The Jasmin Vardimon Company at the Sadlers Wells Theatre - Dance Saturday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
As many of you already know, recently I joined the Cambridge Youth Dance Senior Company and I have now been taking classes with the group every Tuesday evenings since I joined in September. So far, everything is going well. We are set to perform at the Energise Dance Festival on the 4th of February next year so we have all worked together to come up with choreography for a 4 minute piece that we are creating for the show.
However, during the October half term, we also went to see the production Alice, performed by the professional dancers from the Jasmin Vardimon Company at the Sadlers Wells Theatre in London. The performance was spectacular and much of our inspiration for our own 4 minute routine, came from what we saw at the Sadlers Wells Theatre. The production was loosely based on the classic Alice in the Wonderland tale and the show combined props, costuming, and innovative choreography to tell a story of Alice coming of age, alongside her crazy adventures in Wonderland.
To get to the theatre, we all travelled together as a group by train from the Cambridge Train Station in the centre of town. At first, I found it a little bit stressful to get to the station because my bus into town to get there, ended up being slightly late. However, once I arrived at the station and I found the rest of the group waiting by the ticket area, the rest of the journey was quite plain sailing. We all gathered together on the platform and took the train at 5:15pm. I read a bit more of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and I listened to a few more episodes of The Diary of A CEO podcast, until we arrived at the London St. Pancras station at 6:15pm. From there, we met up with our dance teacher Kate, who guided us to the underground where we took the Angel Line to the theatre. We arrived slightly early, at 7pm, to ensure we were there on time so there was a short waiting period before the performance actually started. In that time I bought myself some chocolates and a bottle of water, which I took into the theatre with me to have whilst I watched the show which began at 7:30pm.
The dancing was phenomenal, a real feat of athleticism and pure artistry. Throughout the show, they had these white curtains, hanging from the ceiling that would rotate on a circular panel. These curtains represented the pages of a book and at the beginning of each chapter they would turn to show the audience that they would be moving onto the next chapter of the story. In the beginning and at the very end, they had Alice stand behind one of these curtains and they shone a spotlight on her, which created this really cool cartoon outline of her body on the curtain. It was these sorts of effects that brought the whole story to life, as well as the amazing dancing of course. There was this one part of the routine where everyone was dressed up as Alice and they all performed this country-style dance using canon and unison. In a way, it was quite stressful to watch because you just thought that if one person got the timing wrong, it would all fall apart. But of course, it was well executed and the illusion it created was amazing to watch. In another part of the show, Humpty Dumpty entered the stage and started to do the worm but instead of doing it on his front, like you would usually execute the movement, he did it on his back, creating this fantastic ripple affect throughout his body. We all wondered at the end, how this dancer was able to execute such a challenging movement with such ease and finesse! And of course, we cannot forget about Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Although the Jasmin Vardimon Company is a contemporary dance company and this production was a contemporary show, these two dancers playing Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, started to perform this really upbeat and energetic hip-hop section in the middle of the show, that was also pretty impressive to watch. They were doing these jumps over each other and doing everything in unison, it also added quite a cool segment to the entire piece. Overall, I think everyone at CYDC enjoyed watching the Alice production by the Jasmin Vardimon Company. I would highly recommend going to watch any shows the company does in the future.
After the show, we walked back to the London underground and made our way back to London St. Pancras. We then borded the 9:40pm train back to Cambridge. I had my dinner on the train, which was a sandwich I had made earlier which had egg and bacon in it. It was very delicious! When everyone left the train at the Cambridge Train Station, I stayed on until I got to Cambridge North where I met my dad, who had come to pick me up. I told him all about my evening trip to London on the way back home!
Overall, it was great to go into London again. I found that it was such an easy journey to make and yet, I don't visit the city often enough! In the future, I hope to make more trips to London, maybe with my sister too. On the 6th of February next year, after our performance at Energise, I hope to take the Eurostar from London St. Pancras to Brussels with my sister, to go and visit Teresa at university. I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun and this small trip was definitely a good practice for that!
Stay tuned to see how that goes...
Have you ever watched any performances in London? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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