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April 25, 2005
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.
April 21, 2005
Verity's April Diary
Dear Diary
It has been a very exciting month! We have all been working very hard to perfect our performance for the opening of our Ballet Central Tour on 6th April at the Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music in London. After two in-house preview performances the week before at Central, we had to be at the theatre on Monday morning for 9.00am ready to do the ‘get-in’. We have to do this at every venue we perform at and it involves setting up everything we will need for our show, from all of the technical things such as sound and lighting, to preparing the stage, which includes laying our own dance floor.
The next day was ballet class at school with guest teacher Yoko Ichino who is the Ballet Mistress at Northern Ballet Theatre. It is great when we have guest teachers because you can learn a lot and pick up many tips. After this we were off to the theatre for rehearsals on the stage. Firstly we had a spacing and technical run, which involved slowly spacing and then running each piece (this takes several hours). After some notes and a break we then had a full technical run of the show. We didn’t finish at the theatre until 10.00pm.
Wednesday began with ballet class on stage. I find having class on stage very useful as you get a chance to get to know the space that you are later going to perform on. We then had a few rehearsals and fixed things that didn’t go right from the day before. I danced in ‘Pretty and the Wolf’ which is the jazz piece by Lucy Potter, it was a lot of fun and it was great to be on stage, although it wasn’t enough and once I was off I just wanted to get back on! Everybody I spoke to after the performance said they really enjoyed it and we got a good review on ballet.co, no less!
The next day those who were going on tour set off on the coach for Kendal, Colwyn Bay and Liverpool. I didn’t go on this leg of the tour, and those of us that remained at school took part in filming for ‘Bump n Grind’, a programme that will appear on Trouble TV, a digital station, in May. The series is a dance competition and we had to demonstrate a ballet class to the dancers that had made it into this show. It was quite funny - the dancers had done no more than four hours of ballet before but they were great and really enthusiastic. They also each showed us a bit of what they did, which was mainly street dancing and they were amazing.
Also whilst the others were away we had a Ballet Central photocall at the London Stock Exchange. The photocall was to mark our most prestigious date in our three month tour at the Linbury, Royal Opera House. We posed in front of ‘The Source’ sculpture in our very bright costumes in the foyer area! I didn’t find this sculpture very impressive - just a load of balls moving up and down and occasionally glowing blue - but it was an unusual setting for the photos.
Those on tour are back very shortly. I can’t wait to hear how it all went - but there is no time for relaxing when they get back, as we are to perform at the Linbury in a day’s time. So that is all for now.
Verity xx
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