Victoria Sibson and Dreda Blow retiring from Northern Ballet in June

[Jan McNulty]

Two wonderful and wonderfully dramatic dancers are retiring from Northern Ballet at the end of June - Victoria Sibson and Dreda Blow.

 

Victoria Sibson created the role of young Cathy in Wuthering Heights when she was still a student at Central School and has gone on to create and dance some incredibly powerful roles.  I think my favourite recollection is of her performance as Puck in David Nixon's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" but she was also magical as Gertrude in Hamlet and more recently as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre.

 

I first noticed Dreda Blow when I was invited to attend a visually impaired workshop and Dreda was one of the dancers who participated.  Since that day I watched out for her and have loved her in everything she has done from Cathy in Wuthering Heights to Julia in 1984 and most recently as Princess Dana in Little Mermaid.

 

Both these dancers will be much missed and I would like to wish them both all the very best for the future.

 

https://northernballet.com/jane-eyre/saying-farewell

[Nicola H]

which means there will be some big news  over the summer the,  as that 'top table'  will need some  new  people round it  to join Javier, Pippa, Hannah ,Antoinette and Ashley ... 

i'm not going to place bets  on anything as the last thing I  placed a (virtual) bet on ballet wise  was  blown out of the water  by a certain person  joining ENB 

[capybara]

13 hours ago, Nicola H said:

which means there will be some big news  over the summer the,  as that 'top table'  will need some  new  people round it  to join Javier, Pippa, Hannah ,Antoinette and Ashley ... 

i'm not going to place bets  on anything as the last thing I  placed a (virtual) bet on ballet wise  was  blown out of the water  by a certain person  joining ENB 

 

Nicola H - I'm afraid that not all of us are as  familiar with Northern Ballet as you are. Please can we have some surnames?

[Nicola H]

2 minutes ago, capybara said:

 

Nicola H - I'm afraid that not all of us are as  familiar with Northern Ballet as you are. Please can we have some surnames?

https://northernballet.com/dancers

Northern;s nomenclature of it;s dancers is different to that of some other companies - notably  not actually titling  people as Principals 

the 2  'Premier Dancers ' being Javier Torres and Pippa Moore  

the  'Leading '  and 'First ' Soloists   being  Hannah Bateman , Antoinette Brooks-Daw and Ashley Dixon    plus   Giuliano Contadini who left at the turn of the year , and  now with Dreda  and VIctoria announcing they are  moving on ...  there's a  number of  'vacancies' 

returning to  the nomenclature issue  -   northern  has 4 grades of  Soloist  , Leading -FIist- <plain> - Junior  and  Coryphees   (  not to mention   some of the  corps takign names roles in  full scale  productions  - as  we've seen with Gavin McCaig  in  the most rescent shows of the Little Mermaid and Jane Eyre )

with the Leading and First  Soloists  functionally   equivalent to  those other  companies  call principals