A Good Start

 Jane Lambert with six o the eight members of the cast of "Aria"

© 2019 Powerhouse Ballet, all rights reserved

Yesterday Powerhouse Ballet performed in public for the first time and, to my great joy and relief, that first performance went very well.  My congratulations and thanks to the artists who travelled considerable distances and devoted many hours of their leisure time to classes and rehearsals and, of course, to our choreographer, Terence Etheridge, ballet mistress, Beverley Willsmer, and our costume designer, Amelia Sierevogel. Having attended each and every one of those classes and rehearsals, I know the full extent of that sacrifice and I am extremely grateful.

I am also grateful to Karen Sant, Principal of KNT, for inviting us to her 10th-anniversary gala.  We were the only guests at that event and as I noted in January when the invitation was made it was a singular honour,  Finally, I should also like to thank the technical and front of house staff of The Dancehouse for presenting our artists (and indeed everyone else who performed in last night's show) in the best possible light.  We were very fortunate to make our debut in a commercial theatre in a major city.  The same city, incidentally, in which English National Ballet and Northern Ballet gave their first performances.

Having said all that, we must not allow ourselves to be carried away.  It has taken us a year from our very first class with Jane Tucker to stage a 6-minute ballet. When I set up Powerhouse Ballet a year ago I had hoped that might be in a position to stage a full-length ballet like The Nutcracker as Duchy Ballet did for its first performance in 1998 (see the Productions page of Duchy Ballet's website) or Coppelia as Chelmsford did for its debut in 1949 (see Chelmsford Ballet's Seventieth Anniversary Show 22 March 2019 Terpsichore).  We are a long way from attempting anything like that.

Still, a start is a start.  We have a foundation on which we can build.  Last week a group of dancers at the April company class resolved to organize as an unincorporated association as a first step to setting up a charitable incorporated organization for the advancement of education and the arts which should enable us to bid for public funding and private sector sponsorship.  Nicola Hodson, Helena Tarren and Sarah Lambert kindly volunteered to join me in managing Powerhouse Ballet for the time being and we were elected nem con.  Shortly afterwards, Alicia Jelley equally kindly offered to take over the management of our social media pages and we have co-opted her onto our committee.  We are about to hold our first committee meeting after which we shall invite everyone who has registered for our company classes or other events over the last year to subscribe to our association and contribute to the cost of such classes and events.

That will be the acid of whether we have a future.