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December 18, 2003
Brian's December Diary
Hi, I’m back, and much has happened since last writing. We have continued to rehearse and get ready for the Ballet Central national tour, we have performed at the Tate Britain (for our sponsors, ScottishPower), I have helped with an education workshop in Glasgow, and we are now shooting our production and audition photographs.
At the Tate Britain ScottishPower event I performed in two pieces, the first being ‘Measured Paces’ by David Fielding, the other was a pas de deux from Northern Ballet Theatre’s Dracula.
Both require a lot of stamina and have very challenging duet work, but even these elements are very different, as ‘Dracula’ is for two men, and ‘Paces’ is for six couples. It has been a demanding process getting ‘Paces’ up to standard; the second movement in which I am more involved requires two couples to perform in unison some very advanced pas de deux work. It has also been challenging to work with the Stravinsky score, which is structurally very complicated and requires constant attention.
‘Dracula’ posed other difficulties, including my first taste of wearing a wig! It is quite a scary experience going into wardrobe looking like yourself, and then twenty minutes later coming out and seeing yourself looking ancient, with long grey hair! I really love playing Dracula, the character has so much power and intensity, and I love going on stage and performing it. There are, however, difficulties in playing a character with that power, as I cannot show any strain during the piece. I have also got some praise from my fellow company members when they have seen me perform it, which is a great encouragement and helps me throw myself into it every time.
In the middle of getting ready for the event at the Tate, I was chosen to go up to Glasgow, with five other Ballet Central members to take part in our first Educational Workshop. We performed a short ‘Behind the Scenes’ look at what we do every day at Central School of Ballet and showed some of the tour pieces, and then the rest of the day we spent creating a version of The Nutcracker with the children. I never really contemplated how tiring it would be, having to be enthusiastic all the time, but it was very rewarding to see the end result when the children put on a performance for their parents.
After all this action over the last 4 weeks I am really looking forward to having a rest over Christmas, allowing my body to recover and returning to South Africa for the first time since I came to Central School of Ballet.
Signing off ‘til next time
Brian
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