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Posted on March 1, 2017
This month’s is the biggest ever issue of Dancing Times! It’s packed with features on a huge variety of dance styles, from a behind-the-scenes look at the new Sergei Polunin documentary Dancer to an interview with Strictly’s Joanne Clifton and news of how dance can help people with multiple sclerosis…
Julie Kavanagh goes behind the scenes on the documentary recording the life of Sergei Polunin (also reviewed in this issue)
“After their press conference he visited Kiev’s ballet academy, where he’d been trained as a child, and was visibly moved by the ‘same smells and faces’. In Giselle rehearsals he was coached by his first mentor, Nicolai Priadchenko, a wiry man with thick grey hair and leathery skin, who’d prepared Sergei for his Royal Ballet School audition, taught him variations for European competitions, and passed on the combination of romantic softness and danseur noble imperiousness that defined his own performances as company star.
“Priadchenko had been horrified to hear that Sergei had walked out of The Royal Ballet – ‘It’s not a company to be left. It was his base’ – and on camera was visibly shocked when the dancer confessed to hardly ever taking company class. Among his teachers only Priadchenko, Sergei said, was ‘constantly critical’, something he admitted he badly needed. ‘I work by myself, I mark things, and nobody tells me anything. So I’m trying in a way to lie to people – pretending I know what I’m doing, but really I don’t. Nicolai knows that, and tells me off in rehearsals. He wants to correct me; show me something new. I try to hold on to the key moments that I remember, but it’s not the same. If I had him every day, I’d be on a different level…’”
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Last year’s Strictly Come Dancing champion Joanne Clifton tells Nicola Rayner about ambition, tap dancing and starring in Thoroughly Modern Millie
“Joanne Clifton is a curious mixture, with girlish charm hiding what must be pretty steely ambition – and then there’s that wonderful Grimsby accent. ‘Ooh, heck!’ she exclaims when I ask her if we’ve missed anything out at the end of the interview. ‘You’ve got me thinking on the spot.’
“Is she like Millie? ‘Well, I’m playing a 19-year-old girl,’ she laughs. ‘I’m not 19! She took herself off from Kansas and left her family behind, because she went to New York where her dream was to marry a rich man and live the modern life… though it might not turn out like that in the musical…
“‘In terms of leaving your family to pursue your dreams, that I can relate to, because to pursue my dream, which was becoming world champion, I took myself off at 16 and moved to Italy…’”
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Debbie Malina explores the physical and psychological benefits of dance for people living with multiple sclerosis (MS)
“A study undertaken at Ohio State University in 2010 demonstrated improved brain function following exercise… Ruchika Shauyra Prakash, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology explained: ‘For a long time, MS patients were told not to exercise because there was a fear it could exacerbate their symptoms, but we’re finding that if MS patients exercise in a controlled setting, it can actually help them with their cognitive function.’
“…The condition can affect the area of the brain controlling coordination, and when symptoms increase, individuals may be tempted to move less, limiting their use of coordinated movements, exacerbating the problem, often leading to depression and anxiety. Dancing involves following directions and coordinating movement, stimulating the brain and enhancing its ability to continue these movements… Taking part in a dance therapy class is likely to improve an individual’s mobility – of equal relevance is the fact it provides the opportunity to connect with others. People with the condition often feel they have lost their independence, relying on others for many of their regular activities; dance therapy helps them feel they have a greater sense of control.”
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Sharon Wagner on the return of stage musical 42nd Street to London’s West End
Saying goodbye: David Mead meets DanceXchange’s David Massingham to look back on 17 years of changing dance in Birmingham
Back to the barre: Jonathan Gray describes his experience with adult ballet lessons
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Lewis Turner is our March Dancer of the Month
Zoë Anderson reports from the National Dance Awards 2016 ceremony
Laura Dodge visits vocational college Centre Pointe
David Toole tells Zoë Anderson about Stopgap Dance Company’s new production, The Enormous Room
Nicola Rayner reports from the UK Open in Bournemouth, with analysis of the four major competitions and the Rising Stars
Marianka Swain interviews DJ Jacky Logan about two trailblazing decades in same-sex dance
Tips on technique: James Whitehead on the cha cha cha
Our Dance Doctor, Phil Meacham, looks at the natural spin turn in waltz and quickstep
In our serialisation of Nadia Nerina’s memoirs, the ballerina recalls joining the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1946
We preview MOVE IT, the UK’s biggest dance event, and its MOVE IT PRO programme for teachers, social media fans and emerging choreographers
Gerald Dowler on the role of the dance critic
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English National Ballet in Mary Skeaping’s Giselle, debuts by Francesca Hayward, Yasmine Naghdi and more in The Royal Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in Masurca Fogo, The Royal Ballet in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works and Javier De Frutos’ Les Enfants Terribles, 52 Portraits at Sadler’s Wells, Fallen Angels Dance Theatre, ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble, Israel Galván and Eva Yerbabuena at Flamenco Festival London, Anton Du Beke and Erin Boag’s Swing Time, English National Opera’s Rigoletto, Simon McBurney’s production of Beware of Pity, Thomas Ostermeier’s staging of Richard III
Christopher Wheeldon’s timely new Nutcracker for Joffrey Ballet, new works by Justin Peck and Pontus Lidberg at New York City Ballet, The Stone Flower back on the Maryinsky stage, Fredrik Rydman’s The Nutcracker Reloaded, the gala Stars of the Bavarian State Ballet, works by Yuri Possokhov, Jirí Bubeníček, Justin Peck and William Forsythe, Royal Ballet Flanders in Spartacus, Company Wayne McGregor and the Paris Opéra Ballet in Tree of Codes
Plus news of the Paris Opéra Ballet, Dancers’ Career Development, Prix de Lausanne 2017, Brighton Festival, Dutch National Ballet, new film Alive and Kicking, Zenaida Yanowsky and more
Obituary Vicki Karras
Media The Sergei Polunin documentary Dancer reviewed
Last Dance Our regular dip into the Dancing Times archives includes Peggy Spencer on Rudolf Nureyev, a 1977 snapshot on the Royal Danish Ballet and a 1926 Molyneux evening dress, “all clever slanting lines to make excessive slimness appear where slimness is not”