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Mark Baldwin
Robin Key, Chairman of the London Ballet Circle, warmly welcomed Mark Baldwin and began by asking him how the Company’s current tour was progressing. MB: We were in Stoke last week where we had a wonderfully enthusiastic response, especially among the young people. The Company had never performed there before and we were worried that we wouldn’t get an audience and that it might be breezy and empty but it wasn’t. We have quite a young audience and it was wonderfully noisy. On Wednesday night it was like a rock concert! There is something about that energy I absolutely adore. The Theatre was over-the-moon too because it had been wondering how it could engage young people and Rambert provided a discreet access to young people which it hadn’t had before. We got great reviews while we were up there too so it was all a bit of a triumph for Rambert. RK: Tell us about how you work out the specific programme for each venue. We don’t always premiere works in London as that’s a dangerous thing. Most of the works we performed at Sadler’s Wells had been premiered outside of London, except for the Mozart ‘Gran Partita’ which had been premiered the season before when it had got quite a bad reception. However, I knew that if we brought it back the dancers would have had the time to practise it, get into it and find out how to do it. The first movement absolutely kills a dancer – even though it doesn’t look it. At first the programme was very male-dominated with Christopher Bruce’s work ‘Swansong’ and Karole Armitage’s piece ‘Gran Partita’ and the rather brutal piece ‘Infinity’ by the wonderful Australian Choreographer Garry Stewart. But then I looked at the Workshop and saw that Melanie Teall had used six of our most glorious women in ‘L’eveil’. And when I saw what they were going to wear, I thought ‘Yes - some female energy!’ So that was how I looked at it and worked out the balance. Also I love live music and I love touring with our Orchestra. Paul Hoskins, our Musical Director, worked out that we could have ‘L’eveil’ sung live. It is tough being a touring company because all the theatres across Britain are different and you have to work out how the Company can look the best in each venue. We are familiar with Sadler’s Wells yet we try to get in a day beforehand so we can get comfortable. Then we might go to somewhere like Truro where it is a very narrow stage from back to front and we can’t fly so many things in from up top. It’s the same with Brighton which has a steep rake. It’s very old fashioned, you can’t use a computer and you need sailors there because they still use hemp ropes! Leeds has a steep rake too. It’s wonderful for the audience because they can see everything but for the dancers it’s like dancing on a hill. Wonderful when you have to jump down. However, going up hill is quite different! RK: You have got a couple of new dancers in the Company. You also have a couple of dancers with injuries. As you have only 22 dancers, this is quite significant. How did you handle that? I try to encourage choreographers to use large casts. I think audiences like to see a stage full of people. I held a big audition for British dancers, which was my main priority, yet I couldn’t find any that suited the Company, who would fit in, who had the technical ability and who were strong. But we found a Cuban dancer, Miguel Altunaga, who Carlos Acosta sent me. I happened to bang into Carlos in the street and I explained to him that I was looking for male dancers and two days later Miguel turned up! He had been dancing with Carlos in ‘Tocororo’ and he was looking to develop himself as a contemporary dancer. He had been in the contemporary company in Cuba for about five years, since he was 17. He has incredible skills. He really looks marvellous. We also have a young dancer from South Africa who was with Matthew Bourne in Swan Lake - Mbulelo Ndabeni. He is a delight and a wonderful person to have around. Touring with a dance company in winter can be the most depressing thing so you need to jolly the dancers along. I go along to do class with them - so if they feel bad they can just look at me and feel good again with my low but sometimes well-placed legs! But Lelo is one of these people who can jump and turn and he’s got a bright, sunny disposition and it is really nice to have someone like him in the Company. Dancing is a challenging job that doesn’t last for that long. You’ve got a very short career and you’ve got to wait for the right kind of roles to come up. Often that doesn’t happen and dancers’ careers will be cut short. Dancing is incredibly physical and athletic. I’m the sort of director who hates it when dancers leave class early and I certainly hate it when they miss class. But I don’t have to be Mr Grumpy at the moment because I’ve got a lovely bunch of dancers who really like each other and I think that is coming across in their performances – especially at Sadler’s Wells – that doesn’t always happen. In a company which is only 22 dancers, the dynamics of what keeps the group together are important. RK: What are the boundaries of your responsibilities as Artistic Director? What I see and what our Technical Director sees are totally different. I’ll be looking at the little fold in the curtain in the corner which is driving me nuts. Or the dancers’ costumes have got a little tuck in the bottom. I want the whole thing to look amazing. I need the dancers to be absolutely on form too. My main job is to look for dancers. I had ten applications just today from all around the world. I am looking for the particular kind of experience the dancer can bring to the group. Often they can be classical dancers. We have three Soloists from Birmingham Royal Ballet who all showed that they really wanted to do this and really wanted to push the boundaries of their already big technique and find new ways of using it. Two of them were interested in becoming Choreographers. Alex Whitley is one of them. Monica is a big fan of Alex Whitley. He’s got incredible classical legs and feet but he’s very interested in becoming a Choreographer and that interested me. He came to the Company with an incredible classical technique but we have been able to teach him another technique which is the Cunningham and some Graham technique. The torso work that we make them do just about every second day builds up great strength in the core of the body. The kind of technique which we use in Rambert Dance Company is ballet from the waist down and from the waist up it is contemporary dance. We find when we mix the two together you can build up an incredible attack. It’s that attack that I am looking for in our dancers. Our choreographers build moments of interest and consequence based on the dancers’ technique. Then the dancers have their natural qualities. For example, Miguel is a natural animal on stage. I have high hopes for him. I look at the CVs and if I see someone that interests me, I’ll invite them to come and do class and will then see what they look like with the other dancers and whether they are strong and whether they can keep up. Recently I was invited to look at a dancer who had been with Michael Clark. She came to do class and it was obvious that she had the strength and the agility and, indeed, the training to join in so I will ask her to join my waiting list. Dancers tend to stay a long time with the Company so I have got to wait. For example, there is Eryck Brahmania who was with Stephen Jefferies in Hong Kong for about four years. He has a very arresting presence on stage and he is a fantastic dancer. He’s English and trained at the Royal Ballet School. We had to wait about a year and a half for a place to come up in the Company for him. With present-day employment laws, I can’t say “You are out and he is in”. RK: You rotate the style of class to reflect the breadth of the requirements of the dancers and choreographers. MB: The dancers need to be a group of artists who are fit for purpose. Fit to do almost anything that a choreographer asks. The people that Garry Stewart used had to learn to do tumbling and yoga. They were all quite happy to do that. In my day I think we would have all whinged! This generation is technically very able. Monday, Wednesday and Friday they will be doing classical ballet class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays it is a contemporary class. On Saturdays it is either one of those techniques. I always say to the dancers “When you come to class, it is not just about warming up for the day’s rehearsal. It is about learning, growing and developing.” This is what I expect from our artists. It is a reasonably short career. They are learning, growing and developing so that when they get to about 35 and really have to think about another career, they are so used to the idea of growing and developing, when they have to make that transition – which is a very tough time for an artist – they will come to it prepared. I try to get them to think about this almost from the beginning. That means some of them leave early because they have discovered other things. RK: You have got a fantastic roster of choreographers. How do you find choreographers and how do you keep tabs on what is interesting in the world of choreography? Rambert is 80 years old and when I look across the landscape of Rambert we have Christopher Bruce who is now in his 60s but has been with Rambert since he was 16. To me he is the Statesman of our choreographic stable. Sometimes I will go to see a choreographer, for example Kim Brandstrup who has been around for a long time and who is talented. Although I have not really enjoyed a lot of his work, I could see that he could make something really great for Rambert. He did a Mahler piece for us called ‘Songs of a Wayfarer’ and it worked – my hunch was right. What I look for is a choreographer’s potential to be married up with the kind of dancers we have in Rambert. I was introduced to Garry Stewart about four years ago and the relationship built slowly. Also there was André Gingras (who made Anatomica #3) where the dancers all dress up as The Queen and throw themselves off a ramp at the end. I’m lucky in a way in that Rambert can get away with things like that. If the programme is right, our audience will completely buy into it. I had watched André’s work over three or four years because he kept sending me videos. The more vigourous his work got and the more secure he got with the language of dance, the more free flowing he got. It was then I thought “OK, now is the moment to get André to come and do a work for Rambert” because I was sure he would do something really interesting. Karole Armitage worked with a composer called Thomas Adès – the trendiest English composer – on a piece called ‘Living Toys’. I knew she could tackle music. In my experience not many choreographers are great with music so one of the first things I look at is what a choreographer is going to do with the Orchestra. Are they musical enough to be able to work with a musical director? Do they just want to do something with music that they found in a record shop and decorate it with their own movement? I love the idea that Madame Rambert brought to the table – the Diaghilev model of introducing a choreographer to a composer to a designer. It is still the template I use with Rambert. When you get that group of people working together they will create something which is stronger than if they were just doing it individually. Even when the Company changed from being a strictly classical company in 1966 to a contemporary company, it retained the idea that that triangle produces wonderful new work. I search for choreographers who love music and understand how an audience can be thrilled by that combination of music and dance and how it looks with the design. RK: Tell us a little about your own dancing career. MB: I did the ‘Choreographic Course for Choreographers and Composers’ which was headed by Glen Tetley. He had just done ‘The Tempest’ at Rambert Dance Company. The dancer performing Ferdinand had left to join Lindsay Kemp and Glen thought I would fit very well into Rambert and so I did a tour of ‘The Tempest’ with them as Ferdinand. Then I went back to New Zealand, then I joined the Australian Dance Theatre and while they were over here on tour in the early 80s I auditioned again and they took me back into the Company and I stayed until 1992 and had a wonderful time. Rambert Dance Company is a bit of strange animal in that it has its own style and I feel we have to use our heritage to build for the future. I equate it to art history. If you are an artist, you study art history. Instead of copying everyone else, you know what has gone before and you add to it. Rambert is like that – the old and the new, held in balance. I used to take my choreograhic workshop very seriously. Rambert in 1926 was an experimental ballet workshop and we still carry on that tradition. That’s the reason I try to promote people like Melanie Teall into the Company because that is what Madame did in 1926. That’s where Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, Walter Gore, Christopher Bruce and Rafael Bonachela came from – so it has got a proven history. There is something about the Company that understands creativity. RK: In the 90s, after dancing, you established your own company. How did that come about? MB: When I was at University I studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree because it was the only way I could pay for dance classes. I didn’t get a scholarship to go to the ballet school but I did win a fantastic Fine Arts scholarship. I felt I had loads of money and so I was over the road, spending it on the ballet classes. I was friendly with the doctor at National Health and I would get him to write me notes saying that I was ill but actually I would be off at a ballet workshop in a different part of the country. So I managed to train myself by quite a lot of stealth! But my five year degree in Fine Arts set me up quite well for being Artistic Director because I kind of know about design because I had to spend time learning what design was and doing projects. I know about painting, space, colour, light and line and they became important when I started my own company. There were some other mad people at University and we wanted to start our own company. As a student you are given things for free – theatre tickets and rehearsal space - so we managed to do really well from those things. I knew how to start a company from grass roots so setting up the Mark Baldwin Dance Company wasn’t an enormous trial because I had done it in my early student days. It was fairly tough, turning up in small theatres with no floor, so you put the floor down, you put the lights up and you sometimes work the tape machine. But all that helps me to do what I do now. I was also able to develop myself as a choreographer. I gave myself five years to develop myself as a choreographer but actually it took a bit longer but I built up a reputation having the Mark Baldwin Dance Company. I made about 40 works for that company. They were not long works – the best ones were about 12-25 minutes long. I had wonderful dancers in the early days – some had come from the Royal Ballet – and they had a wealth of knowledge and so we were able to create some incredible energy. Val Bourne, who ran the Dance Umbrella, gave me all these opportunities. In the beginning we had no money and no kudos and were not friendly enough with the Arts Council to be guaranteed any money but she let me do five Dance Umbrellas – the first was with Lynn Seymour. I was given a grant to make a work for older dancers and it was headed by Lynn. I made this wonderful work to Chopin and we put it on at the Riverside Studios. That was a wonderful experience and I learnt a lot by working with Lynn. From that I was invited to make big works. I made a piece for Darcey in the late 90s. The original idea was to have a competition between Darcey Bussell and Deborah Bull – but somehow that didn’t happen. Julian Anderson wrote the music for me and he is going to be doing a project for us in 2009. He is another young British composer who is making beautiful music. I also went to Brazil, Argentina and New Zealand and made works there. My own company toured for the British Council – we went to Paris and Rome and all sorts of strange places where it was so cold the dancers said “We can’t go on, we can see our breath!” RK: In 2002 you were invited to re-join Rambert as Artistic Director. How did that come about? MB: Somebody rang me and said that this opportunity would be coming up. Because I saw myself as a choreographer, I thought he was calling me to ask who I thought might make a good Artistic Director. Then he said he thought I should apply for the job and I thought “What a good idea!” When you are a freelance choreographer, you either have no work or so much work that you can’t do the projects properly. In one year I did seven major pieces and it took me about another two years to recover. When you go to work in large opera houses, like the Staatsoper in Unter den Linden, Berlin, they are very political places. You have got to be really great friends with the Ballet Master; you have got to know the Intendant and you have got to kind of work the joint. At that stage I hadn’t quite worked out that is what you have to do. I did something with Anish Kapoor and Hans Werner Henze which was amazing called ‘Labyrinth’. That experience gave me ammunition when it came to applying for the Artistic Directorship. I took it really seriously. I got the Editor of the Daily Mail to practise a board meeting with me because they sit around in a half circle and fire questions at you. I also applied for other jobs - knowing that I wouldn’t get them - just so I could get that experience. I went to the Professor of Accountancy at Reading University and got him to go through the books with me. Lynn Seymour had given me some tips and so I just worked and practised with friends on how I should behave in the interview. It wasn’t just about being in the right place at the right time. I knew I had 50 other people to compete with – all who had made a name for themselves in the dance world in one way or another. I had serious competition. I got down to the last ten; then the last five, then the last two – and then I got it! RK: Did you feel that there was a lot of reinvigorating and rebuilding to do within the Company when you arrived? MB: Companies like Rambert are run by their Boards, who are Lords and Ladies and ladies and gentlemen from the City and they have a particular idea of what they want the Company to do. What they wanted from me was change and change is very difficult for a group of dancers, some of whom had committed themselves to working for Rambert since their early 20s and they were now in their early 30s. They were quite apprehensive about a change, even though it was by someone who had been one of them. I didn’t do it by revolution, I did it slowly. When I arrived, most of the men were over 30 and heading towards 35 so I knew that they would be moving on. Most of the women were under 25. So there it was a case of finding the right repertoire for them. I had a phrase “Change is our only constant”. In Rambert we don’t have works like ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Nutcracker’ that we can keep on returning to. Our diet is new work and I was looking for a different kind of dancer to the ones that Christopher had in the Company. The dancers in the Company were fantastic but I thought that some of them wouldn’t go with some of the choreographers I had in mind. They were very used to Christopher’s repertoire – which was mostly his own work. Richard Alston had also dominated the repertoire with his own work. I wanted people to experience the Rambert Dance Company like you would a good meal. Next time you come to see the Company you will be able to look at it that way. RK: Dame Alicia Markova was a great friend of yours and ours. What are your memories of Dame Alicia? MB: Dame Alicia was always trying to make me laugh! I am a governor at the London Studio Centre and she was a Patron there. We would often find ourselves there together watching Maggie Barbieri teach in the morning and Dame Alicia would say naughty things and I would laugh! I have a little information from Jane Pritchard, our Archivist. After Diaghilev died, Dame Alicia was in London and perhaps at a little bit of a loose end and so worked with Frederick Ashton who was Rambert’s darling. That is how she met Rambert and she was Rambert’s ballerina for about three years. Occasionally Dame Alicia would demonstrate – even though she was very elderly. For example, I remember her talking about how to reflect live music. If the music was percussive, she would be percussive. If the music was lyrical, she would be lyrical. She had a wonderful sister called Doris Barry. Doris looked after her for years and years. I used to be Bridget Espinosa’s lodger in 1979/1980 and it was through Madame Espinosa that I met those wonderful ladies. What I liked about Dame Alicia and her three sisters was how incredibly stylish they were. They always had jewellery in their handbags. Depending on what was about to happen next, they would get their jewellery out! Even if they were off duty, there was always something in the handbag and in a split-second they could be back on duty again and a representative of the profession. Grooming was very important to them. This has slightly gone from dance now. RK: How did you become a dancer? A member reminded of the forthcoming Antony Tudor centenary… MB: He was one of our early choreographers then he went to America to become Resident Choreographer of the American Ballet Theatre. We have two of his pieces in the repertoire – one is ‘Dark Elegies’ - and I was lucky enough to be in Rambert in the 80s when Richard Alston revived it and at that time there were still a lot of people around who remembered it. It is now a piece we do quite a lot when we go abroad. The other one is called ‘Judgement of Paris” which has got three hookers in it in a bar all vying for the same customer. I really like that piece but our Chairman doesn’t like it because it doesn’t give a very good contemporary modern-day view of women. But we did it recently in Germany, at the Kurt Weill Festival, and they loved it. Next year we are doing a requiem composed by Howard Goodall for Christ Church College, Oxford and we would like to dedicate it to Antony Tudor. It will be in London on Armistice Day, November 2008. I heard the first draft of the music last Monday. Requiems are usually for dead people and we wanted to make a requiem which wasn’t for dead people but for living people. It is wonderfully accessible music – I think he has done a great job. But I am kind of frightened – how do you choreograph a requiem? Where do you put the Choir - especially if some of them are little boys who can’t keep still? How do you dress them? The next thing is for Howard to send me the music and I will just listen to it until I am blue in the face and then I would usually video myself moving to it. Then I will begin to make up dance phrases which I think are appropriate and then build up a picture then I will teach it to the dancers. Then they will add their own interpretation to it and refine it. What I am a bit worried about is for us to commission a new work and then for us to put Antony Tudor’s work on with its wonderful Mahler and carefully worked on solos and duets. I will have to be careful that the programme is balanced. I hope it’s a work that will remain in the repertoire for a long time. We still have some negotiations to get through with the Tudor Trust because we have probably kept it longer than we should have. However, our version is the English version of ‘Dark Elegies’. There is also an American version which is a much more strident version. Our version was made in small studio so all the lifts are quite low. It’s one of my favourite pieces – it is ravishing. MB: He used to dance with my landlady, Bridget Espinosa. More recently his long-term friend, the dancer Jorge Donn, died of Aids and Maurice made a piece (Ballet for Life) which featured music by the band Queen. It was full of youthful energy. In that piece he managed to capture an atmosphere that we are not great at capturing here with our English reserve. He was marvellously flamboyant. He was a towering force in the world of dance and started schools like Mudra and he had been running a company in France. What is great about people like Maurice and Merce Cunningham is that they are creative all of their life. They are still looking for new things. If you are a dancer, you are a dancer for life. A member asked how dancers learn to do stage make-up. MB: I learned to do make-up from Lucy Bird who worked out what I should wear. I used to slap it on and she pointed out that I didn’t need so much! It’s a little bit different these days because the lights are so much brighter than they used to be. If I have to appear on stage these days I always have to make up my head because it is very reflective. Often a good designer will tell the dancers what kind of makeup they should wear. We have a wonderful dancer in the Company called Antonette Daryit, who is Filipino, and when she grooms herself she looks immaculate. This is always arresting on stage and part of the magic. Those costumes in the Mozart piece are actually stuck on with glue! There is something called Sock Glue which comes like a roll-on deodorant. If you stand in the wings you will see the women checking the panty line of their leotards and if they think that it is going to ride up, they put the Sock Glue on! RK: Update us on the new home for Rambert. MB: We have two studios which are smaller than the stages we perform on. We can’t get the Orchestra into the studio as well as the dancers. So we can’t tell what a new work is going to look like until we actually get to a theatre. We have been offered a car park behind the National Theatre. Right next door is a sports centre and next to that is a tower block which, originally, was to be 48 storeys high. There was a big objection because it would have been possible to see the tower from St James’s Park. The tower block was to pay for the public sports centre and we were given a small slither of the site on which to build three studios and where we could house our Archive. We have been given planning permission by Lambeth and Southwark Council but the tower block has not and has been called in by the Government. So it could now take a long time. On behalf of the members, the Chairman extended to Mark grateful thanks for taking time out of his very busy tour schedule to talk and offered him the London Ballet Circle members’ very best wishes for the future. Report written by |
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