Ballet Central Diary

Verity's February Diary

Dear Diary

I’m so tired, it has been a very busy month! Well, firstly the Central Friends Trust Awards went well – I won £100, so that helped with my audition in Mulhouse, France last week for Ballet du Rhin. I enjoyed the audition and Mulhouse was very pretty but extremely boring. Everything was closed and we even had trouble finding somewhere to get food! This weekend I went to Glasgow for the Scottish Ballet audition, I got chosen to learn some repertoire after the class. The work was by Ashley Page and was very modern, it was really cool and I enjoyed it. I have to wait until the end of February to hear the results of that so cross your fingers for me!

Last week was very busy for Ballet Central: we had a Behind the Scenes fundraiser at school, an Open Day for prospective students and two Ballet Central Preview performances. We performed six of our pieces of repertoire at the Previews and this was a great chance to see the response from an invited audience. I think the audience really enjoyed it which is good because we really enjoyed it too – but we still have a long way to go. We also found out this week that Ballet Central will be performing at the Linbury at the Royal Opera House which we thought we would miss out on because it was fully booked – so we are all excited about that.

Over the past couple of days we have been learning an excerpt from The Brontës (from Northern Ballet Theatre’s rep, ch. Gillian Lynne). The excerpt we are learning is a trio for the author Emily Brontë with two of her characters from Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliffe. I have been learning the character of Cathy, which is a fun part because she is a bit wild and extrovert and is bare foot. We are still rehearsing all of the other pieces and they are really starting to come together so now we can stat to concentrate more on the performance and style of the pieces.

Verity xx

Richard's February Diary

Hello, it’s me again. Well, a lot has happened in the last few weeks. As I mentioned in my last entry, I was a finalist in the Central Friends Trust Award. It was a good performance opportunity and a fun evening. I won £100 which enabled me to attend the Ballet du Rhin audition in Paris. I really enjoyed this audition and would like to pursue this company again in the future. I also got to spend the day in Paris for the first time and got to do all the usual touristy things, which was an added bonus!

The following weekend I auditioned for Scottish Ballet at the Royal Opera House. It was a pretty tricky class but I really liked it. After class Ashley Page did a cut and twelve of us got to stay to learn some rep’ and show some pas de deux. The repertoire was Ashley Page’s own choreography, Fearful Symmetries - this was a really exciting piece of rep’ and I had a lot of fun learning and showing it.

As mentioned in my last diary, Aurora Bosch has come over from Cuba to teach at Central for a few weeks. She has been so helpful for us. For me particularly, she’s really helped me on my double tours and attitude en dehors pirouettes. It’s amazing how it’s possible to ‘unlock’ technique and become more successful at doing something that felt impossible before.

Next week is going to be pretty savage. We’re doing a Behind the Scenes fundraising event for Central’s Development Appeal on Wednesday; on Thursday we have a showing of Ballet Central rep’ in an open day for prospective students; and on Friday and Saturday we have preview performances of all the Ballet Central rep’.

Our repertoire is nearly complete now, we only have one more piece to learn from Northern Ballet Theatre’s rep’. I am also currently creating a piece for the tour, but it’s still a work in progress. I will keep you updated on any developments.

Richard