March-May Diary 2003

by Cassa Pancho

It has been a strange and hectic time for Ballet Black of late. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve been quite unwell for about a month or so and as such, haven’t been able to be at every class, rehearsal or meeting. The ensuing result; absolute bloody chaos. I returned to find one dancer ready to quit, one about to have surgery and one still waiting at the 239 bus stop (another long story, almost worthy of its own diary. Another time, really). All in all, a bit of a mess. Happily, this was sorted with a good long chat to air out problems and a great big bitch about stuff too. There’s nothing like a good bitching session to make people bond. Aaaaah. So now no one’s leaving, the surgery should be fairly minor and the 239 bus eventually turned up and the dancer arrived safely. Chaos averted and we all go on to dance another day.

I Pink!

Something I haven’t written about for a while is the Ballet School. It’s going very well and is still something I really love to do, which is a constant surprise to me. Marina (our assistant teacher) is quite brilliant with the kids, and in my fairly long absence, has done really well. I’m quite sure the whole thing would tick along very well without me, which was a huge weight off my mind while I was away. I don’t think I’m ready to give it up just yet, as the kids totally crack me up. There’s something about the colour pink that fascinates my students. When we choose colours for the various mimes (pencils, animals, outfits, shoes, food, bubbles – the list is endless) they start out a bit unsure, like “pink?” and look at each other for confirmation, as if to say, “Okay - so we’re all agreed? Pink is the only colour we’re going to acknowledge.” Then they get a bit more confident:

Us: “What colour horsey are you going to have?” (to practise galops, you understand)

Them: “Pink!”

Us: “Are you SURE you don’t want another colour?”

This throws them for a second; they look a little suspicious, “is there another colour…? There can’t be” So, all decisive…

Them: “PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK!!!!!!

And so it goes on. The school uniform is pink, their little hair thingies are pink, their outdoor clothes are pink. It’s sort of like a candyfloss machine blew up in our small corner of Shepherd’s Bush. But hey, that’s okay - I LOVE PINK TOO!

I Hate Harridans
Before I begin this next section, I’d like to fully acknowledge that I know I am fairly low down on the Ballet Food Chain. Not so low as say, white Jazz shoes (not a great look) or those white cassettes of “fully orchestrated” music for class (scratch that and you’ll find the complete recordings of Delibes as interpreted by a Casio Keyboard with Demo Beat), but I’m not up there with the established choreographers and directors. This is okay by me. I’m 24, pretty new at this lark and not ready for much more than I already do, but in my relatively short ballet career, I reckon I’ve seen quite a lot.

I’ve been taught by those who think it’s acceptable to demoralize aspiring kids who just want to do ballet. I’ve experienced people who think they have the right to sidle up to you, pat you on the bottom, pinching any bit of flesh available and suggest (without having the balls to just say what they mean in plain old English) that gosh, you have enjoyed some home cooking, and, here, could you just hold still while I try and squish that last bit of confidence out of you? You know the kind. The frustrated, closet Nazi.

On the flip side, I have met and been taught by some fabulous people. Choreographers, dancers, lecturers and musicians who have the ability to restore my faith in Ballet Kind and make me very glad I chose this path. What this very long introduction is leading to (finally!) is that the people who work for Ballet Black continually blow me away. At present, our main teachers, apart from myself, are Denzil, Stephen Sheriff (usually referred to as Sher) and Raymond Chia. Denzil teaches with a mixture of exuberance and a rather large dose of the F-word. Sher has a lovely calm quality and it never ceases to amaze me that he can fit in all the exercises into an hour and a half. Raymond has a frenetic quality all his own. His classes are littered with his opinions of other ballet companies (very funny) and he has an odd but kind of endearing habit of calling all our male dancers Felix. Nobody’s figured out why yet.

I find it really helps the dancers to have a continuous change in the people that teach them. They learn something different from each teacher and it seems to keep the artistry flowing. When I was a student choreographer, I would go to rehearsal with definite ideas on what the piece would look like and take page after page of haphazard diagrams and doodles, often writing out entire ballets to teach to the dancers. Now, having observed all the different and very experienced teachers and choreographers that have been through the doors of Ballet Black, I have learned that it doesn’t always have to be pre-planned. To my terror and fascination, I’m now experimenting, using some set ideas that come to me outside of the studio, and combine them with feedback from the dancers and whatever else grows from that. Yikes! It’s a great way to work, scary as it may be and the dancers feel like they’re part of the process too, which is how they should feel. We are all founding members of something new and we’re trying to build a solid repertoire by creating new work and that takes a helluva lot of time and patience. The collaborative air in the studio goes a long way in making everyone feel artistically involved and to preserve peoples sanity (mine included).

There was loads more I wanted to write about, including a lengthy rant about theatre managers, but I will have to save it for next time…there’s a ton of stuff to do and I have to go and pick up a very large quantity of !PINK! t-shirts – the new bit of uniform for the Ballet School. Pictures next month…