The Good, The Bad and the Beaten with the Ugly Stick...

by Cassa Pancho

Which word would best describe this month? Exciting? Interesting? Exhausting? All of those - but the word that springs to mind most easily would be RANDOM. October has been the Month of Random. All kinds of things have been happening at Ballet Black, some good, some bad and some strange (to me anyway). Lets get the Bad out of the way first...

The Bad...
As I wrote in my first diary entry, we're in the middle of setting up an Education Unit. This is made up of two things: a lecture/demonstration project to take into state schools, and a Ballet School. Ideally, I want the Ballet School up and running by January 2002. We (myself, Denzil and Vanessa) have been looking for suitable locations, and Denzil found a good place in a gym in Walthamstow - ideal location, nice studio, reasonable costs...you get the picture. Brilliant.

So, I dutifully wrote out the details of the School and our aims, (in the form of a poster) and Denzil presented the idea to the gym management. They refused point blank to put up the notice on the basis that the term "Ballet Black" was racist - to white people. The poster actually said that the classes are open to children of every race and that our teaching staff is black, white and Asian. The problem was the BB logo heading the notice. When Denzil actually explained what our aim is, they couldn't understand why it hadn't been done before - but still insisted on a change in the poster. Fair enough. The last thing I want to do is to make people, especially kids, feel that they are excluded (though I have my suspicions that this has more to do with being PC than exclusion).

We removed the BB logo from the top of the advertisement and replaced it with the very simple, but very to the point "Ballet School". However - just so that everyone knows where they stand, the original logo was reduced in size and placed at the bottom of the page. I don't want to mislead anyone about where the teachers, money or ideas for the Ballet School come from, and I certainly won't back down from our objective, which is to increase the amount of black students in ballet. We have yet to hear what the people of Walthamstow think of our new ad, but I'll keep you posted.

Grapes of Wrath...
I've been hearing through the ballet grapevine (black grapes, of course) that there are quite a few people who dispute our claim to be the first black, classical ballet company since the 1950's. A television researcher emailed us, saying although it was a "nice tag" there was video evidence of Carol Straker's Dance Company performing classical pieces. Okay. Though there are and have been black, classical ballet dancers in ballet companies - or dancers performing classical pieces within the framework of black dance companies - there have, as yet, been no black companies that are classical. Perhaps I didn't write this clearly enough in the audition notice.

I decided to call Carol Straker about it - apprehensively, since she is someone I admire hugely, and have never spoken to before. As it turned out, she was absolutely brilliant and dispelled my fears that we might be treading on someone's toes. We actually ended up discussing what to wear to this screening of black and Asian dance that we're both attending. That was weird but cool, as, having written about her for my final year dissertation, I found it amazing to be on the phone to her, chatting about what to wear! (I'll be wearing a red carnation so she knows who I am - in case you were wondering).

The Nominations for the Best Auditions Speech Are...
The final Bad Thing is my nerves about the forthcoming audition. Perhaps it's healthy - but they're nerves nonetheless. Will anyone turn up besides Denzil (audition teacher) and Jonathan (class pianist)?! Do I have a suitable plan for the course of the day? Will my opening speech be any good? I mean, I've always had it in the back of my mind that I will have to stand up and speak, but that's the nice thing about the back of your mind. Then its three days (three days?!) until the audition, and do you have a speech worthy of an Oscar ready? NO! How do you make everyone have a good time in the audition, understand your passion and want to join your company in one speech? Lets just leave that in the "I'm working on it" for now...

The Good...

There are a few nice bits to this. Firstly, Gamba has agreed to provide BB with pointe shoes for rehearsals and performances. This is good news for us because as most of you probably know, we are unable at the present time to pay dancers (hence the request for vocational school students). Pointe shoes are quite a hefty expense in the budget of a dance student, so it's good to be able to offer something useful to them, as well as the whole company/performance experience.

We've also been receiving quite a few calls from people who have seen the website, or the ad's for BB, and want to sign up for adult ballet classes! The majority of these calls have been from women who have always wanted to do ballet, but never felt that they could. So, in addition to our kid's lessons, we will be adding Beginners Ballet to our range of classes.

But the best thing that has happened in this Random Month of October is that with just a little arm-twisting, Denzil has agreed to choreograph for the BB Company. Literally a day after saying yes, he emailed with ideas about music, choreographic style and costume, which reminds me that there are people (lots of them - and they know who they are) who are behind BB, and are willing to put themselves "out there" to help make things happen.

The Random... (Ugly Stick bit)
I received a phone call from none other that Mel B and Victoria Beckham's agent. It turns out that Mel B (Scary Spice) is the patron of a charity that exists to provide support for people of ethnic minorities with HIV. One of the jobs her agent does is find people who are active in black charities and the like, and offer them ways in which they can raise their profile. He came across the audition notice for BB in the October issue of PRIDE Magazine, and thought we would be an organisation that he could help.

He told me about these amazing, celebrity-packed parties that Mel B throws every year to squeeze money out of David Beckham, Sacha Baron-Cohen (aka Ali G) John Barnes and a whole heap of corporate business people, and do I have the "determination and guts" to attend one of these parties to tap these rich people for funding, or do "you want to stay at home and wash your hair?" He then went on: "Of course Cassa, these opportunities don't come along for free..." (yup - here it comes) "...and tickets to this event retail at £500."

Excuse me? £500? I don't have £500. I don't know anybody that has £500. Wait - scratch that. I don't know anybody that has £500 to spend ON A TICKET. That kind of money would probably run the BB Company for a year! I very politely told him that I would let him know. I was actually pretty stunned that this man, from reading our ad that clearly says unpaid work, could then call up out of nowhere and ask for that kind of money. So stunned that I had to pick up the phone and call Jonathan ("Absolutely not. What is he thinking?!") and Chris ("No way. What is he thinking?!") just to check that I hadn't walked in to some strange, parallel universe. This agent actually had two bright ideas that day - 1) pay £500 for a ticket and 2) suggested that I raise the money by "hanging out on dark street corners where rich men go and beg, borrow or steal the money."

Actually, come to think of it, it was probably for the best that I was stunned into a rare state of quiet, or Mel B would have to front another charity, in aid of agents who get their arses kicked by disgruntled choreographers.

Audition Day - October 27th
Time for painful honesty. The audition was both a huge success and a big disappointment. The success came from the people who worked on the audition - Denzil, Jonathan, Michelle, Venetia and Hugo (our web designer), and the dancers that arrived to audition.

The disappointing part was me. Or, more to the point, my inability to CHILL OUT and see all the good stuff that was going on (yeah, I guess you could say I was a bit of a princess). I found myself in a studio, where six months prior to the BB auditions, I was a student in class. Then, I'm sitting in the same place - but this time as a director, choosing dancers for a ballet company. My ballet company. An elating, scary, overwhelming thought.

Such a huge amount of work went into just that one day that when it was all over, (and I found I didn't just sail through it) it all came as a bit of a let down.

But enough with the self-indulgent wallowing...

A small number of people turned up, and the class was very good. Denzil led a fabulous audition and has a real gift for making people feel at ease. The dancers had a great time - and we found four people that we're very interested in (two boys, two girls). The small turnout means we're going to have another audition in November and from this we hope to find between two to six more dancers.

This is all excellent stuff for BB. As for me, I don't think I'll be able to enroll in a "How to be a Director" school anytime soon (does anybody know of one?!). Frankly I don't have the time. This is all part of the learning curve I guess... The first big hurdle is over, as are my days of being a princess. I'll save that for when Ballet Black performs at the Royal Opera House. Until then, I think I have people who'll give me a shove (however painful) in the right direction...