Good afternoon and welcome to Tramway here in Glasgow, the headquarters of Scottish Ballet.
My name is Hope Muir and I am Ballet Mistress here at the company.
This is the sixth live ballet web stream we've done here at Scottish Ballet and we are excited
to have you with us in this remarkable event in which Scottish Ballet, the National Dance
Company of Wales and English National Ballet have joined forces to celebrate something
of an extraordinary year in Britain.
We join the dancers here from all three companies midway through their daily class with Scottish
Ballet's own ballet mistress Maria Jimenez.
A professional dancer will start each working day with a class, whether that be classical
ballet or a contemporary dance technique.
It is a fundamental part of every dancer's day that not only allows them to prepare physically
for rehearsals or performances but allows them to focus and maintain their technique, learn
new skills and to develop and explore their own individual approach to movement.
The dancers from Scottish Ballet are wearing blue dance GB T-shirts, National Dance Company
of Wales are in green and English National Ballet are in black.
They are wearing blue dance GB T-shirts, National Dance Company of Wales and English National
Ballet are wearing blue dance GB T-shirts, National Dance Company of Wales and English National
Ballet are wearing blue dance GB T-shirts.
The dancers have already completed a bar and now they moved into centre practice they continue
to build on the exercises that they have already completed.
So they would have started with a basic tendu and now they have moved on to adage.
This is to combine articulation of footwork as well as extension and sustaining movements
against gravity.
The
dance GB project has brought together all of these amazing artists from three of the UK's
most prominent dance companies to perform in individually commissioned works from leading
contemporary choreographers.
Christopher Bruce for the National Dance Company of Wales, Itzik Galili for English National
Ballet and Martin Lawrence for Scottish Ballet.
The Olympic themed evening celebrates the artists as athletes in an exhilarating triple
bill that is being performed this week here in Glasgow and then tours to Cardiff and
Cardiff.
So is ballet really a sport?
Well not in the competitive sense but I feel that it is an incredibly fitting that we celebrate
this Olympic year through dance as dancers themselves are incredible athletes.
Albert Einstein famously said that dancers are the athletes of God and after the dance
GB premiere here in Glasgow on Tuesday evening I would have to agree.
Scottish Ballet's piece Run for it by Martin Lawrence with Turner Prize winning designs
by Martin Boyce puts the company through fiendishly difficult choreography with Olympic themes
running throughout.
Artistic director Anne Sholem from the National Dance Company of Wales commissioned Christopher
Bruce who has given us a poignant and beautiful piece called Dream, charming and nostalgic
set initially at a sports day and building swiftly through a series of Olympic events
with such musicality, clarity and wit and commitment from the extraordinary dancers
of this company.
You can't help but lead with a smile.
The final piece in the evening has been commissioned by Wayne Eagling for English National Ballet
and he chose contemporary choreographer Itzik Gillily who out of 60 dance, 67 dancers available
to him chose 20 and he has an amazing, the unique language and the dances of EMB deliver
it beautifully in a highly technical and challenging work that could be reminiscent of a closing
ceremony.
As the dancers build through their daily class the enchaimons get more complicated and complex.
These are joined together to create longer exercises and embody each of the disciplines
Amazing to see principal artist Irina Takahashi from English National Ballet dancing alongside
Tomo Seto from Scottish Ballet and Claire Robertson.
Amazing!
All of the dancers involved in DanceGP have found it a hugely rewarding experience thus
far.
Not only are we able to share three fantastically new works together on one stage, but they
also have the opportunity to share class together and ideas, and this is rare and something
that they find deeply rewarding.
Huge praise has to be given to the three artistic directors, Wayne Eagling, Ashley Page and
Anne Shoram, to have given the dancers this opportunity to share this three-week, three-week
tour together, this exciting DanceGP project.
Maria will now bring the dancers into the centre to do warm-up jumps.
Before dancers start doing more complicated jumping on shamans, they'll always do a series
of small jumps on class or on the spot, just to make sure that their joints are ready for
the impact of larger jumps.
All three companies will be touring these works later in their seasons, and for information
on tour dates and schedules, please go to the websites of Scottish Ballet, National Dance
Company Wales and English National Ballet.
If you have any questions for any of our dancers, please feel free to send us messages on Facebook
or Twitter as we will go to a live question-answer with three dancers, one from each of the participating
dancers.
At the end of class today, the dancers will travel to the Theatre Royal Glasgow to have
a few hours more of rehearsals before tonight's triple bill.
This is normal in the day of a life of a professional dancer.
A day will normally start with an hour and a half class, followed by three hours of rehearsals
and then a show.
We're about ready to go live to our dancers for a quick question and answer, so please
feel free to send in your questions to Facebook or Twitter.
That's first soloist Crystal Costa on the left-hand side of your screen in the Black
Leotard, from Scottish Ballet, in the centre we have Natalie De Quingy, the principal dancer
Adam Blyde, from Scottish Ballet, in the centre we have Natalie De Quingy, the principal
dancer, from Scottish Ballet, in the centre we have Natalie De Quingy, the principal
dancer, from Scottish Ballet, in the centre we have Natalie De Quingy, the principal
dancer.
As Maria moves through larger enchaimons for bigger jumps, you'll see that the linking
steps get more complicated, there are more power jumps in terms of how long they stay
in the air and also the use of extension will become more complicated, quicker footwork
and also the men will be adding extra elements that perhaps the ladies will not do.
So just before we leave the dancers who are going into their Grand Allegro, I'd just like
to say a huge thank you to all three companies for participating in this live streaming event
from Scottish Ballet, before I pass you over to Emma Jane, who is going to be speaking
live with three of the dancers from the three participating companies.
So a big thank you to our pianist Brian Prentiss and teacher Maria Jimenez and all the fantastic
dancers from Scottish Ballet, English National Ballet and the National Dance Company of Wales.
I'll pass you over to Emma Jane, who is going to speak with three of the dancers.
I'm Emma Jane and I'm here with three of our fantastic dancers from our three companies.
So first of all I have Barry from English National Ballet, then I have Annabeth from
National Dance Company Wales and finally I have Daniel Davidson from Scottish Ballet.
You can see them all looking fantastic in their t-shirts.
So guys, I've just plucked you literally from class.
It's a really special class, given that all three companies are here in one studio.
It's quite amazing for us at Scottish Ballet.
We're a company of around about 36 dancers, so to have everyone here is fantastic.
We've got 10 dancers from National Dance Company Wales and we have around about 20.
So it's fantastic to have this number in the studio.
So what does it feel like firstly to do class with three companies?
Barry?
It's bizarre but it's really amazing to watch how other companies work and what their ethic
is like in class and you can always learn from other dancers, so it's really amazing
to get the chance to take class with another company.
Fantastic.
It's a contemporary company, do you guys do ballet class or is it more contemporary
in terms of your warm up?
Our warm up is when we have show days it's actually ballet, we do ballet every day, but
it's not traditional ballet, it's got much more of a contemporary feel to it because
that's what we need to prepare for our shows, but when we're at base in Cardiff we get lots
of guest teachers from all over the place teaching us loads of different crazy contemporary
things, but for us this is amazing to do a ballet class with ballet dancers, wow.
I think it's great for us as an audience to get to see it as well.
So Daniel, hi back for you, this is your home studio, this is the Peter Darrell studio?
Yeah, I was going to say it's not strange to see it so busy, I mean we obviously work
in here every morning but yeah there's a lot more people here than usual, but it's really
nice having everyone here, it's everyone sort of like pulling together, camaraderie, working
hard to make the shows look good and go smoothly.
There's a real sort of team atmosphere and I guess that's very fitting, it all fits with
the Olympics and with the idea of the torch because I suppose this tour is a little bit
like the torch being passed around the country because we've started off here in Glasgow
and then we move on to Cardiff where a national dance company of Wales are based and then
finally to London to Greenwich actually, so that's pretty exciting and it's going to
be in a tent I believe, yeah.
At the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, so it's a really lovely venue.
Yeah, fantastic, so for you guys being together as three companies have you had a chance to
see each other work outside of a class environment?
I'll go to you for a second.
Yeah well we got to watch the dress rehearsals which is really exciting because we've all
seen the clips that have been on the internet but not actually seen anybody dance properly
and it was amazing, everything's so different and all the pieces stand by themselves really
strongly and they're inspiring and everyone's just been so wonderful and you get excited.
All the pieces, they do stand well on their own but as one complete show they seem to
work really well together.
They get together really well, it's turned out to be a really fantastic programme.
Yeah, it is and there's a real celebration in the diversity of the three companies I
think as well and the diversity of the dancers and I suppose the linking factor really is
the physicality, it's extreme physicality and it's linked very much to the Olympics,
yeah.
And both I think English National Ballet and Scottish Ballet, your pieces are very, very
much based on the physicality, the extremities and yours is a little bit different, Annabelle.
Yeah, I don't know how I get through it.
It's still extremely physical though.
Yeah, I mean I don't know how ours looks because we've never seen it but watching the others,
it's very physical and it's totally extreme and so challenging and it's like sportsmen
that have this huge challenge to get through something and when I watch these guys I'm
like wow, it's really intense and it really draws you in as an audience.
I think looking at your piece, the National Dance Company Wales' piece, it's beautiful,
it's funny, it's touching, it's endearing and it's a lovely look at Jubilee as well,
Jubilee celebrations as well as the Olympics, yeah.
So we've had a lot of interesting comments on Facebook and Twitter, a lot of interest
before the webcast even began so that's amazing this time round.
So let's just have a little look, I'm going to ask one of you to hold my microphone for
me though.
And we've got some questions from Twitter, just looking at what you guys, is this regular
for you to start off class daily every morning in this kind of training?
Yeah, I mean classes sounds cliche but it's like brushing your teeth in the morning.
If you want to have a good day and put on a good show, a good class is an integral part
of a good warm-up to set you up for the rest of the day so it's quite standard for most
young companies to start the day with a class, yeah.
Fantastic, and I have another question here and it's looking at, is this quite a unique
experience bringing three companies together?
Have any of you had that opportunity to perform with different companies under the one bill?
No, I don't think we have, this is the first for us so I'm trying to think, I don't think
I've really been part of any festivals or anything like that when I've been here anyway,
so yeah, it's the first time.
So it's an exciting experience I guess, and I suppose the opportunity to tour is brilliant
because the camaraderie will just build and build.
I mean this is only week one so we still have another two weeks to get to know each other
better, but already there's, I think with anyone who performs, you can relate to the
people so easily so you get on very quickly and I'm really excited about the next two
weeks.
It would be nice to visit everyone's hometowns as well and see where they work and as what's
nice to have everyone here because we've also been here in a couple of years and it still
feels quite fresh to us so to welcome everyone in is really nice.
I'm looking forward to going down south and seeing your places.
Yeah, I feel very lucky to come and see this building actually because I'm from Scotland
and I used to take class at the old building so it's really nice for me to come here and
see these fantastic facilities, they're just amazing, they're really really lucky.
It's lovely so it's a sense of homecoming for you Barry, fantastic, great.
And a few more questions, a lot of people are thoroughly enjoying seeing the three companies
together and I think there's just a real feeling of the interest building and building it as
the tour goes on as well.
There's a lot of different nationalities in the companies as well and a lot of people
have been picking up on that so is it nice to be part of a huge big family of different
nationalities and different cultures and different languages as well, there's a real buzz.
I think definitely in the dance world that's quite normal for us to work with people from
all over the world so it's just that's not something that we're not used to but I think
it's really enriching to work with people from so many different backgrounds and from
different training from different countries, it really broadens your mind and I think
we're really lucky that we get to work with people from so many different places.
It's nice to learn other people's cultures and their background and a bit about their
country where they're from so it would be nice if we did some foreign tours over there.
Yeah, absolutely, well watch this space.
Because I'm sure each piece will sit in each company's repertoire as well to be performed
again and again, yeah, fantastic.
So of course people can still buy tickets, we've still got tickets available in tonight's
performance and also for the matinee in the evening tomorrow at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow
and as we were saying it then goes on to Cardiff, the Millennium Centre and then finally to Greenwich
to a fantastic venue of the Old Naval College the following week.
So you can see all of the details on the Dance GB website.
This webcast will also be available as a podcast as well after so if you haven't been with us live
then you'll be watching us later on and I think that's nice because are any of your families or
friends going to watch you think or are they watching right now?
I'm sure my family are watching, they're fed with a couple of teams.
Fantastic, so brilliant. Well thank you so much you three for taking time out of class.
Have a brilliant tour, enjoy all the performances, we've really enjoyed talking to you
and we've enjoyed having you Barry and Annabeth here to Scottish Ballet.
Thank you very much, thanks for watching everyone and come and see Scottish Ballet very soon.
