Rachel Hickey and Her Company

The Stage of the Czech National Theatre. Prague

Author Jorge Royan Licence CC BY-SA 3.0  Source Wikimedia Commons

I am delighted to announce that Rachel Hickey of the Czech National Ballet has agreed to give Powerhouse Ballet a masterclass from 14:00 to 16:00 on Sunday, 20 July 2025, at KNT Danceworks.  Many thanks to Emily Joy Smith for introducing us to Rachel and to Karen Lester Sant for hosting us at KNT.  I shall post the registration card on the Powerhouse Ballet website shortly. Tickets will be allocated strictly first come first served.

Readers can see from Rachel's web page on the National Ballet's website that she was born in Manchester, trained at Elmhurst, and danced first for the Olomouc Ballet before joining the Czech National Ballet in 2022.  In Olomouc, she danced Myrthe in Giselle and Gamzatti in La Bayadère.  She has greatly extended her repertoire with the National Ballet.

Rachel's company was founded in 1883, nearly 50 years before the Vic-Wells Ballet, which later became the Royal Ballet.  According to Wikipedia, the National Ballet was the first company to perform Swan Lake outside Russia, and Tchaikovsky attended the first night (per Pask, Edward H. (1982). Ballet in Australia: the second act, 1940-1980. Oxford University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978019554293). The "About" page states that the company consists of 75 dancers from 19 countries.  Its current artistic director is Filip Barankiewicz.

The National Ballet shares the National Theatre in Prague with the Czech National Opera and the Czech National Theatre Company.   It promises a very diverse and interesting new season with a programme that includes works by Van Manen and MacMillan.  I am not sure whether they have any plans to visit the United Kingdom in the near future but there are plenty of budget airlines that fly to Prague.

Ballet West in Genting

Standard YouTube Licence


This week and next the Ballet West International Touring Company will perform Swan Lake and will give a series of masterclasses at the Genting International Showroom at Genting Highlands in Malaysia.  The cast will be made up of instructors, recent graduates and students of the school.  I have seen and reviewed Ballet West's performances of Swan Lake at Pitlochry in 2014 and Greencock last year and I am confident that the Malaysian public are in for a treat.

I have a very soft spot for Ballet West.  It was they who started me blogging with their impressive performance of The Nutcracker at Pitlochry in Feb 2013 and I have attended at least one performance of every winter tour of Scotland ever since.  Located some 500 miles from London they do not always get the attention of the largely metropolitan dance press and blogosphere that they deserve.  They are a centre of excellence of which everyone in the UK (not just Scotsmen and women) should be proud.  I know because I have experienced their training first hand (see Visiting Taynuilt  4 May 2018).

I have not yet visited Malaysia but I understand from members of my family who served there that it is beautiful and the pictures I have seen certainly reinforce that understanding.  Malaysia also has a rapidly growing economy which is an important market for British goods and services.  There is a clear link between a country's prowess in the performing arts and its perception by overseas consumers.  All of us in the UK have an interest in the success of this tour.

Michaela DePrince revisits Danceworks

Michaela DePrince with the Summer School Pupils

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Michaela DePrince entered the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company less than three years ago and she is now a grand sujet or soloist of the company. As the rank does not exist in English ballet companies I asked Ernst Meisner, the Junior Company's Artistic Coordinator what it meant in Ernst Meisner’s Work with the Dutch National Ballet 2 Dec 2014 and this is what he told me:

“I danced some nice roles like Hilarion in Giselle, pas de six in Rudi van Dantzig’s Swan Lake, 5 Tangos by Hans van Manen and Zuniga in Ted Brandsen’s Carmen."

These are big roles that are generally performed by principals in England and as DePrince will be performing equivalent roles with one of the leading ballet companies in the world this is remarkable progress by one so young.

A meteoric promotion at an early age is not always a good thing but DePrince is a charming young woman. I met her at the opening gala of the Amsterdam ballet season last year and "I left the Stopera thinking how that exceptionally talented young dancer was as gracious off stage as she is magnificent upon it" (see The best evening I have ever spent at the ballet 13 Sept 2015).

Last year Michaela DePrince gave a masterclass at Danceworks which Ciara Sturrock, one of her students, reported for us in Michaela's Masterclass 8 July 2015. Last month she came back again to teach the Danceworks International Ballet Academy Summer School and hold anther masterclass. Imagine the excitement that those young students must have felt to take a class from someone like her.

Michaela DePrince with older students

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

The photo to the right shows Michaela DePrince with some older students. The timetable for the 18 July 2016 shows that she taught three classes that day between 09:30 - 10:30, 10:30 - 11:30 and 13:00 to 14:30. Lesley Osman, general manager of Danceworks, has very kindly sent me  photos of the day.

I should mention in passing that Michaela DePrince is only one of several distinguished teachers on the summer school which I discussed in Danceworks Summer School  31 March 2015.  It appears that the 2016 programme has been even more successful than last year in that it attracted 80 students aged between 6 to 18 from 25 countries.

Here is another photo of DePrince with the older students:

Michaela DePrince with older students

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Here she demonstrates a position.

Michaela DePrince 

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Here she appears to be making corrections.

Michaela DePrince 

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Here she addresses the class.

Michaela DePrince

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Michaela DePrince 

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

Michaela DePrince 

(c) 2016 Danceworks, all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

And I think you will agree that I have saved the best photo to last. A gorgeous portrait of an exceptionally talented young dancer.

My next opportunity to see Michaela DePrince on stage will come on the 7 Sept 2016 on the opening night of the 2016 - 2017 season. I also hope to see her in the Dutch National Ballet's production of La Bayadere and of Ted Brandsen's Coppelia. I will review all three performances for you in due course.

Michaela's Masterclass

Michaela DePrince and her students, Danceworks, 7 July 2015

(c) 2015 Danceworks Ltd

Here is a photograph of some of the luckiest, happiest and most excited young dancers in the kingdom. The reason for their happiness and excitement is that they were lucky enough to attend a master class with the outstanding young dancer Michaela DePrince. DePrince is an eleve with the Dutch National Ballet (although she is soon to be elevated to coryphée according to the company's press officer) and her company is in London to dance Christopher Wheeldon's Cinderella at the Coliseum. Yesterday DePrince found time to give a master class at Danceworks' studios in Balderton Street.

Lesley Osman, Danceworks's General Manager, described the class as "wonderful". She added that the rehearsal studio in which the class was given was full of young dancers who are inspired by DePrince. Lesley sent me these photos of the event and kindly gave me permission to reproduce them here.

One of the young dancers in DePrince's class was Ciara Sturrock. As you can see, Ciara shows promise as a journalist as well as a dancer. I am sure that everyone who reads this post will wish her well in her studies and career whether it on the stage, in print or somewhere altogether different  She wrote about her experience yesterday as follows:

"To say I wasn't the best dancer in Michaela's Masterclass today is not an exaggeration. I'm 15 years old, not a 'ballet build', and, although have been taking ballet and various other dance classes since the age of 2, I found a lot of the exercises quite difficult. However, Michaela couldn't have been more helpful and was totally inspiring.

She obviously spotted I wasn't technically as good as everyone else and helped me with my body positioning without making me feel awkward. In fact, Michaela helped everyone. Sometimes she just was like a little girl, flapping about when she didn't do something herself quite the way she wanted it to be - just like most of us girls do!

Michaela taught us both technique and how to make more of our presentation. She told us to keep our heads up, open up our chests and, because you don't speak in a ballet performance, to tell the story through our hearts. This really struck a chord with me and I will always remember this when I perform in the future.

Knowing the story of Michaela's early difficult and dangerous childhood, and how successful she has become, I find it amazing that she is so approachable, humble and funny. I may not be a ballet dancer but I really enjoyed the class today, and learnt a lot in

a short space of time, with this fantastic and beautiful role model."

I was lucky enough to see DePrince dance in Cool Britannia in Amsterdam on the 27 June and I witnessed the enormous and enthusiastic following that she enjoys in the Netherlands (see Going Dutch. 29 July 2015).  I am looking forward to seeing her dance again on Saturday in Cinderella and at the gala for the opening of the ballet season in Amsterdam on the 8 Sept 2015 (see Triple Dutch 4 July 2015).

I took an interest in DePrince even before she joined the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company because I have connections with her country of origin, When I saw her dance for the first time I wrote:

"she is even more impressive in real life. She is quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while" (see The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013 26 Nov 2015).

If you want to find out more about this remarkable young  woman I have collated links to most of my articles in Michaela DePrince at TEDx Amsterdam 26 Nov 2015.  My thanks to Lesley and Danceworks for the photos and to Ciara for the copy.

Dance with DePrince

On 7 July 2015 between 10:30 and 12:00 Michaela DePrince will give a master class at Danceworks. The class is for intermediates and above aged 14 or over. The cost is £21.50 and one can book on-line. If I were 50 years younger and a lot better at ballet I would have booked my place like a shot.

I have written a lot about Michaela DePrince over the last two years. You will find links to my articles about her at Michaela DePrince at TEDx Amsterdam 28 Nov 2014. I took an interest in that dancer long before she crossed the Atlantic for two reasons.

The first is that she comes from Sierra Leone and I was married to a Sierra Leonean for nearly 28 years. My late spouse and I never had any children but we did take care of a young woman from Sierra Leone whose parents sent her here just as violence in Liberia was beginning to spread across the Mano River. That young woman is the nearest I have to a daughter.  We sent her to school in Huddersfield where she did well. After three years in Cambridge where she read economics she married a lovely man from Ghana. They have a beautiful little boy with the most expressive face who can run like the wind and jump like a frog.  It was she and her husband who gave me the copy of Hope in a Ballet Shoe in the photograph above for my 66th birthday just before  we saw Ballet Black's Triple Bill where they gave the performance of their lives. I don't think I have ever received a better birthday present or spent a happier birthday.

The other reason for my interest in DePrince is that

"She is quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while."

I wrote those words in  The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013 25 Nov 2013 after I had seen her dance for the first time. I saw her again when the Junior Company came to London and she was even better (see And can they fly! The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company at Covent Garden 30 May 2014).  I saw that show with my daughter manquée and sister in law who is, of course, also Sierra Leonean and the pride with which they left the theatre was palpable.

I read somewhere that DePrince plans a ballet school in Freetown. I don't know whether that is true but I hope it is. Or if not DePrince then someone. There is a ballet school in Kenya that is doing wonderful things for kids in one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Nairobi (see Back to Africa 7 Jan 2015 and What can be achieved by a good teacher 3 March 2013). Not all of those students - possibly none of them - will perform at Covent Garden or the Met but through their exercises at the barre they have been given the physical and mental skills, confidence and pride that will make them much more likely to qualify as the doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, managers and entrepreneurs who will lead their nation out of poverty. I'd love to see something like that Kenyan school in Kroo Town or Kissy. After a vicious civil war that killed and mutilated thousands and the ebola epidemic that is killing thousands more that beautiful country that combines the grandeur of Argyll and  the charm of Cornwall in an almost perfect climate deserves a break.