There are a number of great dance events coming up in and around London too – here’s my pick:

• Dance movie all nighter in London – if you didn’t catch this don’t worry – there’ll be more next time round
• Dance Umbrella timetable – dotted around the country – make sure you snatch some of this year’s dance umbrella
• Degas and the Ballet – in pictures – I saw this (see review) and it’s still on so catch it if you can
• Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadlers Wells – just for two days in october – catch them if you can

Elisha Willis in Moseley park Photograph: Richard Battye

Great news to hear Birmingham Royal Ballet has been photographed by Richard Battye across their hometown city to promote the area and kick off the company’s 2011/12 season.

I’ve posted about Battye before, who has been photographing dance for years and held a number of exhibitions in Birmingham. A few years ago I went to his digbeth studio to see the set up and experience being pictured ‘in flight’.

It’s great to see the world class ballet company teaming up with this excellent local photographer.

Now Battye has photographed Birmingham Royal Ballet’s thirteen Principal dancers, the company Director David Bintley, Assistant Director Marion Tait and Chief Executive Christopher Barron in areas of Birmingham that mean something special to them, away from their work with the company.

Speaking about the project he said:

“It was especially interesting photographing the dancers and staff in their chosen Birmingham locations celebrating the city and all it has to offer. There is a wealth of culture and creativity within the city which is why I have based myself here. Birmingham Royal Ballet is known internationally and the city’s name goes with them as they tour. My thanks to all the varied locations and venues that helped with this project”

The photographs can be viewed here – and show a human personal side to the dancers and company directors. See the picture featured of principal dancer Elisha Willis in her favourite Moseley Park and Robert Parker at Birmingham Airport (althought I doubt this is a favourite haunt and more and idea on the city PR side).

Alexandra Claire. Photo: Simon Fowler

I remember that even as a very small child, I flung myself passionately into dance at the slightest provocation; a piece of music, an anger that I was unable to voice, intolerable beauty; in fact, all that I was unable to voice found its release in dance. From my very first ballet lesson at five years old, I only ever wanted to be a dancer and when I retired at twenty-nine, after a ten-year career in the performance and choreography of contemporary dance and physical theatre, working with companies such as Earthfall, Man Act, National Dance Company Wales (then Diversions) and my own Arts Council funded project company, Tripswitch, I felt satisfied that I had fulfilled my ambition – at least as far as my twisted and torn body would allow.

It was the strangest thing not to dance. I am a dancer as fundamentally as I’m a human being. Pushing a zimmer-frame or riding on a motor-scooter, I’ll still be a dancer, because dance can only be imposed upon the body from the outside in a limited way: dance really comes from within. It resides within. And if you are extremely fortunate, it will take possession of your body.

Just how the dancer within me began arranging words instead of limbs is a mystery to me. While I had read avidly all my life, any attempt at expression through the written word was ultimately frustrating and crude in comparison to the direct route of physical gesture, the explosion of movement, which I’d spent years fine-tuning to express the nuance of an emotion. Yet somehow, five years after my life as a professional dancer was over, I found myself writing, scrawling out a story with a focus and desire and flow which I recognised as a love long missed. That story was ‘Playing the Odds’. It was published later that same year by Parthian, in an anthology called Urban Welsh.

I have spent some time ruminating on how, when I began to write, I seemed to pick up my creative process exactly where I’d left it in dance. When writing, I met with the same mental obstructions I’d fought with when choreographing. Physically, writing a novel is much easier than choreographing a work – no rehearsal space to find, no dancers to employ, no physical pain; I could write whenever was convenient, no-one to organise but myself. But I could not circumnavigate the all too familiar mental obstacles in my creative process. Just as I had always insisted on finding the movement that perfectly expressed a feeling, I now had to find the words that did the same.

In the intervening years, I’ve dug deep and finally found the words, enough to write a novel, ‘Random Walk’, which is published by Gomer this autumn. Dance does not feature in the book, yet Random Walk is filled with a movement, energy and physicality that could never have existed had I not danced before I wrote. I seem to remember hearing of a word for physicality informing writing; I must find out what that word is…

This guest post was written by Alexandra Claire for the digital dancer. Random Walk will be available from tomorrow via Amazon. There is a book launch at 7.30pm at Gwdihw in Cardiff on Saturday 15 October

The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas Photograph: National Gallery of Art, Washington

At most ballet schools you’ll find two types of teacher – one hellbent on improving your technique – and the other, softer teacher, who is all about making you dance to the music and feel the movement. A good dancer is one who has practised both to finesse.

Edgar Degas, unlike any other artist, manages to mirror both disciplines in his own work. Not only does he portray a studied technique in his artwork on 19th century dancers, but his paintings, sculptures and photographs also possess something of the lucidity of movement, invoking a feeling of dancing to any gazing onlooker.

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, curated by Richard Kendall, is a most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work on dance. Presented at the Royal Academy of Arts, there are 85 pieces of artwork in total – with many rare and unseen works including a 360 degree tour of the drawings which were the origins for the famous Little Dancer sculpture, and photographs of dancers he took in later life.

Similar to any ballet recital or stage dancer – the exhibition contains high power impact notes – bright impressionist swirls of pastel colours and dynamique stage sequences. And then there are periods of slower progression, studied poise and interlocking sequences which have a quiet methodology.

Dancer (Préparation en dedans), c 1880-85 Photograph: Trinity House, London and New York

In the middle years, what strikes any former dancer or ballet fanatic is Degas’s willingness to track each individual movement down to its technical origins and progression. It’s satisfying to see the French names of the movement administered correctly – Degas understands the language of dance. He’s keen to capture not only the complex mid-movement pirouette en dedans, but also the less impressive, but far more important, basic steps which every dancer must repeats hundreds of times a day in order to build up to the bigger ‘wow-factor’ steps. So here we see a dancer in a tendu en avant, doing a joining pas de bourée step, and a plié in second position. Later, a sculpture of a dancer in grande arabesque – which she then ponché’s to the ground by the third sculpture. This is movement in stages – the incredible minutiae of the slight changes in weight position, footwork and lines of the body a dancer must learn in order to perfect the overall dance and make it effortless on stage.

Dancers in Blue, c 1890 Photograph: Herve Lewandowski/Musee d'Orsay

Parisian born, it is well documented Degas spent many hours with dancers in French ballet classes – observing them relaxing and lingering inbetween performing and reciting. Many Degas commentators remark upon his ability to capture the dancer in ‘reposte’ – languidly lounging to the side of a stage or in the foreground of a painting while others exert energy mid-movement behind. Others have also read a sexuality to Degas’s depiction of the dancers. Yet in actuality the dancers merely reflect the truth of any ballet school camaraderie – how dancers, so common with one another’s bodies, will lie about on each other and be comfortable baring flesh. How any dancers waiting backstage will spend brief moments catching their breath, massaging muscles and analysing their lines in a mirror. Most of the dancers in Degas’s paintings are staring at their feet – hands pushed into the smalls of their back. Dancers’ feet deserve a lot of attention and are usually in pain – every inch of the body needs to be stretched and massaged between the exertion of movement. Degas knew this – he traces these dancers in his memory and returns to them in later life when his sight was flailing – the dancers are fuller in their quieter moments – gaining more weight and being in the paintings as they relax – blurring when they take flight.

Moving through the exhibition hall, by the end you feel you’ve seen an on stage production which had both impressive technique and skill alongside beautiful movement and rhythm. Degas’s work on dancers wasn’t an obsession, it was an understanding.

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement opens at the Royal Academy on Saturday 17 September. The exhibition is sponsored by BNY Mellon and supported by Region Holdings and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Other events at the Royal Academy are planned to coincide with the exhibition. Find out more about them here.

• Strictly contestants announced | AFP Google News – Robbie Savage, Edwina Currie and Nancy Dell’olio are among a range of controversial sports stars and celebrities who dominate the line up for the new series of British TV show Strictly Come Dancing.
• Strictly Come Dancing – the professionals | Ballet News – So, who are the professional men this year and what are they looking forward to ? Unsurprisingly they all want to make it to the final and lift the glitterball, but Robin Windsor is also looking forward to a whole new set of vests !
• Cupcakes & Conversation with Sascha Radetsky, Soloist, American Ballet Theatre | Royal Ballet Blog – Ahh! It’s the guy from Centre Stage… oh the memories.
• Stricty contestests in pictures | the Guardian - Well Alex Jones has already got her baps out – but browsing through this list I can’t help but think for the most part, who ARE these people? Once again Strictly rears its ugly head and although I can’t stand how set-up and awful it is – I also can’t help but be glued to the TV and will no doubt blog about it here.

Holly Valance in Strictly Come Dancing

But my first and most prevalent thought on Strictly has got to be about the fact Holly Valance is a contestant. Aside from the fact is a huge admission that she’s slipped out of stardom as a popstar in the early noughties so being a pretty B-class celeb (hello Lulu, you’re here too?) and is eager to get her showbiz life back on the road – it’s also MASSIVELY unfair as Holly’s had professional training for dancing on stage and in her pop music videos.

It was EXACTLY the same thing for Rachel Stevens who was in the tween band S Club 7 – and ended coming second in the 2008 Strictly finals. There are plenty of other sexy young something the BBC could’ve found to participate with no dancing experience but just as much sex appeal. It’s a shame this year’s Strictly will be just as predictable as any other – with the public dragging some poor malcoordinated soul through all the rounds alongside a couple of young starlets with previous dancing experience and a rugby player right to the end. Still, I’ll no doubt be vaguely watching and blogging along this series.

But in recent years work has taken over and it’s very rarely that I indulge in a half-hour episode of silliness. There are always new faces, but you never need to know what’s gone on before. Cast members come and go – few go on to anything truly great, many come back with twisted storylines years later.

So on returning home from work – and just so happening to stumble on the last ten minutes of an episode – you can imagine how I spluttered over my cup of tea when I realised the new heart-throb in Chester was none other than my most loved of contemporary dancers.

Richard Windsor

Richard Winsor conveyed a new type of contemporary dance that made me feel it had grew into its time. Dancing the lead in Matthew Bourne’s striking Dorain Gray in 2008 – he’s the man (well the duo) who actually compelled me to blog about what I saw - starting a fruitful career in online journalism.

I sat aghast to see Richard as ‘Father Francis’ in Hollyoaks. Of course he was a superb actor in Dorian and Edward Scissorhands… and must crave a career in acting. But let’s hope, like the characters in Hollyoaks, he decides to return to dance – for such a short stint on the stage would be a great shame for UK audiences.

Update 13/09/2011: I can indeed confirm Winsor is still dancing – as he was in my contemporary class tonight! Aside from making me feel sheepish & rather awestruck – I did happen to notice he’s in fine fit form and no doubt returning to the stage soon. Watch this space.

• Xander Parish: the Brit who ran off to join the Mariinsky Ballet
• Dance Dance Party Party: the night out clubbing that’s good for you – Interesting piece on a new type of dance work out – ever been clubbing and felt you were sweating off the pounds? Sounds like fun – but probably would rather go dancing with my mates…
• Terry Monaghan obituary
• Royal theatre in Denmark releases drug report - quite scandalous really – here’s an excerpt:

After weeks of pressure from the media the Royal Danish Theatre released on Tuesday a controversial report alleging that cocaine abuse is rampant among members of its ballet company.

But first please do excuse the horrendous WordPress error which kept appearing on my last links piece post publishing – testing out a new tool – hopefully won’t happen again. Here goes…

• Bolshoi superstars Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova dance Romeo and Juliet – video – this was on in London this week – wish I had been organised enough to have got tickets – looked awesome though

• Strictly Come Dancing: who would join Pippa Middleton in your ideal lineup? - Really? Pippa? Feel a Strictly blog season coming on….
  
• Oh So Totally Rad; Romeo and Juliet; Cocteau Voices – review
  
• Ethan Stiefel: New Zealand state of mind This again looked awesome – very jealous of New Zealand right now
  
• Roland Petit obituary - very sad news for the ballet world this week with the detah of Roland Petit. The ENB are currently running a show in his honour

• The Guardian has this gallery of images of tween freestyle dancers in Belfast in their sparkly get up – it’s great so check it out here

Finally the god-awful interview on BBC breakfast this morning with Cuban darling of the Royal Ballet Carlos Acosta could simply not go unremarked warning – what ensues can be counted as COMMENT.

Acosta, along with Zenaida Yanowsky, joined BBC Breakfast to talk about the tour Premieres Plus – but someone could at least have briefed ballet-brain-dead presenters Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams on the basic difference between contemporary (modern) and classical ballet.

Poor Zenaida got the brunt of it – with Williams asking her why the two disciplines are different – “is it different muscle groups?” – errr…. in case you hadn’t noticed, Sian, dancing uses pretty much the whole body, so no, it’s not really about muscle groups – more that it’s a completely different style of dance, like hip hop and jazz. Jeezzz, the whole thing was absolutely cringe inducing.

Acosta, with his media-savvy experience in this kind of stupidom, turned the interview back to the production – but no – Sian wanted to talk about the difference between classical and contemporary again – not why this particular contemporary production was different or even a broad but boring question on the state of ballet today. It ended with Zenaida explaining in children’s terms that ballet is about tippy toes and contemporary about rolling around on the floor. For some reason the BBC thought this the most interesting and newsworthy part of the interview, so you can watch it back here.

Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet; photo: Bill Cooper

There comes a time in one’s ballet-watching life when the old classics just don’t cut it anymore – they feel outdated, tired and sometimes bashfully cringey – playing on themes, stories and motifs that often no longer seem relevant. This is how I’d come to view Coppélia – the bizarre story of the ancient toy-maker who is woefully deceived by mischievous villagers in search of some way to occupy a night between engagement and marriage. I’d danced it in my teens days and grown bored of the plot.

But true to form, Peter Wright’s Coppélia, staged at Birmingham Royal Ballet’s home in the city’s Hippodrome, is a reinvigorated production with a fresh approach – which left me and Thursday’s audience stunned at its marvel – met with a resounding applause and standing ovation by some.

And I don’t mean Wright glammed up the setting and story for a modern audience – far from it – his Coppélia, first danced by the company in 1995, is entrenched in medieval drapery – but by setting Coppélia as it was meant to be – a sentimental comedy – Wright brought out the gorgeous simplicity of what is actually a fairly complex plot (with one of the longest miming sequences in ballet history) – and the result is production which is close to creating the perfect night of ballet entertainment. No false undertones are invented – but the work is lain in a bare form – with the odd additional flick of stylised choreography (often making lifts and steps far harder and more impressive) thrown in for good measure. See him chat about it here:

Peter Wright’s productions of the classics from Rob Lindsay on Vimeo.

I’ve never seen Natasha Oughtred dance a lead before – her Swanilda was cheeky, sritely and beguiling – with some astounding allegro in Dr Coppélius’s workshop. But the old codger, acted with endearing tenderness by Valentin Olovyannikov, stole the show for me – inspiring a prickling of tears in the final scenes. Alexander Campbell has always been a favourite for his precise jetees and pirouettes and makes no exception as Franz – and other dancers shined in smaller roles (notably impeccable technique from Céline Gittens at Dawn).

Delibes music will carry you off into the night – but it’s only the memorable characters created by the company which will stick in your minds forever – and as ever (I know I’m biased) I find BRB in their hometown have a comfy intimacy which invites in the spectator – taking you out of your seat and somehow entrapping you in the quirky hobgoblin world of a barmy magician and his toys. This production, combined with a fresh set of eyes on the work in the form of the accompanying exhibition Pointe Blank, will stay with me forever.

• A new arena for dance: Will 50,000 people flock to the O2 for Romeo and Juliet? – Features, Theatre & Dance – The Independent – And it is for them? As in, anyone? “Yes, literally. Actually, maybe not literally, but for the vast majority of people, yes, I am certain that ballet – and opera – is for everyone. Give people the chance to see a ballet, understand the story, and watch the thrill of dancers like Tamara and Carlos performing this repertoire, they will get the excitement, too.”
• National Dance Company of Wales – review | Stage | The Guardian
• I recently went to visit the new Pointe Blank exhibition which went on show to tie in with the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of Coppelia. Not only was the show a hit – but the exhibition of artists’ illustrations based on the sentimental comedy really brought a new fresh take on the ballet. To The Pointe | Blog | Design Week