News: Dance is the Word
Early this year aspiring reviewers had the chance to work with The Times’ dance and theatre critic Donald Hutera as part of English National Ballet’s dance writing course, Dance is the Word. The group continue to contribute to their own blog – and will be reporting in depth on many of the Big Dance 2012 events. We’ll be sharing some of their posts here, but in the meantime, Germaine Cheng, a final year student at Rambert Dance School (and a contributor to londondance.com) tells us more about the course.
Dance is the Word. Yes, it is indeed…
The itinerary for English National Ballet’s aptly titled course for aspiring dance writers included:
- Markova House. The home of English National Ballet is constantly abuzz with activity, even on a Saturday. Each time I’ve visited the studios, the dancing I am privileged to watch and document has been vastly different, ranging from Wayne Eagling rehearsing a trio of principal dancers in Jeux to youth dancers deftly tumbling in a Parkour lesson as part of Dancing Parallel – a testament to English National Ballet’s wide variety of activities.
- Westminster Reference Library. With the old-world charm of any library in our technologically driven age, this tucked-away cove of books served as a backdrop to a lively two-day discussion led by Donald Hutera. We spoke about all things dance, pitted critics against critics and watched Fred and Ginger tap through (and up) a storm.
- London Coliseum. The Company performs its spring season in this West End theatre –this year they dazzled the audience with thrilling technical feats in Suite en Blanc among other works. Given access to performances and backstage events, I’ve written reviews and insight articles, all of which are published on the Dance is the Word blog.
With a pen and spiral-bound notebook in hand, I look forward to the rest of the journey: Big Dance 2012, for which English National Ballet, as the West London Hub, will play host to and oversee a large number of projects.
To keep up to date with the Dance is the Word writers and all of English National Ballet’s Big Dance 2012 activity visit the blog