Ballet Central Diary

Richard's April Diary

Hello! This instalment comes to you from the Ballet Central minibus whilst travelling back from Abergavenny.

Ballet Central has finally kicked off. Well the tour began at the Jack Lyons Theatre, which was a really nice opening venue, and we had a really good reception from our audience. The first night was a success with excellent reviews and feedback from those “in the know”. The next morning the first leg of tour began. Our first port of call was Kendal, where Ballet Central has an established reputation. We did two performances here to sell out audiences but we also managed to find time to see the sights of Kendal and stock up on Kendal mint cake.

The next leg took us to Colwyn Bay in North Wales. This was a difficult venue for everyone because the stage was raked and the size of a postage stamp, but we worked around it like true professionals! On our day off in Colwyn Bay we had fun and made friends with the local sea life, in particular an octopus that we named Irene, who we saved from certain death! The show went well but I nearly took a tumble in Simple Symphony (a ballet work) when another dancer tripped me up - I covered it as best I could. Once the show was finished, as with every venue, we had to do the get out. We were very proud in this early stage of the tour to get it done in under 45 minutes!

The next venue was in Liverpool, which was only a couple of hours down the road. After Colwyn Bay, this was a really exciting venue because the stage was massive in contrast. During the get in I had to go up in to the flies above the stage to help pull some ropes, which was quite frightening. Just before the performance I sprained my ankle, which panicked everyone. I then had to teach my parts to other people in case I couldn’t dance. But luckily I managed to get through the performance with every dancer’s best friend: Nurofen.

The next venue was definitely our most prestigious and important, The Linbury at the Royal Opera House. It was a wonderful experience to dance on such a big stage and also to have a sprung floor. The show was a huge success and people remarked on how much the programme had improved in such a short space of time.

By this time we were all very tired having been on the road for over a week, but the next venue was a home venue for me in Hertford. This was another venue where Ballet Central has an established reputation as we have been going there for 20 years. After the show it was great to see some old friends and relatives.

We then had 3 days off tour and it was a shock coming back to school and wearing uniform. Last Thursday we travelled to Abergavenny. We arrived at our accommodation, which we’re pretty sure was haunted as it was a converted convent: it was really spooky and smelt funny. The theatre was very quaint but it was another mini-stage on a rake. There had been a number of cast changes so it was really good working with some new faces, which made the performance exciting. The show went really well with only a couple of hiccups like people walking into lighting booms! We’re all really tired but looking forward to a week back at school.

Richard.

Posted by at April 25, 2005 12:42 PM