Dancers Arrive In Beijing

The BA flight from Manchester to Heathrow was an hour late departing but only reduced the time to wait for the Beijing flight so did not create any problems. We can now stop worrying about the weather for a week until it is time to return home on 6 January! Almost as soon as check in was complete at the hotel, it was time for the Press Conference.

This was a little challenging as we had to try and justify why we didn’t do traditional classical ballets and the merits of our Romeo & Juliet over the Macmillan version.

A great deal of the conversation was in Chinese so hard to gauge how we came out of it. We did say that our version is often heralded as the best version in the UK!

The weather is unbelievably cold with a really biting wind – quite the coldest it has been on any of our three previous visits. Currently it is -6C and tomorrow we’re expecting -13C. It is almost so bad that you don’t want to venture outside. It will be a chilling experience for the dancers tomorrow first for the 15 minute walk to the theatre for class and then on their trip to the Great Wall. The traffic is as appalling as ever.

All photos: Neil Jarman

Mark Skipper
Chief Executive