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Josephine Jewkes,
The Tour of the 22 Green Bottles | |||||||
Josephine Jewkes, dancer with Rambert and formerly an ENB Principal, writes each month on the "dancing life". Here is a link to the previous column in the series.Having left two of our colleagues behind in London for health reasons (and so taking two ex-Ramberts to cover), we flew to San Francisco on 24th February, straight into hippy heaven (Nirvana?) which is Berkeley University campus. The smell of joss sticks drifted up to my hotel room from the street below and when I ventured out I quickly discovered myriad cafes geared to their "have-a-cup-of-coffee-and-write-your-thesis" type of lifestyle. Most congenial. I made my debut here in Axioma 7. Anxiety dreams about the piece chiefly concerned me falling off my chair onto my teeth as I struggled to take off my trousers in half a count. As it turned out, nothing so dramatic happened (although I nearly forgot my steps when the audience started to laugh) and the only blip was that the chair seat stuck to my sweaty legs at a crucial moment during a Mexican wave effect - not a problem I had encountered in rehearsal. On our day off, a little group of us went to join in class work with San Francisco Ballet at their palatial studio complex. It was a weird experience for me as I saw old familiar sights but unfamiliar faces. The studio was vast and class contained about fifty dancers, the serious workers at the front near the teacher, the not-so-serious ones near the back out of eyesight and earshot. The atmosphere was a combination of narcissism and horseplay as painfully thin women preened in front of the mirrors and bored young Russian-trained men joked and pirouetted during the tendu exercises. Prodigiously gifted principals, hypnotised by their own reflections, seemed immune to the possibility of accepting any corrections and indeed the quietly spoken teacher directed her attention to the conscientious group of corps de ballet and soloist girls who were picking up the exercises and doing the entire class on point. I was pleased to see head and arms moving beautifully at the barre as the Rambert's unsentimental attitude to movement during ballet class can result in a static head and perfunctory arms and hands. However, as my colleagues commented afterwards, very few of the ballet dancers could actually move boldly and eat up space when it came to the allegro sections (especially the women) and the emphasis on external effects meant that very few of them seemed to shift their weight confidently. All shortcomings in fact, which I noted in my own dancing when I joined Rambert. Still in pain with my hip, I visited two chiropractors in the first week. Initially the treatments seemed to help, but acute inflammation soon set in and I was taken out of the show or a week in the hope that it would settle (21 Green Bottles). It did not. I stayed on for a while travelling with the company to Malibu, Los Angeles, Costa Mesa and Palm Desert Springs having treatment with Jos Wiewel when he flew in, but eventually he diagnosed some sort of joint problem which could only show up on a CT or MRI scan. Back to the orthopaedic surgeon after seven months to have the scan I should have had in the first place . . . But now back to the Countdown: While we were in Malibu, Jan landed from a simple jump during a dress rehearsal and collapsed in a heap clutching his calf. After an evening in casualty, he hobbled out on crutches, his leg in a splint and a probable calf muscle or Achilles tendon tear diagnosed (20 Green Bottles). Takeaway pizza in his room and a procession of huggy-kissy Rambertians helped to lift his spirits. Next up was Daniel, whose twice-operated knee locked in spectacular fashion during a Rooster performance, leaving Ruby Tuesday to abort her thrown-lift section in favour of a little improvisational boogie-ing while Daniel was rushed to the nearest hospital. Waiting for him there was a Russian orthopaedic surgeon who was once an Olympic skater. Now THERE'S a poacher-to-gamekeeper! An operation was booked for the next day in time for Daniel to join the company on the coach journey to Palm Desert Springs. Of course, things did not go quite according to plan, the operation being more complex than envisaged and so Dan's plane ticket to London was booked along with mine and Jan's (19 Green Bottles). Libby meanwhile developed bronchial problems which did not evaporate in the warm Californian sun and so she too was sent home for complete rest (18 Green Bottles).` Three cases of stubborn food poisoning decimated the numbers still further and all this before crossing the border to Mexico with its salmonella salads and botulism burgers. I am holding my fingers crossed for the remaining members of the Radically Reduced Rambert Dance Company . . . My scan shows calcific tendonitis of the hip - treatable by the same deep injection method I underwent in October under x-ray monitor, though by the end of this second treatment my ovaries are in some danger of being fried like eggs over-easy. The prospect of endangering my childbearing prospects for the sake of a few more dancing years does not seem a fair exchange and so I am waiting for assurance on this before I confirm the operation which is provisionally booked for 7th April. Ensuring that at least my cloud has a silver lining, I spent last week in Edinburgh visiting my husband who has been performing in the Tchaikovsky Trilogy of Peter Schaufus's Ballet Holstebno. Audience numbers were pretty good and the consensus in the ladies' loo seemed most favourable (the best place to eavesdrop on the real reviews!). For my part, while Peter's movement vocabulary is not as yet distinctive, I found the treatment of the stock "goodies and baddies" quite moving in that he appeared to suggest layers of complexity within them, not touched on in many conventional classical versions. The healing and redemptive power of love (and its lack) affects even Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy. Indeed, I have always been touched by the strain of melancholy in her theme as Tchaikovsky bring the Fairy of Wisdom close to Aurora's cradle. ("Just - don't put your daughter on the stage, your Majesty," she whispers).
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