On 22nd March Lewisham College Access to Dance course performed their strong annual show of six dances including contemporary, jazz and hip hop at Trinity Laban. Here are some of my drawings of the really enjoyable event.
For drawings of their rehearsals see, see https://blog.sallymckay.co.uk/2011/02/.
The Most Incredible Thing is a modern ballet choreographed by Javier de Frutos with music by the Pet Shop Boys. It opened at Sadler’s Wells 17th March. Based on a fairy story by Hans Christian Anderson the King offers his daughter’s hand in marriage and half his kingdom to the person who can create the most extraordinary object anyone has ever seen. Not surprisingly his spirited daughter is resistant to this rather authoritarian concept. The opening scene is one of my favourites in the ballet, the dancers dressed as Russian workers dance around a huge table, it has echoes of early expressionist dance and is so visual it is as if a painting comes to life. Meanwhile isolated behind transparent screens, Princess (Clemmie Sveaas) dances alone in true teenage anxt to the wonderful pounding beat of the Pet Shop Boys.
The two suitors show up, dreamy artist Leo, and ruthless soldier, Karl (Aaron Sillis and Ivan Putrov). Both dance in turn with Princess. The competition to design the most incredible object begins. Leo, creates a little clock which magically comes to life, it is agreed by the panel of judges shown on video that his is the best design and so wins the girl and half the kingdom.
Bad loser Karl, fired up with envy crushes the clock and is pronounced the winner for doing The Most Incredible Thing by destroying such an extraordinary work of art (no I don’t follow that line of thought either… but all is not lost). So Baddy and Beauty are to marry while Sad Artist is pining for his lost love. Suddenly, low and behold, the clock rebuilds itself, destroys the evil soldier and dreamy artist is reunited with his true love and they live happily ever after for ever and ever just like in real life.
Except I missed the last act so didn’t see them reunited because my princess texted me to say she wasn’t feeling well so I left for home. I hope one day I’ll have the opportunity to watch and draw the ballet again, the energy was fabulous and the imagery beautiful.
March 23rd, Protein Facebook
LOL (Lots of Love), Protein‘s fabulous new work was at The Place last week. As the title suggests the dance is concerned with how the internet and social networking is transforming relationships, replacing human contact with a series of letters, dots and dashes. The changes in the way we connect, find love and develop relationships.
As well as dancing the performers speak text in rapid, anxious one liners. The dance is fast and funny, but as it progresses the confusion of the online language combined with unrequited human longing results in melancholic solitude.
Andy Pink has created a fascinating soundscore with video animation by Rachel Davies
LOL (Lots of Love)
Chris Thompson, Director of Learning & Access at The Place described LOL (Lots of Love) as “A brilliant show, so many layers and textures and knotted wires”. During the devising of the dance the cast visited community groups around the country to speak with ‘real people’, the material they drew upon was verbal, interviews and online.
Artistic Director, Luca Silvestrini says “it’s not about technology it’s about relationships within the technology; about humanity, a celebration of flesh and blood through live performance”.
Protein are Company in Residence at Greenwich Dance. Last year during the devising of LOL they performed an extract of LOL at the Greenwich Dance Cabaret. I drew the duet, To The Bone danced by Protein dancers recently at The Wapping Project. see: https://blog.sallymckay.co.uk/2011/01/
The Spring Cabaret at Greenwich Dance last Friday was the chosen venue for Lisa Stubbs to celebrate her birthday. Her friends filled three tables to watch an evening of innovative dance and later surprisingly to participate in. As always I drew a few sketches of the dances as they unfolded before me.
Tamzen Moulding Matthew Hawkins
The first dance of the evening, Tamzen Moulding‘s It Started at The End combined dance and acrobatics. Matthew Hawkins followed with a solo inspired by spending time in a sculptor’s studio in China to an interesting trak sound track of the voices and activity in the studio.
Avant Garde Barn Dance
Avant Garde danced a preview of their multimedia production, Illegal Dance. During the interval Rosie Davis led some of the audience in a barn dance.
Wendy Houstoun
Wendy Houston performed ‘a short monologue for a tongue tied citizen’. I have drawn Wendy’s work before, she choreographed a dance for the Yorke Dance Project called Home on the Range, which I drew last October, see
https://blog.sallymckay.co.uk/2010/10/
Accompanied by the fabulous Squirrel Hunters: Steve Blake, Freddie Gottlieb and Peter Gibson. Dance Caller Rosie Davis encouraged the Cabaret audience to grab a partner and take part in a barn dance!
Sketch book abandoned, as friend Gill and I danced the night away. Another very successful and enjoyable Cabaret at Greenwich Dance.
I Don’t Believe in Outer Space William Forsythe‘s latest work premiered at Sadler’s Wells, London last week. The dance is an intensely personal work looking at the very nature of fragile existence through Forsythe’s eyes. The dance is both comic and tragic, the stage is strewn with balls of black tape suggestive of meteorites, but it is not about astronomy. Forsythe says ‘the space it is talking about is the one where you look back on your life and you think, where the hell was it? You finally begin to focus on the fragility of the whole experience’.
The show opens with a fabulous dark and physical monologue from Dana Caspersen, she plays two neighbours meeting for the first time. One scary and predatory, the other polite, sweet and desperately looking for a way to get rid of him, her body completely changing in shape character and movement as she alternates between the two. (above left)
Spoken text as well as music by composer Thom Willems, using lines from Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and others both as a melody and lines slipped in as spoken word.
‘As if by chance things are falling, as if by chance moving’
‘I can feel it’ ‘I put a spell on you. I love you and I don’t care’
‘you’d think I’d crumble, you’d think I’d die’
‘No more… no more stopping, no more going. No more sun. No more taking a walk in the dark’
Ballet Black is celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary, they opened at The Linbury Studio Theatre at The Royal Opera House on 9th February performing for 4 nights. Ballet Black is a ballet company for international dancers of black and asian descent, their aim is “to see a fundamental change in the number of black and Asian dancers in mainstream ballet companies”. Founded by Cassa Pancho the company performs a beautiful fusion of classical ballet, jazz and modern dance.
Pendulum. Choreographer: Martin Lawrence
My personal favourite was Pendulum, a fabulous strong duet performed to Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music. The relationship swings between tender, intimate, gentle affection and wild, passionate combat, extraordinary angular shapes are created.
Da Gamba. Choreographer: Henri Oguike. Shift. Choreographer: Antonia Franceschi.
DaGamba and Shift were both accompanied on stage by cellist Zoe Martlew. Shift was performed to Martlew’s own score of gorgeous, fast sassy jazz.
Orpheus. Choreographer: Will Tuckett
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My first time watching/drawing The American Ballet Theatre who were performing at Sadler’s Wells last week. Two programmes, I chose the first over the second to see Twyla Tharp‘s Known By Heart. The first dance of the evening, danced by three couples to Scarlatti, was Alexei Ratmansky‘s Seven Sonatas.
I loved Twyla Tharp’s Known by Heart performed by Gillian Murphy and Blaine Hoven to Donald Knaack‘s Junk Music. 
Twyla Tharp. Known By Heart
Another entirely different duet, Duo Concertant, followed, choreographed by George Balanchine.
Duo Concertant. George Balanchine
The final work, Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once choreographed by Benjamin Millepied had a 6 piece music ensemble on stage playing music by David Lang, performed by 24 dancers.
Benjamin Millepied. Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once
The end of a month of fabulous inspirational dance to celebrate The Wapping Project’s 10 year anniversary, curated and directed by Dr. Jules Wright. Saturday evening began with Rock ‘n Roll taught to a large enthusiastic class by the charismatic dancer/dance teacher, David Outevski.
Rock ‘n Roll in the Boiler House of The Wapping Project
At 9.00 the lights went down and the music cut out, the dance class looked confused as a man and woman in their underwear stroll into the middle of the dance floor. A soundtrack begins of an agitated woman’s voice projecting the thought’s of the characters. The dancers continually break away from each other and return in a rush of angry or heated passion, quirky teasing or a slow sultry embrace. The dance is quirky, funny and fast, with a dangerous edge.
To The Bone. Protein Dance
The fragment is from Protein Dance: “To The Bone“, choreographed by Artistic Director Luca Silvestrini and danced by Thomas Goodwin and Vicki Manderson. To see details of the current tour see Protein Dance web site.
The Wapping Hydraulic Power Station housing The Wapping Project is a fantastic venue, Dancing the Decade has now ended but there is a restaurant, a bookshop and a sycamore tree with an exhibition in it’s branches if you need an excuse to visit.
On Friday night Greenwich Dance held their first Cabaret night of the year with dance from Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece and the UK. It was wild!
I sat with the dance and drama students from Lewisham College who I’ll be drawing in a couple of weeks time and my friends Lisa Stubbs (Head of Dance and Drama at Lewisham College) and musician Carl Marsh.
Here are some of my sketches of the night
Ognjen Vucinic & Aleksandra Misic, Randevu
Compere Scottish poet, Elvis McGonagall. Milen Petrov, Apartment
Nigel Charnock. Them There Exes
Levantes Dance Theatre. Canape Art
Nigel Charnock. Cold Tongue
It was a great night. The next cabaret will be the Spring Cabaret 11th March. I shall be there with my sketch book to draw hip hop from Avant Garde and others.