At the end of January we can look forward to a whole day’s ballet workshop at Norfolk Dance in Norwich. This will give us a chance to do a normal ballet class and then learn some real repertoire. This is hugely exciting, and reflects in miniature the pattern of the 3-day summer school that adult ballet students are now able to follow each year here. So, since ballet is an important part of my life and since I’d like to reassure other adults that studying it is still possible, I thought I would write about last year’s summer school.
I’ve had the exhilarating experience of two such summer schools over the past two years. Both years have presented us with a riveting combination of elements. Each day began with class, as in any ballet organisation, and we were divided into the less experienced and the more experienced, I belonging to the former group as I’d only been learning ballet for 3 years, with no experience of having dipped into it as a child.
In the previous year the more basic class was taught by one of my usual teachers, the gifted Nicky Gibbs, but the two teachers exchanged duties this time and we more rudimentary dancers were tutored by our artistic director Derek Purnell, who used to dance with the Royal Ballet. It was an incredible privilege to be coached by him in a small group and benefit from his corrections and advice. Despite our lowly level, he was very particular over such things as arm-positions, posture, using all the muscles in one’s feet, and straightening one’s knees. Three of our members who normally attend classes in North Norfolk where they never receive any comments on their performance were startled but gratified by the amount of personal observation that was made to them so that they could progress. It was very kind of someone of his artistic status to bother with our elementary level of learning, but Norfolk Dance, of which he is head, is concerned to bring dance to all possible areas of the community.
The class was divided as normal into exercises at the barre and those in the centre of the studio, where we worked on our arabesques, arm movements, steps sequences, jumps and pirouettes. The latter are what people tend to find particularly alarming, and Derek’s insights were invaluable into the importance of pulling up on tiptoe on the foot one is balancing on, keeping the other knee well turned out to the side to help propel one around, and not approaching the turn violently. I have tended to throw myself into pirouettes, but when I tried rotating more slowly it strangely became easier.
After the class we would learn some repertoire, one of the exciting features of the summer school. The previous year, we had learned sections from Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and The Firebird. On the first morning this time Nicky Gibbs taught us Swanilda’s opening dance from Coppelia. I told them that this was the first ballet I saw on the stage when I was ten (danced by Doreen Wells and Anton Dolin – I could never believe the later pictures I saw of him as an old man!) and afterwards at home I’d tried to reconstruct the steps of this opening dance in my back garden. They replied that now was my chance to learn the real thing! (But I must point out straight away that we didn’t dance on pointe during this summer school, and someone of my age is never likely to). The dance concerns Swanilda’s attempts to get her neighbour Coppelia to acknowledge her greetings and invitations to dance, not knowing she is in fact a doll. It includes a lot of mime & curtseying, but also leaps and pirouettes, to Delibes’ delightful music.
The afternoon was dedicated to character-dance (or ‘national dance’). After a session at the barre using character-steps (a lot of tapping and oblique movements), we learned the basic Mazurka step and then the Mazurka from Coppelia, a peasant version of the dance. (The one in Swan Lake is more aristocratic). Much stamping and twirling and cabrioles (clicking the heels as one jumps), and such things as jumping over one’s partner’s foot. I’ve always enjoyed watching the character-dances from Coppelia, but my experience of it was somewhat poisoned by my feet being crippled by two hours in my stiff character-shoes. I rarely wear shoes with heels these days anyway, & the leather was particularly unyielding. The agony of being encased in them made it even more difficult to focus on trying to learn the steps. These character-dances can be fast and furious, and I ended up with a sore and bruised big toe. I’m just surprised that most of my toes recovered as soon as I returned to normal shoes.
On the second day our teachers told us with evident relish that we were going to be chickens. The rest of our ballets would be by Frederick Ashton, which Derek had had plenty of experience of dancing in, and we would start with La Fille Mal Gardée, a story which Ashton based on a lost 18th century ballet about a farmer‘s daughter who finally manages to marry the boy of her choice rather than do what her mother wants. Our section came at the start of this ballet, where a cockerel and his hens wake everyone after the night’s rest. Apparently Ashton spent hours watching chickens’ movements before choreographing this humorous piece! The birds jump down out of their coop and rouse themselves to activity, strutting and shaking their wings, until the dance becomes frenetic. It greatly appealed to my sense of humour, and included a tricky sequence of jumps including entrechats. The role of our cockerel was of course taken by our former Royal Ballet dancer. I actually remembered this choreography rather better than at other times, and our teachers also thought we were picking things up really well. As usual we had to perform at the end in the dreaded ‘small groups’ rather than all together, but one gets used to that.
There were no photos taken during the summer school, as everyone involved would have had to agree in writing, and the administration was more than the office, run on a shoe-string, could have coped with. So instead, here is a video clip of the Royal Ballet showing how the hen and cockerel number should be done, as we were taught in that tradition.
On the second afternoon we worked on the opening fairies’ sequence from Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a ballet which Derek considered one of Ashton’s finest, and which I remember seeing on TV years ago with its original interpreters, Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley. The music is by Mendelssohn. It opens with Titania’s fairies flitting around the wood in various formations (and Derek had to tell us to be more ethereal and less like wasps in a bag!) We worked as one whole corps de ballet in a pattern, doing different things among ourselves, such as arabesques and jumps in diverse directions. It included another of those very fast jumps sequences that I find so hard to get my head around, and a certain amount of mime. Ashton also likes an elegant use of the turning of the shoulders. I still had a very sore toe from wearing the character-shoes the day before, and whenever I had to kneel down in The Dream it hurt. However, amongst the majority of participants, this seemed to be the most popular ballet we did.
On the third morning our repertoire was very different: the Foxtrot from Ashton’s jazzy Façade to the accompaniment of Walton’s youthful music and Edith Sitwell’s crazy poetry. I declined the invitation to wear character-shoes as my feet were still sore and instead wore soft early-dance shoes with small heels, although the heels proved unsuitable to go up onto in a tap-dance move. This ballet has a lot of Charleston moves and kicking and general larking around. It was my least favourite of the repertoire, but I recognize the value of studying very different styles of ballet. It was meant to be a fun dance. But most of us probably preferred the more balletic works.
When we reassembled for our final afternoon to go through some of the work again, The Dream was not surprisingly the one with the most votes. We had some worry about whether we’d remember what we’d done on previous days, but much of it came back with a few reminders. Then we recapitulated Swanilda’s dance from Coppelia, which one person who’d been sick had missed the first time and was generally popular. There was time for one more, and I was pleased that the chicken dance in La Fille Mal Gardée won out in the vote over the Mazurka, which I liked but its memory was tainted by my sore feet. Derek expressed surprise that we’d picked up everything so quickly, and Nicky, our normal teacher, looked very pleased, not to say radiant, at how things had gone. We finished with Nicky leading us through some wind-down Pilates stretches. There will probably be another such 3-day summer school this year at the end of August.
It had all been a great success, and we felt very privileged to have had this special experience and such good and detailed tuition in Norwich. It must be one of the best provincial centres in the country in which adults can study ballet. One meets such nice people on ballet courses, all of whom are fired by passion for the dance.
Our new Spring Term has now started, and we look forward to making further advances. Even though I’m only too aware that age has its drawbacks, I am determined to go as far as I can. And we have the January Ballet Day to look forward to in a couple of weeks to give added spice. In the last January session we learned some of Balanchine’s Serenade: I wonder what the repertoire will be this time?
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