Festival Ballet – ENB return to the Festival Hall

Review on Londonist.

Great press drinks in a 5th floor room looking out to the Eye, Big Ben and the river. Lots of wine too – thanks!

Back to class

Between the ages of 3 and 19 I danced a lot. Modern & Ballet (RAD & ISTD) to Advanced, Greek dance classes as a youngster; National medals, Jazz medals. Dance troupe in the pantomime, 3 local dance festivals a year in multiple categories, dancing school group dances, choreography competitions, school shows, Operatic society chorus dancing. I’ve got an entire photograph album full of ridiculous costumes and make up. I loved it. I lived for it.

I was well trained and a decent dancer but not brilliant. Not truly talented. Hard working and committed. In my teens my dance teacher once revealed to my mother that she considered me a “useful little dancer”. It’s testament to the esteem I held my teacher in at that time that I considered this high praise indeed even though what that translates to is really “not good enough”. Still, I liked choreography and teaching and might well have gone that way if I hadn’t realised I was better at words and books and such and gave up training altogether for a boozy and unimpressive university undergraduate career.

Still, as an adult I dabbled in classes at a studio in Camden and later at the Place but I never regained the discipline and dedication I’d shown as a child. I stopped dancing completely and tried just going to the gym but good grief that was dull and a slog and uninspiring. So I stopped exercising. Stress kept the weight off for a time. Then I got happier. Then I started to put weight on. Being sensible (being 30) I knew it was time for action.

Back to class.

Good training stays with you. It’s incredible. Your body still understands and still wants to do it, although, time and inactivity certainly stunts flexibility, strength and stamina! I first went to a beginners’ class to make sure I remembered everything I thought I did – and was chuffed to bits I did and worked hard and sweated lots. Next time I joined an elementary ballet class. A good choice, it was full of late 20 something women all clearly with decent training behind them at some point and a choice selection of dancewear; all quirky tights, leg warmers, all in ones, actual leotards & pink tights – man, I thought I’d seen the end of them! I felt decidedly underdressed in my trackys and vest. Still, it’s all good. Plies and tendues and battements and fondues and releves, retires, pirouettes, ports de bras, sautes and jetes and all that and more still exist in my body’s vocabulary. And I still love to do it.

The cramps are devestating though! More practice required. Now, if only I could recapture the discipline of youth and decline those Tuesday night drinking sessions and I might actually get there. I might get on pointe.

Sin and melodrama at the House

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS/PIERROT LUNAIRE
Friday 4 May, 2007
Royal Opera House

I’m a modern girl with an open mind so imagine my surprise when I spent a good part of this performance wondering whether it was right to see Royal Ballet principal dancers in sexy black undies and suspenders? It seems sacriligious, somehow, as if those childhood notions that ballet dancers are in fact magical princesses, beyond time and sexuality are still frighteningly present. Zenaida Yanowsky, however, kicked ass (having her ass kicked) as the innocent Anna, sold into the sex industry and passed coldly from man to man on her way up the pole to Hollywood fame, flirting dangerously with all seven deadly sins along the way. Her opposite number, half or sister, played and sung by Martha Wainwright, pockets the ill gotten cash and narrates other Anna’s sad story through Kurt Weill’s dark and harsh operetta. Wainwright sounds good and it’s genius to have her on stage amidst the action – she’s a brave one to move side by side with Yanowsky but there’s only one point tonight when she’s caught out inelegantly with bent legs in the air… just for a second.

What was odd about this “ballet chanté” was that although Lez Brotherston got the look was perfect; sleazy, glamorous and stylish the production also reeked of Bournesque aspirations. At times hammed up and verging on the cartoonesque we could have been having an immoral Christmas at Sadlers Wells but with less of a sense of humour.

As for the choreography, Yanowsky spends most of her time legs splayed, upside down being carted around without subtlety but then, this is about fucking your way to money and fame so maybe it’s absolutely perfect. Her provocative dancing with Mariela Nunez in the strip club is ace – bet they love being able to push all those boundaries of modesty on stage for once.

This was an enjoyably dark and dramatic piece. It doesn’t totally work and is perhaps over ambitious but the mix of live sung score and fresh choreography made it engaging and interesting enough. For more, read this Telegraph article here.

Edward Watson. Sigh.

Pierrot Lunaire is a simple short ballet about the loss of innocence and, tonight, was just superb. The Schoenberg score sung live by Linda Hirst was mindblowingly good – her voice swooping and shrieking, lamenting and cooing; now that’s what I call singing. On stage, Alexander Zaitsev was a spritely, mournful Pierrot and Mara Galeazzi his shy love object, Columbine. Then along comes Brighella. A man has never looked so good in a green catsuit. Edward Watson was rivetingly villainish, seductive and full of leggy evil. If it weren’t for the sorry fact he had a crappy costume sword I would have been genuinely terrified. Columbine’s reappearance as a flame attired harpy helps fulfil Brighella’s evil plan to corrupt Pierrot and kill him and the excellent performances all round, topped off by Hirst’s wonderfully characterful, disturbing storytelling soprano made this totally enthralling.

We couldn’t stay for the final piece. We knew we’d only be disappointed.

Read more about Edward Watson here.

Londonist does ballet news

Carlos Acosta excitements & East London Dance/Royal Ballet flirtation covered here.

Ballet-hoo

There’s something I forgot in my cynical old grumblings about Ballet proper like. How Nutcrackers and Romeos are dull and dated, conservative and elitist (well, it may still well be the latTer two). It’s the magic, see. I spent the afternoon watching the More4 back to back repeats of “Ballet changed my life: Ballet-Hoo“. The youth project “Youth at Risk” teamed up with the Birmingham Royal Ballet to provide a once in a lifetime opportunity to difficult and disadvataged kids in the West Midlands; to train to appear in a special performance of Romeo and Juliet alongside the Company’s professional dancers on stage at the Birmingham Hippodrome. The underlying aim of the project: to see if Ballet could change these kids lives.

One of the older white male teenagers, baseball cap, pasty looking, pierced and previously surly, came out of his first professional ballet performance to say, incredulously, “I was rooted to my seat”. Even came out with a stiff neck from not wanting to move in case he blocked anyone else’s view and missed something himself. The magic. Proper good ballet, that. Creating a world through incredible movement, mime, music and storytelling. It really can be something else.

This is an great series and an inspirational project which you can find out more about here.

Swan Lake: the one with boys

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake
New Adventures
Sadlers Wells, 21 December 2006

Swanage

This is fun. Great visually (colourful sets, costumes etc), comedy and tragedy in near equal measure, knowing and relevant with sprinklings of satire and spoof. A cracking Christmas production that left me with a threat of a tear in the eye and a whooping audience. This is a long post so scroll through to sections if you can’t be arsed with it all. Hear this though, Swan Lake is on at Sadlers Wells until 21 January so go see it if you can. It’ll warm the cockles and make you forget your New Year gloom. Until he dies at the end, that is. Ooops! Spoiler alert!

What you need to know

Swan Lake is the ballet you’ve heard of even if you’ve never seen it or have any interest whatsoever in dance. Swan Lake means tragic romantic love, tutus, good and evil magic and a lovers’ leap off a cliff at the end. One of the most technically demanding roles for a ballerina she must play both virginal swan maiden, Odette and evil temptress magician’s daughter Odile. The stuff that little girl’s dancing dreams are made of.

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake takes the original Tchaikovsky score, played live in all its orchestral glory, but decimates the old time story to create something relevant, hilarious and gorgeous as well as touchingly tragic too. It sits somewhere between ballet, modern dance, musical theatre and pantomime. What this means is that it’s excellently accessible and suitable for anyone. A particularly good introduction to dance, especially at Christmas.

The story

Single mum, the Queen, has unhappy Princeling to raise in his royal role. L’il Prince is bored rigid by his monotous duties smiling and waving and all attempts to elicit affection from mumsy are rebuked. Cue grown up Prince in much the same situation. Queenie’s Private Secretary introduces a giggly, vapid blonde to the Prince in a bid to cheer him up. She’s a hilarious gawky creation in a pink puffball making social gaffes left, right and centre and the Queen doesn’t hide her absolute disapproval. The Royals tootle off to a theatre performance with the Girlfriend in tow and a wickedly funny spoof of romantic ballet is performed on one side of the stage (mooning fairies, leiderhosen woodcutter and tree demons with bulging genitalia) with the Girlf’s gauche reactions and the Queen’s horrified reponses acted out from a theatre box on the other side.

Prince is depressed and hits the bottle. Queenie walks in on him, disgusted and is then subjected to a fabulously erotic assault upon her by her son, desperate for her love. Gosh.

Getting nowhere he escapes the castle and goes to an excellently seedy nightclub where Tchaikovsky’s rousing music becomes disco dancing, lasciviousness and drunkeness. The character acting is very funny from the stumbling tweedy old lady to the terribly bored Burlesque dancers. The Prince flails around and ends up beaten up on the streets, snapped by the Paparazzi. The Girlfriend is paid off by the Private Secretary to disappear. Prince is suicidal.

Returning to the castle he psychs himself up to chuck himself in the wintry lake when…… a flock of swans descends and transports him with their feral proud beauty and freedom.

A digression

The swans are male. This is a good thing. It’s rare to see male dancers get such beautiful, bestial, athletic yet delicate choreography to work with, especially in a group, and it’s great to see the swan maiden ideal turned on it’s neck with half nekkid males in feathery pants and white paint. Especially good if you’re in the third row with prime view. The men are great and as they dance with the Prince, first attacking and repelling him and then allowing the main swan to accept him and dance ‘a deux’ with him. You see the Prince gaining in confidence and revelling in the freedom suddenly shown him. But it’s impossible not to read a homosexual awakening into it too, although none of the official publicity material will endorse such a reading. Funny, really, when, rightly or wrongly, ballet dancing is so famously associated with homosexuality in men. Consider, it could have been a mixed sex cast of wild swans – no reason why women can’t do this kind of dancing to get across the repression/freedom theme. But, anyway, these swans are great and it gets better…

Plot continued, second half

Post swan revelation a ball is the offing at the Palace to find the Prince a wife. This is Queenie’s ball. It’s dark and sensuous and she looks incredible in a red pouffy evening gown. All sorts of sleazy European royals turn up (as well as the hopeful Girlfriend tart with a heart) and there’s the whole red carpet, Paparazzi and anorak fans at the front door. Queenie flirts with everyone and as all get drunken there’s sexy groping and seduction all over the shop. Prince is subdued and finds it rather distateful. Then a dark stranger enters bearing a striking similarity to the swan man except he’s wearing black, leather trousers and is a right slut. He charms and sleazes over everyone in a fantastically dishy way even wooing the Queen and sexily licking her arm. Prince goes bonkers, brandishes a pistol and ends up getting his silly Girlfriend shot.

Here it gets messy. Prince is sedated in a sinister sectioning moment. He descends into a fantasy world as the swans invade his bedroom and dance an aggresive, nightmarish scene ending with the main swan being pecked to death for defending the Prince.

Morning comes. Queenie finds Princeling dead in bed. Too late she grasps him in her mother’s arms. The white swan appears at the window cradling the Prince. Dramatic fin.

What I think

It’s beyond criticism really. This is popular entertainment done well. The only problem I have with the show is that the role of Prince is a difficult to pull off. He’s a tragic victim, repressed and desperate; a really unfortunate character who never catches a break. The true star is the Queen, danced this night by Saranne Curtin. She was brilliant. A fine actress and character dancer she did the swing from haughty to sexy with the arch of an eyebrow and a coquettish look. Stunning, too, in the gorgeous dresses. Just brilliant. Ah, fuck it. Just enjoy it.

Take: absolutely anyone really. Kids, grandparents, annoying aunties, football fans, vicars, luvvies, train drivers, anyone. Except, possibly, purist balletomanes who can get a bit upset by this kind of ‘dumbing down’ or subversion. The sillies.

Links to reviews on Londondance.com 

The trouble with ballet

Brought up here. I couldn’t agree more.

Swans tomorrow, though!