Tuesday, August 25
Today, I was in Glasgow. I had a chance to visit the new home of Scottish Ballet and see a bit of this famous city. The company works in an old abandoned building that has been transformed from a former train station into a magnificent marvel of glass and wood. They only moved in two months ago and it has the smell of a new car.
A view of the Scottish Ballet building as I head to Queen Street Train Station.
A view of the Scottish Ballet building from the courtyard while having lunch with my workshop percussionist, Signy Jakobsdottir
The dance instructors and I have been working hard designing community workshops. I met lots of marvelous people, including my counterpart: Associate Director of Education Ailsa-Mary Gold.
Here I am having a "cup-o-tea" with Associate Director of Education Ailsa-Mary Gold
I also spent some quality time with Artistic Director Ashley Page. He is energetic, dynamic, gracious, and informative and we spent about an hour together. We talk about choreography, repertoire, and dance-makers like William Forsythe and Christopher Wheeldon. I loved it. But, imagine my surprise when I came across a familiar face while touring the facility: Nicolas Blanc, former principal dancer with SF Ballet, who has just retired from dancing! Just two weeks ago or so, he was named ballet master for Scottish Ballet, and he now resides in Glasgow. I adore Nicolas, and got to watch him teach a bit of class before I was invited by choreographer Iain Spink to watch a rehearsal of his new world premiere of Petrushka (They spell it differently than we do). Dance is everywhere you go, and it’s a small world after all.
Here I am coaching dance instructors from Scottish Ballet and Scottish Dance Theatre (L-R, Dawn Hartley, Emma-Jane McHenry, me, Lorraine Jamieson, Kate Pringle, and Catarina Lappin)
It rains a lot in Scotland… I’ll tell you more about this later.
Scottish Ballet interior view of the Dancers’ Lounge with Dance Instructor Catarina Lappin posing for the camera
2 Comments
Thank you for your posts. We fans out here are grateful for your sharing. Enjoy yourself everyday, okay?
Thanks so much for letting us know about Nicolas Blanc and the Scottish Ballet. He was such a loss for us, but it’s great that he landed somewhere so quickly.