Oxford Dance Writers

The Ballet des Porcelaines, or The Teapot Prince, was an eighteenth century ballet in the chinoiserie style, for which costumes, sets and choreography are lost; only the score, by Nicolas Racot de Grandval, and the libretto, by the Comte de Caylus, survive.  In 2021 Meredith Martin, Professor of Art History at New York University, and Phil Chan, choreographer and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, collaborated on a re-imagining of this work, which is now touring European venues that included  Waddesdon Manor on 16 and 17 June.  The animation of porcelain was a popular eighteenth century motif, and the original ballet’s story, in which a Chinese sorcerer turned a prince into a teapot, epitomised the simultaneous ‘othering’ and plundering of Oriental culture by Europeans.  The project’s goal was to recreate the work remaining true to its original artistic intentions while revealing the narrative from a broader post-colonial perspective.

Welcome to Jordan Lian, MPhil student at Oxford University, writing for Oxford Dance Writers for the first time. Jordan is studying the ballet history of the Slavonic region, and his current MPhil thesis is on Nijinska’s choreographic leadership of the Polish National Ballet 1937-1938. Here he reviews the recent triple bill by Rambert performed at Sadler’s Wells.

Friday’s Rambert performance started on a high note as Imre and Marne van Opstals’ Eye Candy, reflecting on the pains and pleasures of inhabiting the human body and originally premiered online in July 2021, generated an electric buzz. The piece opens with a dancer who drags out a mysterious package—a tranquil female body. Yet she comes alive as her peers onstage manipulate her joints and limbs to stretch, contort, and fold her corpus. In this sequence, the van Opstals challenge us to think of the degree of free will we possess in our own bodies; we watch as the puppet’s body is moulded by many hands until she moves autonomously. The choreography comprises mechanistic movements as the dancers jab, hammer, and drill gesturally, yet these high-frequency movements betray a lack of control despite the tension held in the dancers’ bodies. 

DANSOX conferences at St Hilda’s College, Oxford are now a regular landmark in the UK dance research year.  DANSOX works in association with TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) and constitutes Oxford’s interface between dance practice and dance research; a space to investigate the ways in which practice constitutes research and, conversely, where research becomes practice.  Although Oxford University has neither a dance department nor dance studio, DANSOX plays a vital role at a time when other UK institutions and centres of academic excellence in dance and their collections are under threat.

The DANSOX 2022 Day of Dance: Transnational Conversations symposium was a collaboration with TORCH Humanities and Cultural Programme and the Network Britain and the Soviet Union: Cultural Encounters; the day interrogated the ways in which dance communicates across borders, cultures and generations through written records, images, recordings and bodily memory.  Open to all, and attended by an array of distinguished scholars, writers, and practitioners from major dance institutions, the day included performances, workshops, lectures, and experimental applications of virtual reality (VR) to performance.

The Teapot Prince will be performed in the fairy-tale grounds of Waddesdon Manor before exploring the Manor after-hours. Be enchanted by this contemporary reimagining of the lost eighteenth-century French Ballet des Porcelaines – The Teapot Prince, bringing to life a story of magic, desire and exotic entanglement. Originally staged in a château near Paris, this is the first production of the ballet in nearly 300 years; it has been created by Meredith Martin, professor of art history at New York University, and Phil Chan, choreographer and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, in collaboration with The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH) and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The production features an all-star cast with New York City Ballet soloists Georgina Pazcoguin and Daniel Applebaum, alongside Broadway phenomenon Tyler Hanes, and the original score will be played live by the Oxford orchestra Instruments of Time and Truth.

The Teapot Prince is based on an Orientalist fairy tale about a sorcerer who lives on a ‘Blue Island’ and transforms anyone who dares to trespass into porcelain cups, vases, and other wares. When the sorcerer turns the eponymous prince into a teapot, his lover, the princess comes to his rescue…

Performances: Thursday 16 and Friday 17 June 2022, 6.00pm 

Venue: Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP18 0JH

Tickets: Adult £32, Child £16 Ticket includes access to the Manor’s west galleries & a talk by the ballet company

Book your ticket here: https://waddesdontest.seetickets.com/timeslot/the-teapot-prince

Porcelain, Chinoiserie and Dance: The Teapot Prince comes to Oxford

Friday 17 June 2022 , 10.15am-1.30pm

Linbury Room, Worcester College, Oxford

Three panels of creative artists and academics discuss the porcelain ballet, The Teapot Prince, as part of its world tour as it stops at Waddesdon Manor (16 and 17 June) en route from New York to Naples, Brighton and Paris.

Panel members: choreographer, Phil Chan, founder of Final Bow for Yellow Face; Meredith Martin, art historian and co-creator with Phil Chan, of The Teapot Prince; artist, Hannah Lim; poet and academic, Sarah Howe; ceramicist, Matt Smith; writer and ceramicist, Edmund de Waal; and art historian, Katie Scott.

Please register your place here

Ballet Black’s confident and authoritative performance on Wednesday night brought the Oxford audience to its feet.  The programme of two new works, Say It Loud and Black Sun was original, thought-provoking, and beautifully danced.  Ballet Black’s twentieth anniversary tour is a celebration, and both dances, in their very different ways, were about identity and belonging.

Say It Loud, by Cassa Pancho, looks at the company’s history using seven dance ‘chapters’.  To set the scene, the seven dancers listen to a list of quotations from reviews and social media, responding physically to criticism and praise, before the series of vignettes explores the company’s place in both British society and the world of ballet itself.  Pancho is serious, but handles difficult political issues with a gentle touch and even humour: there is plenty to be angry about, but her dancers firmly assert their right just to dance, expressing their hope and love of classical ballet.

Black Sun, a co-commission with The Barbican, choreographed by Gregory Maqoma, dives deep into the origins of the earth to discover a shared sense of humanity.  It feels like the beginning of the world when a dancer, slender and ethereal, a mysterious bird-creature on pointe, weaves her way between beams of light, parting invisible curtains.  Maqoma has created a collective creation myth, drawing on the each dancer’s ancestral lineage.  He suggests universal themes, which the audience might see through the eyes of their own culture: for me, the fall from grace, the outcast, the chosen maiden and sibling rivalry were all there.  The dancers (José Alves, Isabela Coracy, Alexander Fadayiro, Sayaka Ichikawa, Mthuthuzeli November, Cira Robinson and Ebony Thomas), speak, sing and play drums, as well as dancing, in this totally absorbing and powerful work.  The audience loved it.

Maggie Watson

2nd June 2022

Dance Scholarship Oxford (DANSOX) and TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities) collaborate to present Day of Dance: Transnational Conversations, a rich mix of dance practice, research and discussion involving leading dance artists and distinguished scholars, and centring on Bronislava Nijinska‘s seminal work Les Noces.

Programme:

10.00am-12.00pm Welcome and Liam Francis choreography session – making new work.

1.15-2.00pm Keynote: Jane Pritchard on Nijinska’s Les Noces

Throughout the day from 1.00pm- 6.00pm, those attending can drop in on a showing of Future Rites by Alexander Whitley Dance Company in the Rooftop Suite

2.05-2.50pm Deirdre Chapman leads dancers in a demonstration and workshop of choreography from Les Noces

3.00-3.30pm Marcus Bell presentation Rites of Spring

3.30-4.00pm Meindert Peters presentation Kafka and Arthur Pita

4.00-4.30pm Hélène Neveu Kringelbach presentation Avant-garde dance in Senegal

5.00-6.00pm Book launch of Lynn Garafola‘s biography La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern with Judith Mackrell

6.10-7.15pm Keynote: Alexander Whitley on Future Rites? with dancers, followed by discussion

7.15pm Reception

Date: Friday 10th June 10.00am-7.45pm

Venue: Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, OX4 1DY

Tickets: Free of charge; to register for the event please use this link.

If you would like to watch the livestream of the day please use this link.

For further info please contact susan.jones@ell.ox.ac.uk & marcus.bell@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

Finally, if you would like to attend the inaugural meeting of TORCH Network
Britain and the Soviet Union: Cultural Encounters you can sign up for a group discussion led by Gabriela Minden – on the London performances of Les Noces by Ballets Russes in June 1926, a month after the General Strike – by following this link.

The Yuka Kodama Ballet Group is an informal group which brings together people of all ages who enjoy dancing classical ballet, studying technique and performing. The group began its life in Japan, and is now based in Oxford, offering a range of ballet classes mainly for adults (including pointe work, pas de deux and men’s classes) to ballet enthusiasts from all over the world. All our dancing is very much in the classical tradition, with a strong bias towards Russian technique. This long established and ever popular group presents its annual show over the Jubilee weekend. The family friendly show entitled Gala Concert and Songs From My Childhood comprises a selection of classical ballet repertoire highlights and newly made choreography.

Performances: Friday 3rd June 7.30pm, Saturday 4th June 2.00 and 6.30pm

Venue: Wychwood School, 74 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JR

Tickets: £11.00-£14.00 bookable online here

Find out more about Yuka Kodama Ballet Group here or on Facebook here