What a Week 30/06/2002

What a week!

Monique Pellegrini Petit, one of the directors at the Central Academy of Ballet, tells Ramona Depares about the school’s upcoming production

Ever since I was a small child I’ve always been interested in dance. The funny thing is that I did not actually go for lessons before the age of thirteen. I still remember taking my first classes with kids who were so much younger than myself… It was really quite embarrassing at first. Luckily I worked my way up very fast. Soon I was dancing with the adults and by the time I was eighteen I had already decided that I wanted to take up dancing as a career.

Dancing is fundamentally fun. I have lovely memories of studying in England, learning contemporary and classic ballet there. Then I was awarded a scholarship by the French Embassy and off I went to the conservatoire in France to spend the summer studying there. As you can imagine, I had the time of my life.

After I came back to Malta I continued taking part in festivals, until I opened up my first school in 1988. Setting up a school for the first time is tremendously exciting, but also hard work. What a long way I’ve come since then! Today I’ve been running the Central Academy of Ballet for the past six years. And I’m very proud of the fact that we have some highly talented students attending our classes. It’s not the first time that our students have decided to further their talent abroad: Fiona Barthet, whom I used to teach, is a case in point. At the moment she is in England, experiencing the same things that I myself did when I was younger. She is also very interested in taking dance up professionally. Of course, we make it a point to offer our students the best teachers available: all the team at the Central Academy of Ballet possesses the best qualifications and we regularly have professional dancers and teachers visiting the school and rehearsing there. One of my best memories is when we hosted the Moscow Theatre Ballet and the International Summer School. The entourage was accompanied by three of the best dance professors in the world: Amanda Eyles, who is a ballet mistress at the English National Ballet, Henri O’Guike, who is resident teacher at the London Contemporary Dance Theatre Company and Isabelle Tamen, who is also part of the teaching faculty and the dance company at the same London school. By exposing our students to the best international dancers we are giving them the opportunity to learn and be inspired by these masters themselves.

Since the school opened we’ve already had two major productions, namely Beauty and The Beast in 1998 and The Little Mermaid in 2000. Both were a hit with the public, and I must say that the students enjoyed every minute of it. Whoever says that there is no talent in Malta is talking rubbish: on the contrary, the talent on this island is growing very quickly, too quickly perhaps. The major problem is that there is nowhere dancers can expand, there is no National Ballet Company that they can apply for. The scene remains stagnant and thus the only chance our talented dancers have of making it is to go abroad. Like I said, the talent is not missing. I’m particularly proud of the fact that we have two excellent leads for this year’s upcoming production and there were many other students who were also good for the part. Unfortunately, of course, you have to place a limit on the number of leads.

This year, Mireille Coleiro (who is also a director at the school) and myself decided to put up a ballet version of that ever-popular musical, My Fair Lady. One of the assistants suggested the title to us and we loved the idea: after all, My Fair Lady appeals to everyone young and old. Of course, putting up a show of this calibre is far from easy. Because the original musical is very well-known, we had to be extremely careful when to choose composers of the same era, as well as music to go with the story-line. The choreography aspect brought its own complications: to capture the beauty, the romance, the comedy and the artistic aspect of My Fair Lady in ballet is no easy task. Moreover we wanted to enable as many as possible of our youngest students to take part in the show, and this could only be achieved through the creation of a number of other characters, such as our lovable chocolates and the mischievous pigeons. Then we had to choose the fabrics and materials and this took us at least five months! But the most difficult aspect of the whole production was probably deciding on the venue. Theatres in Malta are just so expensive and to add insult to injury there aren’t that many to choose from. Perhaps having lower tariffs for local artists than those charged for foreign performers would help…Eventually we settled for the Mediterranean Conference Centre, which is nice and spacious and has all the facilities. But it’s so difficult to keep the costs down without compromising on the standards. Not that it is not worth it: this production will not be just dancing but offers a whole package to the audience. I always compare the stage to a painting: the performers, the scenery, the costumes, it’s a whole package. Thankfully the whole team believes in us and that makes a production so much easier!

What’s the most enjoyable thing when we’re putting up a production? It’s difficult to pin it down to one thing: doing the choreography was fun, getting all the little ones to help and offer little bits advise felt great too. It’s also a minor miracle that we got men to take part, it’s always difficult, but this year we have eight of the best Maltese male dancers. But probably the loveliest feeling of all was seeing everyone so relaxed. Normally performers get tense and irritable when the show is approaching but everyone’s been fantastic, touch wood. There are so many giggles backstage…

One of the best things about the Central Academy of Ballet’s team is the way that we all enjoy working with each other. Being part of a production is very hard work – we often rehearse until one o’clock in the morning – therefore some good humour is essential. As is the support and inspiration of people like peter Howitt, who is designing the set.

At the end of the day, dancers do not mind putting in long hours for a production. As the famous song from My Fair Lady goes, I Could’ve Danced All Night. In this case all of us can I’m sure.