High Points Youth Ballet: Spring Gala
High Points Youth Ballet presents The Fairy Doll and La Bayadère
In the month of June, I attended three ballet performances and the first was on the 1st June at the Drama Theatre of Stranmilis University College in Belfast where, on the 31st May and the 1st June, my friends at High Points Youth Ballet held their annual Spring Gala.
Each year, for the Spring Gala, the HPYB team brings two excerpts from two ballets, one performed by their junior students and one performed by their senior students. This year, the Spring Gala featured a suite of Josef Bayer’s The Fairy Doll and The Kingdom of the Shades from Marius Petipa and Ludwig Minkus’s La Bayadère.
The Fairy Doll is a one-act ballet and is one of the more rarely performed ballets, perhaps because it is deemed a “students’ ballet”. However, it was not created as such. It premièred in Vienna in 1888 and was subsequently staged in Russia, first in Moscow in 1897 and then by the brothers Nikolai and Sergei Legat in Saint Petersburg in 1903. Some of the most famous performers of the titular character include Matilda Kschessinskaya, Olga Preozhenskaya, Elena Lukom and, the most famous of all, Anna Pavlova. Today, The Fairy Doll is traditionally performed by the students of the Vaganova Academy in Saint Petersburg in a version staged by Konstantin Sergeyev in 1989 and it is also performed by several schools in the west, but it is absent from the main repertoire. Its most famous piece, which occasionally appears on the main stage, is the Fairy Doll Pas de trois, which was created by the Legat brothers and the composer Riccardo Drigo. The story is of a magic toyshop where, during closed hours when the shop is empty, the dolls come to life and dance throughout the night. The most spectacular of them all is the Fairy Doll, who is elected their queen. When dawn breaks, the dolls return to their places and all returns to normality.
For their Spring Gala, Artistic Director Jake Allison and répétiteur Dr Anna Carapellotti presented a suite of the dolls’ dances, which was performed by the junior students, with the exception of the titular character who was danced by senior student Zara Crawford. The curtain opened to reveal the dolls in a tableau, surrounding six sleeping girls. All is still until the Fairy Doll gives the signal. The dolls come to life, the girls awake and the dancing begins. Jake and Anna could not have picked a more entertaining piece for the first half. The opening dance served as an introduction to the characters, including Bunny Drummer (Sarina Bennett), the Porcelain Dolls (Amelia Bell, Shanna Black, Barbara Jasiulewicz and Amelia Moore) and the Princess Dolls (Taylor Clydesdale, Amy McCully and Callie Porter). Next followed variations of different dolls, beginning with a marche of toy soldiers, performed by the youngest junior students, which ended with one of the students being lifted by the others in an overhead lift, something which rightfully won them a big cheer from the audience.
The Variations of the Dolls were well staged. The one that got the biggest cheers was that of Polichinelle and Harlequin, danced by Olivia Grimes and Alayna McIlmunn respectively. The dance featured a lot of jumps, which the girls did well, but Alayna, only 10 or 11 years old, took us all by surprise with fast pirouettes. Surely, a future star in the making. Then there was the Russian Doll, danced elegantly by Fifi Marland-Ross, who has just returned to Belfast after spending a year on a training placement in Australia. Next was the Japanese Doll, danced by Jessica Birnie, and the French Doll, danced by Annabelle Brown. These three students are among the leading junior soloists of High Points Youth Ballet and they each gave a performance showing that they have much potential for the future.
After the variations, all the dancers gathered for a very entertaining finale, which included a graceful performance from Zara Crawford as the Fairy Doll, and everyone returned to their opening placements for a closing tableau.
The Fairy Doll suite was very well put together; Anna, Jake and the students all worked very hard to give a good show and their work paid off. They gave us all a more than charming and entertaining first half for the gala.
After the interval, the curtain rose for the second half, The Kingdom of the Shades from the third act of Marius Petipa’s most famous exotic ballet La Bayadère, a challenging, but exciting début for High Points Youth Ballet.
One of the most celebrated works in the repertoire, La Bayadère premièred in Saint Petersburg in 1877 and was later staged in a new production in 1900, and remains a dominant member of the repertoire today. The ballet is set in Ancient India and tells a story of love, betrayal, murder and divine vengeance. The beautiful temple dancer Nikiya and the warrior Solor pledge eternal love to one another, but the Rajah has chosen Solor to be the husband of his daughter Gamzatti. When the Grand Brahmin, whose love Nikiya had rejected, exposes her relationship with Solor, the Rajah and Gamzatti conspire to murder Nikiya and send her a basket of flowers containing a poisonous snake that fatally bites her. In his grief, Solor dreams of Nikiya in a heavenly realm called the Kingdom of the Shades and her shade subsequently haunts him at his wedding to Gamzatti. The angry gods destroy the palace, killing all responsible for Nikiya’s murder, and the shades of Nikiya and Solor are reunited in the afterlife.
However, despite its popularity, in recent years, La Bayadère has become a victim of political correctness with some accusing it of promoting Asian stereotypes and cultural appropriation. Some of these people have attempted to “fix” the ballet by presenting “corrected reimaginings”, except it is these “corrected reimaginings” that are problematic because they have failed to fix anything. Instead, they present a picture of hypocrisy, ignorance and whitewashing that introduce more stereotypes, historical inaccuracies and insult people’s intelligence by appropriating their supposed anger.
It was unfortunate to see the programme label The Kingdom of the Shades as “the ballet’s least controversial scene” because despite what some want others to believe, La Bayadère is not controversial at all. To correct that sentence, The Kingdom of the Shades is the ballet’s most famous and most celebrated scene and is often performed as an independent piece in galas. It features a huge corps de ballet of shades (the original number in 1877 was 64) and is set on the starlit mountain peaks of the Himalayas. In this scene, the despondent Solor dreams of his beloved Nikiya in this heavenly kingdom, where she appears among the multiple shades and forgives him for his betrayal. La Bayadère is never performed in Belfast, so this was a welcomed new addition to the High Points Youth Ballet repertoire.
The curtain opened on a very well-designed backdrop depicting a mountain range and thus began the famous Entrance of the Shades, with sixteen shades entering in the serpentine pattern of arabesques before forming four lines of four. The Entrance of the Shades was beautifully performed; the students had clearly put all their effort into mastering the challenges of this number. The corps de ballet work for the whole scene was well staged and the students gave a stellar performance. Dancing the Three Solo Shades were Amelia Larmour, Lucy Dunbar and Kristina Murphy, though the third variation was performed by Annabelle French. The Variations of the Three Shades are three of the most challenging variations, but the three students did very well in handling the technical challenges, especially Amelia, who stood out the most with her handling of the steely pointe work of the first variation.
The gala saw the return of guest professional dancer Luc Burns, who danced Solor. A native of Belfast and member of the Varna Opera Ballet in Bulgaria, Luc graced the Belfast stage last year in the HPYB Spring Gala 2024 when he danced Albrecht in the second act of Giselle. He subsequently reprised the role two months later at the Belfast International Ballet Festival, where he also performed in a Swan Lake suite. He brought his accomplished technique and buoyant jumps, which he especially showed in the Grand Coda and Solor’s variation (interpolated from Act 2).
The role of Nikiya was danced by senior student Leah McNally. Leah has proven on several occasions to be one of High Points Youth Ballet’s top students and she showed it again in her newest role. This is the second leading role I have seen her dance (the first was Giselle last year) and she gave a truly beautiful, heartfelt performance. Only 18 years old (17 at the time of the performance), she brought such a maturity that defies her young age and she danced like a professional. She brought good, clean technique, which enabled her to master the difficult steps, but she also made the role completely her own by bringing such a beautiful warmth and honesty to it. This is a quality that says she understands Petipa’s words on technique - “In ballerinas, technique should compliment artistry, not rule it.” Leah and Luc worked well together as partners; Luc strongly partnered Leah and she responded well to the levels at which he set her.
As they have done with other grand pas and scenes/acts, Jake and Anna did a great job in staging The Kingdom of the Shades. It is one of the most difficult scenes to stage, but all their hard work and effort paid off and the students were well taught and coached. The huge round of applause during the curtain calls were more than well deserved.
In conclusion, the team at High Points Youth Ballet presented a beautiful and entertaining gala, bringing more of the delights of the classical repertoire to the Belfast stage, a wonderful sign that ballet is growing and growing in the city of Belfast. The Fairy Doll suite and The Kingdom of the Shades will be performed again by HPYB and professional guest artists at the upcoming Belfast International Ballet Festival that will be held on the 1st and 2nd August.
