Ballet Central Diary

Ashley Dixon. Photo: Bill Cooper. Click on picture for larger image.

Ashley Dixon, March Diary

Hey everyone,
Sorry I haven’t written in ages but I do have a good excuse, I promise. Unfortunately towards the end of January I felt sick and was admitted to hospital with suspected appendicitis, which as you can imagine was quite scary so close to starting the tour. I was kept in hospital for a few days while they tried to find out what was wrong. After the two days they discharged me saying that I had a viral infection and would have to rest for at least a week.

This was the last thing I needed at this time as we were drawing nearer to the tour and the work load was increasing – however, I would have been no good staying at school so I went home for a week. This also meant that I sadly missed the audition for Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo. However, since then I have sent my application to Northern Ballet Theatre and have an audition so I will keep you all informed.

So, on went my time at home and it seemed more like a month than a week - I felt I was missing out on so much at school. The last couple of days at home I couldn’t wait to get back to Central and get on with things again. However, a week later, when I actually got back to school I wanted to go home again! My stamina was so low that I was struggling to keep up with everything. But I solved this problem by gradually building up my work load day by day until after about a week I was back doing full timetable again.

This was such a great feeling, as only a few weeks before I was in hospital not knowing if I would be dancing at the beginning of tour. This also meant I could start catching up on new choreography and notes about some of the pieces. The next few weeks seemed to fly by and before we knew it we were told that David Bintley, Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, was coming in to watch us rehearse ‘Scottish Dances’ from Flowers of the Forest – a ballet he choreographed that we were hoping to include in the tour. He seemed impressed with the staging of the piece and was kind enough to give us his permission to use it.

After this I felt really good about myself and felt that we were finally all coming together like a company, nearly forgetting that in the next week or so was the Ballet Central preview – an in-house event where ‘Central Friends’ are given a first exclusive performance of the tour

The preview day turned out to be physically a lot harder than I thought as we didn’t just have to dance but we had to set up the studio to look like a small theatre. This included us setting up lights, a sound system and laying a different dance floor. This was a good experience for us as we have to do this at every venue on tour, giving us an insight in to how a day in the life of Ballet Central works. I felt quite nervous about the performance as I was in the first piece, but as soon as the music started the nerves went and I started to enjoy myself. As the show progressed I thought I would start to tire and lose strength, but the more I went on I felt it was going better and felt really comfortable with the pieces. However at the end of the show when it had all finished all I wanted was to go home and go to bed.

Now the preview has gone and we have about 3 weeks! Until the tour starts - I can’t wait! We are constantly rehearsing pieces just adding the final touches and working on presentation and interpretation. I’ll write again soon, (I promise) keeping you up to date on the tour and any auditions I have.

Bye for now, Ash

Posted by at March 3, 2004 06:13 PM