Now you can see for yourself why Scottish Ballet is very, very special

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Scottish Ballet has performed recently in the USA, Russia and East Asia.  It has also performed just as enthusiastically in Oban and Stornoway bringing not just a full cast but also complete sets and costumes.  More importantly it brought its education and outreach team.  And most importantly of all it brought its artistic director Christopher Hampson who patiently fielded questions from the audience after the show.

I was at the Arlantis Centre in  Oban on 29 April when it danced Sir Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling and it was one of the most memorable nights that I have ever spent in the theatre.  I was also at the pre-performance talk by the education officer who said that outreach was at least as important as performance.   In my review, Scottish Ballet's "Highland Fling" in Gurn and Effie Land 2 May 2018 I wrote:

"A company that thinks like that is very, very special."

Watch the film and see you yourselves what I mean. 

Virtual Reality in Ballet

HTC's marketing director wearing his company's equipment

Author: Maurizio Pesce
Creative Commons Licence
Source Wikipedia

The Dutch National Ballet presented Night Fall with considerable publicity at the end of last month (see Dutch National Ballet presents the first virtual reality ballet in the word on the company's website). I was very excited and watched it on YouTube and my mobile phone (see Looking forward to the Gala and trying to get the Night Fall Video to work 31 Aug 2016). I could see from YouTube that it was a beautiful ballet in which some of my favourite dancers had been cast but the sensation of being on stage with the dancers completely eluded me. I tweeted something to that effect and the company replied with the suggestion that I should visit the VR Cinema while in Amsterdam which I did (see Three Days in Amsterdam 12 Sept 2016).

There I could see what the film was supposed to do though the film did not achieve its task because it was blurred and no amount of adjustment with the focus wheel could improve the picture.  More guidance on how the technology is supposed to work is to be found in Dutch National Ballet's video How to create a ballet in virtual reality.

The film was discussed on the BalletcoForum website (see Dutch National Ballet Presents First Virtual Reality Ballet In The World where reaction was less than favourable, Trog wrote:

"Perhaps this is a peek into the future? I for one, hope that it isn't."

zxDaveM added:

"oh my (very) giddiest of giddy aunts! Not for me either"

Janet McNulty agreed:

"Definitely not one for me ... retreats to a darkened room and lies down to recover from the thought!"

Melody was no more flattering and observed:

"Somehow when something like this turned up, it's sort of inevitable that it'd be the Dutch National Ballet"

John Mallinson wrote about virtual orchestras and a Bjork installation at Somerset House.

As a Friend of the Dutch National Ballet I leap to its defence to say that this was an experiment. I congratulate the company for its boldness and innovation. It may not have worked for everyone - indeed it did not really work for me - but that does not mean that it should not have been tried. Secondly, in answer to Melody's observation about my beloved Het I should add that HNB is not the only company to be experimenting with this technology.  At the end of last year our own Royal Ballet published The Nutcracker in 360 degrees which has received 121,333 hits and the comments on the Royal Opera House's page have been favourable. One DaveM described it as "fun" and another commentator called Timmie wrote:

"Thank you. As a ballet lover and a gadget lover I love it! How about some 3-D ballet…"

I think the reason why the Royal Ballet's video worked so well is that it was not ballet as such  There were scenes from The Nutcracker, a class and rehearsal and a focus on one of the dancers but it was more documentary than ballet. Night Fall  was ballet and ballet is designed to be seen in the theatre and not from the stage. In so far as I experienced VR at all when I saw the film in Amsterdam I felt that I was getting in the way, That feeling was reinforced by the violinist's stare at the end of his piece. It was as if he was saying "What on earth are you doing on our stage? Kindly get back to your seat at once."

However, there are occasions when one does need to feel as though one is on stage and one occurred to me only last night when I attended Sara Horner's class at Dance Studio Leeds. Sara was rehearsing the class for a show which will take place at the Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds next month. She asked us to film her on our mobiles and then she filmed us on hers. Spacing and positioning is an issue that is still to be resolved. VR would have been a great tool had it been available to her and we can see something of its potential in the shots of the class in the Royal Ballet's film.

There are other applications too such as dance education.I have never really mastered pirouettes to the enormous exasperation and acute despair of all my teachers. I think a VR shot of how it is supposed to be done followed by one of how I don't do it would assist me tremendously. Marketing is another application and the number of hits that the Royal Ballet film has received shows its effectiveness there.

So I think HNB (like the Royal Ballet) has to be congratulated and encouraged and I hope that everyone involved in this project takes the technology further,

Chantry Dance - Making Connections

Chantry Dance Company is one of two professional dance companies in the East Midlands and the only one in Lincolnshire. It is based in Grantham which was the home town of Sir Isaac Newton. On the 25 and 27 Sept 2014 the company will dance Chasing the Eclipse as part of the Gravity Fields science and arts festival to celebrate his life and work and connection with the town. Chantry Dance presents great performances as I mentioned in Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance on 10 May 2014 but it also does great educational and outreach work which I covered in Chantry Dance Summer School 2 Aug 2014 and Chantry Dance Associates: Lots of Promise 28 July 2014.

On Tuesday 26 Aug 2014 the company opened its doors to the public in Making Connections.  This consisted of presentations by the company's artistic directors and principal dancers Rae Piper and Paul Chantry about the company and its work and a preview of its new production The Happy Prince which it is taking on tour in the Autumn as part of a triple bill.  Although the event took place immediately after a bank holiday the event attracted a distinguished audience that included His Worship the Mayor of Grantham Councillor Ian Selby.

Over sandwiches and wine Rae Piper told the story of how the company came to be formed. I had heard the story before in May but not really taken it in.  Piper and Chantry had been engaged to dance with a famous Chinese calligrapher who made his brush strokes to music.  Piper and Chantry were freelance dancers at that time.  The idea of independent dancers is not well known or understood in China so their collaborators kept asking them "What is the name of your company?" Eventually they gave in and said "Chantry Dance" and a new company was formed.

Although they are based in a small town in the East Midlands they are not in any sense small town or provincial. Their standards are those of the West End and they made that very clear to the prisoners of HMP Bronzefield who auditioned for "Sister Act" in the hope that it would be a cushy number. The company set up a stage in the prison gym and put the women through their paces. They worked very hard as a result of which their self esteem that had been pretty low soared to great heights.

After the refreshments Paul Chantry led us into a rehearsal studio where we saw some of the scenes from The Happy Prince. I had expected it to be good but not quite that good. Based on Oscar Wilde's short story it has great choreography to a beautiful score and wonderful dancing. My spine began to tingle in the way that it did when I saw Sibley and Dowell, still does when I see Kundi and Christophi and last did when I saw Parish and Tereshkina in Romeo and Juliet. In Piper's pas de deux with Graziano Bongiovanni I had to struggle to hold back the tears. It really was that moving.

Chantry Dance Company's initiative in working with its local community is to be commended for as I argued in Ballet is a Brand 13 March 2014. They do a lot more of that sort of thing in the USA than they do now and though Kathryn Barber counsels me that not everything is rosy on the other side of the Atlantic nowadays I do remember a lot of good ballet almost everywhere when I travelled around America as a graduate student many years ago.  Getting sponsorship and support from the local community is not a substitute for Arts Council funding and other forms of revenue and it should be encouraged.

Chantry Dance Summer School

In "Chantry Dance Associates: Lots of Promise" 28 July 2014 I mentioned that the company was about to start a week long summer school in Grantham. Yesterday was the last day and it ended with a performance and presentations. As Mel and the two other other young women, Yi Ann and Fiona, who had danced with us in May were taking part in the course I drove down from Holmfirth to support them.

Unfortunately, I missed the dancing, Even though I gave myself extra time for what Google maps had estimated would be a 1 hour and 38 minutes journey I found myself in heavy, slow moving traffic almost all the way while Grantham itself was gridlocked. After parking in a car park where the ticket machine gobbled my coins but refused me a ticket I slunk into the back of the Dance Pointe studio just as Paul Chantry and Rae Piper were handing out certificates.

It was good to see Fiona, Mel and Yi Ann again. Paul videoed the show and will no doubt post it to the company's website. To get some idea of what it must have been like I have embedded the YouTube video of Vincent last year's summer school performance.  According to the company's website:

"'Vincent' is a piece created for and by the CDC 2013 Summer School students. In the piece we see Vincent Van Gogh experiencing depression and a creative block. All around him things are falling down, until his muse arrives and brings him visions of three of his most famous paintings - Starry Night, Haystacks and Sunflowers. This gives Vincent the inspiration he needs. We see the paint dance over the canvas as he starts creating a new painting."

The students who performed that work ranged in age from 11-33 and in experience from improver to professional. The summer school gave them a taste of what it is like to work in a professional contemporary ballet company.

The summer school is just one of a number of educational and outreach activities that brings dance to everybody.  The following video summarizes the company's work:


Chantry Dance Company Education and Outreach work from Rae Piper on Vimeo.

I appear on that video and I can tell you that taking part in one of the company's workshops with Fiona, Mel and Yi Ann gave me enormous pleasure, self-confidence and personal satisfaction. It was clear from the faces of the associates last Sunday and the summer school participants yesterday that they felt the same way. The company goes everywhere - even prisons and care homes - and it does wonderful work. It deserves our support and we can help it.  Here are some of the ways:

• becoming a Friend, 
• sponsoring one of their productions, 
• sponsoring an educational programme place (perhaps for a kid from your home town or one of your pupils, apprentices or employees) or 
• supporting its outreach work and perhaps turning round someone's life or giving some other person joy and hope.

On 26 Aug 2014 Chantry Dance are hosting a lunch time event called "Making Connections" for leading regional and national business figures, as well as individuals with a vision for a creative future, to make connections with Chantry Dance Company". During the event they will explain what the company does, what they can do to support businesses and individuals, and what business and individuals can do reciprocally. Chantry Dance is aiming to build positive, productive relationships with others, leading to mutually beneficial outcomes. They will consider how art and business can work together, and how each can liberate areas of untapped potential in the other. This is an excellent idea and something that I have been rabbiting on about for ages (see "Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers" 13 March 2013). This is something that big companies already do (see "The Things I do for my Art: Northern Ballet's Breakfast Meeting" 23 Sept 2013). It is encouraging that one of the smaller companies is doing similar things.

Post script
Mel has just written about her experience of Chantry Dance's summer school in her own blog.

Bounden Part II - How it Works

Just before Christmas I mentioned Bounden, a project by Game Oven, a Dutch games developer to create a dance game for smart phones. This project appealed not only to my love of ballet but also to my interest in technology (see "Bounden - Something that appeals to my Interests in Technology and Dance" 17 Dec 2013). As I noted in my previous article, Hans Meisner and the magnificent Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet, of which he is the artistic director, are participating in this project.

Game Oven and the Dutch National Ballet have just released another video showing how the game works. The idea is to get a ball into the cross hairs of the screen and in order to achieve that object the person holding the phone has to follow a prescribed path. That is to say he or she has to dance.

Although I believe that the idea is to create a work of art I believe that the app could be a tool in dance education.  For example, I tend to wobble like a jelly in arabesque and my pirouettes are terrible. That is because it is not easy for me to find the point of balance in my fat, old body.  Properly programmed I think it could help me find that point of balance and through repeated use train me in time to reach that point instinctively.  I am sure that ballet teachers could find plenty of other uses for the tool.

In one of recent classes in Huddersfield two young women were recording the movements of each student. I think they must have been learning Benesh notation and I am sure that my clumsiness gave them a lot to laugh about. However, it got me thinking about Bounden. If the movement of the ball on the screen follows a path that has been choreographed by Meisner it should surely be possible to reverse the process: that is say digitize the movements of a dancer's body and convert them into points of the stave. If I am right it could also be a tool for dancers, choreologists and choreographers.  In Scottish Ballet's programme for Cinderella Christopher Hampson wrote how he dreads the first day of the creation of a ballet. Well, maybe the technology behind Bounded could make his life easier.

I am something of a fan of the Junior Company and made a special trip to Amsterdam for their opening night (see "The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013" 25 Nov 2013). Meisner has brought twelve of the world's most talented young dancers to the Netherlands where he has prepared them for what are likely to be glittering careers (see "The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company - more than just dePrince" 20 Nov 2013). This company is coming to London on the 28 and 29 May 2014 (see "If you see no other ballet this year this is the one you must see - Dutch National Ballet Junior Company, Linbury 28-29 May 2014 14 Jan 2014). If there are still tickets left do yourself a favour and buy one. I will be there on the 29 May 2014 clapping and cheering as I did in Amsterdam. Only the third time in my life that I have seen a standing ovation for a ballet.