SWDT summer dance intensive: Cecchetti – Llfe & Legacy

Ballet students at South West Dance Theatre will hear a lot of reference to Cecchetti – this is your chance to really dig your teeth in and find out more about this ballet figurehead, the world he lived in and the ballets he influenced.

Aimed at ages 7-12 years old.

The day will give a flavour of the ballet training principles that had ballet’s greatest stars clinging to his coaching, some of the ballets he and his students shaped, as well as the dramatic history of the world around him at the time.

Like the Nile Rodgers of 19th century ballet, everyone who was anyone in those circles at the time worked with Cecchetti at some point. As a dancer in his early career, he created the iconic role of Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty, and later he coached ballet legends including Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, Marie Rambert, Ninette de Valoius and Leonide Massine.

Born back stage in a theatre in Italy in 1850, Enrico’s whole life was steeped in dance and theatre. He worked with the Imperial Russian Ballet in Russia during the political hotbed of 1890s Russia, leaving for Warsaw just a few years before the Russian revolution of 1905. He joined the Diaghilev Ballet Russes in 1909 shortly before break out of the first World War during which the company fled Europe to tour America. In 1918 he opened a school in London, eventually returning to Italy before he died in 1928.

The day will be taught by South West Dance Theatre director Anna Demming Davis, whose Cecchetti training has been moulded by a stellar line up of teachers including Dorothy Ind, Penny Kay, Cara Drower, the late Joan Hewson (whose training traces back through Margaret Saul and Margaret Craske to Cecchetti himself), and senior examiner Cecchetti Society Trust Chair and former Cecchetti Faculty Committee Chair Elisabeth Swan, with whom Anna continues to train. (https://www.southwestdancetheatre.co.uk/the_dancers.html)

*Anyone who needs help with the 9-10am gap and/or the 4-5pm gap at the end of the day, please email info@southwestdancetheatre.com as we may be able to accommodate this for a small additional fee.

Cecchetti day line up

10:00 am – intro

10:15am – Cecchetti principles of dance and his “days of the week” approach (learn how dancers from Pavlova and Nijinsky to Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sembe train)

11:00am (break)

11:15am – Cecchetti’s timeline (learn his bio from birth back stage in an Italian theatre, through revolutionary Russia and the First World War)

11:30am – Repertoire:

Imperial Ballet – Sleeping Beauty – Bluebird solo (as danced by Cecchetti), and the Dying Swan (as danced by Pavlova)

Diaghilev Ballets Russes – L’Apres Midi d’un Faun (as danced by Nijinsky)

12:30am – (lunch)

1:30am – dance theatre workshop (ideas for telling a story with dance)

2:15pmam – create “Cecchetti – the dance theatre production!”

3:15pm – open session/dance theatre production practise

3:45pm – show parents (those who want to)

Photos:
https://picryl.com/media/the-russian-revolution-1905-q81553-f6a71e

https://picryl.com/media/sleeping-beauty-enrico-cecchetti-and-varvara-nikitina-bluebird-and-princess-e6d5bd

https://jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net/media/anna-pavlova-as-the-dying-swan-afd981

Faun (Nijinsky) moving right, holding maenad’s dress. Photograph 1912 by Adolf de Meyer from the 1914 book “Nijinsky: L’Apres-midi d’un Faune” (CC-UPDD)

Entry requirements: no age restrictions