 |
   |
Christopher Hampson,
Luxury & Dry-Ice | |||||||
|
Tens of works down the line and Christopher is now an internationally known and respected choreographer. So which far flung place is he in this time...
Here is a link to the previous column in the series.
I have been resident in Czech Republic for close to three months now creating a new production of Giselle for the National Theatre, Prague. With the temperature outside starting to warm up and the temperature in the theatre doing the same, we are set for the premiere on April 1st (no, really). The first month here was spent working with all the dancers and getting to know them. In the first few days of a new production everybody wants “The Casting”. I find that casting can sometimes take days, weeks and in some cases months. Thankfully, companies have a mixed bag of people to work on. Some dancers do nothing for me in the first week, and then begin to shine in the work a week later. This also works the other way round too. I have had the luxury of time to work very carefully with all the casts on this production, each bringing their own nuances and characteristics to the roles. While I was starting rehearsals I was getting regular visits from Bruce French (Designer, always armed with Marmite and a copy of The Sunday Times from Blighty). He would have meetings with Flora (Set and costume makers dept.) and then would go through any changes or adjustments with me. As the weeks moved on we got to the costume fittings. These required a starting time of 7:30am, for the fittings themselves and sometimes 7 or 8 people to fit in a row (each taking approx 30mins). We found it quite difficult to be making artistic decisions at this time in the morning. Often by the time I got to the studio at around 11am I’d feel like it was “wine time”, but that had to wait quite a few more hours. Caroline Palmer (choreologist) has been with me the whole time on this production notating as I’ve been choreographing. Most people here have never heard of Benesh Notation here and it has been more than one occasion where Caroline has had to give a lecture at a college/university regarding what it is she actually does and why. The second month here was spent finishing the ballet, rehearsing alternative casts and hoping we could get the Dry-Ice machine that we wanted. My rehearsals would be squeezed into a day where the company could be rehearsing up to seven other ballets. I’m in month three now. We have technical rehearsals for three weeks on stage. A week with just the set, then some lights, then a week with orchestra and then a week with everything. Luxury!!! I can actually get a chance to see it properly on stage before anybody else. It is a perfectly normal (and financially necessary) practice in companies such as ENB for the choreographer to only see their new productions on stage with everything together for the first time at the same time you do…the premiere. In the meantime… I’ve been having discussions with Royal New Zealand Ballet about their forthcoming tour of the UK. They bring with them my Romeo and Juliet and a triple bill (Hampson/ de Frutos/ Baldwin). My ballet on the triple bill is Salterello, a work I did for them three years ago. When I was in NZ last year creating R&J I made some changes to Salterello and it has had its airing in NZ already. Because of other work I’ve not had time to work on either of these re- stagings but looking forward to seeing them again in Manchester.
Another diary “post- Giselle”.
| ||||||||
|
 | ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
|
| ||||||||
