Taking steps to learn about ballet and it’s not all prancing and pirouettes
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DO you tend to try and dodge the avalanche of advertising that comes your way every waking moment of the day?
Between radio, television, billboards, the internet, magazines and newspapers, we’re constantly bombarded by images and sound bites that try to influence our decisions — generally about how we spend our money.
It’s pretty hard to avoid, short of walking around blindfolded with your fingers jammed in your ears or becoming a Trappist monk. Even then there are no guarantees: those marketing maestros are pretty slick about reaching their target audience these days. Heck, round our place, it’s generally a toss-up whether the next phone call’s going to be from someone we actually know or just a chancer from a double glazing outfit informing us we’ve been drawn out of the hat for a home improvement voucher worth £5,000.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not sniffy about the concept at all. Some advertisements are, pure and simple, works of inspired genius and go on to become celebrated classics. Others are just there to let you know you can save a few bob on a new sofa. And if you’re in the market for soft furniture, that can be pretty useful information.
Certain key words tend to crop up quite a bit in this realm, don’t they? "New" is undoubtedly one of them. It has become so overused as to be almost meaningless. It was a word used rather less frequently in advertising that caught my eye at the weekend: "less".
It’s included in the strapline on the new Hula Hoop 7-packs. It’s the second thing you notice: after the fact that the packet seems a lot smaller than it used to be. As someone who has bought Hula Hoops on and off since the age of seven (and that wasn’t yesterday), it’s the sort of thing you spot in the blink of an eye.
And so that explanation in full: "30 per cent less packaging", it yells in red block capitals. And before you get any funny ideas about what that might mean for what’s packaged inside, it adds: "Same number of Hula Hoops!" I kid you not: take a look.
So while the item we’re buying into has not changed a jot, this is actually good news: another major player is heeding the growing public concern about the enormously wasteful (and very lucrative) packaging industry and wants to be seen to be doing something about it. There’s a few cereal manufacturers leaping to mind who could easily halve the size of their boxes at one fell swoop without reducing what’s inside. Less to carry home from the shops, less to get rid off or recycle. Sometimes less really is more.
AND that’s more or less what came to mind while watching Scottish Ballet’s young stars going through their paces at two very different sessions at Eden Court on Saturday. The company was in town for a four-day stint performing The Sleeping Beauty.
Ahead of what appeared to me to be a sell-out matinee performance, I checked out one of the venue’s insight programmes. The gist of these is to provide a bit of a scene-setter for the main event. You learn a little about the story, the performers, their costumes, the set and how it’s all put together to produce a show. Turns out there’s a fair bit of effort involved.
The highlight was a 15-minute glimpse of a warm-up session on stage, during which the ballet mistress (a job title of which I’d been blissfully unaware up until then) Maria Jiminez put the dancers through their paces. This was not glamorous: it looked like hard, repetitive work demanding intense concentration and stamina. Not all pirouettes and prancing at all. The dancers were dressed down in well-worn practice gear. One of them, Jamiel Laurence, was summoned to talk to the small gathering of enthusiasts (plus the odd random newbie like myself). We learned that it’s fairly routine for a dancer in a small company to have up to three parts in the same show (and to be asked to understudy another, just in case).
He looked so exhausted (and this with two marathon shows still to come), that I couldn’t help asking if there are ever days when he just can’t face it. He admitted that towards the end of a long tour, it can be pretty gruelling — particularly if you haven’t slept that well. Ironic really given the production he was talking about.
But as someone who has danced since the age of three, he clearly wouldn’t let much short of a broken leg prevent him from getting on the stage each day.
It was hard to reconcile the dazzling stage spectacular a couple of hours later with those pre-performance drills. The dancers were totally transformed by stunning costumes and make-up and threw themselves into the performance with the gusto of an opening night.
Not a sign of tired limbs or mental exhaustion anywhere. The packaging was awesome — and the content was none too shabby either.
