Posts Tagged ‘ballet’

The Trocks head to Birmingham Hippodrome

IDFB co-producer Birmingham Hippodrome’s latest dance offering promises a fabulous programme packed with costume changes and lashings of diva attitude. ‘The Trocks’ (Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo) will perform Swan Lake Act II; Pas de Deux; Go for Barrocco and Raymonda’s Wedding from Wednesday 30 March – Saturday 2 April at Birmingham Hippodrome as part of their spring tour to the UK.

Raymonda's Wedding

Founded in 1974, The Trocks are a company of professional all male dancers who perform an entertaining view of traditional, classical ballet in parody form. Their inspired blend of their loving knowledge of dance, their comic approach and the astounding fact that men can, indeed, dance en pointe have earned them international critical acclaim.

And if you’ve not seen them in action, here’s a video:


 
The Trocks, who have performed in over 500 cities in 33 countries, are winners of the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award and the TMA Theatre Award. They were invited to perform at The Royal Variety Performance in 2008.
 
Tickets are priced from £12.50 – £29.50. Evening performance times are 7.30pm and the Saturday matinee is at 2.30pm. To book, call 0833 338 5000 or go online at www.birminghamhippodrome.com. Please note that there are booking charges.

Sounds like a lot of fun, so see you there!

IDFB Dance Challenge – and the winner is…

Well our brave group of dancers-in-training made it to the end of the IDFB Dance Challenge, and I’m pleased to say that there were no tears and very few tantrums!  Everyone put a lot of effort into learning their individual dance styles and they’ve all had fun trying to master the moves.  Attendance at classes has been very good, with Louisa James and Keith Gabriel both achieving ‘Teacher’s Pet’ status for managing to attend every single one of their classes.

Jodie Schofield had a great time in her final class – getting in touch with her inner hippy with a number from the musical Hair.  Paul Sargent can hardly stop his toes from tapping now, and he has even admitted to breaking into dance routines in his kitchen!  Fionnuala Bourke has been throwing some very funky moves in her Club Jazz classes and Satnam Rana attended some of her hip hop classes at The IDFB Shop in Pavilions.

Lastly, we unfortunately have a slight casualty to report – Kate Lawler had to pull out of the challenge due to an old knee injury flaring up again.  She’s been ordered to rest, although she’s such a busy person we’re not sure whether this is actually possible for her!  Anyway, we all wish her a speedy recovery and are very glad that she enjoyed the Capoeira classes she came to.

Several of our budding dance stars also performed at the grand finale of IDFB 2010 – Put Your Foot Down at Bullring on 15 May.  See Louisa’s brilliant nutcracker solo and Satnam’s hip hop performance (complete with stage invasion from hip hop star Salah!), plus Jodie and the Musical Dance beginners did a great rendition of a piece from Sister Act!

Finally, David Massingham (Co-Artistic Director of the Festival) was responsible for making the difficult decision of who made the most improvement over the last two months of classes.  I’m delighted to announce that the winner of the IDFB 2010 Dance Challenge is…Louisa James.

David Massingham with Louisa James, winner of the IDFB Dance Challenge

David commented: “Although Louisa still has some way to go before she joins BRB, I feel she made a huge amount of technical progress during this short period of classes!

“I’m delighted to hear that she will be continuing to attend ballet classes at DanceXchange.”

Thanks to all of our participants, the tutors and everyone else in the Festival team who helped to make this happen.