Terpsichore

Waiting for La Sylphide to be performed in this country is a bit like waiting for Preston Guild so I booked my ticket for the last performance of the Queensland Ballet's season almost as soon as they went on sale. La Sylphide is pretty close to the top of my favourite ballets whether it is Kobborg or Schaufuss. I much prefer it to Giselle. I like the music, the story and the connection (albeit tenuous) with Scotland. It may not have the most spectacular choreography but I like to image it as it would have appeared to audiences when first performed with the stage lit by gas and candle. I have only seen 3 1/2 performances - the half being the Royal Danish principals and soloists at the Peacock earlier in the year - but one of the other two performances was with Carla Fracci as the sylph. I was not at all disappointed by the show on Saturday night. It was well worth the 400 mile trek to the Smoke and back. I particularly enjoyed Heathcote as Effie. Pinera reminded me a little but of Fracci (though it may have been wishful thinking) and it was good to see Li (nee McKendry) and Horsman again. I had never taken much notice of Luke Schaufuss when I had seen him in the Birmingham Royal Ballet but I did on Saturday night and I shall look out for him again. I think the Queensland Ballet were very brave bringing this production to London. Especially since a large part of their potential audience would have been on holiday. The company seemed to have a good turnout on Saturday night from where I was sitting. I think they can go back to Australia with their heads held high which is more than can be said for their national cricket team.

I'm sorry to hear about your foot. I hope all goes well for you too. Thank you for your prudent suggestions, particularly about carrying a mini first aid kit. Like you I can hardly wait for "Swan Lake". I am treating this as my summer holiday though I do hope to get to Amsterdam for the start of the ballet season on 8 Sept as well to Cornwall for a long weekend in mid-September.

I took Jane Tucker's class at Leeds today without any adverse effects so far so I hope to be joining Bellini Pointe and the other students in Manchester after all.. I told Jane that I had put my name down for the intensive and she promised that the class would be fun, We met over the water cooler so didn't have time for much discussion. I hope to take Jane's class next Thursday and I'll share anything I find out.

Not a bad start to the fourth test but we should never underestimate the Australians. They have good bowlers too. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/32809885

Thanks Kate_N I feel a lot better already. I look forward to returning to class just as soon as I can..

There is a very big question mark over whether I shall be fit enough to do the intensive by the 17 Aug. I had hoped to take Jane Tucker's class in Leeds tomorrow but both my medical friends and dance friends warn me that that is far too early to start. My GP couldn't promise that I'd be ready by 8 Sept when our Over 55 class starts again. A pulled muscle doesn't sounde much but I was in agony last week. I c couldn't sleep for 4 days because I could not lie down.

"Where were all the Aussies?" asks alison. There were certainly a fair number at the London Ballet Circle meeting on Monday. They swelled our numbers considerably. I don't think I have ever seen so many people at a London Ballet Circle event. I spoke to some of the Australians afterwards. They were members of the Queensland Ballet Friends who had flown over specially to support this season. Usually I am the one who travels furthest for a Ballet Circle event but this time there were lots of folk who had travelled many times further.

You bet. I booked my ticket for their last night as soon as they went on sale last year. La Sylphide is not performed in this country nearly as often as I should like which is a pity as it is set in Scotland. I saw the Danes dance a bit of it at The Peacock earlier in the year. I can remember an enchanting performance by Carla Fracci from half a century ago. I like it so much more than Giselle. Also, I have a personal incentive to see this show. The teacher who led me back to ballet after a decades long break which has been such a comfort in my dotage, trained in Brisbane and began her career with the company. Tomorrow Li-Cunxn, the artistic director of the Queensland Ballet, will be the guest of the London Ballet Circle at The Civil Service Club (next door to the Nigerian embassy) at 19:30. He will be interviewed by Gerald Dowler. The meeting is open to the public (£8 for non-members and £5 for members). As he is senior partner of one of the leading stockbrokers of Australia I admire him as much for his business savvy as his genius as a dancer.

There are some who like both cricket and ballet. Xander Parish, for example, was a promising cricketer (see The ballet dancer who could have played cricket for Yorkshire 11 Jan 2015 Yorkshire Post) and Benazir Hussain is the sister of Nasser who was captain of England (see Benazir bowls over dance fans as brother aims to bowl us out 6 Nov 2002).

I look forward to making your acquaintance, Bellini Pointe if we have not already met. I attend KNT Danceworks whenever Northern Ballet Academy is on holiday. Regrettably I have recently done myself a mischief. I awoke on Wednesday morning with excruciating pain in the right side of my body. Fearing all sorts of maladies I obtained an emergency appointment at my local surgery and underwent a systematic examination. The doctor assured me that I was not suffering from appendicitis which was my immediate worry and told me to return today if the pain had not subsided. It did not and I reported for a further examination thismorning. The physician who examined me this morning confirmed that I was unlikely to be suffering from appendicitis and prodded me in various places. Following his prodding he asked me whether I had undertaken any violent physical activity. I couldn't think of any but I told him I worked out in the gym and attended the Leeds over 55 ballet class. His ears pricked up and he asked me whether I had injured myself in any of those activities. I replied that I had not but he persisted saying that the injury may not have been apparent immediately. He concluded that all my symptoms were consistent with a pulled muscle and that it was much more likely than appendicitis, gore stones or some other kidney or liver complaint. His advice was to take it easy though to keep moving and apply pain relieving gel to the affected region. I have to say that I am feeling slightly better now though far from my normal intolerably bouncy self. I have been introduced to Northern Ballet School's physiotherapist and I shall follow whatever advice he may give me. That is so. Karen Sant gave free taster classes in ballet, jazz and contemporary last September in Liverpool town hall and I wrote about the experience in my blog. We were welcomed by the Lord Mayor and her daughter who was acting as Lady Mayoress last year. The classes took place in the ball room where we were overlooked by the portraits of some of the city's most famous denizens. I happened to be near the picture of Lord Canning and I chose his eyes as a reference point for spotting. In the interval between ballet and jazz the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress entertained us to a very generous repast and the Lady Mayoress (a very young and personable woman) spoke eloquently about her mother's work for a charity to relieve dementia. I have many connections with, and much affection for, Liverpool and its environs. My father was born in Southport and my uncle attended Liverpool College. Some cousins still live in Hightown. I have nearly always been able to find free street parking either outside the Union or the Square a few hundred yards south of the Dance House. Street parking is free south of the flyover. I think the car park is just to the north of that border If anyone feels peckish after a class I can strongly recommend Casa Pancho (almost the name of one of the most charming artistic directors in the performing arts) two or three turnings south of the Dance House. They serve the best burritos I have tasted outside North America at very reasonably prices..

While I congratulate England on a well deserved win this afternoon I am slightly disappointed that there will be no play over the weekend when I would have had the time to watch it. I doubt that the Australians will take this defeat lying down so we can all look forward to exciting matches at Trent Bridge and the Oval. Let's hope the weather is kind to us,

That was where the Royal Ballet went in their recent tour but our other national company Scottish Ballet made it to San Antonio, Houston, Pittsburgh and Charleston as well as DC and Chicago when it took Streetcar to the USA in May. I might also mention (and you will know this better than me) there are two major metropolises in Canada which foreign companies visit. My main point is that there are excellent home grown companies in all parts of North America some of which rarely cross the Atlantic. American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet were real eye openers for me when I was a graduate student and I would love to see them again. I also miss Dance Theater of Harlem and Boston Ballet which I saw in London and I would love to see San Francisco Ballet, Joffrey and PNB at least once before I die.

I've been asking myself that question since the 1950s even though I watch about 50 ballets a year not including TV broadcasts and live streaming from London and Moscow, devour just about everything about ballet that is in print or on the internet and take at least 2 classes a week. This is very much a question of taste and temperament and what works for one person won't necessarily work for you There is no consensus as to what is good ballet and what is not but there are a lot of strongly held opinions which I tend to ignore. Here are some guidelines that work for me. 1. Ballet is intended for the Theatre You can get a lot from a DVD, TV programme or live streaming but it is not the same as being in the auditorium. There are several reasons for that. One is that there is so much more to ballet than the dancing. There's the music for a start - especially if there is a live orchestra - then there are the set designs and costumes, the narrative - all your senses are absorbed. The great Russian impresario Diaghilev understood this because he hired great artists as well as great dancers for his shows. Another reason is that ballet is a two way communication. The audience are just as much part of the show as the cast. There is nothing more magical than a curtain call (sometimes rightly called a "reverence") when the crowd is on its feet clapping, cheering and whooping raining cut flowers onto the stage from the balcony to join the mountainous bouquets presented by the theatre management and well wishers. 2. Ballet is to be savoured like wine Because a performance engages all the senses it takes time for the brain to process it all. I try to limit myself to one or at the most two performances of the same show per season. That is not always possible with visiting companies because they may be here only for a week or two and different dancers can interpret the same role in very different ways. But I tend to think that watching the matinee and evening performance of the same show (although I have done that from time to time) or even seeing the same show on successive nights is like wolfing down a great claret (or as you are an American a great Mondavi) without appreciating its colours, textures and flavours. Now there are two views on this point and as I said this is what works for me but other ballet goers will argue the opposite. 3. Don't be be a Ballet Bore μηδὲν ἄγαν Again I am probably not the best person to say this because I don't see read anything like enough books, see anything like enough plays or films, hear enough concerts or watch enough operas. Also, there is nothing I like more than talking ballet, ballet, ballet to another ballet goer. But ballet is just one of several types of theatre and the others are important too. In fact a good knowledge of a play, novel or opera that has inspired a ballet will often help you to appreciate ballet all the more. There are also lots of things outside the performing arts that are worth following. 4. You don't have to go to London to see great ballet I grew up in a suburb of London but acquired my ballet education (such as it is) in Scotland and a year of travelling throughout the USA when I was a graduate student at UCLA. You live in the world's biggest market for ballet and many of the world's best known dancers are Americans though they do not all dance for US companies. The world's biggest companies love to tour in the USA and while they may not make it out to your state they should visit a major metropolis nearby. If you do come to London don't spend all your time in the opera house. Take in some art galleries, parks and public gardens, musicals, concerts and get to know the locals. 5. It may help your appreciation actually to do some ballet It's not compulsory but it works for me even though I am overweight, badly coordinated and three times the age of the average ballet student. I had a few lessons when I was an undergraduate but gave it up when I went to America. Fifty years passed before my next class and I now dance with a group of ladies and the occasional gentleman aged 55 or over. The classes take place in the studios of one of our leading companies and occasionally I have been taught by former members of the company including one of the principals. You learn just how much hard work is involved. If you are unlucky you may even experience some of the pain that dancers endure. You gain a whole new respect for the swans and wilis whom you may well run into in the lifts, corridors or cafeteria. If you want to learn how to get into ballet as an adult in the USA I can recommend two blogs: Adult Beginner at https://adultbeginner.wordpress.com/nwritten by a lady in LA and Dave Tries Ballet http://www.davetriesballet.com/started by an Englishman who took his first classes in New Jersey when he was at Rutgers and who contributes occasionally to this website. You can also get lots of practical tips from some of the threads on the "Doing Dance" forum here. Now if you are interested I am writing a little guide for those who have never been to ballet or are indifferent to the art provisionally called "Will I like Ballet?" for a new publishing business in which I have an interest. If ballet publishing is anything like law publishing it'll take years to see the light of day but if ti ever does I'll let you know.

There has not been much (if any) mention of Darius James and Amy Doughty's production of Cinderella for Ballet Cymru which in my book is one of the best. I saw it in Lincoln on 24 June 2015 and have reviewed it for Terpsichore if anyone is interested. Like Wheeldon James has resorted to primary sources and is even more faithful to the original than Wheeldon in that he incorporates references to the original text in the production, For instance, after the stepmother empties a bowl of lentils onto the floor the birds help her recover them with the refrain: "The good ones go into the pot, The bad ones go into your crop." That text is actually flashed onto the backdrop together with a voice over. Like Nixon, James has commissioned his own score from the young (and in my opinion) very talented Welsh composer Jack White and indeed I prefer it to Feeney's though perhaps not to Prokofiev's. The Welsh needed a simpler score to fit their libretto but I am not sure why Nixon couldn't have used Prokofiev. For the record I have seen Ashton's Cinderella with Fonteyn dancing the title role and Ashton and Helpmann as the sisters. I have also seen Nixon's, Gable's. Matthew Bourne's, Wheeldon's and even a production by the Bristol Russian Youth Ballet Company which starred Glurdjidze and Vargas. I like them all and I look forward to seeing Hampson's later in the year. I must admit to being a bit of a fan of Ballet Cymru which reminds me of Scottish Theatre Ballet (now Scottish Ballet) when it first moved to Glasgow. It has produced some good work and now that it has appointed Marc Brew as an assistant choreographer we can look forward to more.

If you enjoyed Cinderella and other performances of the Dutch National Ballet and the Junior Company you may wish to hear Ernst Meisner, the artistic co-ordinator of the Junior Company and a resident choreographer of the company. As he trained at the Royal Ballet School and danced with the Royal Ballet for many years and worked with Kent Ballet and other companies Meisner is also well known here in his own right. He will be the guest of the London Ballet Circle at 19:30 on Monday 20 July. The meeting is open to the public. Entrance is £5 for members of the Circle (annual sub being £12 per year) and £8 for others. The Circle meets at the Civil Service Club on Old Scotland Yard which is just off Northumberland Avenue. Look out for a green white and green tricolour which is the flag of the Nigerian High Commission (equivalent to an embassy). Members of the public can use the bar which serves a very nourishing plate of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, greens and gravy for £7.50. Not bad for London nowadays.

It was very nice to see you again too. Also, it was good to meet Coated who sold me her ticket so that Gita could attend the show. I shall look out for her in future. I agree. I was in Amsterdam on 6 Feb for the opening night of the Junior Company;s tour and 27 June for Cool Britannia. I look forward to the Gala on 8 Sept 2015. You may want to become a Friend of the company which costs only 50 euros a year. They would send you a very pretty magazine and lots of updates by email. The magazine is in Dutch but Dutch is related to English and if you know some German you are well away. Amsterdam is actually easier and often cheaper to reach than London from many parts of the UK and prices of food, public transport and accommodation are a lot more reasonable. I like the National Ballet because it has some of my favourite choreographers. such as van Manen, Pastor and Meisner as well as many of my favourite dancers such as Herd and Stout. Ted Brandsen's idea of recruiting some of the world's most promising students and giving them stage experience in the Junior Company is a great idea. That is how the company hired Michaela DePrince. Also, I like the innovative ways in which the company supports itself. In February I met the chap in charge of fund raising who told me that although it reeives some funds from its local authority it receives far more from private donations and merchandising. There appears to be nothing like the Arts Council England in the Netherlands.

I saw Cinderella last night with Tsygankova and Golding in the leading roles and enjoyed it enormously. I also saw Helpmann and Ashton dance the sisters twice and it is quite likely that Fonteyn danced in one or both of those performances too. Wheeldon's Cinderella is certainly different from Ashton's but then so is Ratmansky's, Nixon's, Gable's and Darius James's. I saw merit in them all. I was not in the least bored by the show and I found it far from vulgar but then each to his own. I will blog about this show later. I should just like to add that it was good to see DonQ Fan in the row in front of me. She seemed to like the show at least as much as me.

Perhaps I can help. The workshop is taken by Jane Tucker who also teaches the vacation classes at Northern Ballet. Jane is also running a beginners course on Swan Lake, Both cost £200 and there is a non-refundable deposit of £50. I have put my name down for the Swan Lake and you will fond several articles about the intensives and KNT in general in Terpsichore.

Gita has published a review of our contribution to Northern Ballet Academy's end of year show in Terpsichore. In its she says: "Each of the performers danced well and it would be unfair for me to single any out for special praise. The complicated sequences at the start and end of the piece where each dancer raises her hand in turn went off without a hitch. The dancers synchronised their arm movements in the courou and I was impressed by the jumping group and the temps leves of the balance group. Some of the dancers managed quite an elevation which is all the more remarkable given their age. Having seen the rehearsal I know the amount of work that the dancers had put into this show through their classes and rehearsals. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves." However, we didn't get everything right. She says: "The one thing that they could have done better would have been to dance off stage. They seemed to walk off into the wings after they had performed their dance which detracted a little from the overall slickness of the performance. Having said that it may be that I am a little sensitive to that issue as the choreographer of a show in which I had appeared had been very hot on that point." This is something we have to work on when we present the work again in September. She has included two pictures in her review one of which shows me. Altogether I am very happy with the review. Like · Comment · Share

I am very grateful to Janet McNulty for permission to link this article to my post in Terpsichore. Yesterday the outstanding young dancer Michaela DePrince gave a masterclass at Danceworks' studios in Balderton Street. The general manager of Danceworks, Lesley Osman, very kindly sent me some lovely photos of the class with permission to reproduce them in my blog. She also arranged for one of the students, Ciara Sturrock, to write an account of her experience of that class. I have incorporated both into an article entitled Michaela's Masterclass which you can read at http://jelterps.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/michaelas-masterclass.html I am very grateful to both Lesley and Ciara for those materials, I saw DePrince in Cool Britannia on 27 June 2015 and reviewed the show in Dutch National Ballet's Cool Britannia. I look forward to seeing her dance in Wheeldon's Cinderella on Saturday and at the opening gala of the Dutch ballet season in Amsterdam on 8 Sept.

Northern Ballet Academy's Over 55 Class in the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, 4 July 2015 Copyright: Team Terpsichore, 2015 On Saturday I danced in my second ballet. It did not have quite the same edge as my first time on stage because I already knew what it would be like to dance in a commercial theatre. Nevertheless, it was still a thrill. One of the reasons why it was such a thrill was that I knew that I would be dancing before people who mean a lot to me. In particular, Fiona, the teacher who coaxed me back into class a month after I had lost my spouse to a horrible disease when my life was at a very low ebb. The performance in which I appeared was the over 55 class's contribution to Northern Ballet Academy's end of year show. Northern Ballet Academy does great work in the community. Consequently, there are a lot of classes many of which were represented in the show. There were so many that we had to be organized in four performances each with a separate cast. Our's was the last performance which began at 16:30. It included students from the CAT (Centre for Advanced Training) programme as well as some younger kids such as Fiona's daughter who is already something of a pro at the tender age of 9 having already danced Pammy in the Great Gatsby, the young Ondine and one of the mice in The Nutcracker. As happened last year, we were mustered in the lobby of Northern Ballet at 14:45. Our teacher and choreographer, Annemarie Donoghue, led us to one of Phoenix's studios on the 6th floor. We had a short class of pliés, tendus, glissés and cloches at the barre and then a couple of run throughs of our piece to the music. To our great surprise and delight we got most of it right. Annemarie took us down to the theatre where we rehearsed a couple of times on stage. Annemarie corrected a few details but otherwise we were OK. We returned to our studio where we waited for our call which came very quickly. Rather than take the goods lift which gave us our only anxious moment last year we crept down the back stairs and waited our turn. There were some children on stage before us dancing to Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock. They finished their routine and we found our way on to the stage in the dark. The lights came on and our music began. The programme described it as Lullaby by Lulaby. Now I must confess I have never heard of Lulaby and neither (so it would appear) has Google, YouTube. iTunes or Spotify. One of the members of our class who is a retired teacher attributed it to Thomas Schoenberger but I can't confirm that. Be that as it may it is a lovely composition which I have enjoyed listening and dancing to. The choreography was very different from last year's. It was less spectacular but required much more concentration. We started in groups of three. The left hand dancer of each group raised her arm and she was followed sequentially by the middle dancer and the dancer to her right. That was mirrored by the dancer right on the right, followed by the middle dancer and the dancer on the left. We then followed a weaving movement that reminded me of a figure of eight of the Dashing White Sergeant or Eightsome Reel in Scottish country dancing. We repeated that exercise with more épaulements and figures of eight. We advanced, retired and turned to the right. We retired, advanced and turned to the left. We then courued on demi-pointe flapping our arms like wings. Annemarie told us to think of ourselves as swans. As the music changed we broke into two lines, the front line to do some jumping and the back line to do balancés. The jumpers retired and we advanced doing balancés to the right and left followed by several pas de bourrés. We retired to the wings as the jumping group did their sautés. The balancés group entered stage left with two temps levés. We entered from the right with two more and ran across to the front of the stage where we waited for the next music change. In the final movement we formed our two lines again and repeated the épaulement exercise but this time in the style of a Mexican wave, We concluded with a lovely port de bras exercise that we had done in class for several weeks before the show. The applause was deafening. We curtseyed and exited and made our way to the stairs but were told to stop before we had reached the first landing. We learned that we would be required for a curtain call of the whole company. That had not happened the year before and I felt very proud. While waiting for our call Fiona's daughter spotted and greeted me. It was lovely to see her. The children were called on first. Then I ran on followed by the rest of my class. The CAT dancers came on last. There were speeches and prizes and finally the curtain fell. I think our performance was more polished than last year though one of my guests said he preferred last year's show because it lasted longer and there was more jumping. Another said that we had performed better in the technical rehearsal. I wanted to learn what Fiona thought about our show but she had warned me that she had another appointment to attend and I never got to see her. She has however texted me yesterday morning to say "well done for yesterday" and that I had "smiled the whole way through." I am glad if that was so because I was pleased to be there and I had hoped to communicate my pleasure to the audience in the way that Ruth Brill and Rachael Gillespie do. Annemarie told us that there was some doubt as to whether we could run a show next year because there will not be time for a choreography class. However, she also told us that there will be one final chance to perform on the 24 Sept 2015 as part of a new community project to bring the arts to older people in Leeds who are living on their own. Performances are very important for any ballet student including very elderly ones like me because ballet is a performing art which belongs in the theatre rather than the rehearsal studio. I do hope that September will not be my swan song. Gita, the other member of Team Terpsichore. attended the show and she will be reviewing the performance for our blog.

There are some lovely shots of the Stopera (or "Het Muziektheater" if you prefer) as well as glimpses of some of the performances on stage in this YouTube video of last year's gala: I am looking forward to this year's gala on the 8 September 2015. I am also looking forward to the Dutch National Ballet's Cinderella at the Coliseum next Saturday with Anna Tsygankova and Matthew Goulding in the principal roles and to Ernst Meisner's visit to the London Ballet Circle on the 20.

I was at that show too. Ballet Black danced the mixed programme that I saw at The Linbury on Valentine's day but it was quite a different show. The opening ballet was Kit Holder's To Fetch a Pail of Water. In February it was danced by Jacob Wye and Kanika Carr. I wrote that "this was a sweet story ...... of lost innocence." Well in Nottingham those roles were danced by Damien Johnson and Cira Robinson's who are two of the company's senior artists. They bring gravitas and the darkness to which Holder referred in his programme notes was much easier to notice. This is a text book example of how a change of cast can change a ballet. Now both casts are great and I hope that there will be still be nights when Wye and Carr dance that piece as well as others when we see Johnson and Robinson. Will Tuckett's Depouillement is one of the most beautiful ballets that any company has in its repertoire. In Nottingham it was danced by Alves, Carr, Coracy, Mence, Renfurm and Wye. All of them danced well but my eyes were on Coracy and Renfurm. They were very shrewd hires and they have both blossomed in the company. Coracy was a wonderful Puck in her scout's uniform in Arthur Pita's Dream and Remfurm was an unforgettable Miss Polly. Yesterday they both danced like angels. So did all the others, by the way, but there are sometimes days when individual performers shine and yesterday those two were brilliant. If my eyes were on Renfurm and Coracy in Depouillement they were on Carr in Bruce's Second Coming. With tiny wings protruding from her costume she danced "the angel" - though not one of the heavenly variety who knows how to make Yorkshire pudding You have to watch Jonathan Watkins Northern Trilogy if you are looking for one of those. Her role is the linchpin of the work. She entered with the hoop through which she made all the initiates pass at the start and end of the ballet. She produced the dagger which the ruler wielded with such menace. One of Carr's strengths is her face which is so expressive. She can convey any emotion though it is mainly charm and wit. She is the company's great character dancer. As in February the highlight of that piece was Johnson's pas de deux with Robinson to Elgar's Cello Concerto. Its beauty brought tears to my eyes then and I had to struggle to hold them back now. Johnson and Robinson are two wonderful dancers.

Thanks very much. It is actually just one show and we are on for just three ad a half minutes but we shall savour those moments. I am sure you are right. We've been training twice a week since September and have been rehearsing half an hour a week since April. You seem to have done a lot. I'd pay to see you dance. Glad you like it. I am a Friend of Scottish Ballet and a huge fan of Christopher Hampson. Scottish Ballet were the first company I got to know and love. I didn't know about the Guidford troupe but I will look out for them and try to get to one of their shows. I used to live in Surrey and still have links with the county. If you are in touch with those folks give them my good wishes.

You are very fortunate.. I saw the CAT show at a special event to mark the 10th anniversary of the programme last year. It was organized by Hannah Bateman and attended by Kenneth Tindall. The students were very good. We won't get a chance to see any of the other shows this year because we have to report for class and rehearsal. I also have to meet my guests - Vlad the Lad plus his mum and dad - who are travelling from London to see the show. Vlad - who made the acquaintance of Janet McNulty at Southport in April - is already showing an interest in ballet which I am encouraging. If you do attend the show you may like to introduce yourself to me afterwards. Gita, the other member of Team Terpsichore, and I will be celebrating at the Aagrah with my guests. We have booked a table for 6 but I am sure they can add a chair or two if you want to stop for a snifter or even a curry.