Jarkko Lehmus Diary

Just a party animal?

In case you think I'm just another alcoholic party animal I have to correct you: I'm just an animal.

I've just read through my hung over ramblings from the Edinburgh days, corrected the spelling and added the words that I thought I wrote. I guess my mind was a bit faster than my fingers. You know when you're having a conversation and you really think you've said something but the other person just isn't following and then you realise you've jumped from one thought to another in the middle of the sentence only thinking about the bridging thought but you never actually said it out aloud? Funny that. I get it all the time. There's probably some wires loose in my head. Or maybe they've dissolved...

Tomorrow, 30th December, is Glasgow first night and Mara's last night. It's sad to see her go. She's really blown life into the character of Marie. There's a couple of new casts slowly working themselves up to speed and the existing casts are feeling pretty confident with what they're doing. The hardest bit of the tour is behind now and it's time to find a proper rhythm.

Watching different people coping with the work load has been very interesting. The difference in personalities, experience and where they've trained makes a huge difference to the way people deal with physical, emotional and mental stress. Dance schools, especially ballet schools, don't seem to teach much more than just the technique and the rest is up to the kids to learn the hard way. I'll think about that and delve deeper into the subject with better time.

For 'tis the season to be jolly...

Alive, liver intact, I finally found my way back to Glasgow and my own bed for a change. Time to recharge the little brain I have left.

Have a rocking and rolling Festive Season!!!

An emergency buoy always comes in handy.
Photo: me ©

Being a pornstar

After a well deserved rest on Sunday the company breezed through another show on Monday. Out of a whim I went clubbing by myself. Again. Ended up in Revolution, told them I was a pornstar, got auctioned to three Chinese girls for £15. They were boring so I went home by myself with a free bottle of cheap bubbly. Next mission is to get someone else to drink it.

Photo by me ©

If I'd get a pornstar for £15 I'd make a full use of her. Chinese are bizarre...

Sex, Drugs and Pantyhose

It's a healthy looking baby!
Photo by me ©

After a week of absolute technical madness the company delivered a healthy show. And what a beauty it is! Opening night was last Wednesday, 17th of December, in the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. Marie was danced by lovely Mara Galeazzi, hijacked from the Royal Ballet for the season. She's an absolute stunner as a performer and as a person. The role of the prince was danced by our own Cuban stallion Jose. They looked fantastic together. A lot of the credit for that goes to Irek Muhakmedov who's been teaching and coaching us for the last month. He's been there, done that, went around the block a few times and come back with a t-shirt saying: I'm a superstar. So when he talks you tend to listen. He knows his stuff and is a lovely bloke in the process.

I won't bore you with the storyline of the show or stuff like that and I'll let the reviews do the talking on the quality of the production as well. What you can't read in the papers is often much more interesting... Since Wednesday we've practically had a first night every night with four different casts of Drosselmeyers, Marie's and Princes and two casts for the rest of the characters. Plenty of excuses for partying then. More of that later. Wednesday night was a typical first night: lots of excitement, plenty of nerves and a huge relief with the rapturous applause in the end. Just about every show has been like that until last night. Saturday evening saw the second show of the first cast of Mara, Jose, me and the rest of the culprits. It was the first show that felt settled and relaxed and the audience felt it too. It's our show now, it's in the bag and we can really start working on it.

I'd personally love to be able to watch the whole show as a member of the audience. I find watching and performing narrative work very interesting because of it's complexity. Who are the characters? Where do they come from? What do they want and why? Finding the right personality for a character is not necessarily physically as challenging as doing the big jumps and multiple pirouettes but mentally and emotionally there is no contest. I've only scratched the surface of Herr Drosselmeyer, the Royal clockmaker, adventurer and possibly a magician with a passion for strong ladies. It would be very interesting to see the production to get a more complete idea of the story and be able to develop the characters with that information. Sadly, or luckily, I'm second cast Father, Dr Stahlbaum, a bit of a flash git and a germanic playboy with a huge appetite for booze and women. Because of the casting I'm on stage every show and during early week matinees do both roles during the same day. Once I get a proper hang of the characters it'll be ok but at the moment I'm noticing a slight leakage from one character to another. Schitsophrenia is interesting.

Possibly due to the stress of the past two monts I've been out on the razzle every night since Wednesday and am writing this in an internet cafe somewhere in Edinburgh. Every morning I've woken up thinking that tonight I'll have a good night sleep in my bed but instead ended up on the floor of my mates' room in the Holyrood Hotel and passed out in someone elses bed the next night. Words like big, clever and not spring to mind. It's partly due to the friendliness of the company though. It's a great bunch of people. Unlike most ballet companies out there everybody in Scottish Ballet actually talks to each other and there's minimal bitching and backstabbing. Instant social life, just add alcohol.

What ever reasons I presented above are really just excuses. I just want to get out and have some fun like most young people. It's a bit of a balancing act though. Trying to have a life of sorts but not let it affect work. Army taught me some serious tournament endurance though... It's all about priorities really. People work to get money and then spend it on tickets to come and watch us. They should always be given the best show possible and it's up to us to do what ever necessary to give them just that. Work hard, play hard, work even harder the day after.

A great show, great people, great fun. And it's all because of Ashley and his motley crew of artistic staff and supporters. He has kept his cool during the entire lenght of the rehearsal period addressing what ever issues needed to be dealt with in a very smooth and effective fashion, kept working 24/7 with just about every single aspect of the production without losing it. I don't know how he does it, I don't know if he knows how he does it himself but it is very impressive to watch and it does produce some serious results.

Gentlemen Page and Barron... and Miller.
Photo by me ©

I'm off to bed now.

Sorry about that.

I'm sorry to bore You with a whole novel about my history but I think it might help You understand some of the madness that looms in the furture of this web-log.

Who the...

LADIES AND PLAYBOYS!!! I am proud to present to You Mr Jarkko Lehmus!!!! ... Who? The name doesn't exactly ring a bell does it? There's Christopher Hampson and Cathy Marston but who the hell's this new guy?

Now let me enlighten You: I was born and raised in the forests of Eastern Finland, in a tiny town called Juankoski to be precise. Since I was a bit of a human cannonball as a kid my parents got me into judo at the tender age of eight just to get me off their hands for a bit. I quite enjoyed a bit of rough and tumble. I kept at it three times a week for the next eight years. Ever since martial arts has held a very dear place in my heart. It's always very sobering to get punched in the head a few times.

During my teenage years I was a bit soft in the head hence my girlfriend at the time managed to talk me into finnish folk dancing. I was the only guy in the group so I had a field day spinning the ladies about. It struck me as a very nice way of spending time, so when it was time to get out of the school and look for further education I opted for the Music and Dance High School in the nearby town of Kuopio. That's when the bug really bit me.

After two years of mediocre teachers I found my way to Helsinki, had a brush with the Finnish National Ballet School and bashed into show business at full pelt. Several musicals, revues, night club/corporate/cruise ship/fashion/tv shows, half a year of selling hot dogs on the street and a soap opera later I felt the need for proper training and, being a lucky sod, ended up in the capable hands of Ikky Maas, Jacki Mitchell and Donald MacLennan at the Millennium Dance 2000, a rather smashing musical theatre school in London.

Just hanging around at the college. Photo by Peter Teigen ©

I was 21 and had some serious sequins in my eyes. Working front of house and seeing such art as Grease and Miss Saigon too many times for my own good I decided to go contemporary. One thing lead to another and I found myself on stage with National Youth Dance Company. Que plenty of exposure and contacts. In comes Mr Page, creates the rocking Acrid Avid Jam and gets me to perform it with lovely Laura Morera in one of Royal Ballet's choreographic evenings. Wham-bam-thank you 'mam. His style of working suited me very well indeed. If I ever had a chance to work with him again...

I graduated as a fully qualified monkey as part of the first Millennium vintage on spring 2001 and went straight on to work with Kim Brandstrup's Arc Dance Company creating a role in Brothers. On finishing the tour I felt the call of the wild again. It was time to swap the pantyhose to camouflage for a while and head up to the forests of my native land. A year of compulsory national service gave me 10 kilos extra weight, an operation on a collapsed lung and a rank of 2nd Lieutenant. It just happened so that there was a contract available in Scottish Ballet, now run by one Mr Ashley Page. Did I jump for it? Hell yeah!

I started work in the end of July trying to very slowly ease myself back into dancing. Fat chance. We had two months to get the Autumn Tour on the road and I had to learn Siobhan Davies's White Man Sleeps and Stephen Petronio's MiddleSexGorge. Had fun. I had to. If I'd stopped laughing the reality would have hit me square in the face. It was worth it though.

Me and Lilian Pommier rocking it in MiddleSexGorge. Photo by Mark Hamilton ©

On finishing the tour we learned that we had seven weeks to create an entire new production of Nutcracker. I really didn't fancy being in Ashley's shoes. Six weeks behind us we are entering the production week. Ashley's kept his cool through the process and squeezed together a full evening's worth of entertainment. Plenty of hard work but fun in equal measures. I've kept busy trying to get my head around creating the rather complex character of Mr Drosselmeyer. Premiering on the 17th of December in the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh we still have a few days for final tweaking. Edinburgh dates are followed by Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen, Hull and Belfast. Come and have a look. You might just like it...

Scottish Ballet Soloist Claire Robertson as Marie in Ashley Page's new production of The Nutcracker sponsored by Bank of Scotland.
Photo by Drew Farrell ©