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Northern Ballet Archive and a plea for identification help


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Northern Ballet has put a page of archive images on the company website with a plea for help with identification of some of the people in the photographs and poster:

 

http://northernballet.com/index.php?q=news/13-08-27/katharine-wootton/rummage-through-archive

 

I first saw Northern Ballet in the Autumn of 1985 in a production of Othello by Robert de Warren, so most of these items are before my time.

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Hello Rachelm, welome out of the lurking shadows!  Thanks for posting and I hope we'll hear lots more from you.

 

Jayne Regan was very special wasn't she?  And I loved William Walker too!

 

Are you going to see Midsummer Night's Dream at the WYP this weekend or next week?

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Hello Rachelm, welome out of the lurking shadows!  Thanks for posting and I hope we'll hear lots more from you.

 

Jayne Regan was very special wasn't she?  And I loved William Walker too!

 

Are you going to see Midsummer Night's Dream at the WYP this weekend or next week?

Hi Janet, I might see it in Norwich. They're doing a Christmas Carol soon so I hope to see that again. Jayne Regan was gorgeous- I loved her!! I really enjoyed the Christopher Gable productions of Cinderella, Swan Lake & Giselle- I have great memories of her in all those roles. In the current rep, I thought Nutcracker was superb!

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Norwich is absolutely one of my favourite venues!  Unfortunately I can't make it this Autumn and I'm not sure about next Spring either.

 

I loved those productions too (especially the ghetto-set Giselle.  In fact my first ever visit to Norwich was to see that production in May 1998). 

 

It will be interesting to see what David Nixon does with Cinderella.  The score is newly commissioned from Philip Feeney.

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I took some girls from the ballet club to a performance in Port Sunlight on the Wirral circa 1970-72.

 

I think it might have been called Northern Dance Theatre then which I assume is now the Northern Ballet.

 

This was the first ballet any of the girls had been to so am hoping that they are still attenders today up there in Liverpool or wherever they have got to even though haven't seen for 40 years!!

 

I have no idea who the dancers were then of course so somewhere in the archives there will hopefully be a record of this Port Sunlight Hall performance.....and maybe they went there in other years too.

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Yes Lin, Northern Dance Theatre became Northern Ballet!!  I first saw the company towards the end of 1985 but a friend of mine saw the company in its opening season in 1969.

 

Sadly, along with sets and costumes, some of the archives were lost in a fire that happened around 10 years ago.

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Have looked at the building and that looks the most likely.....also I seem to remember getting the train to Bebington and then walking across this Rec (dancing on the way back).

Also what sticks in my mind is that during one of the performances one of the dancers shoes came off and went flying across the stage. Then the dancer got the giggles and it was funny seeing her trying not to laugh and of course my little crowd noticed and went on afterwards about the dancer laughing and the shoe coming off. They loved it though and of course seeing this gave ballet lessons a bit more meaning.

The following year they were performing for the school fete and in old people's homes themselves!

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Norwich is absolutely one of my favourite venues!  Unfortunately I can't make it this Autumn and I'm not sure about next Spring either.

 

I loved those productions too (especially the ghetto-set Giselle.  In fact my first ever visit to Norwich was to see that production in May 1998). 

 

It will be interesting to see what David Nixon does with Cinderella.  The score is newly commissioned from Philip Feeney.

 

Oh wow, you come to Norwich too! I love our theatre, I think we're very lucky. Yes the ghetto setting of Giselle was quite MacMillan-esque I thought! I loved Phillip Feeney's original score for Gable's Cinderella, I wonder why he will be doing another one...? Be great anyway as his music always suits the company really well.

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