Madame Galina's Doings Diary

On Dealing With What’s There...

Some bloody person told me the other day that I was delusional.

“I am not.”

“No, you’re not. I am, though.”

Sorry, I thought, don’t want to join in with Let’s Play Analysts, so just shut up and drive.

We were coming back from a corporate gig I’d done for a local council promoting Dance Awareness in the theatres that it administrates. And, to quote Melba when she had just given a Command Performance for Queen Victoria and was sitting down to eat with her fellow artists: “What a dull evening it would have been if I hadn’t come.”

The idea was to part businesses in town from their takings. For that you must have good booze and nibbles (we did) and a bit of a laugh (I may be flattering myself, but…) and not a long piece from the inevitable troupe of overweight and under-trained girls accompanied by heavy metal in choreography that really should have died the deserved death when French and Saunders lampooned it in their first series for the BBC.

“…and run and run and jump in seconde off balance, and now lunge into plie and arms like the Funky Gibbon minus the funky, and now the pose looking into the middle distance that models use in shoots advertising sailing wear or watches…”

In any case, no matter how good the dancing, don’t waste art on a corporate audience. They don’t want it. Ask a comedian during Christmas office party season. It’s all about crowd control. And the Athenaeum crowd were no different. As one of them said to me,

“The only time I am prepared to watch children perform is at my daughter's Nativity Play. And that’s once a year too often, frankly. Before Madame Galina came on, I’m afraid to say, we all had our hands so firmly in our pockets they’d made a hole.”

A typical corporate event. I'm doing Pacquita Variation Three just out of sight to the left here.

Do I sound delusional? No. But the accusation is part of what I’m noticing in Aldeburgh. A tiny minority there are beginning to see me as a tall poppy. Take when I went to see a show at the Pump House Theatre and had the following bizarre exchange with an old failure from the East Anglian Folk singing circuit.

“You here again?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Have they not thought of giving some others a chance? Maybe that wouldn’t normally be thought of…”

“Er…”

“Well perhaps tonight someone could maybe have left a guitar on the stage and someone else could maybe ask me to sing. A spontaneous happening like that, as a break from the more formal performances you put on featuring Madame Galina. And not needing all that running around with posters and getting in the papers and on the radio that you seem to consider as part and parcel.”

“I’m not actually performing tonight. It’s a poetry evening.”

“I’ve never got on with poetry.”

And off he went. I refrained from shouting after him that I hadn’t actually performed Galina at the Pump House since 2004, and had needed all the posters and getting in the papers and on radio (he forgot ITV Eastern Region) as I was doing Edinburgh and must make as much dosh as I could from previews before I went up there. And what, for fouette’s sake, is spontaneous about leaving a guitar on the stage for it to be used, Chekov’s Act One gun-like, later on?

I’m too busy to be getting up myself, frankly. Back from being adored in Sweden, I was straight on the phone to the National Rural Touring Forum trying to get myself gigs in Village Halls on the outskirts of Swindon. Being a prophet in a foreign land doesn’t necessarily mean being in profit when my tax, internet porn and Horlicks bills have been paid.

And yes, as has got round Aldeburgh, Her Majesty The Queen told the then First Sea Lord to let me sing for longer next time as she thought I had been “rather lovely”, but that only impressed my singing teacher, Pamela Bowling, currently overseeing the recital I’m giving with Louisa Duggan on April 15th, in so far as it was something useful to have on my CV.

“You’re still walking onto the platform like a circus horse. Your “ay” vowel can still sound far too Hampshire Women’s Institute "Jem" Making demonstration. And congratulations on the gorgeous tone you produced in in The Sally Gardens, but you made absolutely no sense of the song at all.”

In fact she went on to say that I had made anti-sense of it. Which is where we came in. The idea of dealing with what’s there.

“The line about her crossing the Sally Gardens on little snow-white feet, is just about this flibbertigibbet of a girl walking across grass. There’s nothing else going on. Certainly - as you made it sound - nothing f-ing Freudian.”

And how do her little snow-white feet make you feel?

It made me think of the recent BBC4 programme where Anthony Dowell coached Carlos Acosta in Prince Whatever You Want To Call Him’s solo from Sleeping Beauty, and Monica Mason worked with Elisabeth McGorian, Gillie Revie and Genesia Rosato on Carabosse. The Dowell segment was fascinating and his dancing in the clips was gorgeous; but I found Mason et al hide behind the sofa squirmy.

Exploring the Method process through the journey of a complex character such as Juliet or Countess Larisch would be instructive. To use Carabosse was ridiculous.

And the way the four hamming lovies were going on you’d think they were preparing for performances of at least Hedda Gabler. In the original language. With Ibsen himself directing.

Posted by Madame Galina2 at March 14, 2007 06:32 PM