Terpsichore

That's precisely why "more people who post on here do not seem to have responded to the ROH's invitation to offer their ballet highlights" there.

Ever since I started blogging about ballet I have reviewed the year and for what it is worth as I don't yet give any cash prizes I make number of awards. These are entirely subjective and based on what I had seen the previous year. As I work from, but do not live in, London I tend to see shows that I can reach easily and economically from my Pennine fastness at weekends. Most of the shows that I see are therefore in the Northern Powerhouse cities though I make occasional excursions to Birmingham, Newport, Edinburgh and Glasgow. As it is often cheaper and easier to nip across to the continent than battle with traffic on the M1 or hang around at Doncaster station for a crowded or overpriced train and as the Dutch National Ballet is a great company I make a lot of trips to Amsterdam. Consequently, my choices may be regarded by some as a little eccentric. They are certainly not Smokecentric. Anyway, here goes: My company of the year is Northern Ballet for three excellent new full length ballets and a splendid triple bill of MacMillan in Bradford. They also have some of m y favourite dancers including my male dancer of the year, as well as Hannah Bateman and Dreda Blow and three younger artists I like a lot, Rachael Gillespie, Abigail Prudames and Mlindi Kulashe. While I don't like everything that David Nixon has created I did like his Little Mermaid which is perhaps his best work yet. My runner up would have been Birmingham Royal Ballet which is the other company of which I saw a lot last year. I particularly liked Ruth Brill's Arcadia. I also liked Birmingham's Cinderella at the Lowry and its Coppelia and The Nutcracker at the Hippodrome. My company of the year last year the Dutch National Ballet. My ballet of the year was the Dutch National Ballet's performance of "The Sleeping Beauty" on 17 Dec at the Music Theatre or Stopera with Maia Makhateli as Aurora and Daniel Camargo as Florimund. For most of the year I thought it would be Northern's Casanova at the Lowry with Javier Torres in the lead role. Last year I think I chose the Bolshoi's performance of Maillot's Taming of the Shrew at Covent Garden; My one act ballet of the year was Ruth Brill's Arcadia though I did like Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Little Red Riding Hood for Ballet Black which I saw on no less than three occasions. My ballerina of the year was Isabella Boylston for a breathtaking performance as Kitri at the Bastille opera house as guest artist of the Paris Opera ballet on Christmas day. The runner up would have been Maia Makhateli. Last year it was Lauren Cuthbertson. I had to scratch my head to think of the male dancer who had impressed me most last year but I opted for Javier Torres for his excellent performance of Casanova at the Lowry and a devastating performance as the fiance in Las Hermanas in Bradford. Last year it was Artur Shesterikov of the Dutch National Ballet. My choreographer of the year was Kenneth Tindall for Casanova though I inclined strongly towards Ruth Brill and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. He got it because his was a full length ballet. Last year my choreographer of the year was Ted Brandsen for his Mata Hari and Coppelia. There are some fine young choreographers in Amsterdam whose work I saw in New Moves in the summer. Expect to hear a lot about Cristiano Principato, Milena Siderova and Thomas van Damme in future. As I said it is all a bit of fun. I hope it is not an altogether uninformed choice. I get to see some 50 ballets or performances of other types of dance a year and I have done for most of the years of my adult life. I even do a little bit of ballet in what little spare time I have. You can read the whole article in my blog if you so wish.

Many thanks for your review, ChMeBa, which I found very interesting. I wish I could see Cranko's Swan Lake for myself. Cranko is my all time favourite choreographer, mainly for his Taming of the Shrew though I also love his Onegin. The emphasis on Siegtried reminds me a lot of David Dawson' Swan Lake for Scottish Ballet which I saw in Liverpool on 3 June 2016 and reviewed in Terpsichore on the 4th. Dawson, like Cranko, has spent much of his career on the Continent where he has a big following. I see several other parallels between Dawson and Cranko. I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to Swan Lake. I don't like to see change for change's sake, but I did like Dawson's and, from what you say, I think I might well like Cranko's. I am in any case a fan of the Stuttgart Ballet and have been ever since the days of Richard Cragun and Marcia Haydee even though I don't get to see that company very often.

Unless I misunderstood it, the above link invites only "Royal Ballet Highlights" (my emphasis) not for ballet highlights in general. Now, much as I love and admire the Royal Ballet, there are other companies.

I agree with Janet McNulty. Last year was an excellent one for Northern Ballet with three new full length shows and I enjoyed them all. I expected much from Kenneth Tindall's Casanova and I was not disappointed. I did not know what to expect from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but was profoundly moved by it. I was also impressed by David Nixon's The Little Mermaid which I regard as one of his best works. I have note liked everything that Nixon has created but I did like that work. I have reviewed several performances of Casanova and written a feature on Tindall but have not yet got round to writing about Mermaid though I hope to do so shortly, I have however reviewed the other company performances including the Macmillan triple bill at Bradford. Scottish Ballet was the first company that I got to know and love and I saw an excellent performance of Christopher Hampson's Hansel and Gretel in Newcastle and the double bill at Sadler's Wells in the summer which I also enjoyed. I also had the pleasure of meeting Hampson at the London Ballet Circle earlier in the year. I am still a big fan of the company. In fact, it is m y favourite British company after the Royal Ballet. Another national company of which I am a Friend as well as a fan is Ballet Cymru. I admire everything that Darius James and Any Doughty create. I liked their Light Princess but I think the highlight of their year was their Midsummer Night's Dream. I enjoyed it even more than Ashton's Dream much as I like that work. Yet another company that I admire greatly is the Birmingham Royal Ballet. I have always liked Ruth Brill as a dancer but I admire her even more as a choreographer after seeing her Arcadia. David mentioned Scottish Ballet's Le Baiser de la Fee above and I agree with him. However, I also want to cheer Birmingham's which was performed with Ruth Brill's work. I also gather from my colleague Gita that Ratmansky's for Miami City Ballet was excellent. Returning to Birmingham, I enjoyed their Coppelia, Nutcracker (which I have still to review) their Cinderella at the Lowry. Like Janet McNulty I had cause to thank the management of English National Ballet for bringing a favourite ballet to my home town. In my case it was La Sylphide in Manchester. I greatly prefer La Sylphide to any version of Giselle (though I did enjoy ENB's performance of Mary Skeeping's in January at the Coliseum very much indeed) and particularly to Akram Khan's. I also managed to say hello to Sarah Kundi whom I have followed for years but met for the first time only in October. I think the best show I saw all year was the Sleeping Beauty by the Dutch National Ballet which I saw in Amsterdam on 17 Dec though the Paris Opera Ballet's Don Quixote at the Bastille with Isabella Boylston as Kitri on Christmas Day ran it a close second. Looking forward to 2018 the Royal Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker on New Year's day was an excellent start to the New Year and I have high hopes for the new Swan Lake. Other shows that I hope to see include Peter Darrell's The Nutcracker in Newcastle, the Dutch National Ballet's Don Quixote in Amsterdam and Sharon Watson's Windrush in February. Finally I should like to wish the organizers of this website and all the subscribers a very happy New Year. I have not had much time to contribute to the site lately. It has been hard enough even to keep up my own blog or even get to class or the theatre. Nevertheless, I read all the digests and other emails and am always interested in your news and views even though I don't always agree with them.

I must have filtered it out as I tend to do with all sorts of information that I don't actually need for the moment. It is hard enough to fit in the occasional class or performance nowadays. Posted October 18 "Not to mention on here." Alison said Not been here much lately, Alison. Hard enough to keep up with my own blog. Will try to catch up around Christmas time as I have the Dutch National Ballet's The Sleeping Beauty in Amsterdam on 17 Dec, the Paris Opera Ballet's Don Quixote at the Bastille on Christmas day and our own Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker on New Year's day to look forward to. Good news about our women's cricket team (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2017/nov/21/australia-v-england-australia-v-england-womens-ashes-third-t20-live) and looking forward to the winter tour of Australia ( https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/21/england-memories-2015-joe-root-australia-ashes-history) If I don't make it back for a few weeks, Merry Christmas and happy New Year everybody.

My goodness. A quote from 2014. I agree that boundaries are for the dancers to make but it is not always obvious what those boundaries are. I rarely go to the stage door but I did a few weeks ago when the English National Ballet performed in Manchester. I made an appointment to see a dancer whom I have long admired but never actually met through social media. That artist was as gracious and charming in everyday life as she is impressive on stage.

Good idea! I took it up again after a gap of 40 years. I did a few classes when I was an undergraduate and then nothing until I was 63. I have been doing it for the last 5 years. Can't say I was ever any good at it then or now but it has been a lot of fun, I've met a lot of nice people of all ages and backgrounds and it helps me to keep working.I wish you the best of luck.

My ears pricked up when I heard the sports news on the Today programme just now about a joint venture between MCC and the Royal Academy of Dance to encourage more children of both genders to take up cricket and ballet. There was an interview with Alexander Campbell who has agreed to act as "ambassador" for the project. I Googled the search terms "RAD", "MCC", "cricket" and "ballet" and discovered this page on the RAD website. As I have said several times on this thread, cricket and ballet are two lifelong passions and I developed a love of both at about the same time. To me, they are very similar and although there are not many persons who claim to be aficionados of both the followers of each activity have much in common. It does not surprise me in the least that Alexander Campbell was an outstanding cricketer (see Alexander Campbell interview: 'Giving up cricket was a sacrifice' The Daily Telegraph) as was Xander Parish. Happy a family like the Husseins where Nasser captained his country on the field and Benazir danced at Covent Garden. There are of course links between ballet and other sports. One of my favourite young dancers with the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company who is now in Houston told me that she learned that she had been accepted for La Scala ballet school when she was about to plunge into the baths to compete in the Italian ladies' swimming championship. My companion at a lot of performances and a collaborator in Terpsichore represented England in volleyball at youth level while also studying several styles of Indian classical dance, contemporary dance and ballet. However, I think the parallels between ballet and cricket are particularly close and I am sure that the children who participate in the MCC-RAD programme will be rewarded with a lifetime of pleasure in the two activities.

Many thanks for drawing my attention to this video. I heard about the tunnels for the first time on Wednesday when I was in Liverpool to give a talk. I thought they might be early foot tunnels under the Mersey like Brunel's under the Thames but that does not seem to be so. There are lots of other interesting things in Liverpool. I was at the Ganesh Temple a couple of weeks ago where I attended a Hindu festival. I saw Indian classical dancers dance out episodes from the Hindu scriptures. Their choreography was intricate, their dancing impressive and their costumes and their makeup were gorgeous. Later that evening I celebrated the festival with a different type of dancing which took place at the Merchant Taylor's School in Crosby, One of the few churches of the Indian Orthodox Church in Britain is at Liverpool. That church is said to have been founded by St Thomas the disciple. And of course, there is also the Philharmonic Hall and its Dining Rooms with its famous facilities - the only ones in England (so I am told) to which ladies are admitted. Lots more of course but these are things I have encountered recently.

I can think of nothing that would give greater comfort or encouragement to those who wish us harm than the kerbing of a lawful and peaceful demonstration. It so happens that I am in sympathy with the demonstrators' cause but I would have been of exactly the same opinion had the demonstration been in support of a cause that I oppose so long as the demo was conducted lawfully and peacefully.

I drove nearly 400 miles to Truro yesterday to see Duchy Ballet perform The Sleeping Beauty in the Hall for Cornwall last night and they were well worth the trek. The lead roles were danced by Laura Bosenberg and Tom Thorne from Cape Town City Ballet, one of the oldest companies in the Commonwealth, and as far as I know this was their only appearance in the UK. The other roles were danced by the companies members who are mainly children and young adults. There were some very promising dancers in the cast - Matthew Phillips who was Bluebird, the young woman who danced the lilac fairy (I think it was Alambama Seymour from the photo in the programme), Jasmine Allen, the white cat. I could go on but I have to get back to Holmfirth tonight. Congratulations to the choreographer, Terence Etheridge who also danced Carabosse in a very Helpmassesque way and to the artistic director, Kay Jones. The company won a standing ovation for their show. Need I say more? I have written a longer review in Terpsichore.

Funny you should say that, Sim. I interviewed Tindall for 45 minutes about his work 2 weeks ago and much of our discussion was on the interface and overlap between the cinema and dance. He has already made a film of his one act ballet "The Architect".

I was at last night's show though I nearly missed it because of gridlocked traffic. I have been following Northern Ballet for many years and have seen many of the company's performances in my time. It has been many years since I enjoyed one of their performances as much as I enjoyed Casanova last night.

I have been thinking of ways the management of the theatre in West Palm Beach that I mentioned in my previous post could discourage its patrons from flouncing out of the auditorium while the dancers are still taking their curtain calls. It could send its valet parking staff off for a coffee break until after the reverence had finished. It could charge a supplemental fee for retrieval of a parked car before the performance had finished approximately equal to a generous bouquet of flowers and apply the proceeds of such fee for that purpose. Any other suggestions?

Another member of Team Terpsichore, has just returned from Florida where she saw the Miami City Ballet perform a triple bill consisting of Balanchine's Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Wheeldon's Polyphonia and a new ballet specially commissioned for the company from Ratmansky called The Fairy's Kiss at West Palm Beach. My colleague enjoyed the review very much and I have just posted her review to our blog but she complained that the auditorium emptied as the artists were taking their curtain call. She was shocked as would I have been. As she put it in her article: I like to think the artists would get the respect they deserve in most theatres in North America but it is many years since I last visited the USA and things may have changed. Is this a case of tempora and mores or is it just the way they do things in West Palm Beach?

You might find this video useful I also wrote an article on the Lowry CAT in my blog on 27 May 2016. The CAT seems to cover a lot of dance disciplines. I came across a Bharatanatyam class at the Dancehouse last October. The teacher spotted my companion who is of Indian heritage and told my companion that she was teaching Bharatanatyam as part of the CAT programme. The above film mentions ballet and actually shows students at the barre. I suggest you contact Jonathan Poole, the CAT Manager, at The Lowry, Pier 8 Salford Quays, M50 3AZ Tel: 0161 876 2025 Email: jonathan.poole@thelowry.com and ask him.

Thank you for starting this thread, thewinelake. I regret I did not see this performance but I have bookmarked the Cambridge University Ballet Club website and will try to attend their next show. I also googled several other universities to see whether they have ballet clubs too. Oxford seems to have a ballet club too though its website at http://www.oxuniballet.co.uk/ seems rather dated. I was particularly pleased to find a Facebook page for a St Andrews Dance Society because I helped to found a society by that name when I was an undergraduate there between 1968 and 1972. Like the Cambridge students, we had classes on Monday night in a new sports centre. Our teacher was a biochemistry student called Sally Marshall who had either performed professionally or trained to a high level. I remember how she trained us to do grands jetes by clapping her hands slowly as we galloped across the studio. I still have that clapping in my mind's ear when doing grands jetes now. We even had a pianist. I don't think we ever contemplated a show but we did organize coach trips to nearby cities to see visiting ballet companies. One of those companies was Western Theatre Ballet which moved from Bristol to Glasgow in 1969. Before they came to Glasgow there was not much dance in Scotland. I think our Professor of Fine Arts, John Steer, may have had something to do with the move as he came to use from Bristol where he know the company very well. It was through Prof. Steer than I got to meet Peter Darrell and many of the dancers. Indeed, I once ferries them from the Whitehall theatre to their lodgings when they visited Dundee. I think the most ambitious thing I ever did was to bring Western Theatre Ballet to St Andrews for out first university arts festival. They came on 15 Feb 1971, the day we introduced decimalized currency. The reason I remember that was that date is that I had to sell programmes at 2/6 or 12 1/2p. I was also a dance critic for 'Αιεν our student newspaper. I remember having to think of something nice to say about Darrell's Beauty and the Beast or rather Thea Musgrave's score. I stopped dancing when I went to graduate school in Los Angeles. In those days there was very little ballet to be had in Southern California and there was certainly no ballet society or even a ballet teacher on campus in the early 1970s, I resumed ballet in 2013 thanks to a wonderful teacher in Huddersfield called Fiona Noonan who encouraged me to apply to Northern Ballet#s over 55 class in Leeds. ​

I would never have come across ZfinMalta Dance Ensemble had I not been offered reviewers' tickets for their show at CAST in Doncaster but I am very glad that I did because the company danced an enthralling performance. The ensemble danced two works: Kick the Bucket by Ivan Perez, and Home by the company's artistic director Mavin Khoo. The first of those works was a duet by Khoo and Gabin Corredor. The second was a work performed by the whole ensemble which had been choreographed by Khoo himself. Khoo may be known to some readers for his work with Akram Khan and Wayne McGregor. The company was formed only in Sept 2014 and has already toured extensively on the continent, in the Middle East and South East Asia. It is very polished and there seems to be a lot of talent in the troupe. It is now touring England and Wales. Its next stops are Liverpool tonight and London next week. I reviewed the ensemble's performance in Doncaster in my blog and write some background on the company and dance in Malta in ZfinMalta Dance Ensemble's UK Tour. If you can get to see them I doubt that you will be disappointed.

Here's the link to Danceworks' beginners' classes in London http://danceworks.net/beginner-classes/ and here's Pineapple http://www.pineapple.uk.com/studio/index/filter/ The link to NB Academy's classes at Leeds is at https://northernballet.com/academy/training-programmes/open-classes There is also a very good beginners' class on Mondays at Dance Studio Leeds http://thedancestudioleeds.com/ If you can get to Manchester Oxford Road by 18:15 which is just over an hour from Leeds you will find my favourite adult ballet classes at KNT which take place in the studios of Northern Ballet School most evenings and on Saturday afternoons http://www.kntdanceworks.co.uk/ The Northern Ballet School - which has nothing to do with the Northern Ballet Academy in Leeds - is literally 2 minutes walk from the railway station. I have reviewed all those classes and many others in Terpsichore and I have written an article called "Back to Class" in that publication on 8 Jan 2017. Also, I wrote about my first adult ballet class on 12 Sept 2013 in "Realizing the Dream." I can't give you precise links other than to the homepage because the management has asked me not to, but there is a search facility and an archive in the top left-hand panel of the blog. The real authority on adult ballet classes is Michelle Richer and she has contributed pages of articles on the subject to the Simply Adult Ballet thread. Good luck with those classes. Maybe I shall run into you at one of them.

I can say that David Brewer is rather good with absolute impartiality and independence and have done so on more than one occasion. I wish him well in his new career. Sim, I think Christopher Moore is likely to be the choreographer. He has done all the other ballets by that company which I have seen. However, that information will be in my review in Terpsichore tomorrow.

I am very glad you enjoyed the performance, nottsballetlover, as I hope to attend the same show in Wakefield tomorrow evening. I find the leaning and twisted tower of the parish church to be the most fascinating feature of Chesterfield. Its local authority has recently been in the news in this part of the world because it is the subject of litigation between Derbyshire County Council and the South Yorkshire metropolitan boroughs over whether it should be allowed to join a new combined authority for the Sheffield city region to which the government proposes to delegate substantial powers. I have seen several performances by Ballet Theatre UK - most recently Pinnochio in Rotherham in the spring which I reviewed in my blog - and admired their young dancers. However, I am aware that they have lost at three of those dancers and it is not clear whether they have replaced them because the "Dancers" page of their website is blank. My only complaint about this company is that they never print cast lists, In the past, Hfbrew has given me the names of the cast but I surmise that she will no longer be able to supply me with that information. I met Christopher Moore at Move It last yer and begged him to spare a thought for the poor reviewer. He assured me that he would distribute cast lists but I had to pin Mr Moore's father into a corner when the company visited Rotherham in order to learn the names of the dancers. My review of the Wakefield performance of Romeo & Juliet will appear in Terpsichore on Sunday.

Returning to the question of what ballet will be like in 2067 there is another trend that I should have mentioned and that is improvements in special effects technology. I was very impressed by the special effects that the Royal Shakespeare Company used in yesterday's performance of The Tempest which I saw in the National Media Museum in Bradford. There have been so many advances in stage technology with computer graphics. If technology advances at the same pace over the next 50 years time the mind boggles at what producers should be able to pull off at the end of that period. That might solve other problems like attracting young people to the ballet. I think kids will come if there is something to see. There was quite a young crowd in the Lowry on the two nights I saw Red Shoes. There are plenty of opportunities for a bit of technical wizardry in say the second act of Coppelia or Drosselmeyer's tricks in The Nutcracker. Combined with great choreography, a great score and great dancing, I think it will draw in the public in droves. Bangorballetboy I take my hat off to you. I don't know how you find the time to see so much. You are very different from the solicitors and patent agents who instruct me. I have had to keep quite about my ballet classes and outings ever since my clerk said "Nobody pays yer to be a ballerina, does they miss" to which I was very tempted to reply "Nobody pays me to be a barrister either." I suppose it must help living in London as you save the 2 to 3 hour journey in each direction but even so.

That's a problem for me too. I was horrified to discover that I had seen 72 ballets, no operas, about 3 concerts and very few films or plays last year. This year I am making a conscious effort to redress the balance and have already taken in one concert at the Bridgwater Hall (albeit conducted by John Pryce-Jones who is the musical director of Northern Ballet) and HDTV transmissions of Nabucco from New York and The Tempest from Stratford. However, I am in danger of backsliding as I am seeing Ballet Theatre UK's Romeo and Juliet at Wakey on Saturday, at least one performance of Mary Skeaping's Giselle in the Smoke, Scottish Ballet's Hansel & Gretel in Newcastle and the Maltese national dance company in Donny. As I keep a dance blog I get a lot of invitations to performances some of which I ask friends in London to cover. I can only see one show once a week without neglecting my job or housework so I shall have to do a lot more delegation if I am going to get some balance. Always looking out for volunteer reviewers.

As usual, Two Pigeons makes some interesting points but again I am not bothered. I think the trends that she identifies simply indicate that tastes change. As to her concerns abut what is happening in Copenhagen and other places, If they can change one way they can change back the other way. Some ballets fall out of favour but are revived many years later. I am grateful to Two Pigeons for drawing attention to the differences between Ashton and Macmillan in their demands on the dancer. The point had not occurred to me before. Having said that, companies perform works that paying audiences want to see rather than dancers want to dance. I think audiences will want to be cheered up by Lanchberry's orchestration, Lancaster's farmyard designs and Ashton's humour in 50 years time just as much as we do now. I also think the same audiences will want to see sword fights, hear Prokofiev's score and admire the bedroom pas de deux in Rome and Juliet. Inevitbly some of the works that we enjoy right now will have to go to make way for popular new works of the future but I don't think that is a bad thing. Some of those new works will be discarded in the subsequent 50 years and some of the very best of today's repertoire will be revived.