Links of interest

Watching a beautiful dancer motivates me to improve and strive for the perfection that they have achieved within their work. I find it interesting to see what the human body can achieve in regards to dance if it is pushed to its limit. There are a handful of dancers that leave an impression on my mind long after the curtain has come down on the performance that I have watched. Elisha Willis is one such dancer. Willis is one of the leading principles at Birmingham Royal Ballet having danced with them for the last 6 years. Whilst her technique is of a superb standard (as would be expected of a principal) it is her performance quality that really excites me. She is able to convincingly portray a vast array of characters, from the sweet Belle in Bintley’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to the wicked Black Queen in Ninette de Valois ‘Checkmate’. Here is a link to her dancing the role of Roxanne in Bintley’s Cyrano, a role that he created on her:


She is one of the few dancers that are able to transport me from the Birmingham Hippodrome auditorium into the world that her character is from. I find that I am able to truly lose myself in her dancing. This motivates me to become a better dancer and to be able to capture just some of the performance quality that she has.

Without music there could be no dance! Music is a key motivational tool to me. I love all music from Pink to Rodgers and Hammerstein but nothing inspires me more than Classical Music. I have two favorite pieces that have motivated me throughout my training but for very different reasons.

The first is The Four Seasons, a set of four violin concertos, composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1723. I first heard the music when I was working with the National Youth Ballet in 2002. I was cast as one of the dancers in ‘Spring’ and instantly fell in love with the music. When I listen to it now I can still see the steps that Frank Freeman masterfully choreographed to rise and fall with the dynamics of the music, as well as the feeling of stepping out in front of a big audience for the first time and dancing those beautiful movements. That feeling of anticipation teamed with excitement can get me through most situations; I find it particularly useful when getting ready to start a 2 hour ballet class at 8.40am!



The second piece of music that never fails to excite me is ‘The Flower Duet’ from Lakmé composed by Léo Delibes and first performed in 1883. I have been singing since the age of 11 and my singing teacher and I were always looking for new and exciting pieces to push me. I first heard ‘the Flower duet’ on an advert for British Airways and fell in love with it.


I started working on it straight away but found that it was a song much harder to sing than it first appeared. This piece motivates me because it reminds me of a time when I had to fully immerse myself within a song. I ended up performing it with my singing teacher at the last concert that I did with her, and even today 5 years on when I listen to the piece, I can remember the feeling I had when I sung it of completely losing myself within the music.