London Trip - Thurrock Workshop tour

The second day in London found us taking the train to Purfleet (only twenty minutes from Barking, where we were staying).  The High house production Park and costume centre is a purpose built space.

  The production centre has a metalworking, carpentry and enormous set painting area.  The costume building is a climate controlled building where costumes and wigs are designed, made and stored.  You can see a some really fantastic videos all about the Production Park below.

The tour took in a look into each of the main workshops as well as a walk around the costume department.

Cardboard Theatre (2)

The next phase of our theatre was to make the curtains, paint the backdrops and (the most fun!) decorate some characters.

 The curtains I mainly just fumbled together, I use a dowel to hang them and then just glued the braid on. I am no great stitcher!  They worked though, so I poke a hole in each side of the box and then hot glued the dowel (and curtains) in place.  They open and close nicely and the braid helps them hang.

For the backdrops I bought a large piece of very cheap plain fabric from Ikea.  The length I bought cost £1.20 and we have lots left.  We experimented in small swatches to see which things made the best colours and which effects we liked best.

 We tried wet fabric with watercolour paints, dry fabric with watercolour paints and watercolour oil crayons on both wet and dry fabric.  In all cases it is possible to blend the colours with a wet paintbrush.  We also waited until some pieces were dry and drew into them using gold and silver pens.  I tried using rock salt to draw up the colours and leave white spots, but it didn't work well.

Iona and granny started Painting a backdrop each.  Granny did a scene from Sleeping Beauty and Iona worked on a sunset over Swan Lake.

And finally (sort of!) no ballet is complete without some ballerinas.  I had bought some cardboard cut outs of people to save us trying to cut out our our dancers when all Iona really wanted to do was decorate them.  Good call.  We pulled out ribbons, sticky paper, pipe cleaners and paint and had at it.  Iona made Clara and Spanish hot chocolate from The Nutcracker.  I made a generic prince to be used whenever we need one.

The Finished Theatre

London trip - Royal Opera House tour

This topic gave us the chance to spread our wings a little.   We decided on a quick trip to London to tour the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

 On our way through Covent garden we found many dance shops, where we peeked in windows at pretty, satin pointe shoes.  As well as admiring shoes we found the statue by Enzo Plazzotta called The Young Dancer.

The Royal Opera House is very grand, but currently the front is covered in swathes of plastic sheeting and fenced off as they are doing a huge building project to open the space up to the public.  We did admire the flags flying though and the grand staircase, built to accommodate ladies wearing extremely full dresses.

We took the Backstage Tour and our guide was really excellent.  There is no photography allowed on the tour, but we will remember it very well.  We started in the auditorium, where we heard a brief history of the site (there have been three theatres built here, the first two burned down) and watched as the stage was reset from morning rehearsals to being ready for an evening performance.  The stage is rarely left empty as so many people need to use the space, checking sets and props, practice for both ballet and opera and so on.

 We moved on upstairs and were treated to a view of dancers rehearsing in a purpose built studio.  They were preparing for the production Woolf Works by Wayne McGregor.  At this point we also watched some videos about how pointe shoes are produced and the logistics of bringing sets from Purfleet to Covent Garden.

 we had a brief stop in the costume workshop, where regular maintenance is performed on costumes and the principles have their fittings.  We spotted one of the mouse masks from The Nutcracker!

 All too soon our visit was over, but we will be sure to be back next year to enjoy the new public space downstairs.

Swan Lake, Live from the Bolshoi Ballet

 Our next trip out was to Cineworld cinema in Edinburgh.  As part of the Pathe Live Experience 2016/17 series they were showing Swan Lake.

 The screening came live from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, which was very exciting.  We could see the crowds waiting for the performance to start, the beautiful gilded carvings and also got some peeks backstage.  It is well worth going to the google page here to get a 360 degree view of the auditorium.

 As well as the ballet there was a presenter who gave us some extra information about the performance, who the principal dancers were and the history of Swan Lake.

 I think seeing the ballet screened in the cinema worked really well.  Of course it's not the same as a trip to the theatre, but you do get an extra good view of the stage and close ups of the dancers and costumes.

 Iona enjoyed seeing Odile and Odette, remembering they were danced by the same ballerina.  The music was wonderful and we all enjoyed listening to the crowd in the theatre who clapped, whistled and stamped in a very enthusiastic way!

 You can see a clip from the ballet here.

Cardboard Theatre (1)

This is turning out to be one of our more ambitious art projects! A lot of fun though.

We decided to build our own theatre out of a box, so that Iona could use puppets to tell the ballet stories (and make up her one) and paint bits of scenery and backdrops.

 I started with a large cardboard box, measure the space for our stage and cut it out.  Then I cut separate pieces to make a decorated front for the stage.

 I drew a lion and unicorn (as suggested by Iona) for our top and used string and cardboard to make details (I love pva glue!!) While I measured and cut, Iona kept me company and worked on a collage/drawing of the three Fossils from Ballet Shoes.  Granny has been reading us a chapter each day while we eat breakfast or work on other projects.

 Once the pieces were stuck together I used paper towel and pva glue to get a smooth surface (so paint the pieces with glue and then dab on paper towel and glue again over the top).

 More time for drying and then a top layer of gold tissue paper, because honestly, can you have too much gold? in a theatre? no.

We are going to make some curtains and cut slits in the sides to operate our puppets through.  Iona is going to paint backdrops using acrylic paints and old sheets.

National Gallery of Scotland

 On the first day of our ballet topic (after setting our learning intentions) we set out to Edinburgh to visit the National Galleries of Scotland.  We wanted to look at the two Degas pictures currently on display and maybe do a little drawing too.

 The pictures are A Group of Dancers and Before the Performance.  Iona really enjoyed looking at them and talking about them.  After having a look around she settled down to some drawing.

 Afterwards we popped into the shop for a couple of postcards and headed for home.  While we drove we listened to the Barefoot book of ballet stories on cd.