Easter Courses For Young Dance Students

Easter 2013 Dance Courses

Despite many dance schools taking breaks for the Easter holidays, eager dance students still have the chance to dance their way through the holidays. There are a wide variety of courses to suit every dance taste, such as hip hop, musical theatre and ballet, enabling students to build on existing skills, and even gain an idea as to further training in dance which they may like to undertake in the future.

ZooNation Easter Academy are inviting beginner and intermediate level dancers to learn from ZooNation company members, covering a wide range of hip hop and street dance styles including Locking, Popping, Breaking, House and Waacking. Students will also be able to learn some original choreography from the hit West End show Some Like It Hip Hop.

The Place Youth Dynamics course can see students work with the renowned national touring company Tavaziva Dance, allowing young dancers to develop their contemporary technique and learn some of the company’s repertory.

The Royal Academy of Dance are holding a Boys’ Day of Dance for male students aged 7 – 16, enabling them to experience four different dance styles: Ballet, Street Dance, Contemporary and Capoeira. The classes held will be taught by professional male teachers and performers, helping to inspire young males in introducing them to dance.

Laine Theatre Arts’ International Easter course will incorporate Jazz, Musical Theatre and Drama workshops, building up a range of skills for students perhaps interested in auditioning for the vocational training course offered at Laine Theatre Arts in Musical Theatre and Dance.

All courses offered by a whole host of dance companies, examination boards and training institutions are fantastic opportunities to inspire new talents and develop existing skills of dance students who are eager to further their training and improve their skills.

The Fonteyn-Nureyev Partnership

Rudolf Nureyev and Margot FonteynThe partnership of Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn is one which dance audiences and balletomanes alike still speculate about. However, it remains that their partnership is perhaps one of the most celebrated and talked about in the world.

It was one of fantastic chemistry and strength, and is arguably reflected today in Daria Klimentova and Vadim Muntagirow of English National Ballet, who have a similar age gap and performance quality to Fonteyn and Nureyev.

Nureyev was invited to make his London debut in 1961 at the annual gala organised by Margot Fonteyn for the Royal Academy of Dancing (now Royal Academy of Dance) of which she was President.

Following the gala Nureyev went on to be invited to dance in Giselle with Fonteyn, in addition to Swan Lake and the Don Quixote pas de deux, amongst many others. Work such as this laid the foundations for Nureyev’s subsequent career and link with the Royal Ballet.

The relationship between Fonteyn and Nureyev was seemingly one of balance, despite one in pointe shoes and a tutu, and the other in tights and a tunic. At 23 years old, Nureyev gave Fonteyn new life and vigour and in return Fonteyn provided Nureyev with inspiration to focus on his future career. Each dancer learned much from the other, each having similar dancing goals: this developed into one of the most talked about partnerships of the dancing world, even after their deaths and presumably far into the future too.

In their era, audiences were desperate to witness the Fonteyn-Nureyev charismatic performances and engage with some of the magic they created on stage. As a result of the demand for seeing the pair dance together, their agent went on to charge much more for the dancers as a pair than the sum of their individual fees, which was already soaring.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Liam Scarlett’s Latest Work

Liam Scarlett

The Royal Ballet’s Liam Scarlett, recently appointed as the Royal’s Artist in Residence, has choreographed again for Miami City Ballet following his last work for the company, having made the transition to choreographing full-time. Hanging up his ballet shoes in the performing sector, Scarlett has seamlessly transferred to the arena of choreography.

Scarlett is seen to be in demand all over the world, most recently premiering his new work Euphotic for Miami City Ballet, which opened on 11 January 2013. Having concluded the company’s Programme II, the performance also featured works by George Balanchine and Marius Petipa, two of the most influential modern and classical ballet choreographers respectively. Euphotic is said to be a ‘closing ballet’, which finishes three classical ballets as a statement for the audience and set to a score of Lowell Liebermann. Scarlett himself designed the scenic and costume designs, with Miami City Ballet blogging the process of working towards Scarlett’s vision and dyeing various pieces of fabrics blue and yellow, representing the sea and the light of the sky.

Last season Scarlett showed off his Viscera for Miami City Ballet, featuring principal dancer Jeanette Delgado, who is also cast as the lead for this season’s Euphotic as a sequel work of twenty-eight dancers. There are three principals and their partners in total leading the movement, fulfilling four movements of dance. The four ballets including Euphotic will also be presented at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Florida as Programme I in addition.

Who knows what is next for Scarlett’s choreographic adventures, but he has certainly hit the ground running, now to build on his creativity and spread his talent further.

Image courtesy of ROH at Flickr.

The Making of Pointe Shoes

Bloch Axis Pointe Shoes

There is, without a doubt, no better feeling than watching a ballerina glide across stage, carried by her pointe shoes. This illusion is just one that captivates audiences and brings them back for more. However, finding out how pointe shoes are made explains just how they work and how they provide that ‘effortless’ look.

For example, Freed, a supplier of ballet and dance shoes since 1928, produces over 150,000 pairs each year, with much work going into each. Freed uses the “turnshoe” method which means that shoes are made from the inside and then turned out the right way around. There are approximately 250 workers across three locations, with 23 makers in total.

Each maker has their own symbol which is stamped under the shoe, with the shoe’s shape affected by the shoe-maker. Some Freed shoes are custom made according to the client’s specifications, and some experienced shoe-makers take just 10 minutes to create a pair of pointe shoes, with around 400 shoes created overall each day. Aside from pointe shoes, other shoes which are made include ballroom, Latin, stage and screen, tap, jazz, character and soft shoes, the method hardly changing since 1930.

Many dancers opt to customise their shoes themselves, such as by cutting the vamp into a V shape to make the shoe appear longer, and then sewn again to hold the shoe together. Elastics can also be sewn inside the shoe in order to add security, for the peace of mind of the dancer that their shoe is not going to slip from their heel. Dancers also work to remove the noise from their shoes, for example by shutting them in doors, hitting them against the floor, and so on, in order to achieve silence as they move around the stage.

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s 2013 Choreographics Performance

Birmingham Royal Ballet

Birmingham Royal Ballet recently presented its 2013 Choreographics performance on 10 January 2013 as a unique programme of ballet created by BRB dancers. Rather than donning their usual tutus, tights and pointe shoes, programmes of this kind give the dancers the chance to develop their artistry in a related but separate avenue of dance performance and create to their own tastes.

The pieces, danced by members of the Company, were performed in the studio theatre at Elmhurst School for Dance in Birmingham, with the six dancers choreographing announced as Kit Holder, Matthew Lawrence, Brandon Lawrence, Ruth Brill, Kristen McGarrity and Lachlan Monaghan. The dancer-choreographers choreographed pieces specifically for the event, to music of their own choosing. The projects provide a welcome opportunity to experiment creatively, try new things out with unlimited freedom and take a breath of fresh air from the rigours of the studio, filled each day with leg warmers and buckets of sweat.

Kit Holder, who has previously contributed to the Choreographics evening of 2010, subsequently had one of his pieces Printer Jam included in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s 20th Anniversary Royal Gala and the launch of the Drum’n’Bass awards in Birmingham, before being expanded into a longer piece as part of International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012. Kit is a clear example of the heights emerging choreographers can reach, and especially those usually contained in a classical environment, rather than a more experimental one. In addition to this, Matthew Lawrence has previously had the opportunity to choreograph gymnastically, demonstrating the doors which may be available to the dancers, should they extend their career to choreographing. Royal Ballet dancer Liam Scarlett is also a demonstrator of this, having recently choreographed for Miami City Ballet.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Anniversary of George Balanchine

George BalanchineJanuary 22 2013 marked the birthday of Giorgi Melitonovitch Balachivadze, otherwise known to ballet and dance fans all over the world as George Balanchine, born in 1904 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Balanchine, as the co-founder of the New York City Ballet and one of the greatest choreographers of modern ballet, created the aesthetic we can recognise in theatres today, with costumes of often just leotards, tights and shoes. Other works, such as Jewels, are more classical in taste, but still echoes the Balanchine style and legacy throughout the dance sector in the twenty-first century.

Balanchine co-founded the School of American Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein and Edward Warburg in 1934, and consequently created one of his most iconic works, Serenade, as a result of his concern that his young students didn’t understand the difference between class work and perfor­mance. He decided the best way for them to learn was to give them something new and unfamiliar to dance. Balanchine said in an interview years later, “I made Serenade to show dancers how to be on a stage”, adding parts for whoever and whatever his classes consisted of. The first class had 17 girls, which explains the beginning of the piece using 17 dancers, and so on. For the emerging of the New York City Ballet, Kirstein envisioned an American ballet where young dancers could be trained and schooled under the guidance of the world’s greatest ballet masters to perform new, modern repertory, rather than relying on touring, imported artists performing for American audiences.

The School of American Ballet has been the home of New York City Ballet since Balanchine journeyed to the US, which has gone on to become one of the most renowned companies of the world. Today, the company is made up of over 100 dancers.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Diablo Ballet’s Web-Made Ballet

Diablo Ballet Logo

The world’s first “web ballet”, the brainchild of Diablo Ballet, has begun. Merging dance and technology, Diablo Ballet is calling ballet and dance fans all over the world to assist in creating the world’s first ballet of this kind.

Not dissimilar to the ideals of postmodern dance pioneer Merce Cunningham, the ballet of Diablo Ballet, named The Web Ballet, will be the first dance work developed from suggestions made on the internet, and will premiere this March in the US. Internet users can participate from anywhere and be fully involved in the creation of the piece, without having to dust off their leotards or legwarmers.

The Web Ballet will be based on the choreographic ideas submitted to Diablo Ballet’s Twitter page from 8 January 2013, welcoming budding choreographers and enthusiastic fans to submit their ideas and see them transformed into a fully-fledged work. The Twitter hashtag #DiabloWebBallet has been suggested in order for users to communicate ideas such as the mood of the work, the emotion and expression of the dancers and the movement vocabulary itself, using a separate tweet for each suggestion. Users can also vote for their favourite musical accompaniment as one of three works on Diablo Ballet’s YouTube page.

The Web Ballet will be created by Robert Dekkers, a Diablo Ballet dancer, and one of Dance Magazine’s 2011 25 to Watch artists.  Submissions end on 14 February, when Dekkers and Lauren Jonas, Diablo Ballet’s Artistic Director, will select seven choreographic suggestions. Dekkers will have two weeks to assemble the winning ideas, and create a new dance work. Those who tweeted the winning artistic suggestions will receive tickets to the performance, and a photograph of the completed work, autographed by Dekkers.

This is truly combining Twitter with the tutus!

N.B. All idea submissions become the property of Diablo Ballet.

2013 National Dance Awards

National Dance Awards Critics' Circle

28 January 2013 saw the 13th National Dance Awards winners announced at The Place, London. Considered by many as one of the most comprehensive list of dance achievements, 2013 certainly did not fail to deliver, providing a roundup of all the great work that was seen in 2012.

The awards are decided by the 60 members of the Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle after an extensive round of nominations and voting. To be eligible to win an award, performances had to take place in the UK between 1 September 2011 and 31 August 2012.

The 2013 winners are as follows –

DANCING TIMES AWARD FOR BEST MALE DANCER
Akram Khan (Akram Khan Company)

GRISHKO AWARD FOR BEST FEMALE DANCER
Marianela Nuñez (The Royal Ballet)

STEF STEFANOU AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING COMPANY
Royal Ballet Flanders

BEST CLASSICAL CHOREOGRAPHY
Annabelle Ochoa (A Streetcar Named Desire for Scottish Ballet)

BEST MODERN CHOREOGRAPHY
Arthur Pita (The Metamorphosis)

OUTSTANDING FEMALE PERFORMANCE (CLASSICAL)
Ksenia Ovsyanick  (English National Ballet)

OUTSTANDING MALE PERFORMANCE (CLASSICAL)
Zdenek Konvalina (English National Ballet)

DANCERS PRO AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING MODERN PERFORMANCE (FEMALE)
Teneisha Bonner (Zoonation)

DANCERS PRO AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING MODERN PERFORMANCE (MALE)
Tommy Franzén (Zoonation and Russell Maliphant Company)

BEST INDEPENDENT COMPANY
Ballet Black

DE VALOIS AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT
Robert Cohan

DANCE UK INDUSTRY AWARD
Jeanette Siddall

The Chairman of the Awards committee, Graham Watts OBE, spoke at the event, and dedicated the 2012 awards to the memories of the late Charles Hedges, John Percival and Freda Pitt, all of whom have died since the last awards. In the year of the Centenary of the Critics’ Circle, the combined years of membership for the three critics totalled a century.

Youth America Grand Prix gala

Youth America Grand PrixThe Youth America Grand Prix, one of the most esteemed ballet competitions in the world, assembled an all-star cast of mostly principal dancers from some of the best companies in the US, and beyond, for its highly anticipated gala. Dancers from American Ballet Theatre, the New York City Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, Boston Ballet, the Dutch National Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater were in attendance, assembled by the YAGP organisers for a programme of excerpts from ballet’s most classic and revered works.

The gala concluded and followed the regional semi-finals of the ballet scholarship competition. Named as “Ballet’s Greatest Hits”, the gala served to be a rare collection of exceptional ballet talent of tutus, pointe shoes, tights and fantastic ability, class and interpretation in one evening. In addition to this, for the first time the gala also marked the first filming of a live performance – as well as documentary footage – which will become part of Emerging Pictures “Ballet in Cinema” series broadcast to cinemas all over America in the spring.

The evening began by presenting some of the students from the previous two days of competition, demonstrating the sheer talent that is anticipated by ballet fans all over the world, solidified by the professional performances of the students’ professional counterparts. Variations from Swan Lake and La Bayadere were amongst those performed at the gala, making the evening a very special one for the competitors and the audience. Works from Ailey repertoire, The Nutcracker and Giselle were also performed, providing the audience with great hope for ballet in the twenty-first century, and beyond.

English National Ballet’s Rebranding

ENB Rebranded Logo

Following the appointment of The Royal Ballet Principal Tamara Rojo as Artistic Director of English National Ballet, the company has been a world of change, from the management to the pointe shoe clad dancers themselves. As part of her new position, Rojo set both the tutu twirling dancers and those behind-the-scenes a very simple and inspiring vision.

Announced during the company’s first press call with Rojo at the helm, the message was clear: she aimed for English National Ballet to be the most creative and most loved company in the UK through what was produced for stage in cherishing ballet traditions, and also aspiring to the new. January has seen English National Ballet rebrand, discarding their black and white logo for one which is a pink and red quotation mark/pointe shoes, a gentle reminder that everyone has something to say.

In addition to a fresh logo, an important part of their new identity is the focus on collaborating with creative artists outside of the ballet world, such as with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. This iconic British fashion house has worked closely with the company to eclectically style the dancers, with the images to be used across advertising and marketing material for 2013. Achieving this new vision will also be fulfilled through collaborations with choreographers, designers, artists, and partner organisations.

By presenting the company in a very different light to the world, Rojo aims to bring the artistry of ballet to as many people as possible, and transform the company along its journey. Whilst some may argue that the rebrand will diminish any form of the company’s previous prestige and influence, Rojo’s bold determination and confident creative leadership cannot be faulted. Her aspirations to ensure the company’s artists continue to excite, innovate and challenge mean that the company will be dancing to conjure wonderful, beautiful visions individually.