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Lachlan Monaghan's From Which to Fall Voices & Virtues Elmhurst Ballet School Ballet might be the reason for Elmhurst's existence but while teaching ballet is the cornerstone, dance is a broad church with many faces as shown in Voices & Virtues involving the whole school with pieces from classical Tchaikovsky with Swan Lake to big band jazz with virtuoso clarinet. While ballet is the core subject many other forms
of dance from contemporary to jazz, tap to flamenco are covered with the
aim of producing ballet dancers who are technically skilled in a wide
range of genres giving them wider opportunities when they graduate. It has seen Elmhurst alumni find roles in West
End musicals, with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures and in
ballet and dance companies around the world, and, nearer to home,
Birmingham Royal Ballet. The gala night was opened by From Which To Fall, a piece from Australian Principal dancer with Birmingham Royal Ballet, Lachlan Monaghan, set to Anton Bruckner's String Quartet in C Minor WAB 111: IV Rondo Schnell. This piece with its music displaying a baroque
feel is the final part of the quartet and was danced elegantly and in
classical style by pupils from year 12, with year 13 men – that's lower
and upper sixth for those who work in old money.
Incidentally, the piece has an unusual history
having been created in 1862 by the Austrian composer Bruckner while he
was studying orchestration under German conductor Otto Kitzler The Quartet was never issued in Bruckner's
lifetime and was only discovered in 1950 when it had it's premiere – a
mere 88 years after it was written. Year 11 brought a contemporary perspective with
Jinwoo, a piece created by former Rambert Dance Company
dancer and current Associate Choreographer for Ballet Black
Jacob Wye, a sort of urban techno piece with insistent music, modern
dance with street cred followed by as classical as ballet gets with a
dip into Swan Lake. This was an excerpt from Act II of Sir Peter
Wright's celebrated version a 16 strong corps de ballet Year 13's young
women. Beauty and form in every little girl's vision of ballerinas,
rehearsed, along with Elmhurst ballet teacher Gloria Grigolat by former
long time assistant director at Birmingham Royal Ballet, Marion
Tate. The trick here is to have 16 swans in unison and creating perfect
shapes like a triangle of snooker reds and they managed it beautifully. At the other end of the scale came Sing Sang
Sung -Yeah from Elmhurst jazz teacher Cris Penfold, set to a piece
of the same name, minus the yeah, from multi Grammy award winning
Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band with its brilliant solo from
renowned jazz clarinetist Eddie Daniels. Year 9 gave it some real
pizzazz in redshirts and bow ties to give that Chicago roaring 20s
appeal.
Less jazz and more formal came Youthful
Enthusiasm from former Elmhurst pupil and now Midlands based
teacher and coach Rosie Miller-Gallus. Set to music from Mozart it gave
Year 7, that's the first year of lower school, a chance to show off
their paces at the start of their Elmhurst journey. The same choreographer
gave us Knowledgeable Optimism with music by Johan Strauss and
performed by Year 8 students. The piece had a bucolic feel with a hint
of La Fille mal gardée about it, all executed with bags of
charm and commendable style. Charm was not something that could be levelled at
Ek.Sta.Sis from Cuban choreographer Miguel Altunaga set to the
track from Belgian pianist and composer Mathias Coppens. Altunaga worked
with the Year 13 students in creating the piece The students, dressed in
formal black suits and white shirts, swooped around the stage at times
like a flock of gulls following a trawler keeping pace with an insistent
almost industrial electronic techno track. At times it had a 1984 feel
with one individual breaking out of the group, defying Big Brother, at
other times dancers became their own individual groups, always fluid,
always moving. This was about shape and movement, rather than
elegance and narrative and it worked. Year 10 take us back almost two centuries with
Giselle Paysants from Adolphe Adam's 1841 opera, choreographed
by Cuban Sonia Fajardo, a graduate of the famed Cuban National
Ballet School and another of Elmhurst's ballet teachers. The ballet dates from
the time before Marius Petipa and the Imperial Russian Ballet
in St Petersberg set what was to become the accepted standard for
classical ballet in the latter part of the 1800s and is based on folk
dances with a simplistic, 19th century country fair air about
it. Elmhurst Ballet Company, the school's own
company, creating a stepping stone between the protective bubble of a
school environment and the dog eat dog world of making a living in
professional dance, gave us Paper Plane.
It was first seen
earlier this year in the company's production, Resonance, and
was devised by award winning contemporary choreographer, Jessica Wright
who is also Staging Director for Wayne McGregor’s works. Set to music of
the same name by Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson. It comes from the
school's collaboration with Studio Wayne McGregor and utilised
his AI tool, AISOM which helps to generate movement and choreographic
codes. Dancers tell it what they want and the tool comes up with the
moves – which do require bodies that bend, twist and flex . . . and
don't creak . . . if you fancy a go . . . The result is a sort of
aerobics work out on speed by the next generation of dancers to leave
Elmhurst in the summer. The programme closed with the Grand Défilé
with music by Tchaikovsky from Eugene Onegin which brought on the entire
cast of an enjoyable and varied evening of dance from Year 7 to the
school's own company, Year 14, making the transition from learning to
earning.
Roger Clarke 08-07-25 |
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