May-July Diary 2003

by Cassa Pancho

Boyz in the Halloumi
You might think it would take a director of great magnitude to achieve such inter-cultural, gettin’ down in the community to unite the casts of Boyz in the Hood with My Big Fat Greek Wedding - interspersed with the dancers of Ballet Black – but it been CAN be done.

On one of the more gorgeously sunny days we’ve been having recently, Ballet Black’s company class and rehearsal was due to take place at the Ballet School location in Shepherd’s Bush. All the very adorable baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabies (yes, do feel free to draw out the ‘A’ for as long as you wish) had gone home for the day having completed another Saturday’s worth of pony galops, skewiff pirouettes and tour en’lairs (start ‘em young), when the local Community Service boyz arrived to repaint the hall to repay their debt to society.

Ah.

After a brief discussion with their supervisor, it emerged that we had been double booked. Hmm. After a bit more discussion that was now becoming quite heated, the supervisor’s supervisor arrived. We both wanted the same thing. Not peace and harmony in the community but simply for each other to bugger off. With neither party about to budge the only thing left was to split the hall and for them to paint around us. This worked out okay as the space is pretty huge, but I don’t think Raymond Chia, our teacher that day was too pleased with trying to teach class with four enormous brothers up a tower, painting whilst he extolled the virtues of being “up on that supporting leg!”

He especially didn’t like it when my good God the entire ensemble of My Big Fat Greek Wedding arrived half an hour later to set up their wedding reception, complete with a helium gas canister and enough halloumi to feed the entire Greek army.

More heated discussion and, yep, you guessed it – the hall had been triple booked! With only one of the wedding party speaking English, trying to stop them waddling right through the middle of the rehearsal became an exercise in futility. Finally, we managed to stash the Greeks in the kitchen with the helium gas, balloons and halloumi, the community servicers at the far end of the room (though by now painting had been abandoned in favour of watching us), and finished what we were doing, to the inevitable, melodic !POPPING! coming from the kitchen as one balloon after another was over-gassed and burst.

Now if that doesn’t win us the Cross-Culture in the Community Award I don’t know what will.

Ballet School
We have two new editions to our ever-expanding School - two completely deaf children. One makes up half of a set of twins (her twin has perfect hearing), and the other is her friend. They are both three years of age and adore coming to ballet class. Marina and I were a little unsure at first, as we would find ourselves asking them the same questions we would of all the other kids, then thinking “D’oh!” when those questions were met by a calm smile or a slightly garbled response. We would be terribly apologetic and try desperately not to embarrass them in front of the other kids – though I suspect we were the only ones to look remotely foolish.

Photograph by William Potter ©

It’s quite funny. Here I am, running a black ballet company, un-apologetic and continually frustrated/amused by those who, through some misplaced sense of guilt or political correctness are always saying ridiculous things to me like, “did you see that black lady here today? Maybe she could join your company?” (while we’re in a shopping centre) or, “Me racist? Have you seen my collection of saris?” OR – and this is my favourite, “Well my nanny/driver/cleaner is black and he/she is just lovely.” Oh dear! I shouldn’t complain - those are some of the funniest things I ever get to hear! Aaaanyway – I was going somewhere with this…Though I may have the occasional chuckle at this sort of thing, I was just as guilty of it with our deaf students. Trying anxiously to make them feel at home resulted in going slightly over the top by SPEEEAKING-LIIIIIKE-THIIIIS to attempt to be clear. Happily, we’re over that. One child is very good at lip reading, so it’s just a matter of standing where she can see your face clearly. We’re experimenting with turning the music up (without deafening the other students of course) to feel that slight vibration through the floorboards. My homework is to find some time over the summer holidays to do some reading around on the subject – but if anyone has any advice we’d love to hear it.

Ballet Black
Our next performance is well under way. Raymond has been working really well with the dancers, instilling a huge amount of discipline and generally whompin’arse. If you’re ever around Danceworks, GO TO HIS CLASS. Richard, our physiotherapist also puts them through their paces with weekly private Pilates, plus some horrendously difficult stuff at the end of company class – as well as Pilates sessions where I work at Pilates off the Square in Bond Street.

Gerrard Martin, Sia Kpakiwa and me (obviously) in rehearsal
photograph by William Potter ©

The show is in October, which is also Black History Month UK. What better time for us to perform? Denzil is teaming up once again with the fab ‘n funky Celloman. I have a new Jazz quartet, to go with my newly honed ballet. Stephen Sheriff (aka Sher) has a very haunting Poulenc piece with two “heavy weight” musicians (in the words of my Jazz musician Audun who introduced us). We have new costume designers too – Denzil is working with Faith Caton, who seems to be on his wavelength! I am finally working with my old friend Yuki Tsukamoto. We collaborated on a ballet when we were both third year students and came up with a very swish Audrey Hepburn style ballet. Yuki works as Bruce French’s assistant so has done her share of designing for dance and theatre and I can’t wait to see how everything will work out. I really can’t describe how excited I am with the way thing are going for BB. There was a point when I felt that my enthusiasm was waning, but the act of writing this diary reminds me of all the great things that are happening.

We’ve come on a lot since our Fundraiser and have changed dancers, staff and ballets, but the hardcore team that remain are so dedicated. I look forward to our next show with eagerness and fear (as always) but always try to hold onto the fact that if we go about our business with love, care and attention to detail it can’t be a bad thing (oh, and a big fat wad of cash wouldn’t go amiss either).