Archive for glasgow
September 16, 2007 at 10:37 am · Filed under dance, friends, lifestyle, london, KATE, graham, contemporary, dance teacher, scottish ballet, dance studies, glasgow, the place, contemporary dance, martha graham dance company, summer intensive
I’m looking out of my window and trying to get some work done on a rainy Sunday morning. It’s really wet out there and the leaves on the trees across the street are starting to change colour and fall. This has been a rather sunless summer - not just here in Glasgow but my old friends in London have been complaining about it too. (We British DO talk about the weather, it’s not just a great big cliche…)
I find it very hard to believe we are nearing the end of September already. This has been the busiest summer of my life, and unfortunately it’s been almost all about work and not about dancing or anything else. However, it’s been good in the sense that I have learned a lot, especially since I have been working alone and for myself - both for my PhD and in doing some advertising consulting to pay the bills.
But it’s not all been about work and rain, oh no. At the beginning of August I went to London for a week, ostensibly to do some research but actually so I could hang around with some of my friends and do some of the summer intensive at the Place. The intensive was great. I did Graham Technique with Kim Jones from the Martha Graham Company - this was amazing. I was so happy to be doing the class again because it’s my favourite contemporary technique to do and yet it’s really hard to get a proper Graham class where I live. (Actually in London it wasn’t all that easy.) It made me sad that I wasn’t able to do more than just a week of class in the summer - because there’s no way I can ever be the dancer I want to be, because of money, time constraints, location, etc, etc. In Glasgow I can do a couple of good classes each week, and they are good, but they are not enough. But this is the way that people who love dance but aren’t full-time dancers live - we just have to make the most of what we’ve got. It’s hard to pop in and out of something like Graham, because during a week’s intensive it draws you in, like a life philosophy, and when it stops you feel bereft.
The other course I took was contact improvisation, which in the end I loved. I say ‘in the end’ because it was the first time I had ever done it, and to be honest for the first two or three days I felt completely lost and out of my depth. Not because it was technically difficult, because it’s not, but because it’s so much about trust and letting go. I had to let go of lots of preconceptions about things. For example, we were practicing lifts and I was scared that i would be too heavy, but our teacher said to remember that we are not as heavy as we think, and it’s much more about timing and trust. Having said that, I found it really hard to lift people who were shorter than me because the centre of their weight seemed to be so much lower down than mine. Over the course of the week I grew less scared about dancing with other people and by the end I was in love with it. I was also covered in bruises, because I did get dropped and fall down rather a lot. Unfortunately there’s nowhere I can do contact improvisation here, there used to be but it was discontinued because there weren’t enough people. Oh well.
The thing that I noticed when I was on the Intensive was how much better my alignment is and how much more movement I have in my back and my hips. This is because since May I have been taking weekly gyrotonics sessions with Penny Withers. Penny was trained at the Royal Ballet School and had a career with the Scottish Ballet, where she now runs the young associates training programme. Penny is a great teacher and I have learned so much from her.
Later on in August I went with some of my friends to a place in the woods which I love near Dumfries, in the south-west of Scotland. There we stayed in a reconstructed iron-age roundhouse, which had a thatched roof and a fire in the middle. There’s also an outdoor hot tub and sauna! The iron age people knew how to live. The fire was good because it rained all weekend and we were soaked, so at night we sat around the fire and dried off, drank rather a lot of wine and played games. It was really fun.
I’m now really excited because a) this week my favourite Glasgow contemporary class starts again (which is Graham/Cunningham style) and b) I am going to Greece for a week this coming Saturday.
Stand by for tales of sunshine and the seaside.
Recent Posts by kate bordwell
April 14, 2007 at 11:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized, ballet, choreographers, dancers, costumes, KATE, scotland, review, dancing, performance, scottish ballet, jarkko lehmus, modern dance, choreography, glasgow, contemporary dance, poster
| 
| Posted by Kate Bordwell
It is many years since I have been to see the Scottish Ballet, and I was a little sceptical about seeing them again when I arrived at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on Wednesday night. Why? Because the last time I saw them, in their tired Nutcracker production, I did not enjoy myself as I should have done. The old company - we are talking about the late 1990s here - seemed tired, stressed, shambolic. It was a company in need of care and attention, of rejuvination.
The company I saw on Wednesday was a company transformed. Under the artistic direction of Ashley Page since 2002 the Scottish Ballet has become a kind of hybrid ensemble, with a range of dancers suited to different types of dance, a spectrum with classical ballet at one end and contemporary at the other.
The programme was as follows. Balanchine’s Agon opened, and in this we were able to see the almost impeccable techniques of classical dancers Claire Robertson, Eve Mutso and Erik Cavallari. It was wonderful to see the choreography performed so well, but also in such good humour - what stood out for me most about the Scottish Ballet is that on the whole they appeared to be enjoying themselves - and I think that in the case of Agon, which strikes me as a very difficult piece to pull off well, having fun whilst doing it is the icing on the cake!
After the first interval we saw Othello, by the Scottish Ballet’s founder, Peter Darrell. It was very melodramatic. There was a pause, and the curtain opened to a different drama; Room of Cooks by Ashley Page. This was a contemporary piece based upon a painting by Stephen Chambers and the action took place around a kitchen table, and was danced by Diana Loosmore, Jarkko Lehmus and Paul Liburd. (Kristin has already bigged up Lehmus, who is another dance blogger.) These three dancers were well suited to the style, and Loosmore has recently won an award for her own choreography.
The programme closed with a piece which was worth the price of the ticket all by itself: Krzysztof Pastor’s In Light & Shadow. This began with a serene pas de deux danced to the opening of Bach’s beautiful piano work The Goldberg Variations, and everything was gorgeous for five minutes. Then suddenly all the dancers (16?) appeared on the stage in wonderful and strange colourful costumes (two of which are pictured above) and the music changed to a vibrant Bach orchestral piece and I witnessed the most exuberant and joyful dancing I had seen in quite some time. It was in this we could see the variety of talents on display - from the strength of Lehmus and Liburd to the delicacy and precision of dancers such as Tomomi Sato and Sophie Martin. All were graceful - it was like being instructed in the many faces of grace and joy. A perfect piece for the diversity and range represented by the company’s dancers. I absolutely loved it and want to see it again soon.
Recent Posts by kate bordwell
April 3, 2007 at 9:39 pm · Filed under music, culture, KATE, art, scotland, scottish ballet, glasgow, the place, dance house, scottish youth theatre
Posted by Kate Bordwell
I’ve been quite slack at posting all round really, and I promise to do better, because there is such a lot going on here in Glasgow that I would like to tell Wingers all about.
First of all, I have found classes to go to at The Scottish Ballet and The Dance House (thank you for the tip Article 19.) The Scottish Ballet classes are, well, ballet classes and they are HARD. Everything goes very quickly and I have to work very hard to keep up. The great thing about this class is that it’s in a really nice big rehearsal room, there is a good pianist and the teacher makes quite funny jokes. Also, if you get there early you can watch “the proper dancers” rehearsing before class begins.
The Dancehouse is for contemporary, and I do a class that is largely Graham based with some Cunningham thrown in. Hooray. It is at the Scottish Youth Theatre and my only complaint is that the floor is not sprung. Ouch. But the class is taught by a guy called Martin Robinson, who trained at my beloved London School of Contemporary Dance a.k.a. The Place - which makes me happy since I am not the only person making the great move up north.
The Scottish Youth Theatre is an impressive building - a strange and wonderful mixture of very modern and very old. It used to be the Sherriff Court in Glasgow.
Our class takes place in “The Purple Room”. There are lots of rooms named after colours, but they are not coloured inside.
It’s the Easter holidays at the moment, and there is no dancing. Also, I have hurt my knee training for a (running) race, so I don’t know when I will be going back. Boo. I will have to make up for not dancing by watching a lot of dancing - watch this space as I have some very exciting things to tell you about later in the month.
I am absolutely loving living in Glasgow. What I like most is the fact that there is so much culture just jammed in to a tiny space and it is very accessible. For example, a few weeks ago my friends said to me on a Friday afternoon,”What are you doing tonight?” I said I had been going to see a comedy show but that it had been cancelled. “Well come along to the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) - there’s a free gig to launch The Ballad of the Books.” So off we went and watched some bands, including the Trashcan Sinatras, whom I used to listen to when I was a small teenager.
The CCA is practically next door to the Glasgow School of Art, a hulking great Charles Rennie Macintosh building at the top of the very steep hills which in Glasgow are called Drumlins. Some people say it feels a bit like San Francisco in Glasgow. But probably no one who has actually been to San Francisco…
The CCA is another old building that has been made new. In the centre of the building there is a courtyardy sort of place where there’s a bar and a mezzanine level. It was here that we watched the bands.
All in all this is a wonderful place and I look forward to telling you more about it.
In other news, I recently became an aunt, to Megan. Here she is with her babysitter.
Recent Posts by kate bordwell
