Crystal Ballet, who brought you the specially choreographed and filmed ballet pieces for digital release only, are aiming towards their second project.
It is their first commission as a production company and they will be working closely with the New English Ballet Theatre, a new London-based ballet company, shooting their rehearsal period and interviews with the choreographers before the opening at the beginning of July at London's Peacock Theatre.
After NEBT's successful début season in 2012, it will return with a mixed bill programme: Tryst – devotion and betrayal, with new works from some of the UK's top choreographic talents.
The evening will open with Orbital Motion, by The Royal Ballet's Valentino Zucchetti, set to music by Philip Glass; there will be a brand new work from The Royal Ballet's Kristen McNally; and a piece by former Dutch National Ballet dancer Daniela Cardim Fonteyne's Tangents, which uses music from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The programme concludes with a newly commissioned work by Andrew McNicol, based on Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata, with set design from Linbury Prize-winner Emma Bailey.
Crystal Ballet's beautifully filmed original ballets – called Genesis – with Steven McRae, Sarah Lamb, Alina Cojocaru, Johan Kobborg, Vadim Muntagirov, Daria Klimentová and others, marked an interesting new direction for filmed ballet performances. Now with the collaboration with NEBT they will create a montage film that will be screened during the evening at The Peacock Theatre.
Crystal Ballet are all about quality and, of course, that comes at a price. To create such a film means hiring a camera operator, film assistant, editor, sound recorder and sound production technician with all the associated equipment for a week. Although Crystal Ballet will be offering its services for free, that still adds up to a cost that NEBT, still a fledgling company, certainly can't cover, and that is where Kickstarter comes in. As Crystal Ballet's Henry St Clair says,
If you've always wanted to get involved with backing a film here's your first step into shallow waters!
The promo clip for Genesis show the high level at which the company aims, and if you feel like helping, visit the Kickstarter page, where there are also incentives for the backers!
Photo by David West
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
