very first blog post five years ago, audiences there will take them to their hearts.

If only I were young again - Chantry School of Contemporary and Balletic Arts

A few days ago I wrote about Serendipity. Chantry Dance Company about which I have written a lot in the past is another example of serendipity. Formed in reaction to a Chinese bureaucrat's unfamiliarity with the concept of freelancing it has become a significant touring company attracting such guest artists as Dominic North whom I last saw in Matthew Bourne's The Car Man (see my review of Chantry Dance's Chasing the Eclipse 26 Sept 2014). The Company has always been engaged in education and indeed it was at one of their workshops that I made their acquaintance in the first place (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 16 May 2015). Now it has put its educational activities on a formal basis by launching the Chantry School of Contemporary and Balletic Arts.

If I were young again with some ability and a vocation for dance (and could not be deterred by Matthew Henley's report that "Most professional dancers ‘earn less than £5k a year’" 24 July 2015 The Stage) this is one school that I would consider very seriously. The reason I would consider it seriously it is that it is run by Rae Piper and Paul Chantry who are young and still on an upward trajectory in their dancing careers. Paul Chantry is also a talented choreographer. The quality of their work has been recognized and rewarded with commissions in Rome, Japan and Covent Garden in the last 9 months alone. The best chance for a young dancer to make a reasonable living out of his or her career would be by taking some tips from Piper and Chantry.

What would give me some hope that I might find work at the end of my course is the curriculum which includes classes in nutrition for the dancer, audition technique and marketing as well as classical and contemporary ballet. modern and contemporary dance and acrobatics. How many other dance schools offer classes in the last skill? The fees at £4,500 a year are not beyond the range of most families and in the few cases where such fees just cannot be raised scholarships and bursaries are available.

If I were the parent of such a young dancer I would encourage him or her to consider the Chantry school because Chantry and Piper are persons of principle. I am not going to embarrass them by repeating their tweets and posts to Facebook but I have noted their posts about such things as literacy and other matters outside dance and strongly approve of them. I love reading about their little dog, about their wonder at their discoveries in Japan and Italy. In Chasing the Eclipse Piper expressed her wonder at the universe with an enormous smile. It is upon her more than any other dancer that I have tried to model myself on the two occasions that I have been inflicted on the paying public. I can imagine her viewing the lakes, mountains and temples and castles of Japan and the ruins and archaeology of ancient Rome with that  same expression of wonder.

The vocational course is just one of the School's activities. There is also an associate programme whose show at Sadler's Wells I reviewed last year (Chantry Dance Associates: Lots of Promise 28 July 2014 ) and a summer school whose award ceremony last year I also attended (see Chantry Dance Summer School 2 Aug 2014). I have already mentioned the workshops in which I have participated and I woukd add that Gita and I are making enquiries with a view to facilitating one in Manchester on a convenient occasion.

This school fills a very obvious need and it deserves to do well. Its programmes have already been successful. I look forward to even more from them as Piper and Chantry develop this activity.

Welcome Home Paul and Rae

Grantham, Home of Chantry Dance - and also the late Lady Thatcher

Photo Thorvaldson
Source Wikipedia

Paul Chantry and Rae Piper get around a fair bit.  Earlier this year they were in Japan and more recently they have been in Italy working on La Dama di Picche at the Rome Opera House with Rae as assistant director and Paul as revival choreographer.  The test as to whether they have been away too long will come when they see their dog, Bracken. If it still runs to them for a cuddle that's fine. But if it barks at them ..........

Quite apart from the fact that Bracken needs his walks Chantry Dance Company have a very busy programme in England. They have an Autumn tour starting on 10 Sept 2015 which will take in Grantham, Stamford, Birmingham, Worcester, Halifax and London which I discussed in Chantry Dance's Autumn Tour 13 May 2015. They will perform Wooderverse (a combination of dance and poetry) for the patients of the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham this month and in September.  In August they run their summer school at Dance Pointe in Grantham.  I attended the awards ceremony last year and spoke to several of the students who had enjoyed the course (see Chantry Dance Summer School 2 Aug 2014). They also have their busy associates programme which runs for most of the year.

Chantry Dance are one of only two ballet companies based in the East Midlands - Ballet Theatre UK being the other. They are in Grantham which is famous for being close to the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton and infamous in some peoples' books (though not entirely in mine) for being the birthplace of our first and so far only female Prime Minister. They seem proud of their town (as well they might be) contributing to its science and arts festival, starting their tours and basing their summer school there. They gave me the confidence to dance in public for which I shall always be grateful (see Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance 10 May 2014).

Chantry Dance Associates: Lots of Promise

Sadler's Wells Theatre

Source Wikipedia

Both Mel and I have written about Chantry Dance recently (see Jane Lambert "Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance" 10 May 2014 and Mel Wong "July News from Chantry Dance Company" 6 July 2014). One of the company's activities is an associate programme for "young dancers of a pre-vocational or pre-professional level, who aspire to have a career in dance." That programme

"exists to nurture, develop and inspire the country's most talented young dancers, and to encourage them to be courageous with their dancing in order to reach new levels in their technique and interpretative skills."

Yesterday, the associates (participants on the programme) showed what they could do in the Lilian Baylis Studio of Sadler's Wells.

Owing to the closure of the M1 between junctions 21 and 22 yesterday (see "M1 motorway closed between junctions 21 and 22 following serious accident" 27 July 2014 Leicester Mercury) my journey was delayed by nearly 2 hours and I arrived towards the end of the show.  Gail Gordon, who must have formed a terrible impression of me because I was also late for the Dream Dance workshop, ushered me into a rehearsal studio and perched me on a piano stool in order not to disturb the associates who were dancing to Vivaldi or Paul Chantry who was filming them on an iPad.  They were all young women and I spotted immediately one I knew: Fiona who had taught me the dance in the Dream Dance workshop. After the show, Rae Piper told me that the dancers ranged in age from 11 to 24. At least one was at Elmhurst and two others were on their way to Trinity Laban.

The steps that the associates danced were not easy and demanded a lot of energy and stamina. The choreography to which Gail told me she had contributed was intricate.  It was executed with lightness, precision and obvious joy. The movement of those artists lifted my spirits and helped me forget my terrible journey.

After the Vivaldi several of the associates performed their own short solos. I had to take notes on the back of a VAT receipt because I had left my notebook in my car in my rush to catch a train at Luton Parkway. Consequently I was able to record my impressions of only a few of those pieces with the result that I am unable to do justice to the others. They were all good and I congratulate all the artists. I enjoyed their work enormously. However, those that I did record made a particular impression on me. An associate whom I know only as Jessica explored steps and movements beyond the positions of classical ballet to create novel and ingenious body shapes. She reminded me of two performances that I had seen recently: first, Ed Watson in the first act of The Winter's Tale where his body contortions represented his jealousy and irrationality; secondly, Daniel Montero's Ballet 101 in the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company's gala. Another dancer whose name I forget interpreted the story of Icarus and Daedalus. A human biology student represented heart beats and blood flows. Yet another one showed considerably dramatic promise in her improvisation.

The performance took place in a part of Sadler's Wells that I had not seen before. There was a plaque to Sir Frederick Ashton on the wall and busts of him as well as Fonteyn, Somes, Dolin, Lillian Baylis and Madam (I do hope real dancers will excuse my presumption in referring to Dane Ninette de Valois in this way) at the entrance. I had seen all of those great men and women except Baylis when they were alive and the flood of memories those busts triggered made my eyes water.

But I was also reminded that ballet is not all magic and involves hard work and sweat. I found myself in a lift with a troupe of Brazilian dancers including one who was naked except for a pair of sweaty underpants. They had obviously been dancing their socks off. Literally. That's about as up close and personal as most of us would care to get.

Talking about sweat, Chantry Dance is a company that works incredibly hard. On Saturday they had been performing The Sandman plus a new work in the Lincoln Drill Hall. Today they are starting a week long summer school in which Mel and Fiona are taking part. Later next month they are meeting local business. In October they will take their latest works which includes The Happy Prince on tour. One of the venues they will visit is The Square Chapel in Halifax on 20 Nov 2014.