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To read a review of a previous show, as it appeared in the local press, click here |
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The Show - What is it and who can take part? The Samara Ballet School is spread over a huge part of rural Norfolk and Cambridgeshire (80 miles separate some branches!) and with over 300 pupils, it could be difficult making each branch `feel´ a part of the school. To try and encourage a sense of belonging and to give all pupils, whatever their standard or ability, the chance to perform on stage, the school undertakes a major production every 2 years. EVERY PUPIL is very welcome to participate and solo parts are open to all who want to try. Parents and friends all lend a hand in the costume-making (900 in the last show!), supervising the children, providing refreshments etc, and they help to make the show a huge community venture. How big is it - Facts and Figures. The show is usually performed 3 or 4 times over two days but in the 2005 production we changed the format. As the school has grown to such a size, we decided to produce 2 separate shows (5 performances) over different weekends - one for Norfolk and one for Cambridge. In total, we had over 1100 people come and watch (compared to just 500 in 1996!) The costumes have grown in number as we become more complex with almost 900 items of costume being used in 2005 with a back room staff of over 50 needed for each performance!. To quote from Gerald Main, BBC Radio Cambridge ...half of East Anglia appears to be there...Technical ability increases as the school becomes more established and the latest show in 2005 saw some of the original 'babies' from when the school first started leave as 18 year olds off to university! Back in 1996, the average age of performers was just 8 years old. The following review appeared in various local newspapers following the 2005 performances: Feet of Imagination by David Learner, 3 July 2005 Michelle Rasdall seems genuinely surprised that another perfect total eclipse has just taken place. Every two years her ballet schools across the flat lands join forces to produce a show of such excellence, panache and exuberance that the tears run down your cheeks. This is everything that we could want for our children, encapsulated in ninety minutes of high-octane brilliance, dazzling our senses and leaving us breathless with admiration. She knows what she wants, of course, and her dancers are aching to oblige. For the first time, with so many pupils cramming the books in the Samara's schools' search for superlatives, there have been two shows. I've caught the one at Witchford Village College on a summer's evening. It's hot, but not half as hot in the auditorium as it is on stage. Michelle has grabbed me during the interval and cajoles me into one of the halls where 159 dancers, aged 3 to 18, are in various stages of stardom. The sun catches them all. The scene reminds me of a cross between a triage station in the Crimea, with stage make-up and footless tights taking the place of bandages, and an explosion in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. So much colour it hurts the eyes, so many helpers (45 at each of the three performances) that it's hard to believe that we've been allowed a glimpse of the eclipse's arrangement. Like catching it with its trousers down somehow, but warts and all it's a scene of huge calm. As ever the show is skillfully knitted together to show everyone at their very best. There are, I realise, two centuries of experience in front of me as the curtain opens on Peter and the Wolf. Some of the flowers are so young that they've been born since the millennium; the older girls are eighteen, indeed they've been with Michelle since that very first day in 1993. Now they'll leave for adult lives at university with twelve years of Rasdall zest coating their leotards. The decade and a half will have taught them a discipline that's all too rare in this day and age. The reality TV shows have told this generation that 15 minutes fame is everyone's right; at least there are two 18-year-olds here who know that the long march to excellence has been worth it, in the hands of one of the area's most skilful teachers. For dance, of course, isn't just about eyes and teeth, it's about hard work and the will to shine. Peter himself is played by Jonathon Baker. For what it's worth he will out-Billy all the Elliotts and is a name to watch. He's Michelle's second placement at the Royal Ballet School, after her own son Nathan, and already Baker shines like the star he will surely be. But he's surrounded by such talent. Nobody misses a step as the story unfolds. And whose idea was it to ask the surly hunters (all girls) to pick something to shoot with that we would accept immediately was a gun. There was a seaside spade, a whisk, an inflatable hammer, and they were handled with such conviction that you believed that any one of them would have shot you stone dead. Next was the Cambridge ballet, ten minutes of plié and jeté and entrechat which swept its piano accompaniment and its audience into a wealth of colour and life. Always there was Michelle's raw imagination with another unexpected move and always there was a dancer so light on her feet that she danced on egg shells. A swift bow to the lighting, which played an integral part in the evening and which bestowed the dullest of stages with iridescence and playful good humour. But throughout, the technical expertise shone through; no less than you would expect from Samara. The second half brought down the shutters on the classical part of the evening and the tutus and pirouettes were replaced by jazz taps and hipster tights as the dancers sweated their way through some of Disney's most playful numbers. There was so much to choose from, whether it was the sweeps on the chimneys in the classic number from Mary Poppins of the earthiness of the jungle drums in Lion King. And if the duet between Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh suddenly became a stage full of no less than eight Poohs, all stretching out their dreams for Christopher Robin to sweep them away then who was counting? These biennial shows have become part of the landscape and Michelle Rasdall, their onlie begetter, the Pied Piper of the Fens. Only she leads our children not into the unknown but into a position of strength from which they can only gain so many riches. Count these minutes, for they pass so quickly. As Mark Rasdall said in his opening announcement to us all: "Enjoy your fantastic children!" Michelle has opened our eyes by causing to realise that it's not soon we should be celebrating, it's not then, it's now Every second is the best we shall spend on this astounding earth. PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS
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