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Lottery triumph for dancers under threat from cuts
Mon 14 November, 2011
Northern Ballet and Phoenix Dance Theatre have won the National Lottery Awards "Best Arts Project 2011" for their new joint HQ in Quarry Hill, Leeds. The award comes as the two companies celebrate their first anniversary in their new premises.
Learning, education and training potential of the performing arts
Fri 4 November, 2011
I’ve long regarded theatre itself as a crucial facet in education and it doesn’t always have to be pigeon-holed as “theatre for young audiences”. Learning is, after all, a lifelong process, and children and young people can often get a lot out of work which was not specifically created for them.
Take the marvellous Nutcracker, which I saw, courtesy of Northern Ballet, at the splendid new Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury earlier this week. Yes, it’s such a confection that of course it works well for children and there were quite a few youngsters in the audience including, I was pleased to note, some enthusiastic boys.
When Josh Barwick was offered the chance to try ballet he was certain it wasn’t for him.
But after just one class he was hooked and now he is enjoying his dream job with a prestigious company.
Josh was 14 when he took his first tentative steps into the world of ballet. Within a year he was offered the chance to join the Northern Ballet Academy. And two years later he was accepted into the Elmhurst School for Dance at Birmingham.
A Yorkshire ballet company facing the loss of a quarter of its dancers due to funding cuts is appealing for people to sponsor a dancer in a bid to save jobs.
Created by Northern Ballet’s artistic director David Nixon, and co-directed by Northern Ballet associate artist Patricia Doyle, the production focuses on Hamlet’s mind unravelling against the backdrop of one of the most terrifying periods in modern history.
Written by Paul Clarke.
Seductive, ruthless and ultimitely tragic - the legend of Cleopatra has inspired numerous artists, dramatists and film-makers down the ages, from Shakespeare to Hollywood. Now, her story is being turned into a ballet.
Gillian Spickernell visits the Northern Ballet and finds that, far from jumping on the Black Swan bandwagon, the company is at the forefront of the dance movement.
