AUTUMN/WINTER 2022 ISSUE 31 INSIDETHE MAGAZINE FROM NORTHERN BALLETContents 4 Welcome from Artistic Director, Federico Bonelli 6 Our autumn 2022 season 8 In conversation with Dickson Mbi and Kenny Wing Tao Ho 10 Introducing our new Chair, Guy Perricone 11 Upcoming events 12 Dancer update 14 Inside the Wig Room 16 The Nutcracker spotlight 20 Academy update 21 Learning update 22 What’s on 2Front cover: Rachael Gillespie and Harris Beattie in The Nutcracker. Photo Bill Cooper. Inside: Northern Ballet dancers in The Nutcracker. Photo Kyle Baines. 3Our autumn 2022 season Reflecting on the end of my first season as Artistic Director of Northern Ballet, I am proud to have led the Company on such a successful season, reaching wide audiences across the UK. In a particularly busy period, our Company found itself in Leeds, London and Newcastle simultaneously in October – a testament to the dedicated work of everyone at Northern Ballet. After a summer filled with rehearsals, our autumn tour had a particularly exciting start with the première of the dynamic triple bill Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets opening at Leeds Playhouse and going on to tour at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre. We captivated audiences with our much-loved The Little Mermaid and then returned to the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre with our family favourite children’s ballet Ugly Duckling. It was wonderful to see so many families join us, many experiencing ballet for the very first time. As 2022 drew to a close, we were excited to be touring our festive favourite The Nutcracker. As many of you will be aware, our esteemed Chief Executive Mark Skipper DL retired after 35 years with the Company. Mark leaves with my utmost gratitude and huge appreciation of everything he achieved for Northern Ballet, and I know you will join me in wishing him all the best for the future. With my first full season nearly complete, I look forward to 2023 with great excitement, beginning with our glittering production of The Great Gatsby in the spring. I hope to see you there. As ever, I would like to thank you for your generous support and for welcoming me with open arms. If you ever require any assistance, please do get in touch with Jennifer, Zoë, Richard or Laura in the Development team, who will be very happy to help. Best wishes, Federico Bonelli Artistic Director Federico’s welcome 4Jennifer Young Director of Development Zoë Walker Head of Development Richard Cross Development Executive Laura Kelly Individual Giving and Events Executive jennifer.young@northernballet.com zoe.walker@northernballet.com laura.kelly@northernballet.com richard.cross@northernballet.com Northern Ballet dancers in The Nutcracker. Photo Bill Cooper. 5Our autumn 2022 season It has been a very busy autumn for Northern Ballet with the première of Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets, performances of The Little Mermaid, The Nutcracker and our children’s ballet Ugly Duckling. We have loved sharing these productions with audiences across the country and it was wonderful to have so many of you join us for a performance. Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets - Nostalgia Photo Kyle Baines. Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets - Wailers Photo George Liang. Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets - Ma Vie Photo Emma Kauldhar. Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets - Ma Vie Photo Kyle Baines. 6The Little Mermaid Photo Bill Cooper. The Nutcracker Photo Bill Cooper. Ugly Duckling Photo Emily Nuttall. 7Our autumn 2022 season In conversation with Dickson Mbi & Kenny Wing Tao Ho Tell us about yourselves and how you came to work together Dickson: I was born in Cameroon and came to London aged 12. I started dancing around 2005 when I met a girl who went to Pineapple Dance Studios, so I decided to go down and see what I could do. I wasn’t good but when I walked out of the studio I met a group of guys outside who were dancing a style called popping, and when I saw what they could do I was like ‘Wow! This is what I want to do.’ So popping and street dance is my first love and where I began, and after a few years of winning competitions and building a bit of a name for myself I decided to go to college and learn contemporary dance. Kenny: I’m from Chesterfield in Derbyshire and I started dancing when I was around 13 when I saw a film called You Got Served. I took that home and started learning all the moves, and then one day I saw some guys on a bandstand in the park and I thought okay, let me show you my moves, and that’s how I met my crew. So then we trained together, we went to competitions and did breakdancing, all of which led me to London where I met Dickson. Dickson: We trained together at London Contemporary Dance School from 2010 and we’ve been close friends ever since, and Kenny’s supported me a lot since I started choreographing in 2015. In May this year we released Ma Vie, a Northern Ballet original dance film by renowned hip hop choreographer Dickson Mbi. Such was the success of the film, Dickson was commissioned to make an adaptation for stage as part of our autumn mixed programme Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets. We sat down with Dickson and his associate choreographer Kenny Wing Tao Ho to find out more about their experience of working with Northern Ballet. How have you found working with Northern Ballet? Have you needed to adapt your style? Dickson: I don’t think we’ve adapted our style, we don’t want to compromise on what we’re trying to do with the movement and the quality but I guess what’s changed for us is just how we communicate and how we give information to the dancers. I know that in the ballet world there’s a sense that you want to do everything quite frontal - everybody needs to see what you’re doing and it’s all about the shape and I guess what we really try and work on is more about feeling - if it feels right then it must look right. It’s been a good challenge and it’s good to learn those things from each other because the more you learn the more you grow. Tell us about Ma Vie Dickson: So we started off with the film when I had a conversation with Kenneth Tindall (Northern Ballet’s Associate Director for Digital) and he presented this concept of doing something based on the story of Casanova. At the time I’d heard of Casanova but I’d never really looked into his story, so when I read into it I found that this guy was a different sort of guy and there were so many things in that story which I felt could be really interesting to explore. Everything that I looked at online, all the films that I saw, were all about him being a womaniser or someone that would have orgies or sex with different people and that’s what was always put out. 8I wasn’t really interested in that, and that’s been done so many times, I was more interested in what got him to that place. How was his relationship with his lovers? Why did he never finish what he started? Why was he so scared to commit? Kenny: Part of what we’re interested in is the humanness of him - what he’s afraid of, why he did what he did - and I think that’s what we’re really trying to find in the work. Dickson: The stage piece is a loose adaptation of the film. There are some visual aspects from the film which we thought were really interesting and we wanted to bring to the stage version and some things that practically we can’t do on stage because you can’t stop and start in a live performance. The film also focusses more on the relationship between Casanova and the church and that’s not something that’s in the live version. The stage version is more about the relationship between Casanova and different people in his life who were controlling him and which led him to control other people. I think a lot of people can relate to that at some point in your life - you might feel like you’re being controlled by your partner to do certain things, or your boss trying to control you, or are you controlling someone else? There are so many different relationships that we all encounter in our life that you might feel like you’re in someone else’s movie and they’re the ones pressing stop/start/fast-forward. ‘Ma vie’ in French means ‘my life’ and although the piece is about this specific character we felt that really Casanova’s story could be anybody’s story when you look deeper into the fears and emotions within him. That’s what we hoped to get across in both the stage and film versions. Watch Ma Vie online now Top: Dickson Mbi in rehearsal for Ma Vie. Photo Mthuthuzeli November. Bottom: Jonadette Carpio and Northern Ballet dancers in Ma Vie. Photos Emma Kauldhar. 9Next >