It’s all getting tutu much as David’s last dance draws ever closer!
David Bintley will be leaving Birmingham Royal Ballet in the summer after 24 years at the helm. He tells ROZ LAWS about his highlights and his plans for the future
THERE’S no doubt it will end in tears when David Bintley bids farewell to his beloved Birmingham Royal Ballet. The director, who is leaving at the end of July after 24 years at the helm, confesses: “I cry all the time these days. I’m always the first to blub.”
But while he’s bracing himself for an emotional final few months, he reckons he’ll be able to stop the waterworks when he presents An Evening of Music and Dance in Birmingham this week – for one surprising reason.
“I’ll just be too nervous to let go in that way,” he admits. “I find public speaking, in front of 2,000 people, really challenging. It’s not what I’m paid to do!
“It’s really nerve-wracking and usually results in quite a bit of perspiration.”
David will be compering the event at Symphony Hall, which features Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.
He will introduce each item – orchestral works, such as
Berlioz’s Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust and Verdi’s Force of Destiny Overture, alongside half a dozen pieces he has choreographed.
They include excerpts from Carmina Burana, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sylvia and Hobson’s Choice.
He says “I’ve been doing this annual event for several years now but this one will be special, because it’s the last I will be doing.
“This year, all the dance items are my work. I’ll talk about how the pieces were made and what went on behind the scenes.
“It’s a nice evening. I think it would be a good introduction to ballet if you’ve never been, but we also get a lot of our regulars coming because it’s a different experience from the theatre.
“The audience can get quite close to the dancers as they perform on a small stage in front of the orchestra. And the acoustics in Symphony Hall are wonderful.
“I’ve been doing the compering for a few years now. In the past it’s been hosted by a number of people and Alan Titchmarsh was a regular.
“I think it was our financial director who suggested I take over, as they don’t have to pay me to do it! Plus I do know a bit about ballet.”
Just a bit. David, 61, danced with BRB as a teenager in its previous incarnation as Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. After a spell as choreographer at The Royal Ballet, he succeeded Sir Peter Wright as artistic director of BRB in 1995. He went on to devise more than 10 fulllength and 12 one-act ballets for the company.
David has developed BRB into one of the world’s great ballet companies, so much so that superstar Carlos Acosta is taking over from him as director.
Looking back, he muses: “I am very proud of Ballet Hoo. It was a two-year outreach programme in 2006 for 200 kids who had lost their way in life. It was all filmed by Channel 4, ending in a performance of Romeo and Juliet. That was extraordinary.
“I’m also proud that BRB was the first company to go to South Africa after the first free elections, and that we were the first foreign company touring Japan just a couple of months after the devastating earthquake of 2011, when everyone else was running away.
“Now, as I’m leaving, my life has become one long countdown as I mentally tick things off and say ‘I won’t be doing that again’.
“I look after 60 young lives and I will miss them. But I’m not saying goodbye for good. The company will still perform my work and I hope I’ll get the chance to work with them again.”
And will he miss Birmingham? “No I won’t, because I’m not going anywhere!” declares
David, who lives in Edgbaston with his wife Jenny.
“Most of my future work will probably be abroad but we have a great airport. I have lived here longer than anywhere else so I’m a Brummie now.
“I love the city and have seen it change so much. I remember in 1999 we had a West End producer come to see a show. Afterwards we went to the only restaurant we could find that was still open in Birmingham. The chef had gone home so we had two cold starters.
“That was embarrassing. But look at it now, it’s just incredible with all the new restaurants that are opening all the time. Everything is just flying up.
“Mind you, it would be nice if they could just finish some of the new buildings and let us use the roads again…”
Spoken like a true Brummie.
An Evening of Music and Dance plays Symphony Hall on Friday, February 15. For tickets ring 0121 780 3333 or go to thsh.co.uk. Beauty and the Beast opens at Birmingham Hippodrome on February 19. Call 0844 338 5000.
In Alec Roth Ex Cathedra have the most congenial of composers-in-residence, supplying the choir with music which is always well-crafted, rewarding in the listening, and with points of reference which we can all recognise.
His latest commission, A Time to be Born and a Time to Die, received a triumphant premiere under Jeffrey Skidmore in the comfortable Elgar Hall, a venue which allowed full scope for Ex Cathedra’s trademark imaginative choreography – not least Skidmore’s picking up of the “hairy drum” and thudding a beat as everyone left the stage.
Written for a smoothly interwoven quartet of soloists – here Katie Trethewey, Martha McLorinan, Samuel Boden and Greg Skidmore – community choir (drawn from St Mary’s Hospice, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Birmingham Women’s Hospital), minimally cringeworthy audience participation, and main chorus, the cantata also calls for a period-instrument orchestral ensemble. The sound is lovely, but I wonder how many choral societies around the land will be able to summon up an oboe da caccia?
Amid the well-chosen array of poetic texts there is perhaps too much emphasis on the indignation of actually being born (coincidentally on the day I read of someone in India suing his parents for forcing him into the world), but there is also a sense of Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality; and Tippett’s ideal of communal involvement is never very far away, too.
Ex Cathedra delivered this attractive piece with full tone, beautifully scaled to a range of dynamics, and telling clarity of diction. There were several points of reference (thank goodness not the ghastly “Turn, turn, turn”), chiefly the ancient French carol-tune “Noel Nouvelet”, and a stunning recourse to Bach’s Passion Chorale, a pointer towards Ex Cathedra’s planned traversal of all 200-odd extant Bach cantatas, of which two completed this programme. A breathtaking concert for so many reasons. Starting with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus Overture taken at a near-uncomfortable speed by conductor Nikolaj SzepsZnaider, rescued by lovely solo oboe (Emmet Byrne)) and eventually accelerating to a hectic conclusion. Mopped brows throughout!
Gut strings on a Stradivarius cello – a special treat – from Steven Isserlis on his performance of Schumann’s Cello Concerto. This soloist can certainly give a unique and personal performance with much tossing of curls, sighs and attempted visual contact with the conductor. Added charm came with the unaccompanied encore “Song of the birds”, with smiles all round.
A massive orchestra (140) assembled for Richard Strauss’s gargantuan Ein Heldenleben (A Heros Life). From the terrifying first bass note this work caused a sensation – gleefully parodying critics, adding exuberant self-celebration with nine horns, heroic brass, chattering woodwinds, masses of timpani and percussion, two harps and endless sweeping strings. Top score for guest leader Benjamin Gilmore who impeccably delivered the seemingly endless hairraising solo interjections (representing Strauss’s wife) using a whole range of violinistic acrobatics. A star!
Off stage trumpets heralded a massive battle – military heroism, tattoos, gunfire – eventually leading to a magnificent heartstopping horn solo (Elspeth Dutch).
The packed audience rightly exploded after the final note died away, and some of us were in tears.
Now, as I’m leaving, my life has become one long countdown as I mentally tick things off and say ‘I won’t be doing that again’