Daniel Jones Diary

Premieres and Pictures

October 11th 2007

Thursday October 11th was not just any Thursday, it was the opening night of Michael Corder’s The Snow Queen, a production that English National Ballet had been working on for many months. Within four days of the opening night we had had six performances of the same show which means, sadly, it’s easy to forget what the opening night actually felt like.
The main difference for a dancer between a premiere performance and all the rehearsals leading up to it, is there are no interruptions, and for the first time we get to feel what it’s actually like to run the show from beginning to end in front of a panel of hundreds of judges – the audience.
My memories of that first show in Liverpool were that of relief. From the moment the curtain rose the audience reacted with cheery applause after each scene, and it was becoming clear to us on stage that there was a sense of excitement in the air.

Michael Corder's The Snow Queen. Photo © Daniel Jones

When the show finally came to an end, the auditorium erupted, and all the hours of rehearsals seemed to have paid off.
There was a party after the performance in the theatre but I couldn’t stop thinking that we had two more performances the next day, so it wasn’t really time to party.
It was a time to feel good though. To know that I’d been part of the creation of another full length ballet made me feel incredibly satisfied.

A Class Photo

Whenever English National Ballet works on a brand new production, photographers that I’ve never seen before suddenly start appearing. One such photographer was Sian Trenberth, who seemed to appear with her camera all over the theatre during our time in Bristol. One evening I headed to my dressing to find a photograph she had kindly given to me which she had taken during our morning class on stage.

Daniel Jones in class at the Bristol Hippodrome. Photo © Sian Trenberth

Looking at the photo, I realised I couldn’t remember seeing her taking the photograph, and I noticed she had caught me in a deep ballet trance that I throw myself into for at least an hour, six days a week.
Am I on my leg? Am I on my full three quarter pointe? Am I arching my back? Is my supporting leg really stretched or can I stretch it a little bit more? Am I on the music? Am I doing the right exercise?
One, or possibly all of the thoughts above, were going through my head at the time the photo was taken. It makes me wonder how many dancer thoughts actually go into putting on a new production like the Snow Queen – I actually don’t have time to think about it as since we opened the Snow Queen we’ve already performed Swan lake and soon we’ll be doing the Nutcracker. Ballet life really is a busy life.

Wireless Theatre News

The New Theatre in Oxford offers a wireless internet connection in the dressing room. Please can all theatres follow this example so that I don’t have to sit in an internet café and force myself to drink overly priced coffee that I don’t really want in order to keep in touch with the world, and read ballet.co…