Ballet Central Diary

Richard's March Diary

Hello, it feels like ages since I last wrote an entry, I guess that’s because so much has happened in the meantime. I’ve done a few auditions this month. I flew to Oslo for the Norwegian National Ballet audition – it was a pretty good class, quite tricky, and Oslo was really nice, but freezing!! Lots of funny things happened, including me trying to check into the wrong hotel... Last week I auditioned in Prague for the national company. This was a hard class and it was very, v-e-r-y long. Anyway, Prague was beautiful and that made it all worthwhile.

Two weeks ago, an awards ceremony was held at the Barbican for Arts and Business Awards. Me and Carolyn White, another third year student, were invited to attend and we were really pleased to find out that Ballet Central and ScottishPower had won the award for sustainability. This was a really interesting evening and we had a good time at the champagne reception afterwards!

The main focus for Ballet Central in the last month has been the ScottishPower event held at St Andrew Church in Holborn. This was a really important event for us because we didn’t want to disappoint our sponsors. We performed five pieces from our rep’ and I was in three of them. The biggest challenge for me was the final piece entitled ‘The Numbers Game’ by Sara Matthews. Sara had just finished the piece the week before and it’s the longest, and for me the most complicated piece in our rep’. The evening went really well and everyone was very pleased with our performance.

This week we have a residency with Siobhan Davies for 2 days which should be a very interesting experience. This weekend I will be auditioning for Northern Ballet Theatre, which I’m really look forward to but I’m a bit nervous about it, so wish me luck!

Richard

Verity's March Diary

Dear Diary

Hello. Again it has been a very busy month, although not much has really changed since my last entry. I am still off every now and then auditioning - but no luck as of yet.

Last weekend I went to Norway - it was freezing and a very expensive place, I could hardly afford to eat! A group of us stayed in a hostel just outside the city centre of Oslo which is really nice and very big. We had some spare time after our audition so we visited a sculpture park, a ‘must see’ when going to Oslo, apparently. The park was huge, and the sculptures were quite interesting. They were all of naked people in very unusual poses!

Ballet Central performed at a ScottishPower event last Wednesday at St Andrew Church in Holborn. So we worked really hard last week rehearsing the pieces we were to perform and it was a very successful evening – all the hard work paid off. It was a big church but it was very cold while we were rehearsing and the stage was quite small. The first piece in the programme was David Nixon’s pas de deux which is danced to music written by Philip Feeney. Philip played the piece live on a big organ and there was also a live soprano singing: it sounded amazing.

It was a very long evening, as in the middle of the programme we had a 2 hour interval in which the guests ate a meal, so our second half did not begin until 10ish. I performed in the jazz piece after the interval (choreographed by Lucy Potter) which I really enjoy because it is a piece that you can have a lot of fun with. It was the first time that we had worn costumes for a few of the pieces and they all looked great.

I am really looking forward to going on tour. The ScottishPower event gave us a taste of what’s to come: it will be hard work but it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Verity