Talent spotted aged 6, Jakob’s on a path he never dreamed of
Ballet’s reputation for being predominantly white and middle class is being dismantled through initiatives in Birmingham which aim to increase its diversity and inclusivity. DIANE PARKES reports
ELMHURST Ballet School student Jakob Myers will see a new work he has created share the stage with pieces by world-famous choreographers next month. The 18-year-old from Birmingham has created You Never Know which will be performed during Synergy, an evening of dance by Elmhurst Ballet Company, the graduate year of the school, as they move from school to professional life. Jakob is the only student to have choreographed a piece for the performance, which also includes work by Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Peter Wright, David Bintley and Studio Wayne McGregor.
What’s even more surprising is that Jakob’s first steps on the ballet ladder happened by chance. A pupil at King David Primary School in Moseley, Jakob was six years old when he first discovered ballet when an outreach team from Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Dance Track held a workshop at the school.
Founded 23 years ago, Dance Track aims to introduce Birmingham children, who may not otherwise have access to dance, to ballet. And it certainly succeeded with Jakob.
“I started ballet by accident,” he recalls. “Dance Track did a workshop at my school. They select people they think have potential to become ballet dancers and they asked me. I agreed to do ballet and I enjoyed it.”
Initially attending one class a week, Jakob believes the company chose him because of his focus and musicality as well as his dance ability.
“I was quite disciplined and ballet is really disciplined. And I was quite musical. We always had music playing in the house and I played the violin. So I enjoyed those aspects as well as the actual dancing. There were about 20-25 children in the class, with roughly equal numbers of boys and girls although the boys dropped off a bit as they got older.”
When BRB launched Dance Track Plus for older children, Jakob took two classes a week and then he applied to Elmhurst, auditioned and was offered a place.
Last year, Jakob was head boy at the school in Edgbaston, Birmingham – and he discovered a talent not just for dancing but also for choreography.
Jakob Myers (centre) in Elmhurst Ballet Company’s Take Five by David Bintley.
“With an injury I was off dance for seven months and so I used the time to learn a lot more piano and started choreographing.”
Jakob created a piece to Muse’s Feeling Good called Fifty Percent, which was a finalist in the school’s choreography competition. It also led Elmhurst artistic director Robert Parker to ask Jakob to create a work for the company’s live production Synergy, which will be performed at Elmhurst and at the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells in London next month. Jakob’s new work is set to M-Beat’s Dexterity.
“I start with music,” he explains. “I listen to music of all genres and if it has a beat with a natural kind of dance and bounce to it and it makes you want to dance then you can use it for choreography.
“You Never Know uses ten dancers in my year and it’s nearly eight minutes long. I had a rough idea of what I wanted from the dancers beforehand but I used them as an influence as you can play to their strengths that way. Originally it was going to be narrative but then I became more transfixed by the idea of natural movement rather than telling a story.
“This is a contemporary piece so we’ve used our contemporary classes to do it and our teacher, Angela Towler, is great and really helpful. She’s good at finding ways of fixing things if they don’t quite work. I can describe what I want and she can see why it doesn’t work and fix it.
“I’m really looking forward to it being performed but I’m also terrified! I was a bit shocked when Mr Parker asked me, I was like ‘Who? Me?’ It’s flattering but also a bit scary because it’s going to be on the stage in Birmingham and in London and in front of
directors.”
As a young black dancer, Jakob has been inspired by dancers and choreographers including Brandon Lawrence at BRB, the Royal Ballet’s Marcellino Sambé and Carlos Acosta, the new director of BRB. And he believes the dance world is opening up to diversity.
“It’s definitely changing,” he says. “There’s been an increase in diversity at the school in the time I’ve been here, which is great. But there’s still more work to do to improve diversity, inclusion and equality in dance, and that’s why programmes like Dance Track and Elmhurst Young Dancers are so important.” Jakob is due to leave Elmhurst Ballet School this summer and he hopes to develop a career both dancing and choreographing. He’s grateful to both the school and Dance Track for giving him the opportunities to pursue that career path.
“I would never have come to dance if Dance Track hadn’t been to my school, there’s not really any dance history in my family. And then if I’d not come to Elmhurst I’m sure I would have had to give up dance. I might have been able to keep it as a hobby but not much more. “Learning to choreograph is one of the things you get from being at this school. You come hoping to be a ballet dancer and you leave with a lot more skills than you could ever imagine.” Dance Track exists to discover children like Jakob and open doors to ballet, says BRB director of learning, engagement, access and participation Pearl Chesterman.
“BRB are committed to developing and diversifying the dancers of the future and Dance Track aims to introduce ballet to children who wouldn’t know anything about dance. We go into deprived communities where we are looking for potential talent,” she says.
“We visit around 50 schools across Birmingham each year and if we spot that potential talent we bring the children in to do a workshop at BRB and, if they get through that, we talk to the families and the children are invited to take part in a year of free ballet classes and to have tickets to see ballet.”
Funded largely through trusts and foundations, Dance Track offers places to roughly 100 local children each year. If the youngsters continue to show potential they are offered a second year and are encouraged to undertake auditions for Saturday schools such as Elmhurst. If they gain places at the Saturday schools then Dance Track Plus continues to support them with additional classes to help build their skills in the hope of gaining a full-time place at one of the ballet schools.
But it’s not just the children who go on to have a career in dance who benefit.
“All the children in Dance Track learn focus and discipline as well as working in a team and understanding and enjoying physicality,” says Pearl. “It’s also being somewhere different and opening their eyes to being in the theatre, to being in BRB and realising it is a place for them. It’s introducing them to opportunities they wouldn’t expect – particularly boys because they don’t necessarily think about ballet.
“With Jakob, we went into his school and saw this little boy who was enjoying what he did, was really focussed and had the physicality. He has gone on that journey, learning new things, and he has gone down a route and a career path that he would never have dreamed of if it hadn’t been for that visit to the school.”
Elmhurst Ballet School works closely with BRB to nurture young talent and to give students opportunities, says
Robert
I would never have come to dance if Dance Track hadn’t been to my school, there’s not really any dance history in my family
Parker, artistic director at the school. “Cultivating the next generation and bringing them up from the grass roots level is vital for the survival of our profession,” he says. “Dance Track and Elmhurst Young Dancers Programme and all of the outreach we do as a school is vital to expose the young generation to our art form.
“Our philosophy is that talent is classless and if the talent is there and the student displays the potential to be a classical dancer and to access a school like ours we should be able to support them through that.” Many Elmhurst pupils receive Music and Dance Scheme grants through the Department of Education ensuring they can fund their place at the school. And Elmhurst is keen to promote young talent, regardless of the child’s background.
“There was a tradition that ballet was largely middle-class and white but that has been changing over the years,” says Robert, a former principal dancer with BRB. “However we are still not students seeing the number of diverse coming through the doors that we would like to see. When we bring students into the school, it’s based on their talent, regardless of academic ability, financial means and cultural background. We are looking for the potential for talent.”
And that talent is not just for dancing.
“As a school we not only want to produce tomorrow’s elite performers and dancers but also tomorrow’s industry leaders,” says Robert. “Choreography, and ensuring the students have a high level of creativity and autonomy in their work, is very important. It’s about preparing our students for what it’s like working in the industry.
“Jakob is a lovely dancer to watch – he has an incredible body movement, a very classical technique and really good musical response. And when he’s working on his choreography with the other students you can see he has a real affinity for it. He was an obvious choice to create student choreography for Synergy and he’s really embraced that opportunity.
“Jakob represents everything that we are trying to achieve with Elmhurst. We are taking students from a very young age, and maybe from a diverse background, who wouldn’t have had the normal career pathway into dance and providing them with this opportunity to shine. “We’re finding these gems and polishing them up to become wonderful dancers who enjoy the wonderful art form that is dance and are employable by companies around the world.
‘‘It’s really rewarding to nurture this next generation and we couldn’t be more proud of Jakob.”
Synergy can be seen at Elmhurst Ballet SChool on February 7 and 8. More information from www.elmhurstballetschool. org. For more about Birmingham Royal Ballet’s ‘Dance Track’ see www.brb.org.uk