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TO the eternal credit of Birmingham Royal
Ballet there are no half measures when it comes to their innovative
First Steps performances for children. The eager youngsters
were treated to the full 60 plus strong Royal Ballet Sinfonia under
principal conductor Paul Murphy along with front line dancers in a cut
down version of Sir Frederick Ashton’s
The Dream, beautifully devised by
assistant director Marion Tait. The short ballet, based
on A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
dates from 1964 to mark the 400th
anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, this year it marks his the
anniversary of his death. The excellent storyteller Owen Young introduces a
near full house to the language of ballet, speaking without words, with
hosts of youngsters joining him in showing a host of emotions in silence
– more or less – angry being a particular favourite. Even Stephen King
might have been frightened at some of the faces!
Young then sets the scene in the Forest of Arden
with first the appearance of the fairies and then Oberon and Titania,
king and queen of the fairies, quarrelling about a foundling - a child
given to the Queen that Oberon wanted as a servant. The curtain opens, with audible ooohs from the
young audience, as Peter Farmer’s woodland set is revealed and the 16
strong corps de ballet, the fairies, appear in delicate powder blue
flowing costumes, pretty as a picture, and a dream in themselves for
many a young girl in the audience in her pink tutu. This is what they
wanted to see . . . and want to be – ballerinas. Had this been a decade ago perhaps young girls in
tutus would have been all the youngsters your would see, but times have
changed and there were an appreciable number of boys in the audience –
dance no longer a macho no no. Billy Elliot, Sir Matthew Bourne, hip-hop,
breakdancing, street dancing, Strictly, have all opened minds and
changed attitudes – even Fred Astaire is cool again these days, with a
resurgence of dance musicals. Tait has sensibly simplified the story to
concentrate on Oberon, Titania, Puck and Bottom – a name, incidentally,
to delight any audience of youngsters. Out go the humans and the Shakespearean romcom of
Hermia and Lysander and Demetrius and Helena. Let’s be honest, love and
marriage are about as interesting as choosing kitchen cabinets to young
children so best dump the lovers. Instead give the youngsters an amiable idiot turned into a donkey by a mischievous Puck, and a Queen then falling in love with him, and they are happy. It is all a bit silly and funny - and easy to portray and understand Principal dancer Jenna Roberts is a lovely
Titania with rising star William
Meanwhile James Barton gives us a lively Puck,
full of mischief and practical jokes, a role he also danced that
evening, while Jonathan Caguioa, who danced the role on Press night, is
a wonderful Bottom who appears perhaps slightly brighter as a donkey
than he is as a human.
Bottom arrives with a splendidly eccentric bunch of rustics, Shakespeare's rude mechanicals, who vanish in fear after Puck turns him into a donkey. The performance is broken into short scenes with Young explaining what is going on between each section with the help of the characters answering his questions. Thus we have the trick of magic juice dropped on
the eyes of Titania so she would fall for the now donkey-headed Bottom.
Then, after a dance between the pair, it is explained how Puck and
Oberon will make everything right again with Titania and Bottom, back to
a human again, waking up and believing they have merely had a strange
dream. No dance is long enough for any child to lose
interest, no dance takes place without children being told what is
happening and how it takes the story forward. As well as the dance
there is also some explanation of Mendelssohn’s music with the Royal
Ballet Sinfonia showing the different emotions expressed in the score,
from the anger of Oberon when he is denied the foundling, to the happy
dance of Bottom as a donkey, including a musical Hee Haw, all led by
conductor Paul Murphy . . . who Young assured us is
very cool. Plenty of little girls in their ballet class
outfits were in their element but for the rest as an introduction to
ballet, and indeed theatre itself, it is an innovative venture by BRB
and has enough interest to make a child think not only theatre is OK but
there might even be something in this ballet lark. Making ballet
accessible to children aged three to seven is not the easiest of tasks
but Marion Tait has managed it splendidly, building on last year’s
A child’s Swan Lake.
A sublime dancer herself in her prime, Tait is now encouraging and
teaching the current generation and with First Steps could well be
inspiring the stars of the next generation. Roger Clarke 19-02-16
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Bracewell
as the athletic Oberon making a splendidly regal duo The pair also
danced the roles in Saturday’s full performance.