Archive for scottish ballet
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 24, 2007 at 5:58 pm · Filed under choreographers, KATE, scotland, contemporary, movement research, construction, education, mercecunningham, arts funding, choreographer, scottish ballet, modern dance, choreography, the place, contemporary dance, liv lorent
| 
| Posted by Kate Bordwell
On Thursday 19 April I went to Stirling, which is a 25-minute train ride north-east out of Glasgow. The reason for my trip was to see Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT) in a mixed programme, and to meet Janet Smith, SDT’s Artistic Director.
I first asked Janet how she got into dancing. ‘I always danced as a child,’ she said, ‘and I remember at school making work to a musical box and getting my mum to make me a costume out of crepe paper and it got rained on – I was furious with her – I had all the artistic temperament at that moment!’
At her local ballet school she also learnt Greek dancing and the creative freeform element inspired her: ‘The pianist would play some Debussy or something and we would do our own thing – like Isadora Duncan, complete with tunic and bare feet, long hair flowing! That was the idea that you can move how you can move, and we have movement that comes out of us and we can express ourselves and the music and whatever through it, which excited me.’
Following her teacher’s advice Smith went to Dartington College to study dance and drama, where she encountered a wide range of dance styles. ‘It wasn’t a conventional education in that period. It was the sixties, and it was quite associated with liberal arts and freethinking. It was wonderful for me because I really found myself and I found this area of dance theatre… We had some very good tutoring, and I came across modern American dance, which is what they were teaching there and so that led me to America after school.’
At Dartington Smith admired Rosemary Butcher, especially because she ‘worked in her own particular way.’ After Dartington she studied in New York at the Cunningham School with Dan Wagoner and Viola Farber, dancers who had both been through Graham and Cunningham but whose ‘own research led them into very strong personal movement signatures and flavours, and that was totally new to me, you know, to the idea that you can authentically dance out of yourself rather than out of the different techniques and styles that had come to the UK.’
She also learnt from Wagoner in St Louis, where she also encountered Hawkins technique, which in a sense brought her back to Isadora Duncan, ‘taking the structure of Graham work but finding a much more free, impulsive way of moving.’ When she returned to England, she worked with musician-composer, Gordon Jones to create a solo show. She took the programme to Dartington, a move which proved to open doors for her. ‘My head of department there wrote to Robin Howard, the founder of The Place, and Bob Cohan, who was the founding Artistic Director, saying, “Give this girl a chance,” and they invited me to show it, first of all, publicly, and then again just to the company and the school. So we took this work to London, then I had my first reviews, and I began to get funding, which led to me forming my first company.’
She worked on her companies in Yorkshire and London from the mid-1970s until the end of the 1980s, touring her work internationally. These were interesting times, and she had the opportunity to work with a variety of choreographers and dancers, from newly graduated students to some big names in British contemporary dance. ‘I was always interested in being a dancer as well as a choreographer and working collaboratively with different people and I invited people like my then husband, Robert North; Christopher Bruce, who was also creating work with Rambert at that time and working internationally; Dan Wagoner, because he had been a first inspiration to me and the first person that showed me that you can have humour in work which was such a delight! And then other company members created work as well.’
Following some funding issues in the late 1980s, she wound up her company and freelanced – both choreographing for companies around the world and teaching. Teaching allowed her to have a dance company as a project, and in 1997 she was invited to Dundee to work on the Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT).
Over the past ten years SDT has evolved from a very small group with limited funds to possibly the most exciting contemporary dance company in Scotland. This year SDT has worked with Adam Benjamin*, founder of CandoCo, and Scottish Ballet, producing works choreographed by young company members who were winners of the Peter Darrell Award. Not only was it a good opportunity for the dancers’ work to be shown publicly but also for the dancers to work together and to learn from each other. ‘It was lovely. It was an opportunity for the two companies to get together – to do class together, to watch each others’ work and to support each other. I think dancers are generous and supportive people – normally with a nice sense of community – and it was great – both sides admired and supported each other’s work and difference.’ Further collaborations are planned for the future, with a Czech company, and with the ‘up-and-coming’ choreographers Hofesh Schechter and Liv Lorent, whose work differs greatly but Janet admires for its energy and humanity.
She would also like to take the work further afield. Not just so that more people can see the company but because it will broaden the dancers’ minds. ‘I think a dancer’s life is a very short life and one of the perks is the chance to go out and meet people from different cultures and see and interact with different cultures. So as well as being good ambassadors for Scotland it’s also a really lovely life experience for the performers and I want to give them that.’
I asked Janet about whether she had a set approach to creating work. She said, ‘More and more I notice that things happen very differently. I haven’t started with music for a while, and that’s what I want to do next time. Music does inspire me and I have been lucky enough to work with composers and I think that that collaboration, often with Chris Benstead, who goes way back to my Dartington roots, and therefore we have a shared language about work, and so in a way you’re working often with the idea and without the music and the music comes in later on so in a sense he has a lot to do then, to follow our structure, although he can often inspire me by a piece of music which I can then get to working to. I think I work in a range of ways, but I have to, even when I’m listening to music, I’m looking to find the idea that I will get really excited about and feel passionate about and really commit to.’
‘My works don’t always have a story behind them, but I am into making a comment on culture and it happens through comparison because of that idea of travelling somewhere and it triggering your thoughts. I made a piece called High Land after I’d lived in Scotland for four years and it was my response to the whole thing – Scottish culture and the way it plays the tourism thing – Nessie and the way that the landscape affects us and the influences of psalming and step dancing… I have made pieces that are always about people – they’re not always narrative at all but they are more thematic, they take you through to dreamscape or memory, or sense of identity or culture. Those are the areas that excite me a lot – who we are, what we’re doing, where are we going?! On a personal level, rather than politicising.’
We spoke about dance in Scotland more generally. She believes there is a dance equivalent of a ‘brain drain’ because dance education in this country is limited in some fairly crucial ways. There is not enough offered in terms of degree and postgraduate education, but ‘Equally not far enough qualitatively, not maturing dancers, and that bothers me a lot. So it’s been a history of underfunding or not putting the funds in the right places. There’s space and opportunity for more support to be given to individual makers of work and directors of small companies that have ideas and are working and are going somewhere who often struggle on the breadline. I feel that we can train our own dancers better and there’s a really good dancing tradition in Scotland and I think that if we can put dance more into the heart of education so that we could really study it and get a qualification at school we could build confidence and capacity for our teachers at school level to take up dance, just like you can with drama or English or music I think that would do the world of good – not just fitness, but real love of the dance and then audiences for dance would grow and there would be more audiences for more dance companies.’
‘Dance keeps you sane – it’s a thing for life. It keeps you active and creatively engaged and it helps all sorts of social skills and relationships and trust. I think it is undervalued in education at the moment and that’s the core, the starting place from which all else follows.’
We finished with a piece of advice for any dancer or choreographer starting out, which she had heard one of her young dancers give to a school pupil earlier that day. ‘If you like something, just follow it as much as you can. In dance, try all kinds of dance, because something you think is not for you might become for you, and anyway it will feed what you do. Try to see as much dance as you can, and that will inform you about what you really love, about what you’d love to do.’
I enjoyed meeting Janet Smith, especially since it gave me such an insight into the life of a choreographer and company director, and it made me think a lot about movement and what it’s all about - what it can do… I will post about the programme I saw on Thursday night in my next entry.
*More about this collaboration and the integrated work will follow in a separate entry…
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
February 21, 2007 at 12:08 am · Filed under SLOAN, dancers, food, scottish ballet, jarkko lehmus, soon ja lee, donating, fundraising, auction, issues
Posted by Sloan
Eve Mutso and Erik Cavallari of the Scottish Ballet, in George Balanchine’s Agon. Photograph by Andrew Ross.
The Scottish Ballet recently auctioned off, via ebay, a “dinner for two” with one of their soloist dancers (Either Soon Ja Lee, or the hilarious Jarkko Lehmus… check out his blog at ballet.co.uk) at Glasgow’s swanky Hallion Club .
I think if the dancers are fine with it (and you’ll read in Jarkko’s blog that he is), and it is done in a classy way (which it seems like this was), it’s probably a fun way for the dancer to feel like they are helping raise significant money for the company they love, and also getting to share conversation with someone who also shares a passion for dance. Any people that I have met, either at a gala dinner, a sponsored cocktail party, a special donor event, or even just in the lobby of a theater, I have always enjoyed chatting and trying to understand that person’s love of dance and where they are coming from. It’s so interesting to me.
Others may not agree, and I can see how this scenario could rub people the wrong way, especially when many people feel dancers do not always get the respect they deserve. But there are many people out there who have huge respect for dancers and for dance as an artform, and would love to be able to interact with the artists they admire. Any fundraising scenario is very similar to this situation, even if a bit less personal (galas, studio talks, cocktail parties, etc.), trying to bring the audience closer to the artists in a sophisticated and meaningful way. Heck, that is what we are trying to do here. What do you think, is auctioning a dinner date too far? Maybe it is.
The Scottish Ballet does a great job getting the word out about their company, aside from creative fundraising ideas (a myspace page, a fantastic email newsletter, and a great website). I hope the auction was successful!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
