Beyond Ballets Russes

In the early twentieth century, Dhiagelev's Ballets Russes toured Europe and brought the male dancer out of Victorian shadow with proud and sexy expressions of masculine strength, dignity and leadership. 

Apollo, image Annabel Moeller

"Astonish me" Dhiagelev instructed his dancers and isn't this what the audience wants?

English National Ballet's Beyond Ballets Russes had to be on my agenda and I thought I was doing well to buy half price tickets on lastminute.com. How annoying to find afterwards I could have bought them for much less through dance websites: http://www.dancetabs.com/ and http://balletnews.co.uk/

The ENB's dancing was superb and it was refreshing to take a break from the dramballet format of the likes of Nutcracker.

Ballachine's Apollo was inspiring. The god and three muses. I half joke I always want the role of prince but a god would be promotion. Can I persuade my ballet teacher to choreograph a watered down version of Apollo for our dance school show in July? Watch this space.

The 1920s male bathing beauty was a cheeky acrobatic demonstration piece full of fun, evidence that there really is only one letter difference between pose and poise.

Suite en Blanc was worth the full price ticket alone. From its set piece opening snapshot to  the rapidly unfolding scenes of classical ballet it was a machine gun of a ballet.

But what about the curtain calls? My ballet teacher was at the previous evening's performance and praised the dancing to the hilt. But he warned us  that if any student ever did sloppy curtain calls like theirs he would shoot us.

Swan Lake - The Best Bits

It was a privilege and huge fun to take to the stage in my first ever ballet after eighteen months of challenging fitness and ballet classes.

The success of our performance was entirely due to the dedication and expertise of my ballerina and our choreographer, Charlotte Spooner. Here's a link to her website: http://www.astara.co.uk/

I'm glad to say the ballet we put on has inspired a number who saw it to attend other performances and even take up ballet themselves, something I'm passionate about. 

I'm looking forward to the next time but meanwhile here are a selection of performance photographs of Charlotte and me from a really talented photographer, Claire Naylor: www.clairenaylorphotography.co.uk