Jarkko Lehmus Diary

Some Numbers, A Bit Of Inspiration and A Couple Of Armchairs

Exactly a week from now, Thursday 6th of December, the first of our four production days in the theatre would have just finished. I'd like to draw your attention to the number of production days: four. Let me give you another number: three. That particular number crops up in a fair few places, such as Freud's proposal of the psyche being divided in three parts and three being the amount of heads some mutt guarding the gates to hell reportedly has. Since you are reading this you might be more interested in learning that Sleeping Beauty is the third full length production Ashley has choreographed, it's running time is three hours and during the first week we are putting on three casts.

Let's relate the second number to the first, shall we? It'll take us two days just to get through the whole show. That is trying to get to grips with the set and all the final props and costumes. Almost everyone in the company does two roles, some do... wait for it... three! So that means that while you are trying to work out what you're supposed to do you're also trying to have half an eye on what you're supposed to do in the second cast and you'd better be pretty sharp with it, since you're on on the second night. So two days to sort things out, two runs on Saturday, most likely two runs on Monday, another run on Tuesday during the day and then it's show time proper. Three casts and five runs and a fourth cast going on the very next week. It's certainly not a dull life this.

On a positive note the dancing looks pretty good and there's plenty of it, the costumes are beautiful and the sets should be pretty impressive too. I;ve been busy creating the role of the King, Aurora's father, another strong male role acting as an anchor for the rest of the production. As a person he's very different to Drosselmeyer in Nutcracker or Father in Cinderella, but essentially the function of the role is very similar. Where Mr D orchestrated and manipulated the events, Cinderella's Father was the connection point between all the other characters, the King is a strong and proud ruler of his kingdom instantly putting him in the thick of it. In a way this is the most classical role I have ever done with plenty of regal posturing and a few pointed feet.

The real bombshell of the show for me is the what I do in the second cast though. I am the Romanian Prince... Yes. A prince. I work in a ballet company and dance a role of a prince. That's the last of my street cred gone in a flash. Or maybe I can twist enough juice out of the fact that Mr Romania also doubles up as the Wolf for Little Red Ridinghood and has a bit of a sly streak to him. Err... A prince is a prince and a pair of tights are still a pair of tights.

To be honest I've quite enjoyed sinking my teeth into the more balletic material and working hard in class with the knowledge that I'd have to look pretty enough to be able to hold my head up high next to the actual princey types. I changed the alignment of my pelvis a little while back and that started a whole new chapter in my dancing. It's still pretty hard work to keep it all in check, but so far so good. Except a bit of knee trouble that slowed me down for a couple of weeks and the usual wear and tear things are pretty good as dancing goes.

Outside work the most notable thing of late was a very inspiring encounter with David Lynch when he came to do a Q&A session in Glasgow with Donovan, the bloke who sang Mellow Yellow, to promote the benefits of Transcendental Meditation and the work of his foundation in bringing TM to schools. They were both very interesting characters with great passion. I might give that TM-stuff a shot some time. Apparently Mr Lynch has been meditating every day for the past thirty years and it has greatly helped him with his various artistic pursuits. All I know is that when I went to see his latest film, Inland Empire, in the cinema last spring I had to give up trying to understand anything I was seeing about half-way through it, but once it was over I went to a pub, ordered a pint, sat down and wrote down a ten minute choreography complete with the set, staging and lighting. Now all I need to do is to get it out of my head and off the paper onto some flesh and bone...

The magic of Mr Lynch. Photo by Mark Stewart©

And that moment might be closer than I thought with the choreographic workshops being just around the corner in February. If all goes well I'd like to get an original score composed for the piece. I'm in the very early stages of talks with a local combo called Cinephile. You can check them out at http://www.cinephileonline.com/. If the piece is good enough it might end up on our small scale tour during the summer. It's something to aim for even if it doesn't happen. I can see the piece in my head very clearly, so it will be very interesting to see how succesfull I am in translating my vision to other people. Challenge...

Dropping back to reality of present day the ambitious casting has certainly frayed a few nerves and it'll probably only get worse before it starts getting better. I know that I'm not quite on top of what I'm supposed to be doing in the first cat, so I haven't been giving the other casts for my role the best of support either, but we're all in the same boat. I don't think there's anybody in the company who's totally on it at the moment. It's nice to the chance to do a lot of things, but it would be nice to also be able to truly develop a character and the drama on stage, but that would require stability of casting which just doesn't happen if you want to put on a constant stream of casts in a company the size of ours. Win some lose some.

As per usual because of the size of the production we've been fortifies by a good stack of extra people. A few of them are from ballet schools, but some of them also hardened professionals, most notably an old Royal Ballet refugee Matt Dibble. That boy's got some energy on him and it's nice to have it in the studio and I'm sure the audience will appreciate it too.

That's plenty of stuff there already, but I've saved the best for the last. Slowly but steadily this moment has been looming in the horizon with people buying flats, getting married and no, finally, getting pregnant. Dear Diana is showing some bump already with a due date in March!

On that bombshell I will leave you with a picture of a couple of blokes pushing armchairs down my street in the middle of the night. Ta ta.