I just love to dance, all styles and enjoy watching others perform. In London last week I watched the Bolshoi Ballet’s performance of ‘Jewels’ at the Royal Opera House. It was my first time inside the Royal Opera House and my first London ballet. I wore my ballerina dress for the occasion, we arrived at 6pm to make a full night of it. Dad had booked the tickets and a meal for Mum’s birthday treat. The boys went to watch ‘The Book of Mormons’ musical and gave it 5 out of 5.
Jewels is a ballet in three parts, 1) Emeralds, 2) Rubies and 3) Diamonds. The scores for each section were composed by Faure, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. It was sublime, I looked this word up in my thesaurus because I wanted to sum up my feelings on the performance: glorious, superb, magnificent, grand, stately, majestic and exalted = sublime – that is perfect for my review. The dancing was fabulous, although there were a couple of timing issues with substitute cast in one act, the costumes were fantastic I would have preferred red tutu’s in Ruby but that’s just me, the speed and tempo in that section were breathtaking and the orchestra simple stunning. I loved the large bouquets of flowers for the Prima Ballerinas. It left me wanting to dance.
I started dancing ballet and tap from the age of three with Helen Bates School of Dance in Knutsford. At six, I started Stagecoach in Northwich and had a dance class there with Zoe Buckley every Saturday. I started additional classes at Zoe’s ‘Love2Dance’ group in Northwich and we did Jazz, stage, and stage tap there and produced shows twice a year which I loved. Age 11, I started Ballroom and Latin dancing with my family at Amanda Kirkby’s Northwich Dance School and took all my medal tests passing with the highest grades and winning several gold medals in competitions.
At Knutsford Academy, I worked with a wonderful dance teacher called Lisa Scott (nee Hughes) we were taught contemporary dance, she was upset for me when I broke my foot four months before my final A level dance test, but after eight weeks off my feet we worked hard together to achieve an A grade.
I had to stop ballet and tap when I started at Junior Royal Northern College of Music as the lessons clashed and I didn’t get the time to pass my final grade 8 exams although previously I had passed with Distinction in Ballet. Last year, in Glasgow, I started up ballet classes again and was hoping to do a module in ballet in my second year degree program but it was not to be, so I’m doing Shakespeare instead. I am hoping to resume my ballet classes in the evenings the exercise, toning and deportment required is simply unbeatable.
Just an update to say that I auditioned for a ballet module at the start of my fourth year and am happy to let you know I passed and started ballet again from September 2015, it’s exhilarating, hard work but in a good way.