Ballet Dancer in Training

Ballet Dancer in Training
Showing posts with label Young Friends of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Young Friends of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Practice, Boys Class,Pointe Shoes and Ballet Exams


Hard at practice

This is a very busy time for Salem.
He has been getting ready for his RAD Grade 5 exam and his RAD Performance Award exam.
We have been up at the gym in the dance studio nearly every day.
Salem has had his normal classes plus a mock exam on the weekend.
He knows it all and now we are working on polishing up everything.

Glen Harris

The day after his last performances of Giselle, he went to the Boys Ballet Class with the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
His teacher was Glen Harris who is the RNZB's ballet master for the moment.
Salem really enjoyed the class and Glen gave the boys lots of good tips which Salem has found very useful.
He has been practicing one of the dances from Giselle that Glen taught the boys.


Getting ready for his Intermediate
Foundation Class

Salem loves his blue pointe shoes and has been using them in his Intermediate Foundation class.
He is becoming more confident with them and is doing centre work with them on.

His blue pointe shoes

His pointe shoes still need a bit more wearing in.

So exams are on Sunday and his examiner is his old ballet teacher from Wellington.
I know he will do very well!!!!

Friday, November 16, 2012

A Master Class and Two Performances - Giselle


Me and Loughlan Prior


Ballet Diaries - Giselle
By Salem

A Master Class and Two Performances in One Day
10th November 2012

We had to get up very early in the morning and had to catch the 7am train into Wellington.
I had a Master Class with the Royal New Zealand Ballet at their studios at the St James at 8.30am.
It was a real rush to get there in time but we did it!!!!!
Loughlan Prior, one of the RNZB dancers took the Senior class which I was in.
It was a real fun class and we did some exercises and lots of combinations.
He was a really good teacher.

After that, me and Mum stayed in the green room for a while and had a cuppa and a biscuit to eat.
It had been quite a while since we had breakfast.
Then we went for a walk to upper Cuba Street to have brunch at Arthur's Cafe and to meet up with a photographer to have some photos taken of us for a newspaper story.


Visiting Jonte in his dressing room

A bit later we had to go back to the St James and up to my dressing room and Mum put on my make-up as usual and I got into my costume.  We were doing a matinee show this afternoon.
I went back downstairs and visited Jonte (Sir Jon Trimmer) in his dressing room.  He let me choose one of his costume rings for me to have.  I chose a big green one.  Thank you Jonte, I love it.

I went and got some more autographs in my Giselle program.  I just knocked on the dressing room doors.
All the dancers are lovely and signed my program.  I think they are used to me doing this now, except for the new dancers though.


Knocking on the dressing room door to get more
autographs.

I went back up to my dressing room and Mum went into the St James as she was watching the show in the audience again.
Me, Paris and Jaida mucked around until we were called to go down to backstage.
Our performance went well and I got some souvenirs, some of the leaves from the trees had fallen off so I picked some up and put them in my pants until I got up to the dressing room.
As usual, I quickly got changed and went downstairs to chat to Lindsay until Mum picked me up at intermission to take me into the theatre so I could watch Act Two.
I got to watch Lucy Green as Giselle and Kohei Iwamoto as Albrecht.
They did really well and everyone danced brilliantly, but Antonia Hewitt and Andrew Bowan are my favourite Giselle and Albrecht.
Giselle is such a great ballet!!!!!


Me and Bronte Kelly

Between the shows we had a pot of tea at The Jimmy and then went and hung out in my dressing room and relaxed.
But on the way up to the dressing room, Ethan Stiefel came and waited to go up in the lift as well.  I needed his autograph so I ran up the stairs (the lift takes too long) to get my program for him to sign while Mum chatted to him while he waited for me to come back down.  Yay, I finally have his autograph.

I also finished getting all my autographs, Maree White's was the last one I needed and I finally tracked her down.


On our way down to backstage.

Later, I got back into my costume for the last time and Mum did a quick fix-up of my make-up.
Then I took Paris and Jaida downstairs to the dressing rooms to get autographs in their programs.
We had heaps of fun doing that.
Back up in our dressing rooms, we were feeling a bit sad as this was to be our last performance.


The Peasant Men

Our performance went very well as usual but it was sad.
I wanted to stay on stage as usual with my "family".

Back up in the dressing room, we all got changed and said our goodbyes.
Paris and Jaida gave me a little present of lollies for being a good "brother".
We gave each other hugs and then it was time to go.
We will all see each other again at future master classes and competitions.
It will be nice to see my friends again.

I was a very tired and sad boy and needed to get home to bed.
Jonte was on the train with us again and both of us caught some zzzzzzzzzzzz's on the ride home.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Senior Master Class - YFRNZB 4th August 2012


Dance All Weekend  YFRNZ 2010

Senior Master Class  by Salem
This morning we had to get up really early, Mum got me up at 5am, to get the train into Wellington for the Young Friends of the Royal New Zealand Ballet Senior Master Class at the RNZB's studios at the St James.

Rory Fairweather-Neylan

Our teacher was Rory Fairweather-Neylan who is one of the RNZB company dancers.
It was a really good class and I found it nice and challenging.  Some of it was easy and then there was some harder stuff.  We were using steps and exercises that we know but in a different way which I liked.


Rory with the Boys in the Nutcracker 2010

Rory was a very good teacher.  I hope we have more classes with him in the future.
Thanks Rory!!!!!


Saturday, July 28, 2012

Ballet Class with the Royal New Zealand Ballet


On Sunday morning we got up nice and early to travel into Wellington for the Boys Only Class with Shannon   and some other male dancers from the Royal New Zealand Ballet.  It was held in the dance studios at the St James Theatre in Wellington.  The photos I have put up are from a previous Boys Only class about a year or so ago.


Boys Only Class 22nd July 2012      
by Salem
There were heaps of boys this time, lots from out of town.  Shannon took the class.  First we did some barre work.   It was quite easy.  Then it was on to some pirouettes and tour en l'airs, followed by port de bras which was a lot harder because we had to do a lot of balancing.  We also did a tricky exercise doing sissones.
We were split up into two groups and had to make a circle with one person in the middle.  The middle person had to trust everybody to catch him when he fell backwards.  The catcher then had to push him back up so that he could fall back onto the next person.


After that, each group had to split into two lines with their hands out so that they could catch the one boy who fell into everyone's hands.  They he got thrown up into the air and caught again.  We all had turns.  It was lots of fun.  My group included Byron, David, Shannon, one of the RNZ Ballet dancers and some boys I didn't know before today.
We sat down at the end of the class so we could have a bit of question and answer time with the RNZ Ballet dancers.  It was a fun morning and I learnt quite a few things.