A Year of Horton

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It’s 2025 and this year I have decided to get stuck into Horton Technique!

I did some online Horton (and Graham) classes in August when I decided to join M-Intensive’s CPD Summer Intensive, and I was drawn to that because I love Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre and have seen them twice in London. I’ve also been doing BOP Jazz’s online workouts (which I purchased during Covid) most days after work, and that uses Horton Technique for the warm up. After thinking about it for a little while, I bit the bullet and signed up for membership at M-Intensive this week and I’ve made a start with roll downs and flat backs – yeah!

This does not mean I’m giving up on TAP of course!

 

Summer of Dance

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This summer of dance has been completely different for me to other years. I had intended to go to my annual tap intensive in Covent Garden as per usual, but I ended up with some sort of viral stiff neck that week (typical!) so I had to cancel and let my friend know I couldn’t make it. 

I’ve been interested in Horton Technique for a while having done bits here and there, so I’ve been following M-Intensive online platform for a while and had purchased a couple of their videos. Anyway, this year I saw they were advertising a summer intensive of Martha Graham and Lester Horton Techniques, along with ancestral dance styles that influenced those pioneers of Modern dance, namely Afro-Caribbean, Classical Indian, Balinese and Javanese dances, with CPD certificate at the end, so I thought why not? Because I was working through some of it, I did the classes on catch-up and it was hard work but really good fun and I had learnt loads and felt a lot fitter by the end of the 25 hours.

London Tap Dance Festival kicked off its inaugural year this August in Brixton… but I did not go! South London is pretty easy for me to get to compared to Paris, Barcelona, Mallorca or THE USA and very close to where I work (when I’m in the office, that is), but I felt like I had too much going on and I honestly had no energy for it – even though I was offered a discount the week before!

Now I’m two weeks back into my weekly tap class with **new pink Jason Samuels Smith shoes** and it’s great to be back with everyone. I just need to get motivated to practice again!

p.s. I also need to get motivated to write regularly again…

Afternoon at Pineapple

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Exterior of Pineapple StudiosOn Sunday afternoon I went to an advanced beginners/intermediate tap class at the world-famous Pineapple Studios in Covent Garden, led by Kaia Koehler who currently dances with Old Kent Road tap company. Although I’ve been to Pineapple Studios before, it was for a couple of Cats workshops rather than a regular drop-in class, and I’ve never done a tap class there before, so I had no idea what to expect.

Well, I absolutely loved it! It was quite a full class, and we worked with a 7/4 time signature, using the piece of music Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck. We had 7 steps to master, and then we did them quicker and quicker. Once we got that, we added another 7 steps…and so on. After that we learnt a different combination. It was so much fun, and I can’t wait to go back!

 

 

More Practice > More Classes

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Wall of tap shoesLately, I’ve found myself having conversations encouraging some of my classmates to practise outside of class. Before class people tend to ask each other if they’ve practised the routine, and I find some people are saying they don’t practise and they’re shocked at how much I do (and I really don’t do that much compared to some tap dancers). Now I know I am obsessed with tap, and want to get to a higher skill level, so I do try to practise the class routine at least 3 different days a week (not particularly long sessions), otherwise I find it doesn’t get into my muscle memory… and that’s a separate thing to doing drills etc, which I try to do on weekends, but I haven’t managed much of that since the autumn. I also know some people just want to do tap dance for fun and not really have to do homework – I definitely get that…BUT THEN they get frustrated in the class and sometimes even with the teacher. A lady recently told me she’s been doing tap classes on and off for about 20 years now, and she’s not improving, so her solution was perhaps to enrol in more classes. I asked her how much she practises outside of class – she doesn’t really. AHA. Imagine if we were talking about learning a musical instrument – I’m not improving but I don’t practise outside of my lessons. Unfortunately, it won’t happen by OSMOSIS 🙂

More Practice > More Classes

Happy New Year!

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Sorry I haven’t written anything in a long time! 

Yesterday I made it to my tap class after having missed last week’s class due to the lingering fatigue of whatever seasonal illness I had over Christmas. I had caught the train and walked to the college, but realised that I just didn’t feel right, so I carried on walking to the Tube station and went home! Our teacher records a video of what we’ve learnt of our routine each week so we can practice at home, and therefore I was able to get up to speed.

It was good to be back yesterday and to catch up with my classmates after the holidays!

The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby

Last Thursday my SO and I went to Sadler’s Wells to see Northern Ballet’s performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel The Great Gatsby. I was really looking forward to it and I wasn’t disappointed! It was a full house, and we were right at the back of the top tier, so it was pretty warm in there. 

It was ballet, of course, but it was also full of jazz music and authentic jazz dances, such as the Charleston and the Lindy Hop. The sets and costumes were lavish and really captured the feel of the story set on 1920s Long Island, NY. I started reading this novel a few times in the past, but now I have made a commitment to read it all the way through, and then maybe move onto Fitzgerald’s other novels that I own because they’re art deco hardback editions that look nice on my bookshelf…

Tap Class

Tap dance class is going really well. It’s the largest class size I’ve ever known on a Thursday afternoon, but it’s a really lovely group of people. We’re all getting to know each other better as we’re doing a lot of work in pairs, which is great. I’m trying to stand in different parts of the studio so I don’t get stuck in my comfort zone! We now have a break for a week of half-term, and I was wondering whether to take a break from that class until September, but  I ended up telling everyone I’d see them in 2 weeks…

Review: Creature

Front cover of the Creature ballet programme with theatre auditorium in the background
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Yes, I was at Sadler’s Wells again! Last Saturday my SO and I headed to Islington to see Akram Khan’s English National Ballet production Creature. 

It was a full house that afternoon and there was lots of anticipation and excitement as the lights went down and the show began…

“In a dilapidated former Arctic research station, Creature has been conscripted by a military brigade into a bold new experimental programme. He is being tested for his mental and physical ability to adapt to cold, isolation and homesickness…” (Act I synopsis)

The mission is to colonise space, man’s final frontier.

Creature is based on medical student Georg Buechner’s play Woyzeck (1875), a tragedy where a lonely soldier agrees to take part in medical experiments conducted by a doctor, to earn money – his mental health gradually breaks down and he begins to have apocalyptic visions.

The staging of Creature is a large wood panelled room, where the creature is being kept and tested. He falls in love with Marie (Emily Suzuki), his keeper who spends much of her time mopping the floor, but shows him kindness. She is assaulted by the evil Major (Skylar Martin) who is in charge of this mission and because she has rejected his advances, his rage turns towards her.  A sinister and repetitive voice over from The Lord of the Rings’ Andy Serkis added to the sense of foreboding that was being created by the menacing and jarring music. On and off throughout the show we hear part of a speech by President Nixon congratulating Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong “because of what [they] have done…” which gradually becomes more and more twisted and slurred, where we suddenly realise (if we’re paying attention) that the meaning has morphed into something different.

A sinister and repetitive voice…

Rentaro Nakaaki was excellent as Creature and beautifully expressed the many emotions his character went through. The military brigade were very effective as a sinister and faceless troop, following the Major’s orders, and I loved the contemporary style of dance. The story raises many questions about the quest for space, how we treat our planet and at what cost, and of course, how we treat each other.

Creature is an engaging, Frankenstein-esque, edge-of-your-seat ballet and I’m so glad I went to see and experience it!

 

Scottish Ballet Company Class

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Last Saturday morning I took myself along to Sadler’s Wells in London to watch  Scottish Ballet’s company class! I have a free membership with Scottish Ballet, which includes invitations to watch company classes. As the company were performing a sold-out run of ‘Coppelia’ at Sadler’s Wells, I thought I would take the opportunity to go along and watch them warm up and rehearse.

I got to Islington early, so I had a wander along Camden Passage and stopped for a cappuccino before heading to Sadler’s Wells. I arrived at the Lilian Baylis Theatre entrance on time and went in to join the others who were waiting. We were met by the lady organising the event and she crossed each of us off the register. Then, at 11.30am we were taken through the stage door, down to the auditorium where everyone spread out across the seats so we all had an uninterrupted view (I think there was about 15 of us altogether). The company class had already started, and I was really excited to see how they get ready for a day of not one, but TWO performances!

The rehearsal director took the dancers through barre class and floor work and then they moved onto rehearsal for Coppelia. It was so interesting to watch everyone and I have to say what we all know already – they are SUCH TALENTED ATHLETES! We watched them for an hour before we were collected. I didn’t have tickets to see the show later on, but I didn’t feel like I was missing out – the company class was fab!

Watching the warm-up gave me the motivation to put more effort into working out, and to persevere with my online ballet classes 🙂

The Best On-Demand Ballet Classes

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Black ballet shoesThere was no tap class this week, so most days after work I’ve been doing an on-demand online ballet class with English National Ballet with the aim of making it a habit. The site is called BalletActive and is part of their ‘ENB At Home’ offering, which I think they set up during the Covid lockdown.  You can download their ENB At Home app to do the classes from your phone or to cast onto your TV with a Google Chromecast or just play it from your laptop as I am. It costs £9.99 a month, and you can try it out with a free 7 day trial. At the moment I’m doing the classes in my bedroom – unfortunately, I don’t have much space there, so I did hit the back of my heel on my bed on Wednesday evening 🙁  I really should get back to the garage now the weather is milder…

I’m currently working my way through the ‘Bitesize Ballet’ classes for beginners/improvers with Richard Bermange (Creative Director of ENBYouthCo), beginning with the barre class and then moving on to centre. I’m really enjoying it, and I like the fact there’s another dancer demonstrating, so it’s really helpful that the teacher gives him corrections and feedback during and after a sequence. It has definitely reignited my passion for doing ballet (and not just watching!), which is great, because I’ve felt very much like I can’t be bothered recently – HELP! I actually got onto this because I was signed up to ENB’s newsletter and they were promoting their Sofa2Studio programme after Christmas, which I signed up to (a bit like Couch to 5k) but never actually did! I used to do ‘Ballet at the Barre’ classes at City Lit in Covent Garden, but I find it hard to do that as well as tap classes in my working week. I think timetables and travel make it harder – doing an on-demand class at home cuts that part out, but of course you need to be disciplined.

With this in mind, here is my list of the best on-demand ballet classes I’ve come across this year:

  • ENB BalletActive – Ballet, Kathak, Pilates, dance cardio, yoga, barre fit, warm-ups £9.99 a month (free 7 day trial)
  • Rambert Plus – Ballet, contemporary, contemporary fusion, Caribbean dance, GCSE Dance, Kathak, Pilates, yoga, dance cardio,  workout playlists, over 60s classes. £8.99 a month (free 2 week trial)
  • My Ballet Coach – Ballet, warm-ups, workouts, stretch and body conditioning, pointe and pre-pointe, live classes £14.99 a month (free trial)
  • Sleek Ballet Fitness – ballet-style fitness, ballet repertoire, dance cardio, body conditioning plus a schedule of live classes. £22.49 a month or book live classes (free 7 day trial and free starter workouts)

Speaking of ballet, I’ve just bought tickets to see Akram Khan’s Creature  next month and Northern Ballet’s The Great Gatsby in May, both at Sadler’s Wells – can’t wait! 🙂