Sleeping Beauty with the Russian State Ballet
What a remarkable experience staging the classical ballet 'Sleeping Beauty' in collaboration with the Russian State Ballet!
Forty-one of our young dancers aged 9-17 took to the stage in the production which gave them the opportunity to dance alongside professional principal dancers from the Russian company in a fully costumed classical ballet. The performance was part of the 'Ballet without Borders' project which staged 4 unique productions across Scotland.
Our dancers trained with CSBS teacher Amanda over the course of 7 rehearsals, learning the Russian choreography from video clips sent by Maestro Akhundov. CSBS teacher Sammy also worked with the Advanced students to learn their challenging choreography in class time. You can view some photos from the rehearsals on our CSBS Facebook page.
As well as dancing the corps de ballet choreography, our students performed principal roles in the production including the five colured fairies. Huge congratulations to Jenna Callaghan, Sarah Leslie, Adela Mayers, Laura McTeague, and Katy Russell on quite outstanding performances! Other principal roles included the fairytale characters in Act 2 with Lucy Guthrie and Sarah Firth dancing 'Puss in Boots' and the 'White Cat', and Anna Bremner and Laura McTeague dancing 'Red Riding Hood' and the 'Big Bad Wolf'.
Russian Ballet masterclass
Another exciting part of the experience was the cast being given a Russian Ballet masterclass by Russian choreographer and ballet master, Maestro Vitaly Akhundov, alongside the Russian ballet dancers. It was very challenging but great fun... especially as the Maestro speaks almost no English! We then had one rehearsal with the Russian principals to prepare for the performance. Please view the gallery of photos from our masterclass and rehearsal to see how hard everyone was working!
Sponsorship for costumes
We were delighted to receive a generous sponsorship from Muirhall Energy Ltd toward five professional tutus for our five 'fairies'. The tutus were made especially for them by a specialist manufacturer in China and were quite exquisite. It was a wonderful experience for them to be able to wear a professional costume, and the tutus will be lighting up our stage for many years to come!
We also need to give many thanks to the technical team at Carnegie Hall for their help and support in the theatre; Vitaly Mirinov from the Moscow Caledonian Society for organising the project; Julie at Dance Costumes for Hire for two lovely sets of tutus.
You can view photos from the dress rehearsal and performance on our Facebook page to get a glimpse of how spectacular the production looked on stage:
To access a full gallery of photos from the dress rehearsal, please visit the gallery on Leask Photography website using our CSBS password.