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The day has come at last! Monday 17 May 2021, and theatres are reopening, so we are off to Sadler's Wells to watch English National Ballet's Reunion—the live performances of the five films created last autumn: Take Five Blues, Senseless Kindness, Laid in Earth, Echoes, and Jolly Folly.
And it's Tamara Rojo's birthday. What could be more serendipitous?
The day has come at last, and we are excited, but also a bit apprehensive, as if we're emerging from a bunker where we've been sheltering, and we're not sure of the damage that might await us.
Twitter is awash with tweets about preparing to go to the theatre, concerns about donning "real" clothes (conveyed with great humour) and good wishes from all and sundry to theatres and museums that are reopening.
We have received a long and detailed missive from Sadler's Wells Theatre about staying safe before, during and after the performance. It makes us feel a tad nervous, but overriding the nervousness is the curiosity about how it will feel to put on glad rags, get on a train and then meet together with hundreds of people in the same building; but hundreds fewer than usual. How will people look? What masks will they be wearing? (We have purchased brand-new silk masks for the occasion.) How will they negotiate the space? How even will the theatre smell?
Overriding the curiosity is the sense of building anticipation, reminding us of how slow the hours would pass as a teenager waiting to see one of our first ballets, The Sleeping Beauty or The Nutcracker, or great stars like Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Gelsey Kirkland or Mikhail Baryshnikov. Five works, all new to the stage, all to be performed in a single evening after over a year of absence from the theatre. What better way to return to live performance?
As we approach the theatre walking along Arlington Way, the area seems eerily still. But as soon as we turn the corner into Rosebery Avenue we are part of a milling crowd—not as big as usual, but enough to give us a familiar feel of the theatre.
Checking in is easy, and the staff are, as always, relaxed and friendly.
Everything seems just as usual—we're so accustomed to people wearing masks by now that it doesn't seem out of place, even in the theatre. Once in the auditorium, there are little jokes about social distancing with the people sitting near us. The Second Circle seems quite full, but with much more evenly spaced empty seats than those unfortunate occasions when not all the seats have been sold.
Everything seems just as usual … until the lights go down and Artistic Director of Sadler's Wells Alastair Spalding arrives on the stage with Patrick Harrison, Executive Director of English National Ballet. They greet us with emotion in their voices, whereupon the theatre erupts with joyous cheers, whoops, clapping and stamping, to which we enthusiastically contribute.
The buoyancy of the atmosphere continues to simmer throughout the evening, bubbling up to moments of explosive jubilation. We're lucky to be sitting near Shevelle Dynott, until recently a dancer with the Company, rooting for his friends with unrepressed enthusiasm.
As we knew from the films, each piece creates a different world. In order for us to transition from one to the other without an interval or even a break, short clips are shown of the choreographers and dancers speaking about the works, some of which we remember from the mini documentaries that accompanied the films. These introductions facilitate the shift from one created world to the next, like the wardrobe opening into Narnia …
The worlds are the same as we remember from the films, and yet they are different. Sometimes the dramatic use of space throws relationships into more vivid relief, as in Yuri Possokhov's Senseless Kindness, even if moments of intimacy and quietness resonate with poignancy as much from our memories as from what we are seeing in front of us on the stage.
Emma Hawes and Isaac Hernandez in Senseless Kindness by Yuri Possokhov part of ENB's Reunion © Laurent Liotardo
The stage space throbs with dramatic energy in Sidi Larbi Cherakoui's Laid in Earth where the film's forest and lake are replaced by a kind of wasteland, and the use of physical three-dimensional space evokes the characters' shadowy reflections in the lake's murky waters.
Erina Takahashi and James Streeter in Laid in Earth by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui part of ENB's Reunion © Laurent Liotardo
Jeffrey Cirio and James Streeter in Laid in Earth by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui ©Laurent Liotardo
Stina's Quagebeur's work strikes as the most familiar, but we can see some of her witty groupings with greater clarity as individual dancers unexpectedly fire themselves up into the air above the cluster surrounding them. Russell Maliphant's masterly use of lighting seems even more hypnotic on stage, as pulsating lights enfold us like waves into his world of Echoes, where the swirling seamless motion of dancers and light fuse together to transform the stage space.
Angela Wood in Take Five Blues by Stina Quagebeur © Laurent Liotardo
Knowing the dancers as she does, Quagebeur (a dancer with the Company herself) brings out their personalities and individuality. Areille Smith builds on her dancers' characters to reveal new qualities that we feel more intently in the live performances and without the addition of the special effects: writ large is the devilry of Joe Caley, Ken Saruhashi and Erik Woolhouse; while Julia Conway and Francesca Velicu once again break forth from the chrysalis of their young ballerinadom to enter Jolly Folly's boxing ring with spunkiness to spare, and then some.
On-demand films give us choice: we can decide to watch whenever we want in whichever order – to match our calendar and our mood – including filling an unexpected free evening, or bringing some life to a dull lunch break.
Live performance gives us choice: we can bring our focus to whichever aspect of the performance takes our fancy or draws our interest; we can take up the opportunity to watch multiple performances from different parts of theatre, and with different casts.
And live performances grow organically. Even over the two weeks of this first run, performances have the chance to evolve with the same casts as well as with the insight of new casts.
As we leave, the sounds of the theatre are still ringing in our ears, and the visual images resonating in our mind's eye.
To be honest, we didn't notice the smells of the theatre, but we were very happy that our masks were admired.
As is our wont, we have returned to watch further performances—the final two of the run. The whole process of attending the theatre in accordance with safety guidance now seems familiar and quite normal, and we have already experienced the works live, so our attention is now more focused on the specific performances of the work. On the Saturday night the Company is on fire: Fernando Carratalá Coloma, Henry Dowdon, Shiori Kase visibly revel in the quick-fire repartee of Take Five Blues, taking exhilarating risks with timing, balance, moments of suspension; in Laid in Earth Erina Takahashi exudes the intensity of presence that mesmerised us in her performance of Medea in Yabin Wang's M-Dao; Francesco Gabriele Frola sears his way through Senseless Kindness. The energy of Jolly Folly is intoxicating. So enthralled are we by Echoes, that we could sit here watching it for the rest of the evening …
English National Ballet in Echoes by Russell Maliphant © Laurent Liotardo
The delight of watching an alternative cast is in seeing more of our favourite dancers that we haven't seen for over year—Aitor Arietta, Sarah Kundi, James Streeter, Emily Suzui—and being surprised and uplifted by dancers less familiar to us, like Rebecca Blenkinsop, Noam Durand, Matei Holeleu, Natascha Mair, Anna-Babette Winkler. And we are thrilled to notice a different ratio of female to male dancers in Jolly Folly, meaning that one of the female dancers has taken the role created by Erik Woolhouse. She's performing it with great gusto.
English National Ballet in Jolly Folly by Arielle Smith © Laurent Liotardo
In our opinion, it doesn't take dramatic change for choreographic works to live, breathe and develop a life of their own: slight changes in the shaping of a gesture, a subtly different dynamic palette, a variation in the approach to space—all of these feed the work with new lifeblood.
Attending live performances again, we realise how much we love the feeling of spontaneity both within and around us, as we catch our breath, laugh and cheer at various points in the show. It's all part and parcel of what make live theatre "so refreshingly uncertain", as dance writer Graham Watts so aptly puts it.
For pianist and composer Stephen Hough the audience is part of the performance in a "really intense way" (05:44). The commitment of watching and of performing live is bound up with Hough's understanding the way in which the transience and uncertainty of live performing arts gets to the very heart of what it means to be human:
Whatever we're enjoying has to end so that we can enjoy it again … I'm enjoying this cup of coffee very much now, but I don't want it to last forever, because then I won't be able to have my next cup of coffee and enjoy that too. So this is the wonderful conundrum … of being a human being, of wanting to live forever, and yet the only way we can experience life is with things failing and passing and crumbling, and it's the autumn turning into spring. That's what art is all about in some ways, isn't it—you could almost trace all of the arts back to this fragility of existence, this longing to hold on to something, realising that you can't, and within that contradiction is everything that we do in our artistic lives. (9:05-9:54)
Long may we enjoy this conundrum, with many more live performances from the wonderful variety of British ballet companies.
Dedicated to Carla Fracci, who danced Giselle with London Festival Ballet (now ENB) as a young ballerina, and who died on May 27th this year:
You don't need to fix things. I hate [to fix things]. It's how you feel … It's the moment, that is important, it's what you create, and this creates the performance. (1:26, 1:28)
© British Ballet Now and Then
Fracci, Carla. "'Giselle' – A Documentary". YouTube, uploaded by John Hall, 14 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=–FVqDeLByY. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Hough, Stephen. "Music Matters: Music in the Moment". BBC Sounds, 29 May 2021, www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000wkcy. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Watts, Graham. "Live dance returns to London: English National Ballet's Reunion". Bachtrack, 27 May 2021, https://bachtrack.com/review-english-national-ballet-reunion-sadlers-wells-may-2021. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on June 4, 2021 June 19, 2021 Format ImageCategories UncategorizedTags ballethistory, British ballet, British Ballet Now & Then, britishballetnowandthen, CarlaFracci, ENB, ENBallet, GrahamWatts, LiveTheatre, reunion, sadlerswells, StephenHoughLeave a comment on Watching with British Ballet Now & Then: ENB's Reunion
English National Ballet Now & Then
Introductory thoughts
English National Ballet dancers take a bow at the end of Etudes part of the 70th Anniversary Gala (C) Piers Allardyce
If you are a regular reader of British Ballet Now & Then, you will know that what we offer here is a personal perspective on British ballet based on our own experiences of watching various British ballet companies over the years, and in some cases over a number of decades. Inevitably, therefore, readers will notice lacunae in our discussion of English National Ballet (ENB) now & then (and please feel free to object!), but part of what makes this particular post so personal to us is the selection of directors, dancers, and repertoire that are alive in our memories and consequently form the foundation of our tribute to the Company in its 70th anniversary year.
For our Now section we are focussing on the period from 2012, that is, the period of Tamara Rojo's directorship, as the steady realisation of her vision for the Company has already had a significant impact on both ENB itself and on ballet as an art form in Britain.
ENB Now
It comes as no surprise to us that as a director Rojo has a very clear vision for her company. After all, as a ballerina she has always expressed exceptional vision, demonstrated in the distinctive way in which she shapes her articulation of choreography and character. This is evident in recordings of her work portraying a gamut of complex characters, from Marius Petipa's Nikiya (La Bayadère, 1877), Kenneth MacMillan's Juliet (1965) and Manon (1974) to Ashton's Isadora (1976) and Akram Khan's Giselle (2016). Rojo's distinctiveness, the intensity of her commitment to performance and dramatic cogency in her repertoire, has been commented on by critics including Zoë Anderson, Sarah Crompton, Luke Jennings ("Step into the Past), and Judith Mackrell ("Giselle"). These qualities seem to us to be integral to what dance writer Graham Watts describes as being "possessed of an exceptional independence of spirit and a remarkable enquiry into [her] art".
As expressed in their 2017-2018 Annual Review, ENB aims to "develop the art form of ballet by commissioning new choreography, design and musical composition as well as cherishing the classical repertoire" (5). So let's have a look at how ENB's choice of repertoire reflects these aims …
Rojo's very first season as Artistic Director opened with Kenneth MacMillan's production of The Sleeping Beauty, which had been in repertoire since 2005. The Sleeping Beauty is widely perceived as the pinnacle of classical ballet (Dodge; "The Sleeping Beauty Live"; Speer), and indeed, when we witnessed its revival in 2018 with Jurgita Dronina in the title role, it did indeed look "cherished", as also attested by the critics (Anderson; Gilbert; Jennings "English National Ballet"). Something that is very noticeable about the 19thcentury repertoire when performed by this company is the attention paid to stylistic detail, with the result that each work makes a quite different visual impact, as we have written about previously. In our view this makes for extremely satisfying watching: not only is there a visible distinction between Romantic and classical styles, but even within those eras, there is clear differentiation between the specific articulation of the choreographies. For example, dance writer Judith Mackrell highlights some of the key features of Bournonville's style in Isaac Hernández' "beautifully filleted beats and bounding jetés" as James in La Sylphide, and in the way in which Daniel Kraus as Gurn "joyously embod[ies] the mobile twists and turns of Bournonville's épaulement" ("Song of the Earth). In contrast, Giselle is distinguished by the careful schooling of the corps de ballet in the 19th century French style "as is apparent in their softly rounded arms and restrained line" (Jennings "Giselle Review"), while performances of the Russian Imperial Sleeping Beauty "evince …an absolute commitment to classical style and stage manners …You can see the concentration on the placement of arms and shoulders, on the expressiveness of wrists and hands, on the line of the neck and precise direction of gaze" (Jennings "English National Ballet").
ENBS students peform La Sylphide as part of ENB's 70th Gala (c) Bill Cooper
Like The Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire was choreographed by Marius Petipa for the Russian Imperial court. But unlike The Sleeping Beauty, which holds a special place in British ballet history, the complete Le Corsaire is a recent addition to the British repertoire, having been staged for the first time in this country by English National Ballet in 2013. And unlike The Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire requires the kind of extravagant bravura in both classical and character dancing that is not generally associated with English style ballet. Yet the Company has risen to this challenge with great spirit and self-assurance. This was noted in reviews (Byrne; Gilbert; Winship), as well as in our own "In Conversation" post. Emma Byrne's headline description "A swaggering, bravura spectacle" already conveys a strong sense of the dancers' bold commitment to the style, as does Jenny Gilbert's rendition of Jeffrey Cirio's Ali, who "wins the biggest cheers of the night for his aerial fireworks, explosive energy following through to the tips of his fingers". We found it fascinating to discover as part of our research that ENB President Beryl Grey had discussed her thoughts on the Russian tradition of performing as part of her "Desert Island Discs". These thoughts were based on her first-hand experiences of dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet (more of Beryl Grey in the "Then" section of this post):
The dancers, they lived every single small role up to the biggest role … And I think you have in the Russian dancers this tremendous capacity to make believe. And they're never embarrassed – the ones I worked with anyway were never embarrassed – whereas, in England … in my days one sort of half acted … until the performance … but in Russia every single rehearsal was full out, like a performance, and they actually get into the roles and live them truly. (31:12-32:13)
Let's turn to Jenny Gilbert once again to reaffirm the achievement of ENB in this ballet, and make a connection between their physical commitment to the style and Grey's description above:
The plot [of Le Corsaire] is, frankly, ridiculous … It's the sort of hokum it normally takes a Russian company to bring off, but English National Ballet meets the challenge with a swagger in its revival of Anna-Marie Holmes's 2013 production.
So while the collection of works itself is of course significant, the understanding of style conveyed through the performance of those works demonstrates a commitment to "cherishing" the choreography rather than simply maintaining the works within the repertoire. Jennings attributes this commitment to Rojo and her teaching staff ("English National Ballet"), as do we ourselves, having had the opportunity to watch her in rehearsal as well as in performance. Further, one of the benefits of the Covid-19 lockdown seems to have been an increased number of opportunities to hear discussions with Rojo on various aspects of her professional life as both director and dancer. From one of these discussions we are given an insight into Rojo's hunger for knowledge and understanding, and her creative thinking in the face of adversity:
One thing that I thought was a negative when I was young has turned out to be a great positive … I did not come from any consolidated, respected ballet school: I did not come from Paris Opera, from the Bolshoi, from the Mariinsky, from the Royal Ballet School. And I always felt that I did not belong to one particular school and that that was a minus. But in a way that actually was a huge plus, because first of all it gave me this imposter syndrome that meant that I kind of researched like a crazy person every aspect of each style, feeling that I had to do extra work because I wasn't part of it. ("Tom and Ty Talk 23:12-23:58")
As for ENB's aim to develop the art form of ballet, there is ample evidence of this. Amongst the names of choreographers who have created new work for the Company are William Forsythe, Akram Khan, Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa, Russell Maliphant and Yabin Wang, all of whom have demonstrated challenges to traditional ballet in their commissioned works for ENB. This is completely in line with Rojo's vision for her Company, her belief in ballet as an art form and her dedication to its continuing relevance.
English National Ballet in Playlist (Track 2) as part of the Company's 70th Gala (c) Bill Cooper
There is no doubt in our minds that the jewel in the crown of ENB's new repertoire since 2012 is Akram Khan's Giselle. In an interview with Keke Chele of JoBurg Ballet, Rojo explained her decision to commission Akram Khan to reimagine the canonical Giselle:
I've always been fascinated by ballet history, and in my opinion it has been when our artform has been "polluted" (like the traditionalists would say) by other types of dance, whether that was folklore or musics that were not considered proper for ballet, or themes, you know like when Kenneth MacMillan started to introduce Manon, Mayerling, or you know, by different, like cross-fertilisation, is when I think cultures become better and arts become better, and that was my motivation to bring Akram. This is an exceptional artist that I've admired for many years, that I've seen so many of his shows that had such capacity for story-telling and such strong technique of his own, that was kathak and contemporary, that I knew that he will understand an art form that is equally demanding in technique – the classical technique of ballet – but also that in itself it is a language to tell stories. ("JoBurg Ballet Off Stage" 18:00-19:04 )
English National Ballet in Dust by Akram Khan © Bill Cooper
What we find extraordinary about Rojo is the way in which her insight into ballet history has driven her decisions as Artistic Director. In her intrepid interrogation of ballet and its potential, she seems to have revived the spirit of Serge Diaghilev, the redoubtable impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, whose leadership and exceptional vision engendered such radical but enduring works as Bronislava Nijinka's Les Noces (1923) and George Balanchine's Apollo (1927).
Fabian Reimair and Tamara Rojo in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Broken Wings part of English National Ballet's 70th Anniversary Gala (c) Laurent Liotardo
ENB Then
We first encountered the Company in the 1970s. Some of the ballets we saw in the late 1970s and early 1980s have made an enduring impression on us. We can still remember the curtain rising on the white opening tableau of Les Sylphides (Fokine, 1909) and the hushed atmosphere as the dancers seemed to float downstage. The great Danish mime artist Niels Bjørn Larsen was unforgettable in his charismatic rendition of Madge in La Sylphide (Bournonville, 1836), as was the verve of the corps de ballet in the reel, and the poignancy of Eva Evdokimova's Sylphide as her sight fails before her death. And what a thrill was Etudes (Lander, 1948) with its seemingly inexorable build-up to the final climax and its sense of competition between the male dancers, particularly when performed by such brilliant virtuosi as Peter Schaufuss, Patrice Bart and Patrick Armand.
But in addition to the imprint these works made on our memories, within this tiny selection of repertoire we can see two distinct trends in the repertoire of London Festival Ballet: the highlighting of the Romantic heritage, and the connection with Danish ballet tradition – trends that Jane Pritchard, Archive Consultant to ENB, has drawn attention to. This is also borne out by lists of repertoire in programmes from the 1950s and early 1960s. These included Anton Dolin's production of Giselle (Coralli/Perrot, 1841) and his reconstruction of Pas de Quatre (Perrot, 1844); the final act of Bournonville's Napoli (1846) and the pas de deux from his 1858 Flower Festival in Genzano; and from 1909 and 1910 Fokine's evocations of the Romantic era – Les Sylphides and Le Spectre de la rose.
PAVLOVA on TV Alicia Markova and Milorad Miskovitch dancing Giselle – January 1956 Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL
As we wrote in our first Giselle post, Alicia Markova, who established the Company in 1950 with Anton Dolin, also performed the eponymous heroine in the first British production of the ballet in 1934, after which she became associated with the ballet through the course of her career. Dolin's production of the ballet was one of the first complete 19th century works to be mounted by Festival Ballet, and according to Pritchard, Markova's initial involvement in the Company was dependent on having a new production of Giselle created specifically for her, thereby placing this work "at the heart of" ENB. Mary Skeaping's 1971 staging, commissioned by Beryl Grey, was an extremely important production due the intensive historical research Skeaping had undertaken, which in our opinion gives the ballet more dramatic cogency, as well as a vivid sense of Romantic ballet style. This, our favourite production of Giselle, has been performed by the Company with luminaries of the stature of Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia Makarova, and still receives excellent notices (Crompton; Jays; Watts "English National Ballet's Exceptional"; Watts "Review").
GISELLE Alicia Markova and Michael Somes Sadler's Wells Ballet Royal Opera House – Covent Garden London – 1948 Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL
The first time Markova performed in Fokine's Les Sylphides, his tribute to la danse ballonnée, she was only 15 or 16 years old. However, only six years later, and only two months after her debut with the Company in 1932, she mounted the ballet for the Vic-Wells (later Royal Ballet) (Bland 30). Subsequently Markova staged further productions: for American Ballet Theatre (1964), Northern Ballet Theatre (1979), and for our present discussion most importantly her 1976 staging for London Festival Ballet. Although we never saw Markova perform, Rosie has a memory of a photograph of Markova in Les Sylphides from her very first ballet book (which she still possesses), The Girls' Book of Ballet by A. H. Franks, and was always struck by a quote from Markova about her relationship with the audience: "I do not try to reach out to them; I draw them in to me" (60). In a way Markova continues to draw people to her through recordings of her performances in Giselleand Les Sylphides – recordings originally made in the early 1950s that therefore suggest the importance of these ballets for her career. In fact, the 1951 film of Giselle, with Dolin as Albrecht, is also significant as the oldest surviving recording of English National Ballet.
Therefore, in our minds, through Alicia Markova, Beryl Grey and Mary Skeaping, English National Ballet is undeniably a curator of Romantic style repertoire. As if to emphasise the importance of Romantic themes in the repertoire, Giselle was sometimes performed in a double bill with Le Spectre de la rose, as in the 1976 London Coliseum spring season.
BBC T.V. – LES SYLPHIDES – April 1953 Production and Rehearsals ALICIA MARKOVA / JOHN FIELD Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL Les Sylphides La Sylphide http://www.arenapal.com
In the early years, the Danish tradition was represented by the two dancers Flemming Flindt and Toni Lander, both of whom had trained at the Royal Danish Ballet School before being accepted into the Copenhagen company. Additionally, in 1955 Lander's husband Harald staged his work Etudes, which was chosen as the climax to the 70th Anniversary Gala performances, having become a signature ballet for the Company with a total of over 700 performances over the years. Another delicious nugget of information we uncovered was that it was Harald Lander who mounted ENB's first Coppélia. This was a re-staging of the Danish production first performed in 1896 and "carefully preserved" first by Ballet Master Hans Beck and later by Lander himself (Hall 57).
In the 1970s and 1980s Festival Ballet's connection with the Romantic and Danish traditions was consolidated and enriched through the dancer and director Peter Schaufuss. Son of two Royal Danish Ballet dancers, and another graduate of the Royal Danish Ballet School, Schaufuss danced with the Company for much of the 1970s and into the early 1980s before becoming Artistic Director. In 1978 he mounted his production of La Sylphide for the first time, with the exquisite and ethereal Eva Evdokimova, renowned for her portrayal of Romantic roles, in the eponymous role, and the supreme Niels Bjørn Larsen as Madge. Ten years later he bestowed another jewel from the Danish tradition on the Company: Bournonville's three act Napoli (1842).
SLEEPING BEAUTY – ACT II (The Vision) 1946 MARGOT FONTEYN / BERYL GREY Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL http://www.arenapal.com
In our very first British Ballet Now and Then post we explored how The Nutcracker (Ivanov, 1892) became a family Christmas tradition in this country, largely through the work of ENB, who began performing it in its very first season. By the time Grey took over as Artistic Director in 1968, the Company were also performing full-length productions of The Sleeping Beauty (Petipa, 1890) and Swan Lake (Petipa/Ivanov, 1895). London Festival Ballet programme notes from 1976 emphasise Grey's involvement in new productions of these works for the Company.
SWAN LAKE, Photocall, Bryan Ashbridge and Beryl Grey, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, UK, May 1960, Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL http://www.arenapal.com
It seems that just as Markova had a special relationship with the ballets Giselle and Les Sylphides, Grey had a special relationship with the ballet Swan Lake, not only due to the extraordinary fact that she performed the dual role of Odette/Odile for the first time on her fifteenth birthday, but also because she was the first Western ballerina to dance in Soviet Russia and in Beijing, and danced this ballet on both occasions.
SLEEPING BEAUTY rehearsal March 1959 Sadler's Wells Ballet – Covent Garden Beryl Grey / Caj Selling with Errol Addison Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL
Grey had been a ballerina with the Royal Ballet and performed the Lilac Fairy to Margot Fonteyn's Aurora at the famous reopening of the Royal Opera House after World War II. Although Ninette de Valois evidently told Grey she would never dance Aurora as she was "far too tall to manage the attitude balances" of the "Rose Adagio", Grey was determined to prove her wrong, and in fact she performed the role towards the end of that same season, just after her nineteenth birthday (Grey 51, 54). When Grey performed in China, she also took the opportunity to assist in staging The Sleeping Beauty (195). Although Grey first danced Giselle as a sixteen-year-old, and also performed the role in the Soviet Union, she is perhaps more associated with the character of Myrthe, which she danced to Fonteyn's Giselle. We loved the discovery that Grey performed the Queen of the Wilis when Markova and Dolin danced in Giselle at the Royal Opera House in 1948, bringing these three key figures together on the stage. In the same year Swan Lake was added to the repertoire at Covent Garden. In her autobiography Grey expresses her excitement at the prospect of dancing her favourite role on the Royal Opera House stage (68).
SWAN LAKE – February 1959 Music: Tchaikovsky Royal Ballet – Covent Garden Beryl Grey and Caj Selling Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL
No doubt we take it for granted that the London Coliseum is a major venue for English National Ballet. However, it was not until Grey's tenure as Artistic Director that the Company started to perform regular seasons there. Having first-hand experience of The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and Swan Lake in large-scale productions at the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera House New York and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Grey understood the power of these ballets for the audience, and their importance for the prestige and development of a company. Therefore, negotiating seasons at the Coliseum where spectacular productions could be presented in an appropriately lavish environment seems like a significant step to us.
As performers, Alicia Markova, Beryl Grey and Peter Schaufuss were all international stars, intrepid individuals who went on to shape the repertoire of ENB by incorporating and highlighting specific traditions associated with their prestigious dancing careers, thereby contributing to the Company's distinctive identity. In addition, as directors, Grey and Schaufuss launched major initiatives to bring a greater stability and sense of permanence to the Company: Grey secured Markova House as the Company's first permanent home in 1976, while twelve years later Schaufuss, coming from one of the oldest ballet schools in the world, established English National Ballet School.
PAVLOVA on TV. Alicia Markova dancing Giselle – January 1956 Credit: Royal Academy of Dance / ArenaPAL
Concluding Thoughts on ENB Now and Then
In 1993 Pritchard wrote: "English National Ballet has never been a notably innovative company determined to challenge its audience" (450). Sixteen years later Sanjoy Roy made a similar comment, but framed it in more specific terms, portraying the decision not to challenge audiences as a pragmatic choice: "Like many other big ballet companies, ENB is cautious about programming too many modern works in case it loses audiences".
In January 2020 however, at the English National Ballet Gala Celebration, the Company that we witnessed hardly seemed to be "cautious about programming" or unwilling to "challenge its audience". The celebration garnered glowing reviews attesting to both the strength and vigour of the dancers, and the diversity and richness of the repertoire (Gaisford; Guerreiro; Watts; Weiss). For us the Gala marked not only seventy years of Company history, but also over seven years of Tamara Rojo's leadership. We not only witnessed a company at the top of its game, but were excited about the inventive and well-laid plans for the future, as ENB entered a new phase of development with brand new purpose-built premises.
As we all know, the year has not gone to plan for any of us. Nonetheless, with its forthcoming digital season, including works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant and Stina Quagebur, it would be difficult to recognise the Company in its current form from the words of Pritchard and Roy. In our opinion it has now evolved into an innovative company that frequently challenges its audiences with unfamiliar movement and music styles, and subject matter, while still "delighting them with the traditional" (English National Ballet 4). And in keeping with the optimism of their new address on Hopewell Square, we believe that ENB will continue to fulfil its vision of "celebrat[ing] the tradition of great classical ballet while embracing change, evolving the art form for future generations and encouraging audiences to deepen their engagement" (5).
Next time on British Ballet Now and Then … This season English National Ballet planned a restaging of Marius Petipa's 1898 Raymonda based on a retelling of the narrative with Florence Nightingale at its heart. In response to this we will consider how British ballet choreographers and directors have ensured the continuing relevance of ballet as an art form.
Anderson, Zoë. "Marguerite and Armand". Independent, 13 Feb. 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/marguerite-and-armand-the-royal-ballet-sergei-polunin-and-tamara-rojo-royal-opera-house-london-8492773.html. Accessed 6 Sept. 2020.
Bland, Alexander. The Royal Ballet: the first 50 years. Royal Opera House, 1981.
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Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on November 4, 2020 November 5, 2020 Categories UncategorizedTags AkramKhan, AliciaMarkova, ballet history, Beryl Grey, bri, britishballetnowandthen, ENB, ENBallet, ENBSchool, English National Ballet, Etudes, Festival Ballet, Giselle, La Sylphide, Les Sylphides, Peter Schaufuss, Tamara Rojo2 Comments on English National Ballet Now & Then
Ballet at War Now & Then
Art does help you process; it does help you see your own situation from a different point of view; it does help you either process that situation or actually distract from that situation, which is equally valid. Fantasy is again another of those human necessities, and to be able to disappear in an alternative reality is, I think, now certainly needed.
(Tamara Rojo "The Art of Empathy" 13:25-14:22)
Ballet at War Now
Early 2020 was truly auspicious for British ballet. It began with Northern Ballet's 50th Anniversary Celebration Gala, featuring dancers from a range of British ballet companies: Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Scottish Ballet There were glorious performances of Le Corsaire by English National Ballet, followed by three performances of their 70th Anniversary Gala, highlighting the range of works in their repertoire over the years and the strength of the Company in terms of both technique and character. Cathy Marston's The Cellist, her first work for the main stage at the Royal Opera House, premiered in February. And then there was the promise of other major new works: Kenneth Tindall's Geisha for Northern Ballet, and most excitingly Akram Khan's much anticipated Creature for English National Ballet – their third collaboration.
With the announcement of COVID-19 as a global pandemic this promise was largely unfulfilled: although Geisha received its world premiere in Leeds to substantial acclaim (Brown, M.; Roy; Hutera), the tour was cancelled, along with all performances in April and May of Red Riding Hood; and to our utter dismay, Creaturewas postponed weeks before the premiere. Since we wrote our spotlight post on British ballet in lockdown, further cancellations and postponements have ensued, including both English National Ballet's and the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake and Scottish Ballet's The Scandal at Mayerling, all of which are vital to the finances of the respective companies.
It goes without saying that the primary purpose of any ballet company is to produce and perform live performances, and that these performances require daily training and rehearsals for the dancers and musicians, as well as work behind the scenes from a whole host of people of different skill sets, including set and lighting designers, wardrobe and technical staff, and physiotherapists, to say nothing of teachers, coaches and directors. For all of these people, whose communities are sometimes referred to as a "family" (Weiss; Wulff 89), the current loss of this purpose must seem like a bereavement. Further, for dancers and musicians in particular, who perform in groups as well as individuals and rely on the extreme skill of their bodies to fulfil their profession, being cut off from their working environment with the space and facilitates they require must feel far more disorienting, and constitute a far greater breach to their professional identity, than for those of us who are locked out of our offices.
Understandably perhaps, the language of war pervades the discourse of the pandemic. Journalists have highlighted vocabulary used to describe our relationship with the virus: Dominic Raab looked "shell-shocked" before chairing the "war cabinet" (Hyde); the virus is a "cruel enemy" that must be defeated in battle (Freedman). The death toll is constantly updated in the news, and people are anxious about their loved ones, and lose them without being able to bid them a real farewell. In addition, there is a sense of dislocation as we relocate our work to our homes; this sense of dislocation must be especially acute for dancers who have to practise, sometimes alone, in limited and limiting spaces at home. And then there is time. Literary scholarBeryl Pong describes wartime life as having "peculiar temporalities": it is "a period when one feels that time has stopped, but also when it simply cannot pass by quickly enough" (93). So we experience dislocation in both time and space, the two elements that choreographer Merce Cunningham regarded to be the only essentials to dance other than the moving body (qtd.in Preston-Dunlop). This dislocation, the attendant physical restrictions and mental pain are in our opinion most movingly expressed in the film Where We Are. Organised by Alexander Campbell of the Royal Ballet with choreography by Hannah Rudd of Rambert, the film features Campbell's colleague Francesca Hayward, freelancer Hannah Sveaas, and Jeffrey Cirio of English National Ballet. The movements are predominantly performed in the near space of the dancers' kinesphere, arms folding over their bodies, hands across their mouths and necks, sometimes with tense fluttering gestures; all indicating both the restrictions and the anxiety experienced by the performers in their current situation.
But despite the poignant message expressed by Where We Are, the film also symbolises hope. It is not only that Cirio utters the words "I'm so hopeful", but the film is one of the many activities undertaken by the dancers of this country that are witness to their resourcefulness and creativity. In our last post we outlined some of these activities, from the practical, such as classes targeted at a wide range of demographic groups, to the highly entertaining films made by Sean Bates and Mlindi Kulashe of Northern Ballet. Since we wrote that post, there have been many many other delightful offerings. One favourite is English National Ballet's Isabelle Brouwers' Instagram video post in which she cooks a highly nutritious meal, while simultaneously explaining to us how to access the nutrients for optimising dancers' performance and magic them up into a delicious meal. This video was made after Brouwers gained a diploma in Sports Nutrition with distinction (Bellabrouwers). Another favourite is completely different in nature, though equally upbeat: a compilation by no fewer than ten Royal Ballet dancers performing the "Fred Step", Frederick Ashton's signature movement phrase, in a variety of guises and locations (Frederick Ashton Foundation).
Dancers' projects are highly visible – they are ideal fare for social media, and their ventures also make for engaging feature articles in newspapers, magazines and news websites, garnering such catchy headlines as "How should everyone keep fit during lockdown? Just put on some music and move!" (Monahan), "These Ballet Dancers are Keeping Limber under Lockdown" (Rosado), "Dancing in the streets: Royal Ballet stars rock to new Rolling Stones song" (Wiegand). For us, however, it was noticeable that later in May and well into June the focus of articles shifted towards the vexed question of reopening theatres and the arduous process of preparing dancers for a return to the stage (Craine; Crompton "What will it take?"; Mendes; Sanderson). This development seemed to be a response to two events: the first steps to the easing of lockdown with the opening of "non-essential shops", and the establishment of a government Cultural Renewal Task Force, which notably included the presence of Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of English National Ballet. The resultant growing concern about the future of the arts resulted in a series of petitions and an escalating flurry of anxious activity on social media leading up to a cautious sense of relief triggered by the announcement of a £1.57 billion rescue package for the arts, culture and heritage industries from the Treasury.
This situation calls for a different kind of creativity from company and theatre directors, one that is less visible, less immediately engaging and eye-catching than videos of performances (including cooking!). Yet this kind of problem-solving creativity and resourcefulness is vital for the future of ballet in this country, and is crucially a long-term endeavour. Someone who has brought greater visibility to this kind of creativity is Tamara Rojo, who is an avid theatre goer, as well as being passionate about the development of ballet as an art form and the part that her own company is playing in this. In June, she participated in three events in which the repercussions of lockdown for the performing arts were included in discussion ("The Art of Empathy"; "The Future of Live Performance", "Tom and Ty Talk"). All of the conversations could be described as "equally sobering and optimistic" and "bittersweet" (@uk_aspen). These oxymoronic phrases capture the predicament faced by artistic directors, who must be realistic in balancing the books as well as idealistic in holding on to their vision for their art form. At this time, in the face of the plummeting UK economy and the uncertainty regarding the nature of the virus, artistic directors are confronted with a predicament of far greater proportions than is usually the case: depleted income, dancers who require months to return to full physical and mental preparedness for performance, and the likelihood of low box-office takings when theatres reopen, due to new social distancing regulations. Exacerbating matters is the status of the arts in the UK, implied in Sarah Crompton's statement: "with so many demands on the Exchequer, the needs of culture may seem low on the list" ("What will it take?").
Happily, ballet audiences have all benefited from creative solutions already. Initially companies shared previously recorded performances online. More recently, the Royal Opera House "re-opened" with Live from Covent Garden, a concert series of ballet and opera streamed live from the Opera House, but minus the audience. Members of the Royal Ballet danced Morgen, a new creation by Wayne McGregor, Frederick Ashton's Dance of the Blessed Spirits (1978), and pas deux from Concerto (MacMillan, 1966) and Within the Golden Hour (Wheeldon, 2008). Of necessity, these were small-scale performances danced by couples living together or individuals dancing alone. Similarly, wife and husband Erina Takahashi and James Streeter of English National Ballet performed the "White Swan pas de deux" at Grange Park Opera House.
Ballet companies do, of course, offer a lot of digital content on their websites in order to both inform and entice their audiences. These include short dance films made specifically for the camera in a variety of settings, such as Ballet Black's Mute, performed in the Thames Estuary as part of Mark Donne's Listening with Frontiersman (2016), Scottish Ballet's Frontiers (2019), filmed in outdoor locations around Glasgow, and the ambitious Ego from Northern Ballet, which moves from the home of the characters to the London tube, to Lytham St. Anne's seafront. But since the middle of March, of course, the only way for companies to share content has been online.
We have no doubt all experienced how life under lockdown has expanded our use of technology, and the potential advantages of this, for example, in terms of the possibility for some of us to work from home for a portion of the week, and the positive impact a continuation of this practice may have on productivity, the environment and personal finance (Bayley; Courtney). Similarly, Rojo believes that digital performances and events will, in the future, run in parallel with traditional live shows as part of the core business, rather than digital content on company websites and social media platforms being used predominantly as marketing tools ("The Art of Empathy"). In our opinion, this is the kind of creative thinking that could bring a boost to ballet as an art form by attracting new audiences, making it more accessible and inclusive, while generating new channels of revenue for companies.
Let's finish this section with a war analogy from LBC's radio presenter Nick Abbot. He likens life in lockdown to being in a bunker: while we're in the bunker we're safe, but we are uncertain of what will meet us when we emerge, and what the repercussions will be of occurrences that have taken place while we have been sheltered in our bunker. But we do know that as well as performing in theatres, albeit theatres bereft of audiences, dancers are starting to take class again in their company studios that have been made safe for them; and we have a date for the opening of indoor theatres with socially distanced audiences. So step by step dancers are emerging from their bunkers, and Rojo is confident that we, their audiences, will follow suit once theatres have also been made safe ("The Art of Empathy"). As far as we are concerned that will definitely be the case, as our thoughts are perfectly encapsulated by Crompton's eloquent description of the current "absence" of live theatre performances as "an aching hole where something rich and vibrant used to live" ("What will it take?").
Ballet at War Then
To lovers of ballet, the story of how the infant British ballet flourished against all the odds during the course of World War II is now a familiar and triumphant episode in the history of the art form in this country (Brown, I.; "Dancing in the Blitz; Mackrell"). In fact, we have written twice about this phenomenon in previous posts :"The Sleeping Beauty Now & Then"; "British Ballerinas Now & Then".
Given the current international standing of British ballet, it is easy to forget that ballet as an established art form with a national company and school and distinctive style of choreography and performance with internationally celebrated dancers does not have a long history in this country, in contrast to the case of France, Russia or Denmark. As you are doubtless aware, the contemporary dance company Rambert started life as a ballet company named after its founder Marie Rambert, and in fact this was the first ballet company to be established here. However, by the outbreak of war, Ballet Rambert was still only in its second decade, and Ninette de Valois' Company, later to become the Royal Ballet, had been founded only eight years previously.
As in the current crisis, the War instigated debates regarding the function and value of the arts, and whether male dancers would serve their country more effectively by joining the armed forces, or in their highly skilled profession, which would allow them to bring the kind of benefits to their audiences that we experience through art, ranging from joy, solace and escapism, to emotional resonance and intellectual stimulation (Eliot 91). Considering the early stage of British ballet's development at the time, the advent of war could have been catastrophic for the art form. Companies still needed to shape an identity through repertoire and the development of a distinctive style; and they needed to build a loyal following. Even during the Phoney War, conscription, along with the day-to-day problems of rationing, blackouts and restrictions on public transport, all impacted on those involved in ballet, with potentially long-term devastating effects.
At the start of the War, theatres were closed, causing problems with performing opportunities. However, in the pithy words of Alexander Bland, "It soon became apparent to the authorities that a total cessation of normal recreation was more damaging to Londoners than a few bombs" (65). Evidently, access to the arts, including ballet, was perceived as a necessity to the psychological wellbeing of the capital's residents, and consequently a useful means of boosting the morale of the population, whether or not they were already familiar with ballet as a performance art. Despite this, availability of suitable performance spaces continued to be a problem in London due to the repurposing of important venues: the Royal Opera House became a Mecca Dance Hall, and Sadler's Wells (home of the Vic-Wells/Sadler's Wells Ballet) was used as a centre for air raid-victims (Eliot 34).
Two institutions were set up to promote and support the arts: CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts) and ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association). Although these organisations were privately run, both were supported by the government, indicating the value attributed to the arts at this time (Eliot 33). In addition to addressing concerns about the mental health of both civilians and members of the armed forces, these organisations proved invaluable in ensuring work for artists in their different fields (34-35). Over the years of the War ballet companies toured the provinces as well as larger cities, staging shows in an array of different venues in addition to theatres, including local halls, military bases, munitions sites, factories, and aircraft hangars, thereby bringing ballet to new audiences. In fact, Ballet Rambert were performing for the Codebreakers of Bletchley Park as Germany surrendered in 1945 (Simpson). There was also lunchtime ballet and teatime ballet, resulting in an increase in the usual number of performances (Eliot 52-3). This combination of diversity of location and frequency of performance made ballet central to people's everyday lives (58).
The necessity and stringencies of touring, catering for new audiences, and producing performances with severely depleted numbers of male dances required imagination and resourcefulness from the various staff members of ballet companies. Adapting the repertoire to such an assortment of unusual spaces must have called for constant thinking outside the box. An orchestra was a luxury, so Constant Lambert, Music Director of the Sadler's Wells Ballet, and Hilda Gaunt, Rehearsal Pianist, accompanied the dancers on two pianos. Absent male dancers were replaced by young inexperienced colleagues (Eliot 52), although sometimes they were able to participate in performances at short notice when they were on leave (90). Repertoire was selected to accommodate the situation, with Les Sylphides (Fokine, 1909) a regular item in the performances of many companies: it was already an audience favourite; it required only one male dancer; and Chopin's music was originally composed for piano.
For us, the image of Les Sylphides brings to mind the notion of escapism, and as Rojo says this is one function of art that is "now certainly needed" ("The Art of Empathy"). Karen Eliot emphasises the importance of ballet's ability to divert audiences' attention away from everyday realities in her comments on the rising popularity of the 19th century repertoire during the War years:
Unexpectedly, the multi-act 19th-century classical ballets that had earlier seemed old-fashioned and irrelevant during the war afforded both comfort and fascination to the diverse audiences who crowded theaters to see them …they opened up worlds of fantasy and colour, granting and audiences a few hours of visual sumptuousness that must have countered the gloom. (174)
However, in in addition to discussing art in terms of diversion, Rojo highlights its ability to help us to process situations we find ourselves in and to see them "from a different point of view". For some people this is perhaps more likely to occur when watching and contemplating a different type of work. Known for the charm, vivacity and even frivolity of his choreographies in the 1930s, Ashton turned to more serious subject matter in the early 1940s in Dante Sonata, The Wise Virgins, The Wanderer and The Quest. In the words of Alexander Bland, "The international crisis seems to have opened up an emotional level in Ashtons's artistic personality that had not previously been tapped" (59). Rich in symbolism, these allegorical ballets dealt with such themes as the conflicts between light and darkness, good and evil, the weaknesses of human nature, and the workings of the psyche (Vaughan).
In 2007 an exhibition at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms entitled Dancing through the War: The Royal Ballet 1939-1946 showcased the contribution made by the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet towards the War effort. This gave rise to dramatic broadsheet headlines paying tribute to the heroism and fighting spirit of the dancers: "As bombs fell, they danced on" (Crompton) and "Take that, Adolf!" (Mackrell). Seven years later, a BBC 4 documentary on British ballet in the War years was released: "Dancing in the Blitz: how World War II Made British Ballet". As this title suggests, the focus this time was on the ways in which the conditions of war – or perhaps more accurately, the ways in which the government and those involved in ballet responded to those conditions – stimulated the development of ballet in this country in terms of the dancers' performance and technical skills, the breadth of repertoire and the size and diversity of the ballet audience. Once again, the company that was the subject of this documentary was the Sadler's Wells Ballet.
While it is understandable that what was to become Britain's flagship ballet company would be the principal player in this narrative, we find these accounts problematic. It is not difficult to locate evidence that the Sadler's Wells Company was one amongst many contributing to both the War effort and the development of the art form in this country. For example, Andrée Howard of Ballet Rambert provided "psychological realism" in her work, giving the audience insights into the "interior world" of her characters (Eliot 154-55). In contrast, Mona Inglesby's International Ballet toured Britain throughout the War years staging "lavish full-scale ballets and playing in cinemas where theatres weren't available, taking ballet to the people at a price they could afford" ("Blackout Ballet"). In fact, such was the prestige of International Ballet by 1951 that it was this company that was selected to perform at the opening of the Royal Festival Hall (Brown, I.). And there was an array of other, smaller companies that expanded audiences for ballet in Britain through their commitment, fortitude and imagination, offering them (civilians and those involved in military action alike) much needed comfort and distraction on the one hand, and intellectual inspiration and spiritual resonance on the other. These included Pauline Grant's Ballet Group, Lydia Kyasht's Les Ballets Jeunesse Anglaise, the Anglo-Polish Ballet, Les Ballets Trois Arts, the Ballet Guild and the Arts Theatre Ballet (Eliot 38).
"We are in the business of mass gatherings". These straightforward and pragmatic words from Gillian Moore, Director of Music of the Southbank Centre ("The Future of Live Performance") highlight both the long-term quandary imposed on the performing arts by lockdown and social distancing, and the way in which the present "war" differs so radically from the situation experienced by ballet companies during World War II, when gatherings of people from all walks of life in a variety of environments and venues became new captive audiences for ballet. With the emergence of new ballet companies there seems to have been constant work for dancers. We are not as confident about the employment situation faced by today's freelancers working in ballet in all their various capacities – freelancers who, in our opinion, should be treated as "the crown jewels" of the industry (Thompson).
Let's finish by drawing on some words by Karen Eliot from her peerless research on British ballet in the Second World War:
Personnel with the companies was fluid as the smaller groups disbanded and reformed under new direction, or as dancers moved from one organization to another. Throughout the period, dancers seem to have gamely carried on, moving through the daily regimen of their lives, making do with few resources, and mixing discipline and adventure. In their various missions, the companies created during the war highlighted ballet's relevance to new and eager audiences; they demonstrated ballet's potential to entertain as well as to offer aesthetic stimulus; and they testified to its viability as an art form with a distinct British identity. (38)
As we know, ballet in Britain now has a long-established identity, to which the activity of the War years made a pivotal contribution. However, since the beginning of lockdown, dancers, musicians, choreographers, film makers, amongst other ballet professionals, have engaged in new online endeavours in order to maintain both professional activity and their relationship with their audiences. They have offered us entertainment and aesthetic stimulus through their efforts, sometimes collaborating with colleagues from other companies. We have witnessed their sense of discipline, in particular through the sharing of online classes, and adventure in some of the enterprising videos we have relished. And we hope that new audiences will be attracted by the current hive of online activity in the world of British ballet.
But when those new audiences arrive, let's not forget that the ballet world is an "ecology" comprising a plethora of establishments large and small, who are dependent on one another as well as on individual freelancers (Rojo "Tom and Ty Talk"). Let's remember to recognise the contribution of everyone to the development of our art form and how it is helping us through the COVID "war".
Dedicated to everyone working in British ballet, with heartfelt thanks for their steadfast commitment to the art form that we all love.
© British Ballet Now & Then
Next time on British Ballet Now & Then … Let's not forget that this year English National Ballet is celebrating their 70th anniversary, so we'll be thinking about its directors, repertoire and dancers, and the way the company has evolved over time.
Abbot, Nick, and Carol McGiffin. What's your Problem with Nick and Carol? Letting out gas on a plane. GlobalPlayer, 30 June 2020, http://www.globalplayercom. Accessed 11 July 2020.
Apter, Kelly. "Eve McConnachie: 'Dance Films can add something to the movement because you can isolate moments and play with time'". The List, 16 May 2019, www.list.co.uk/article/108535-eve-mcconnachie-dance-films-can-add-something-to-the-movement-because-you-can-isolate-moments-and-play-with-time/Accessed 18 July 2020.
"The Art of Empathy: Renée Fleming and Tamara Rojo on Creativity and Wellbeing". The Female Quotient, 15 May 2020, https://www.facebook.com/FemaleQuotient/videos/172377800811211/?vh=e. Accessed 12 July 2020.
Bayley, Caroline. "The Highs and Lows of Working from Home". BBC Radio 4, 2020, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Mky6fvrChwCRd7fWQW8h9l/the-highs-and-lows-of-working-from-home. Accessed 19 July 2020.
Bellabrouwers. "The Quarantine Chronicles/Culinary Edition Pt1/2". Instagram, uploaded 23 Apr. 2020, http://www.instagram.com/tv/B_VjsqSAme5/?igshid=1k1u993r4nt94. Accessed 5 July 2020.
"Blackout Ballet". BBC Radio 4, 10 Dec. 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p704k. Accessed 22 July 2020.
Bland, Alexander. The Royal Ballet: the first fifty years. Threshold Books, 1981.
Brown, Mark. "Geisha, Northern Ballet, review: 'ambitious and accomplished'". The Guardian, 15 Mar. 2020, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/dance/what-to-see/geisha-northern-ballet-review-ambitious-accomplished/. Accessed 31 May 2020.
Brown, Ismene. "Black-Out Ballet: the invisible woman of British Ballet". The Arts Desk, 11 Dec. 2012, https://theartsdesk.com/dance/black-out-ballet-invisible-woman-british-ballet. Accessed 23 July 2020.
Courtney, Emily. "The Benefits of Working from Home: why the pandemic isn't the only reason to work remotely". FlexJobs, 1 June 2020, http://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/benefits-of-remote-work/. Accessed 19 July 2020.
Craine, Debra. "Tamara Rojo: 'It's exciting for the dancers to have a date to work towards'". The Times, 17 June 2020, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tamara-rojo-its-exciting-for-the-dancers-to-have-a-date-to-work-towards-7d0067cfx. Accessed 17 June 2020.
Crompton, Sarah. "As bombs fell, they danced on". The Telegraph, 5 Feb. 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/3662992/As-bombs-fell-they-danced-on.html. Accessed 31 May 2020.
—. "What will it take to save British theatre?". Vogue, 11 June 2000, http://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/uk-theatre-crisis-coronavirus. Accessed 14 June 2020.
"Dancing in the Blitz: how World War 2 Made British Ballet (BBC Documentary)". YouTube, uploaded 9 May 2019, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5xxPY8er7E. Accessed 22 July 2020.
Edgerton, David. "Why the Coronavirus crisis should not be compared to the Second World War". New Statesman, 3 Apr. 2020, http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/04/why-coronavirus-crisis-should-not-be-compared-second-world-war. Accessed 30 May 2020.
Eliot, Karen. Albion's Dance. Oxford, 2016.
Frederick Ashton Foundation. "Fred step film". YouTube, uploaded 27 May 2020, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbiMm96_H2M&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 5 July 2020.
"Frontiers", choreographed by Myles Thatcher. Scottish Ballet, 2019, http://www.scottishballet.co.uk/tv/frontiers. Accessed 18 July 2020.
"The Future of Live Performance". Aspen Initiative UK,11 June 2020.
Hutera, Donald. "Geisha Review – supernaturally charged and unexpectedly touching". The Times, 16 Mar. 2020, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/geisha-review-supernaturally-charged-and-unexpectedly-touching-g3xgrf557. Accessed 31 May 2020.
Mackrell, Judith. "Take that, Adolf". The Guardian, 14 Feb. 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/feb/15/dance. Accessed 22 July 2020.
Mendes, Sam. "How we can save our theatres. Financial Times, 5 June 2020, http://www.ft.com/content/643b7228-a3ef-11ea-92e2-cbd9b7e28ee6. Accessed 20 June 2020.
Monahan, Mark. "'How should everyone keep fit during lockdown? Just put on some music and move!'". The Telegraph, 30 Apr. 2020, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/dance/what-to-see/should-everyone-keep-fit-lockdown-just-put-music-move/. Accessed 14 June 2020.
Donne, Mark. "PERFORMANCE: Mute". BalletBlack. Performed by Circa Robinson, 2016, https://balletblack.co.uk/bb-on-film/. Accessed 18 July 2020.
Pong, Beryl. British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime: for the duration. Oxford UP, 2020.
Rosado, Ana. "These Ballet Dancers are Keeping Limber under Lockdown". 7News, 20 Apr. 2020, https://7news.news/these-ballet-dancers-are-keeping-limber-under-lockdown/. Accessed 14 June 2020.
Roy, Sanjoy. "Northern Ballet: Geisha review – potent fusion of romantic dance and Japanese horror". The Guardian, 15 Mar. 2020. Accessed 31 May 2020.
Sanderson, David. "Ballet dancers need three months to get back in step after lockdown". The Times, 15 June 2020, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ballet-dancers-need-three-months-to-get-back-in-step-after-lockdown-vnrhlw6z7. Accessed 17 June 2020.
Simpson, Edward. "Solving JN-25 at Bletchey Park:1943-5". The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park, edited byRalph Erskine and Michael Smith, Biteback Publishing, 2011.
Thompson, Tosin. "The real 'crown jewels' of the arts? An unprotected freelance workforce". The Guardian, 22 July 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jul/22/the-real-crown-jewels-of-the-arts-an-unprotected-freelance-workforce. Accessed 25 July 2020.
@uk_aspen. "It's not often". Twitter 11 June 2020, 6:28pm, https://twitter.com/uk_aspen/status/1271132243000471555?s=20.
Vaughan, David. Frederick Ashton and his Ballets. Rev. ed., Dance Books, 1999.
Weiss, Deborah. "English National Ballet – 70th Anniversary Gala – London". DanceTabs, 20 Jan. 2020, https://dancetabs.com/2020/01/english-national-ballet-70th-anniversary-gala-london/. Accessed 31 May 2020.
"Where We Are: An original film by Alexander Campbell and Anthoula Syndica-Drummond". YouTube, 11 June 2020, https://youtu.be/gN8mjOLU9Gg. Accessed 20 June 2020.
Wiegand, Chris. "Dancing in the streets: Royal Ballet stars rock to new Rolling Stones song". The Guardian, 8 June, 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/08/royal-ballet-rolling-stones-mick-jagger-living-in-a-ghost-town. Accessed 14 June 2020.
Wulff, Helena. Ballet Across Borders. Berg, 2001.
Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on July 31, 2020 Categories UncategorizedTags #andreehoward, Aspen UK, BalletBlack, BalletInternational, Balletinwartime, BalletRambert, britishballet, britishballetnowandthen, Coronavirus, COVID-19, English National Ballet, FemaleQuotient, frederickashton, Freelancers, Karen Elliot, Northern Ballet Theatre, Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Tamara Rojo, TomandTyTalk, WorldWar2Leave a comment on Ballet at War Now & Then
Watching with British Ballet Now & Then
MacMillan offerings from English National Ballet and Scottish Ballet, June 2020
Julia and Rosie have been watching some of the ballets being streamed by British ballet companies and have some thoughts on three works by Kenneth MacMillan shown in June: Scottish Ballet's The Fairy's Kiss, and English National Ballet's Song of the Earth and Manon.
There is so much to watch online in lockdown – an overwhelming choice of offerings from companies all over the world. But for our blog we need to focus on British ballet. We notice that there is a cluster of MacMillan ballets available to watch that we are really interested in: we're not familiar with The Fairy's Kiss; we love Song of the Earth; and the performance of Manon being streamed is a cast we didn't get to see live and features Jeffrey Cirio, one of our favourite dancers.
Jeffrey Cirio in Manon © Laurent Liotardo
Before watching The Fairy's Kiss from our respective homes, we discover that it's quite an early work, from 1960 (MacMillan started choreographing seven years previously, for the Sadler's Wells Choreographic Group). We wonder whether we will be able to notice any particular MacMillan characteristic features; it seems likely, as he had already made his renowned The Burrow in 1958, and he created his seminal The Invitation later in 1960, so only months after the premiere of The Fairy's Kiss (originally known by its French title, Le Baiser de la fée). There's a connection between the three ballets too, in that they all had major roles for MacMillan's most important muse, the incomparable Lynn Seymour, originator of Juliet, Anastasia and Mary Vetsera, some of his most significant ballerina creations.
Constance Devernay and Andrew Peasgood of Scottish Ballet in Kenneth MacMillan's The Fairy's Kiss. Photo by Andy Ross
So we watch The Fairy's Kiss and notice how important the establishment of character is through the use of movement style. The three female protagonists are all quite different in their styles, which is crucial to the narrative: the Fairy is a combination of glittering spikiness and sparkling sensuality; the Fiancée is more free flow and buoyant, gentle in her port de bras, while the Gypsy is all voluptuousness with her ample use of the arms and back, and flirtatious in the detail of her footwork. Rosie tells Julia about the webinar she attended when Bethany Kingsley-Garner (who dances the Fiancée) talked about building character through the rehearsal process. She focussed specifically on the role of the Mother, a significant but small role whose past is not explained. Consequently the dancers were encouraged to ask questions about her backstory to give the movements more meaning. This is a clear indication to us that MacMillan thought it vital for his choreography to express situation, narrative, feeling, even for more minor characters.
Dancers of Scottish Ballet in Kenneth MacMillan's The Fairy's Kiss. Photo by Andy Ross
But we're a bit perplexed. Wasn't MacMillan famous for saying that he was sick of fairy tales? The basis of the narrative is The Ice-Maiden written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1861; so perhaps we can think of it more as a work of Romantic literature, with its melancholy tale of forbidden love, shattered dreams, loss and grief. We discover that Andersen claimed "Most of what I have written is a reflection of myself. Every character is from life. I know and have known them all" (qtd. in Silvey, 25). So these concerns in fact seem to be entirely compatible with MacMillan's choreographic voice. A bit of research uncovers the fact that between 1955 and 1962 MacMillan created a total of four works to the music of Stravinsky: in addition to The Fairy's Kiss, there was Danses Concertantes (1955), Agon (1958), and most famously The Rite of Spring (1962). We conclude that some important factors drove MacMillan to tackling The Fairy's Kiss, uncharacteristic though it may seem.
Tamara Rojo, Joseph Caley and Fernando Carratalá Coloma in Song of the Earth © Laurent Liotardo
Then we watch Song of the Earth. This is a ballet that we know. We decide we think of it as a "plotless" work, for want of a better term: it doesn't trace a linear narrative, but neither is it completely abstract. The characters are fascinating; in fact, despite their overtly archetypal nature, the Man, Woman and Messenger seem more real to us than the protagonists from The Fairy's Kiss. We always enjoy discussing dancers' individual interpretations of their roles. How does this work with this plotless ballet? For sure, The Messenger of Death requires a dancer with charisma. Julia finds Jeffrey Cirio to be quite menacing in the role: the harbinger of death – the abiding inevitable of life, who can arrive unexpectedly at any moment. Rosie also compares him with Carlos Acosta in the same role. Carlos' interpretation seemed to be more of a reflection of the original title for the character – Der Ewige, meaning The Eternal One. His presence was portentous, but it felt like a constant companion who would continue to accompany The Man and Woman into the next world. We agree that a role of this complexity and depth is a treasure trove for both the performer and the audience.
As we watch Song of the Earth, we realise that we notice things on a recording that we don't necessarily take in during a performance. Do we perhaps tend to watch recordings in a more analytical way, because we know we can re-watch the same recording to pick up other aspects we're interested in? Or maybe because of the choices made in the process of filming and editing? Rosie's attention is drawn to the partner work for the male dancers in the opening section "The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow". Julia notices another point about partnering. In the third song ("Of Youth") the main female dancer of the section is supported in a series of playful cartwheels by four male dancers. Julia makes a connection with a supported cartwheel that is repeated from arabesque to arabesque in an adagio manner in one of the duets for the Fairy and the Young Man in The Fairy's Kiss. The "Of Youth" cartwheels are also clearly an expression of the lyrics about the surface of the pond showing the world in mirror image, so that everything is standing on its head. We recognise MacMillan as a master in the creation of pas de deux, but seeing these works within such a short space of time makes us more alert to how innovative some of his movement ideas for partnering were, and how imaginatively he reworked them to fit the context of the ballet he was in the process of creating.
Thinking ahead to Manon, we acknowledge that MacMillan created some extraordinary female roles. As well as Manon, our list includes Juliet, Anastasia, Lady Capulet, The Chosen One in The Rite of Spring, the Sisters in Winter Dreams. This list covers almost three decades. But thinking back to The Fairy's Kiss and Song of the Earth, we remember that the Young Man from The Fairy's Kiss is involved in multiple pas de deux, and both the Man and The Messenger of Death are protagonists. And on consideration, this development of male choreography is also characteristic of MacMillan's oeuvre. We think of the male protagonists in Romeo and Juliet and Gloria, and his most developed male role, Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling, who has duets with his Wife, and his Mother, as well as with various Mistresses.
James Streeter, Alina Cojocaru, Jane Haworth and Jeffrey Cirio in Manon © Laurent Liotardo
As the curtains open on Manon, named after its female protagonist, it is of course her brother Lescaut who sits alone on the stage in a pool of light surrounded by his cloak. Perhaps because it's his shenanigans that drive the narrative to disaster? He is the first to dance a solo, and his conniving character is conveyed through the steps themselves as well as through mime, meaning that the dancer has to be very skilful technically as well as being a great actor – like David Wall, the originator of the role. This first solo establishes his personality with those tricky entrechats. Of course Jeffrey Cirio is an exceptional actor-dancer and makes for a real wheeler-dealer Lescaut right from the start, articulating the choreography with fantastic finesse. The entrechats are performed with bent legs. We're unsure about the correct terminology for the movement. We think maybe Italian entrechats, like Italian assemblés. In trying to find an answer we discover Edmund Fairfax's Eighteenth-Century Ballet. According to this research, the execution of movements with bent legs was quite prevalent in 18th century ballet in comic and what they called "grotesque" styles, by which we believe they meant dancing with lots of acrobatic elements performed by Commedia dell'arte figures, such as Harlequin and Scaramouche. We don't know whether these particular entrechats were MacMiIlan's idea, or if he knew the history of the step and connected it to Manon's 18th century Paris. We consider whether MacMillan saw Lescaut as a kind of Harlequin with his agility, wiliness and high spirits. It may seem fanciful, but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of the possible.
Looking back, this particular selection of MacMillan ballets highlights the choreographer's deep concern with creating complex characters, his innovative approaches to partnering, and his gift of superb roles for male as well as female dancers.
Fairfax, Edmund. "The Bent-Legged Jumps of Eighteenth-Century Ballet". Eighteenth-Century Ballet, 16 Feb. 2016, https://eighteenthcenturyballet.com/2019/02/16/bent-legged-jumps-of-eighteenth-century-ballet/. Accessed 25 June 2020.
Kingsley-Garner, Bethany. "The Fairy's Kiss Post-Show Conversation". Arts Alive. Webinar, 18 June 2020.
Silvey, Anita, editor. Children's Books and their Creators. Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
Author britishballetnowandthenPosted on July 3, 2020 July 5, 2020 Categories UncategorizedTags britishballet, britishballetnowandthen, ENBallet, Jeffrey Cirio, Kenneth MacMillan, lockdown, Manon, Scottish Ballet, Song of the Earth, Tamara RojoLeave a comment on Watching with British Ballet Now & Then


… or "it's for my boss". These were some of the great quotes out of a little video made by Karl Long, a very good marketing blogger that works at Nokia. I know I'm a little bit behind due to my holidays, but I had to post this one. It think it's a really smart video (and cheap) that shows everything there is to say to it especially since the video is made with the Nokia N95. Great job Karl!
Read on about the how and why at Karl's blog. There's a very good post on the buzz around the iPhone on the Pronet Advertising blog by the way in 'the importance of marketing and covering in moderation'.
Hey Paul – sorry I forgot to mention you, so congrats to you as well. I really liked it.


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Randy operates the pharmacy along with Dana. They opened Green Street Pharmasave in November 2005 & Fallowfield Pharmasave in November 2012. He enjoys the opportunity to create and work in an environment that allows him to get to know his patients which enables him to provide a more personalized level of service. He seeks out ways to better serve the needs of their patients with new products and services. Randy graduated from Dalhousie University along with Dana and Tania, his future wife, in 1996 with a Degree in Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy. In his off hours, Randy cherishes his time with his wife and young children and staying active with running, outdoor activities and his next building project.
Michele moved to Fallowfield Pharmasave from our sister store, Green Street Pharmasave, to take over managment of our Front Store & Home Health Care departments. She is a certified fitter for compression stockings from Sigvaris, Jobst & Venosan. Michele also coordinates the billing for walkers to the Assisted Devices Program (ADP) funded by the provincial government. She is continually updating the department with the newest & most comfortable braces she can find for our customers.


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I am new to all of this, but I have everything working with my studio set up except the keyboard. Everything seems to be hooked up correctly, the mike works, plug in guitars work, my computer works, but getting the keyboard to get recognized by the system has caused me several hours of fruitless attempts to change wiring, get into the software program, etc. I get the keyboard to appear in the software, but it says "not connected" and prompts me to go back to factory settings, which I have done. When I try to connect the keyboard, the prompts from the software don't match the manual. I am sure that I am one or two clicks away from getting this to work, but I don't know what the "click" is that I am doing wrong. Any help is appreciated. Thanks to everyone out there.
Please provide some more details on the keyboard model, how you are connecting, and what steps you take to activate it.
I have the PreSonus keyboard that came with the package.
I basically hooked the keyboard into my computer with a USB connector that came with the keyboard. I looked on another blog that said that all USB ports are not built alike. I am not in front of my setup which is at home, but I will change ports.
There are some steps that are missing from your description. It is a benefit to having as much detail as possible to eliminate talking about redundant steps etc.
closed Nov 16, 2015 by gadget69 I am not sure what other information is needed.
Now, within Studio One, if the keyboard shows up but doesn't function, or is barely functional, it's possible the keyboard has an issue... again, the Tech ticket is you friend here.
how do i get my software to show-up on my account.
why isnt my registered software showing on my account?
My hardware isn't showing up in my products.


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