Month: May 2013

Dirty Dancing Set To Return!

Dirty Dancing - Aldwych TheatreThe hit West End musical that went on to tour the UK, Dirty Dancing, is set to replace Viva Forever! at the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End, depicting a story of talent shows and friendships set to the music of the iconic Spice Girls. Despite this pull, the new musical is set to close its doors later this summer and welcome Dirty Dancing, which previously played in London at the Aldwych Theatre from 2006 until 2011 and has since been touring the UK. The much-loved musical will finish touring in June at the Manchester Opera House before returning to London and opening at the Piccadilly Theatre from July.

Beginning as a hit film in 1987, the American romance hooked the world with its lead protagonists Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey who played Johnny Castle and Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman respectively. Dirty Dancing then became the longest running show in the history of the Aldwych Theatre, having sold out for the first six months of its run before it opened! The classic story on stage went on to break records in Germany and the UK for having the highest advance ticket sales in history.

Dirty Dancing on tour was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, Australia in November 2004. Following this, the production went on a national tour of Australia and New Zealand, visiting Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Auckland and the show had a sell-out season of 18 months throughout Australia and New Zealand. The show has gone on to perform across the world in Toronto, Canada; Utrecht, Holland; a North American Tour including Chicago, Boston and LA and the production continues to play to sold-out houses and recently sold its one millionth ticket. Following the reinstatement of the iconic Dirty Dancing to London’s theatreland, a new UK tour of the musical will be launched in March next year.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Life After Training

DancersAfter three institutionalised years at performing arts college, the big bad world on the other side of the studio door can seem a little daunting. Many students will graduate from college alongside their peers, only to be greeted with the graduates from all the other acting, musical theatre and dance colleges all over the world, all battling for the same jobs. This is even without considering graduates from years before the current year, in addition to the professional dancers already established within the industry. When auditions are looming, it could seem that a fresh-faced graduate is ultimately a minuscule fish in a huge high-kicking sea.

This is not to say that new graduates are unable to obtain jobs in theatres and on projects, as this decision lies purely with the casting director. Your pirouettes may have been the best of your third year, but if your hair colour and height are not what fits the production bill, the job may go elsewhere.

Alternatively, many graduates lean towards the teaching disciplines, eager to apply their three years of training and experience to a different venture and help young dancers to prepare for their future dancing years. Many institutes of higher education and examination boards such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, the Royal Academy of Dance, the International Dance Teachers’ Association and the British Ballet Organisation are able to provide professional dancers with the qualifications they need to take up teaching jobs and help pass on their knowledge of performing arts. It is arguable that the satisfaction gleaned from teaching and aiding young students is equal to that of performing on stage, the buzz of applying yourself to the job immeasurable.

There are ultimately many different avenues of work for performing arts graduates, and all waiting for a fresh influx of young professionals later this year!

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

English National Ballet and the The Coronation Festival

ENB Rebranded LogoIt has been announced that English National Ballet will take part in three Gala performances in the grounds of Buckingham Palace as part of the Coronation Festival in July this year, performing Tempus, a specially commissioned piece paying tribute to Her Majesty The Queen to celebrate the 60th anniversary of her Coronation.

Tempus, choreographed by Associate Artist George Williamson to a new score by composer Christopher Mayo, will be danced by Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, alongside other Principals and Artists of the company such as Esteban Berlanga, Daria Klimentová, Vadim Muntagirov, Fernanda Oliveira, Zhanat Atymtayev, Bridgett Zehr, Ken Saruhashi, Ksenia Ovsyanick and Junor Souza. The work will be inspired by incredible era of change during her reign and a sense of transition and memories in order to celebrate the Queen’s years and simultaneously look to the future of the art form.

The Gala will form part of the Coronation Festival , which is to be a unique public event hosted by The Royal Warrant Holders Association and will encapsulate the Festival’s themes of excellence and innovation with a particular focus on youth, in a celebration of the past 60 years of performing arts. The Festival will be open to members of the public from Friday 12 to Sunday 14 July and the Galas will be broadcast on TV and radio, with a Royal Preview on Thursday, 11th July for invited guests.

The Coronation Festival is being hosted by The Royal Warrant Holders Association, and will showcase over 200 of the companies who have supplied goods or services for at least five years to the Households of The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh or The Prince of Wales.

The Big Dance Pledge

Big Dance 2013Artistic Director of English National Ballet Tamara Rojo has begun leading the Big Dance Pledge, an initiative to be performed by thousands of people all over the world on the weekend of 17-19 May. She was joined by her dancers from ENB and young dancers from Chingford Foundation School, London, to raise awareness of this fantastic project which they hope will go global.

Organised by Big Dance, the world’s largest biennial festival of dance and with the support of the British Council, the Big Dance Pledge has been taught, learnt and will be performed by over 32,000 people this weekend in hundreds of places around the world including India, Lebanon and Brazil. The Pledge has been specially choreographed by English National Ballet’s Creative Learning department (specifically by artists Laura Harvey (Creative Associate) and Jenna Lee (Soloist) and is a 3-minute dance routine that anyone can do – regardless of age or experience.

ENB hopes to inspire as many people as possible to take part and embrace the art of dance as a chance to learn something new and engage in a community experience after the fantastic success of Big Dance 2012. Last year the cause reached millions of people all over the country through the Big Dance Festival, which will take place again in 2014. The Pledge therefore aims to continue this success and remind everyone of the power of Big Dance to enfold communities in performing arts.

The Big Dance Pledge ultimately strives to build on the legacy left by last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in involving all in a worthy and motivating cause, inspiring and encouraging people to make dance a bigger and more enriching part of their lives. With Tamara as one at the helm, who is an International Ambassador for Big Dance, it seems that Big Dance will continue as the ultimate dance experience in bringing dance to as many as possible in unexpected ways.

The Pledge is available to learn now and will be performed during the Pledge Performance Weekend (17-19 May). Watch the video below for more information.

Alina Cojocaru For Hospice of Hope

Aina CojocaruAlina Cojocaru, back in 2008, launched the fundraising for the Bucharest Hospice Appeal through her first gala for Hospice of Hope, a Romanian charity operating to prevent the abandonment of sick children. This donation of so much of her time and effort is in an entirely different vein from her Royal Ballet status.

Now for 2013, Cojocaru will be providing Sadler’s Wells with another unique evening in the completion of the project and another gala performance in aid of the charity. This incredible evening of artists will work to celebrate the past, present and future of dance, and will include highlights from classical repertoire in addition to some rarely seen works , such as those choreographed by Marius Petipa, Tim Rushton, and her fiancé and dance partner Johan Kobborg, amongst others.

The programme will include 101, Don Quixote, Carmen Fantasie for Violin and Orchestra, Excerpts from Sleeping Beauty, Salute (UK premiere), Dying Swan solo and Les Lutins amongst many more. In turn, dancing these pieces on 12 May will be internationally renowned dancers, giving the gala audience the chance to see many talented stars of the classical ballet industry perform under one roof and for one night only. These stars include Isabelle Ciaravola (Paris Opera Ballet), English National Ballet Principals Erina Takahashi and Vadim Muntagirov, Steven McRae, Johan Kobborg, Akane Takada, Frankie Hayward, Marcelino Sambe and James Hay (Royal Ballet), Sergei Polunin (Stanislavsky Ballet), Xander Parish (Mariinsky Ballet), Matthew Golding (Dutch National Ballet), Ana Sendas and Stefanos Bizas (Danish Dance Theatre) and violin virtuoso Charlie Siem will also take to the stage.

Alina recently travelled to Bucharest to see the progress of the Hospice of Hope building site, in addition to The National Ballet School of Romania, in which some of its students will perform a fragment of Johan Kobborg’s Salute.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Gillian Lynne: A Dance Legend

Gillian Lynne with Peter Land (2008)Beginning as a soloist under Dame Ninette de Valois in the original Sadler’s Wells Ballet, going on to become a star dancer at the London Palladium, acting opposite Errol Flynn in films and dancing on television, it seems Gillian Lynne has done the lot!

Gillian’s career took off when she danced the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake aged 16 and was spotted by de Valois. She entered Sadler’s Wells Ballet aged 17 and rose through the ranks to become a leading dancer, with her roles including the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty, one of three ballerinas in Symphonic Variations, Queen of the Willis in Giselle, Black Ballerina in Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial, and Black Queen in de Valois’ Checkmate. Gillian went on to set herself on the dance map as a performer, choreographer, director and innovator.

Gillian was instrumental in the development of jazz dance in Britain and her distinctive style, which is a fusion of classical and jazz, lead to her fantastic work on the world famous musical Cats – for which she is probably most well-known – and also on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s worldwide hits Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love, which she staged and choreographed. Aside from these huge hits which took the West End by storm in their heyday and continue to do so today, Gillian has also worked on shows such as Cabaret, Pickwick, Hans Christian Andersen, My Fair Lady, Songbook and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and for the Royal Shakespeare Company, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, The Boyfriend and The Secret Garden. In addition to the West End stage, her ballets included The Bröntes, On Such A Night (Northern Ballet) and Journey (Bolshoi Ballet), and feature films include A Wonderful Life, Half a Sixpence and Gillian also staged many of the famous Muppet Shows.

Gillian still has the same vigour and passion for life in her late eighties, most recently being awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Olivier Awards and giving the keynote speech at the Royal Academy of Dance’s Dance for Lifelong Wellbeing conference, the syllabus under which she originally trained. Gillian was honoured by the Royal Academy of Dance with the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award in 2001, and was awarded the CBE in 1997.

Image courtesy of shakespearetheatreco (Shakespeare Theatre Company) on Flickr.

Choros – A Pas De Trente Deux!

Choros

Today we are highlighting an incredibly hypnotic short film called Choros. Filmed in 2011 by Michael Langan & Terah Maher, Choros is a dizzying combination of music, dance and cinema where a single dancer (Maher) is “layered” over herself 32 times… in effect, a “pas de trente-deux”! Set to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, the result is surreal, highly inventive and just plain beautiful to watch.

The filming of Choros references a historical technique called chronophotography, whcih used multiple photographs to enable the scientific study of a subject’s movement. However, Langan and Maher have advanced the technique in Choros through digital innovation, which has lead to multiple international awards since its launch.

Watching the full work requires freeing up some time as it lasts for 13 minutes, but we urge everyone to watch this truly stunning film… it is inspirational!

ZooNation’s New show!

ZooNation Dance CompanyZooNation, the hip hop dance company founded by Kate Prince in 2002, will perform the world premiere of new production Groove on Down the Road at the Southbank Centre in London this summer. The new show is written and directed by Prince, and has been commissioned by the Southbank Centre, described as a “unique twist” on The Wizard of Oz.

Prince’s production will include music from the 1978 film The Wiz, and will be re-mixed with current hits by DJ Walde. The cast will comprise dancers under the age of 19 and two 11 year-old dancers, Arizona Snow and Portia Oti, will share the role of Dorothy, taking to the stage and unleashing their talents. This cast is born from the ZooNation Academy of Dance, which Prince trains each week, an admirer of their capability and talents at such a young age. The dancers have had huge amounts of access to hip hop dance and the culture which surrounds it, and the wealth of information that comes too. As a result of this, the group is made up of a whole new breed of dancers who have a raw, authentic and fearless skill and passion for dance.

The show marks the return of the hip hop dance company to the venue after it last performed there in 2010 with smash-hit Into the Hoods, a take on the musical Into the Woods. Into the Woods was created in 2005 and was commissioned by Sadler’s Wells to be performed for the first time in 2006 at the Peacock Theatre. The show then opened on the West End in 2008 and therefore became the first hip hop dance show on the West End and the longest running dance show in the history of Theatreland.

Groove on Down the Road will run from August 10 to September 1 at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Dawn Williams – Life On Tour In Cats!

Cats

As the Cats tour grips the country in a wealth of feline frolics and incredible talent, Dance Direct caught up with Dawn Williams, who is fresh out of musical theatre college and is playing kitten Jemima.

Dawn, have you always wanted to be on stage?

I have wanted to be on stage, for as long as I can remember, and have been dancing, singing and acting from such a young age. Performing was the only thing that I knew I wanted to do as a career.

Dawn WilliamsWhere did you go to train and what was it like there?

I went to Harlequin Stage School in Worcesterhire, as well as WODYS amateur dramatics and Emma Winscom Young Singers. For the last 3 years, I have trained at Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom, Surrey, where I graduated in Professional Musical Theatre and Dance. It was three years that I wouldn’t change for the world and I feel that it was the right school for me as it fulfilled all my needs and concentrated on aspects which I needed to improve and learn more about. Of course, it had highs and lows, and it was never easy, but the hard work was definitely worth it and I graduated ready for the industry. Well, as ready as I could have been! I think you are always going to be learning ‘on-the-job’ and from other people throughout your career.

Did you audition a lot before Cats?

I started auditioning in my final term at Laine, through the college agency. I auditioned for cruises, West End shows and tours, even flew to Germany for an audition. I did okay in these auditions, and wasn’t too disappointed as I was still at college. I then got a QDOS pantomime playing Wendy in Peter Pan. I was over the moon, as I felt that this was a good place to start my career. From graduating from Laine I then got a new agent.  I got signed by Gina Rowland from Bronia Buchannan and was fortunate to obtain fringe work at the Union theatre in a production of Call Me Madam directed by Michael Strassen. It was then that I started to audition for Cats and was successful. I was very lucky as I then went from job to job.

What was the Cats audition like?

The Cats audition process started with a dance round first, where we were taught a section of the Jellicle Ball. Then there was a cut which kept back a handful from a room full of girls. We then had to sing our own material and I got called back several times after this and was asked to learn material from Cats.  We worked on the dance choreography each time we had a call-back: after a 3 week process I got a phone call from my agent to say that I have been offered the role of Jemima and first cover Rumpleteazer. As expected I screamed! And ran round my house!

Were the rehearsals hard?

The rehearsal process was hard as for the majority of the time I was still getting my head around the fact that I was there and was going to be a part of such a great show! We only had one month, which (we were warned) had never been done before for Cats. Learning the choreography was amazing as it was the original as choreographed by Gillian Lynne, and learning all the music was amazing as I had never been in an environment where 26 people were all singing great music in harmony. I had to make sure that I went home and went over everything I my head, so I was singing and doing the dance moves in my sleep. Along with learning the solid material, becoming a cat was so interesting as well as difficult. We had to attend a cat workshop in order to focus on all aspects of becoming a convincing cat. We were taught to be aware of what was around us, our senses, our feelings and everything in our bodies and how that all made us feel or react.  I would say that all of this work was harder than setting and learning the show!

What is understudying like?

I’ve really enjoyed understudying. At first I found it hard as I was learning my own track so in rehearsals I took note of where my cover was positioned,  then when I was confident with the part of Jemima I learnt the choreography for Rumpleteaser.

Have you played the part yet?

Recently I have been on as Rumpleteaser, since the end of Manchester until first week in Bradford, where I did the first rehearsal and press night which was exciting but nerve wracking, just because Rumple is an older character and I had to think about the different counts and traffic, and also working in as a duet. But, I had a great time and it was good to do a run of shows rather than just a one-off performance.

What is it like being on tour?. Is it what you expected, or different?

I didn’t know what to expect really being on tour but I am really enjoying it, as it is my first big job and it keeps me fresh being at different venues, as the sound, stage, theatres are all so different. Some venues work better than others and some venues are nicer places to visit, but overall I am really enjoying it!

What is a day in the life of Dawn, and does this change from place to place on tour?

My normal day would be to get up at around 10am, have breakfast, and then go out to see the place in which I am staying and then meet some of the cast for lunch. I tend to eat larger lunch then I am used to, as I get to the theatre for 5pm, so I need something to fill me up until 10.30pm, but I eat about 3pm so that I don’t feel full by the time the show starts. When I get to the theatre it then takes me 45 minutes to do my makeup. Although I have got a lot faster, I don’t like to rush it and some of it I still find really tricky, like the eyes and muscle, so I like to take my time. I then have to warm up at 6pm, physical and vocal until the half hour call, then it’s wig and costume time. The show comes down at 10.15pm roughly, when I change and maybe have one drink after the show but most of the time I go back home and relax before bed.

Do you enjoy it?

I really am enjoying it but it is still overwhelming at times. Working with a great cast and team makes it even more enjoyable. The show is so energetic, as soon as you get into the zone to start the show Act 1 is done, it goes so fast and Act 2 soon follows. I love being Jemima too, as I am a kitten so I can have lots of fun, be playful, curious about different things and I have a great dance track, but then I get to perform the lovely spiritual moments singing at the beginning of Act 2 and later on in the show the famous Memory with Grizabella. With this show no performance is the same as we are always experimenting with different ways of being feline, the way we walk, the way we crawl, the way we get up and down, the positions on set and our relationships with the other cats.

Do you have any pre show rituals?

The cast of Cats always gets together at the beginners’ call and we all hold hands as we are about to become a tribe as this helps us all to get focused and it brings us all together before the show! I always have to have the same leg warmers on too, so the black one always goes on the left leg and the black and white one on the right!

What is your advice to aspiring performers?

Find the right training for you. Believe in yourself. Never give up. Work hard. Dreams really can come true!

Find out where the Cats tour is heading next: http://www.catsthemusical.com/tickets/2013-ukeurope-tour/