Latest news with #ballet
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘No one is immune to grief': the team turning A Single Man into a sexy, grimy, heartbreaking ballet
'I can't believe that somehow I was able to make it all the way to the age of 55 without having read that book!' says American singer-songwriter John Grant. 'It's a transformative book. I was just completely blown away by it; I've been trying to get everybody that I've ever met to read it.' The book Grant is telling me about, enthusing from his sofa at home in Reykjavík, is Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, published in 1964, turned into 2009's most stylish film by first-time director Tom Ford, starring Colin Firth, and now about to be a ballet, premiering at this year's Manchester international festival. Grant, the former Czars frontman and now an acclaimed solo artist (with albums including Pale Green Ghosts and his latest, The Art of the Lie), is writing the new show's songs. A Single Man is the story of middle-aged academic George, an Englishman in LA, quietly living through devastating grief following the death of his partner, Jim, in a car accident. Reporting George's thoughts in granular detail, the book charts, as Grant puts it, 'the millions of tiny moments that make up human life'. The idea of turning the book into a ballet came from choreographer Jonathan Watkins (Kes, 1984, Reasons to Stay Alive), who had been musing on the concept since before the pandemic. 'Jonathan was pursuing me about this for several years, and I was a little confused about why anybody would want me to do it,' says Grant, though he says he's always liked dance. Once Grant had read the book, it resonated so strongly there was no doubt. 'It was like this man had been inside my head walking around. I mean, I knew I was self-absorbed,' he laughs, 'but I didn't realise there were people out there that understood me so deeply.' The book's portrayal of grief, especially, connected deeply with Grant, whose mother died of lung cancer when he was in his 20s. 'My work is saturated by that. But sometimes I wonder if I've ever actually been able to grieve yet,' he says. 'Grief is nothing if not an extremely skittish beast, right? The individual experience of dealing with grief is a very strange thing to go through. And it's so masterfully depicted [in the book] within the context of going about your day.' When I speak to Watkins some days later, he too talks about the theme of grief, focusing on those experiencing it. 'It's also that there's this great love between two men at a time when people didn't really believe that two men could love each other that much, and therefore couldn't feel grief in the same way,' he says. For Watkins, who founded the company Ballet Queer in 2023, the importance of A Single Man as a queer story was key to wanting to make this work. I ask why he was so keen to work with Grant, who is himself gay. 'I always saw it with John Grant, I really loved his work and I could hear that the themes of his existing songs already had an overlap with the book. There's a line in the song Glacier,' says Watkins. 'It goes: 'This pain is a glacier moving through you / And carving out deep valleys and creating spectacular landscapes …' And for me, that was like the epilogue of our show!' Watkins says. 'We use our experiences in life in order to forge forward. It was that lyric.' In a north London dance studio that's not quite big enough for all the bodies inside it, Watkins leads a rehearsal with dry humour and gentle authority. The dancers are trying to work out a musical cue. 'We're listening through, trying to find the 'plink plonks',' he tells them and they tilt their heads in concentration, waiting for the melody. Heading an accomplished cast of fascinating movers is ex-Royal Ballet principal Edward Watson, who plays George. Watkins (who also danced with the Royal Ballet) had talked to him about the idea for A Single Man over the years, and when it finally crystallised into a project, 'I realised that I wanted to do it – or I didn't want anyone else to do it!' says Watson, a dancer of extraordinary physicality, known for bringing subtle angst and complexity to his roles. Next to him in the room is a contemporary dancer who excels in beautifully haunted characters, Jonathan Goddard, playing Jim, but also alternating in the lead for some performances. While the dancers embody George's physical life, Grant will be singing live on stage, expressing what's going on inside George's head. Watson loves dancing alongside singers on stage: he's previously worked with Martha Wainwright, soprano Danielle de Niese and cabaret singer Meow Meow. 'There's something really special about being on stage with a singer. You can feel where the sound comes from; you're not just listening to it, you share the space with where that emotion starts.' Once the dancers find their cue, they launch into a scene. Watkins's choreography uses a lot of stark shapes and angular poses – you could map it on graph paper ('It's like George is on autopilot, mechanically going through the motions,' Watkins says) – but then the movement might shift into something heavy, slinky, sexy, a little bit grimy. Characters have different signatures: for George's friend Charley (played by Julianne Moore in the film, here by the Royal Ballet's Kristen McNally) the movement is based in ecstatic dance. Elsewhere the dancers crowd into stylised formations, looking like a 21st-century Bob Fosse, while the prowling jazzy feel of the music evokes the 1960s. Alongside Grant's songs, the score has been created by composer Jasmin Kent Rodgman. She wanted the sound to be rooted in the 60s, acknowledging that it was a time of great musical experimentation, whether the pioneering Buchla synthesiser that she's sampled for the score, or American minimalism or jazz. In the performance, each instrumentalist will be hooked up to an FX pedal so sounds can suddenly morph, she tells me, from 'really lush romantic string trio … to open ambient, electronic anxiety, which might be slammed into this distorted trumpet line, that kicks us into a bit of high action'. Rodgman has relished working with Grant. 'I have to say John is an incredibly generous creative. And he's an incredibly accomplished musician,' she says. 'Sometimes when you meet someone from the pop and rock world there's a disconnect. But he's a classically trained pianist. You can hear that; I hear Rachmaninov, Romantic piano music coming through. He used to play the baritone saxophone; there's a lot of hidden facts about John Grant!' When Grant talks about the songwriting process, he raves about the inspiration of Isherwood's language. 'It's so masterful. It's very uncontrived, you know. You don't get the sense somebody is making a great effort to impress with their skills. It's natural, organic. And the humour! Like I'm actually inside this human being experiencing these things.' That sounds much like a description of Grant himself, the ability to cut through life's biggest emotions with the conversational and wryly observational (sample lyric from the song Sigourney Weaver, about a time of crisis in his childhood: 'I feel just like Winona Ryder in that movie about vampires / And she couldn't get that accent right / Neither could that other guy'). That ability to fuse the seismic and the mundane is apt to illustrate the dislocation of grief, when the world ends and carries on at the same time. As Watson puts it: 'You can't quite believe that all this is happening and then: oh, I still have to wash; I have to make dinner. It seems dumb to carry on with those things.' 'No one is immune to grief,' says Watkins, which is what makes this story universal, but in his version as the story progresses, the gap between the inner and outer worlds, the mind and the body, begins to close. He talks of a scene at the end of the book where Isherwood describes some rock pools as being their own self-contained worlds. 'He's saying that we're all in our own rock pools with all of our different characters and connections in our lives,' says Watkins. 'And then the tide comes in and sweeps us into this one big shared ocean; we're all part of this shared experience.' A Single Man is at Aviva Studios, Manchester, 2-6 July; Linbury theatre at the Royal Opera House, London, 8-20 September.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Thousands of Bradford children take to stage for ballet and opera
More than 2,000 Bradford primary school pupils took to the stage recently to perform a ballet and opera inspired by their own hopes and dreams. The children filled the newly refurbished Bradford Live to perform the new ballet and opera as part of Sing, Dance, Leap - a mass participation project for young people commissioned by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. Tom Whitehead, a Bradford-born Royal Ballet dancer who returned to his hometown for the project, said: "It has been a real privilege to be able to help bring Sing, Dance, Leap to my hometown and see the impact it has had on these brilliant young people. "I know how much I would have loved to have been involved in a project like this when I was young, so it makes it extra special to be able to give Bradford's next generation this opportunity. "If Sing, Dance, Leap can be that spark of inspiration for one child to pursue their passion, whatever that is, then this project has been a huge success." The Sing, Dance, Leap project was commissioned by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture (Image: Elly Welford) Led by the Royal Ballet and Opera, Opera North, and Northern Ballet, the Sing, Dance, Leap project intends to help children to express how they feel about themselves, and their city, through ballet, opera, and the arts. The children's thoughts and feelings helped shape the performance's music, lyrics, and choreography, which were created respectively by Will Todd, Kadijah Ibrahiim, and Carlos Pons Guerra. Jillian Barker, director of learning and participation for the Royal Ballet and Opera, said: "Sing, Dance, Leap is a real celebration of young voices and the power that access to the arts can have. "We want to ensure that projects like this give children more than a momentary experience – we want these young people to take what they have learnt in this project and continue to be creatively inspired in their daily lives. The project was led by the Royal Ballet and Opera, Opera North, and Northern Ballet (Image: Elly Welford) "We have seen firsthand how impactful projects like Sing, Dance, Leap can be on young people, and we will continue to advocate for greater arts access for children across the UK, both in our own work and in the national curriculum." Rhiannon Hannon, director of creative engagement and participation for Bradford 2025, said: "It's so fitting for Bradford's young people to be among the first to use this stage to share this inspiring new work." Sing, Dance, Leap is part of a four-year community partnership, launched in 2023, between the Royal Ballet and Opera and Bradford.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Molly-Mae Hague lovingly cradles her daughter Bambie, 2, as she takes her to a morning ballet class
Molly-Mae Hague cradled her two-year-old daughter Bambi as she took her to an early morning ballet class on Thursday. The former Love Island star, 26, cut a casual figure in a light yellow T-shirt which she wore with a pair of white tracksuit bottoms. Also wearing a pair of red-tinted sunglasses, the influencer completed her look with a pair of black sandals. Bambi was dressed in an adorable pink top and tutu along with white socks as Molly-Mae took her to class. The star shares her daughter with boxer Tommy Fury who she finished as runner-up with on Love Island in 2019. Molly and Tommy recently reunited after their shock split in August, with a source telling The Sun that they are in the 'honeymoon period again'. After the epic trip to Disneyland Paris, the family were all spotted landing back in the UK via private jet before they drove back to Molly's £4million Cheshire home. The Paris trip marked Molly's seventh holiday of the year having already jetted off to locations including Switzerland, Paris and St. Moritz already in 2025. She also flew to Dubai with Tommy in March with Bambi, and they then recreated the trip with another relaxing UAE voyage shortly after. At the time, Molly referred to the trip as 'the best holiday of her life' after fans were sent wild over whether she and Tommy had reunited. However, Molly was hit by a health scare upon her return from their second Dubai trip as she was rushed to hospital not long after. The Maebe founder said in a recent YouTube video that she was suffering with 'severe pain' in her leg following the long-haul flight and was told to urgently go to A&E to get it checked. Molly said she feared she had a blood clot in her leg after feeling a 'sharp, stabbing pain' in her leg which then moved to her knee and ankle. She called 111, when she started to feel her leg go numb, and was told by a doctor to go straight to hospital. She said: 'Basically yesterday I thought I had a blood clot and half of today I thought I had a blood clot in my leg. 'Obviously flying home from Dubai I was on the plane for like nearly eight hours… I didn't drink like hardly any water. 'I was in so much pain, like it was in the back of my knee, so so strong. Like it didn't feel like a dead leg, it was like a sharp stabbing pain… 'I was in A&E for absolutely hours. It was absolutely packed, it was such a sad environment, so many poorly people.' But after waiting for four hours in A&E for a blood test, Molly had to wait for three more hours for the results to see a doctor. Worried about not getting back to take Bambi to nursery, Molly went back home, but after suffering from dizziness and nausea, went back for a full round of testing. Thankfully, she got the all-clear, adding: 'Like there was nothing that showed them any sort of concern or anything about a blood clot.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ballet Director Mariaelena Ruiz of Cary Ballet Conservatory Shares Insights on Ballet Training Mindset in HelloNation Magazine
CARY, N.C., June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- What do most people get wrong about ballet training? That question is addressed in What Most People Get Wrong About Ballet Training, a feature article in HelloNation Magazine, offering perspective from Mariaelena Ruiz of Cary Ballet Conservatory in Cary, North Carolina. The article reveals how ballet is far more than graceful movements—it is an in-depth training in discipline, mental resilience, and personal growth. Often misunderstood as merely a performance art focused on physical form, ballet is shown to be a system that teaches focus, patience, and critical thinking. Students begin learning from their very first plié that progress comes slowly and only through consistent effort. Each technical correction, repetition, and rehearsal sharpens not just performance skills but also emotional strength and self-awareness. Ruiz emphasizes that the true value of ballet lies in the mindset it cultivates. From managing stage pressure to processing feedback, dancers are continually building traits such as composure, coachability, and persistence. These qualities translate into high achievement across academic and professional environments, making ballet an education in character as much as in choreography. The article, What Most People Get Wrong About Ballet Training, highlights how ballet shapes young people into thoughtful, driven individuals. Read the full article at What Most People Get Wrong About Ballet Training. About HelloNationHelloNation is a premier media platform that connects readers with trusted professionals and businesses across various industries. Through its innovative 'edvertising' approach that blends educational content and storytelling, HelloNation delivers expert-driven articles that inform, inspire, and empower. Covering topics from home improvement and health to business strategy and lifestyle, HelloNation highlights leaders making a meaningful impact in their communities. Patrick McCabeinfo@ photo accompanying this announcement is available at l'accesso per consultare il tuo portafoglio
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ballet Director Mariaelena Ruiz of Cary Ballet Conservatory Shares Insights on Ballet Training Mindset in HelloNation Magazine
CARY, N.C., June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- What do most people get wrong about ballet training? That question is addressed in What Most People Get Wrong About Ballet Training, a feature article in HelloNation Magazine, offering perspective from Mariaelena Ruiz of Cary Ballet Conservatory in Cary, North Carolina. The article reveals how ballet is far more than graceful movements—it is an in-depth training in discipline, mental resilience, and personal growth. Often misunderstood as merely a performance art focused on physical form, ballet is shown to be a system that teaches focus, patience, and critical thinking. Students begin learning from their very first plié that progress comes slowly and only through consistent effort. Each technical correction, repetition, and rehearsal sharpens not just performance skills but also emotional strength and self-awareness. Ruiz emphasizes that the true value of ballet lies in the mindset it cultivates. From managing stage pressure to processing feedback, dancers are continually building traits such as composure, coachability, and persistence. These qualities translate into high achievement across academic and professional environments, making ballet an education in character as much as in choreography. The article, What Most People Get Wrong About Ballet Training, highlights how ballet shapes young people into thoughtful, driven individuals. Read the full article at What Most People Get Wrong About Ballet Training. About HelloNationHelloNation is a premier media platform that connects readers with trusted professionals and businesses across various industries. Through its innovative 'edvertising' approach that blends educational content and storytelling, HelloNation delivers expert-driven articles that inform, inspire, and empower. Covering topics from home improvement and health to business strategy and lifestyle, HelloNation highlights leaders making a meaningful impact in their communities. Patrick McCabeinfo@ photo accompanying this announcement is available at in to access your portfolio
