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• Alejandro Muñoz
• Francisco Serrano
• Gemma Bond
• Harris Bell
• Joshua Junker
• Kevin O'Hare
• Layla Hotham
• Petal Ashmole
• Pietro Zironi
• Sae Maeda
• Stuart Cassidy

Gemma Bond

Choreographer & former First Artist, The Royal Ballet

Interviewed by David Bain
American International Church, Mon 19th Feb, 2024

 

David welcomed Gemma who began by telling us about the piece she has created for the Royal Ballet’s Festival of New Choreography. Gemma said it was a commission from Kevin O’Hare who’d been watching her work in the USA. She kept asking to workshop with the Royal, but he suggested she came and made something as part of the Festival. She sent a selection of music, chose a concerto for two pianos, and then started to think of a concept to match. While listening to the score she picked her daughter up from her Brooklyn school playground where the children were running around and bumping into each other and thought how well the movement fitted the music which was full of energy and wondered how she could tie that in with her idea for a ballet.  She wanted Charlotte MacMillan to design the costumes for a tutu ballet while looking at breaking the boundaries of the tutu so the men could get closer to the women rather than in the traditional pas de deux when the man is further away from the woman and there’s little contact or intimacy. They began a conversation about boundaries in ballet and those we put on ourselves. Then watching her daughter and friends with their freedom and open minds she realised they had no boundaries so maybe she could explore that in the piece.  It was a real journey, and the stage was her playground. As soon as dancers put on pointe shoes, they tend to become rigid and she wanted a neo-classical contemporary feel to the movement but with a pointe shoe.

Gemma had been at White Lodge and the Upper School and when she first started choreographing she was very drawn to contemporary movement which she found very exciting and particularly loved the aesthetics of Netherlands Dance Theatre. Her first few ballets she would try to make that way. They always started in a sock or barefoot but somehow it would look wrong and just before the performance she’d get the dancers back into pointe shoes. There were conversations with Charlotte and the composer Joey Roukens whose piece In Unison was 30 minutes long. There were originally to be five works on the programme and Kevin had put a limit of 20 minutes on each piece. She spoke to Koen Kessels who contacted Joey and he agreed to adapt it so for the pas de deux they have four and a half minutes of the slow second movement which is normally ten minutes long. They began with the idea of tutu and thinking of a piano being black and white though the piece being busy so how to make it not too crazy for the audience and a bit more mature for the Royal dancers. They wanted to show off their sophistication in the costumes while keeping it playful, so the tutus are very short with little circular petals. The Opera House stage is very large, and everyone was restricted to 12 dancers though Joshua Junker has more for half of his ballet. She was concerned about filling the space and creating atmosphere without a set especially with tutus and pointe shoes. They used gauzes to partition off the stage to show its size, it starts with them trapped between two gauzes, they come up and for the pas de deux it’s back down so they use half the stage, and they can only move side to side and they can’t use the depth which was a challenge. For the last movement everything is out so you can really see the full space.

How to choose dancers? Kevin knows the choreographers’ individual styles so was excellent in separating the company into five groups. She workshopped with the 30 dancers he’d put aside for her and chose the ones who responded well to what she was doing. Workshopping is the way Gemma works and especially for an abstract ballet she comes up with a mind map so for this she had Playground. It’s going to be abstract and a classical work but asked how to show a childlike movement in a playground. Then she’ll take 200 words, ranging from crocodile to bird to snack to bubble, everything she sees in the playground, to drawing and creative and where do they go when they are creative. An idea takes over like a light bulb moment. She gives each dancer 10 random words and asks them to create a movement for them. Then she shows them a phrase of movement she has created, with no port de bras, just legs and musicality to show how she’s moving but her arms remain at the side. They add the arms and intention from the words so it can be very random. After that, there are phrases of movement and then it’s put to music, and she counts it out and shapes it.  The intention and emotion come last.  At the rehearsal how much do you know what you are going to do? How much is developed with the dancers?  She generally has the concept figured out, and she then splits the music into sections, the middle will be the most tender, very quiet pas de deux and on either side a group dance and then a solo. Initially she doesn’t know who will do each part, so she tries to begin with the moment where everyone is dancing. In Boundless she began with the big section which is very alive with everyone dancing the ‘TikTok dance’ which is just them having a tantrum. From that she sees how people move, who will do the variation, who is sharp and energetic. The opening for this piece and all of Yasmine’s stuff she created on herself, then taught Yasmine who put her spin on it. It was such a pleasure to work with her. Yasmine instantly understood what Gemma wanted and it looks stunning. Ryoichi Hirano was the only person she knew from her time in the Royal Ballet, and he was then in the corps. She didn’t know what to expect and was really struck by how he is very powerful but very tender and his partnering is flawless. Initially in the creation of the pas de deux she would think something wouldn’t be possible but would throw it at him and he just did it. He has such control. She thought the pas de deux would be more intricate but when she realised how much control he has, she was able to strip it down and the movements are seamless.

When Gemma came over first in November the work had no title. Kenneth MacMillan had already made a ballet called Playground and as Charlotte was doing the costumes she wanted a different title. Boundless came about because of boundaries and escape and freedom and it seemed right. Initially she got over-excited by the talent and created a lot of movement. Stan Wegrzyn and James Large had a lot more originally. She fell in love with the dancers who are so individual as personalities, and it was hard to edit and have to say she was removing things from them. Having the break was good for her, not being with the dancers and getting emotional about her relationship with them. Meanwhile Samantha Raine, the rehearsal director, carried on with timing and phrasing. There’s a really hard part they called Meerkat, which is so fast it’s hard to get it together, but Sam is excellent at doing just that. Gemma would WhatsApp her to keep in touch with what she wanted. She doesn’t like reaching the end point and likes to make changes, rarely believing a work is done. Just occasionally she’s happy with the end product. Asked why she continues, Gemma explained she falls in love with the music which gives her something powerful and she wants to match it and wants everyone to feel the same. If she achieves that it’s magic. If she hasn’t quite got it, she keeps working on it. Boundless was five weeks in the creation but there are moments in it when she thinks with one more week she would have moved someone or kept trying till it was exactly right. If it’s re-staged there are moments that she will change. Despite this, Gemma was really happy with the first night reception. She finds it tricky as she believes unless people really love ballet, it’s a hard sell these days. Ballet doesn’t have the ‘West End pull’ that other forms of dance have. If there’s a tap dance before or after her piece, it’s a nightmare for her! In the US if there is a music number it brings the house down but Two Pigeons pas de deux doesn’t have the same kick. She sat behind Wayne McGregor and said I don’t know why I do this as it is horrible. He said he never watches his work from the front to see it through other people’s eyes. She did get really nice feedback but hardly took it in. She’s more concerned if the dancers are OK as it’s very much about them and goes backstage when the curtain goes down so she doesn’t hear the ovation. Jill (audience member) commented that it was a lovely work, and she didn’t think about it not filling the stage. The costumes, particularly tutus, were beautiful. Gemma said there’s something so urban about the playground, it’s a hard environment, and the children have endless imagination, talking about being crocodiles and snow monsters or pretending to offer refreshments from their cafe. One minute they’re happy, the next in tears. There are tantrums when they don’t want to leave even though they know they’re returning tomorrow. She films every rehearsal but normally does it out of order. Every day she puts it into an editing programme where it’s meant to be placed so by the end of the second week, she has a rough idea of the layout and structure. Asked if she changed other things, Gemma said she changed the gauzes as the original three she thought looked too busy, there was to be a two-man pas de deux and that came out because she felt the piece didn’t have a focus. The dances are intentionally short, and it moves along very quickly. She needed just one couple to ground the work and who were more mature, and the other couple distracted from that so it was just Yasmine and Ryo. One member said she’d been at the Insight evening and noticed Gemma was barefoot. Gemma replied that she no longer owns a pair of ballet shoes and if she wears socks it turns into a more contemporary movement as you can slide and move in a different way.

Gemma is now working at the Royal Ballet School. Last year Chris Powney had asked her to create a piece. They are doing Paquita which involves all the women and he wanted something a bit more classical for the men to show them off, Today was her first day with them. So far, they’ve created three minutes of a ten minute piece with three movements, so they’re off to a good start. It will be hard to choose the cast because there are 40 men altogether and they only need 20 but they will be taken from all three years of the school and not split into years, so every level is dancing together. There’s a character feel to the piece with a Hungarian dance and a lot of stylistic character moves in the ballet. She’s not yet decided on the music and has three pieces to choose from. Tomorrow there’ll be a different piece from today. With contemporary work the music is often not in place initially. She puts on the recordings to see which the dancers respond to but probably by Wednesday she’ll know which piece of music they’ll use. After this week Gemma is coming back for two weeks in May.

Gemma’s work for the Uruguay National Ballet, she considers her most successful piece. She felt so relaxed watching it and was really happy with the way everything came together. It was 25 minutes long to Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons. She was very happy with the costumes and dancers and got on so well with the ballet mistress. When Gemma moved to ABT she danced with Maria Riccetto who is now the director in Uruguay. She’d started choreographing when Maria was leaving the company, but suggested Gemma sent her something. Maria had asked her for a piece before Covid but finally it happened last summer. Now she’s going back to make a full-length narrative (her first) for them and they are hoping to get the rights to Amadeus (the original play).

Gemma has also worked with Sarasota Ballet on three occasions. She prefers to have a personal relationship with someone who asks for a work. Originally a friend of a friend said Iain Webb was looking to find something new in ballet. Iain sent her a random email asking for a work and she was invited to make what is Excursionswhich might be brought back next year. It has 20 dancers, Laura Starobin did the costumes, which are very bright, and Gemma was very driven by the music to create probably her most modern piece, not contemporary but more in the Cunningham style. Then she made a Maria Callas Variation for their gala and another piece this year called Panoramic Score. Sarasota started as a boutique company but is now championing and performing Ashton’s smaller ballets which aren’t being done anywhere else, so she’s seen things of Ashton she’s not seen before. They’re lucky to have the priceless Maggie Barbieri there. It’s easy to choreograph on the company because their transitions are Ashton which is in Gemma’s training so is naturally in her choreography. In the US the training is generally more Russian in style (here she gave a demonstration of some of the differences) so it takes a lot more thought and coordination and time for the dancers to pick up. She’s also worked with Washington Ballet, Atlanta and ABT Studio company amongst others. She does a lot of festivals, sometimes at City Center where she creates the work and hires the dancers, auditioning from companies such as City Ballet, ABT, Martha Graham, and they create the work in their own time. It was the same when she had a season at the Joyce. In the US dancers are normally only contracted for 32 weeks a year so they must find work elsewhere. A lot are in school during that period, looking to the future.

Gemma started choreographing in ABT with the equivalent of Draft Works and loved it so then did it every year. In the second year Kevin Mackenzie asked if she would make a pas de deux for the Eric Bruhn competition. Liam Scarlett also did something that year involving Frankie Hayward and James Hay. There were people from National Ballet of Canada, ABT, DNB as well as the Royal. Neither she nor Liam won but they giggled because Liam got three commissions out of it whereas the winner got none!

Talking of her experience in Cuba, Gemma said it was a very different situation. The amount of talent is incredible, and their circumstances are tough. They must take two busses to work at crack of dawn and work all day until they are bussed home. It’s admirable. She knew there would be the talent, but she didn’t expect the growth they achieved. Her work was very different from what they were used to and wondered if she was imposing too much and if should she pull back and respect what they knew but kept pushing. She couldn’t stop crying on opening night. Linnet,the woman who had held her hand through the whole process, translated for her, was in the studio every day, and whose family she lived with during her time there, told the dancers ‘I think she’s happy’! She was taken aback by the effort they’d put in. Never had she felt such a leap from the first day to the end result, so it was very powerful. Her choice of music was quite heavy (Bach’s St Matthew Passion). Gemma isn’t religious and went through the whole work, taking away mention of Jesus. She had 24 singers, four soloists, and a full orchestra which was a huge undertaking. The piece lasts 25 minutes and she chose passages of words that inspired hope. It was her first piece after the pandemic and she had a reaction to the music and, going through it, used the words and turned it into something else.  The audition process in Cuba was very strange. Auditions are free. Normally when you go to a company it is mandatory for the dancers to audition whereas there, they said Gemma is making a ballet, if you’d like to be in it you can come to the auditions so everyone in the room wanted to be involved. She became overwhelmed with the numbers and cut the cast to ten after three weeks. After a few months break away, she also changed three songs because the way the dancers moved and responded to the music was very literal. When she went back, a lot of the dancers had disappeared having left the company, including one of the leading men, but it worked out well in the end. She recently watched a recording. People would say they were showing a recording of her ballet, and she didn’t watch – didn’t she care? She feels sick of herself, and it seems a bit of an indulgence to watch your own creation. She attends the theatre a lot to see others but doesn’t watch her own work. This time she did watch as another company wanted to see it and was quite touched by it. There was a solo for a dancer who was very special but unfortunately, she’d lost him by the time they redid the ballet for the Festival at the end of October, six months after the premiere.

Asked when she began choreographing, Gemma said it was at White Lodge where she came third in the Kenneth MacMillan competition. At the time she was focussing on being a dancer and it was just an exercise at school which was fun, but she didn’t pursue it. Even when she was in the company there was Draft Works, but it didn’t click that she could create something. Sometimes dancers would ask her to be in their piece but choreography didn’t grab her. When she moved to New York, she didn’t know anybody and the schedule at ABT is very different. The season is in blocks, you rehearse for five weeks, have Sunday and Monday and all evenings off, then two weeks of intense shows and three weeks off with nothing to do. There was a year long course to encourage women in choreography and she thought she’d try as she always loved being with choreographers in the studio. The process of being in the room and thinking what to do next, how to make a pattern, was all important. She thought she’d hone these skills and would then have more to offer in the studio. Initially there were 20 women, after six weeks there were five and latterly only three remained, Misty Copeland and Xiomara Reyes. The course was cancelled after only one year as the men complained! Stephen Pier, who was working at Julliard, brought in guest teachers to teach how to read a score, the musical structure, they studied Twyla Tharp and William Forsyth, the craftsmanship of a piece, why things work and why not, watching videos and dissecting pieces which was so interesting. David Hallberg started something like Draft Works for ABT and they auditioned for that by showing two minutes of material and talking about the concept and recorded it on video. There was a panel of Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Kevin Mackenzie, Victor Barbie, Judith Jenson and Stephen Pier and they selected five people. In an interview for a website, she quoted David Hallberg who said this is how you create dance. You’re not reinventing the wheel. Respect what has come before and keep it alive. This is Gemma’s own take. She doesn’t think of making something very different. She has a way of moving which makes it a bit different, but she doesn’t want to go to new places. For her earliest pieces she would hear music which reminded her of a particular dance, but she would then do it moving her own way. Her family came for the Boundless opening night, afterwards her sister and mum were laughing and saying it was, so Gemma and she did this all the time. As a young dancer in the Royal Ballet, she always watched other dancers. It was a reason she wanted to move to the US. They’d been on tour there and they went to the theatre and the same here in London. Most dancers like to relax rather than go to see other dancers and dance forms. Her greatest find was Pam Tanowitz who she’d been told was very much in the Merce Cunningham style.

Why the USA? Gemma said she really loved the Royal Ballet and enjoyed her time there but knew her limits as a dancer and knew she wouldn’t go further than Stephanie, Clara, Olga or fairies. She was never in Wayne MacGregor’s works and thought he would be the next resident choreographer and she wouldn’t fit. Also, would there be other people coming in and how would it be for her? She had a very close relationship with Monica Mason so discussed it with her and she said you’re right, go off for a year and come back if you want to. She really wanted New York City Ballet as they had lots of new work, but they were auditioning for soloists or above as their corps comes from the school and she lacked the confidence to aim that high, so said no. She auditioned for ABT and got a place, and at Boston.

Answering a question, Gemma said creating pas de deux is more natural, but she probably prefers creating on a group. She loves working with students who don’t know what they are doing, she comes out with something she is really proud of as she has to push and struggle to get there. Large groups can become hectic and are more of a challenge, so she gets more out of it when it works.

It’s a challenge when she auditions from different companies who have different styles and it’s more difficult with the women. The men are always in a flat shoe, but women differ on how they get on pointe. New York City dancers are so springy, rarely putting their heels down, but have an amazing, lively quality. ABT are very placed and more classical and use the shoe in a different way. The way a woman is partnered is also different. Gemma doesn’t go into the coaching part until the whole thing is finished, and then does the tweaking.

David gave big thanks to Gemma for being our guest saying it shows in her choreography that she has watched other dancers and shows in the theatre. He was privileged to watch her over many weeks in Cuba which was a fascinating experience. It was a delight to hear from her here this evening.

Report written by Liz Bouttell and edited by Gemma Bond and David Bain.

© The Ballet Association 2024