Putting our Billy back into ballet
Friends!
It saddens me to report that British ballet remains becalmed in the doldrums - rudderless, bereft and a tinsy bit sad.
I realised this after getting only 8 'likes' on my nascent Facebook page. Though I did receive 1 'Brilliant' - a review I've placed alongside my acclaimed performance as 'Charleys Aunt' in an otherwise 'run of the mill' * production at Leatherhead Rep. (*The Stage 1985)
Friends!
It saddens me to report that British ballet remains becalmed in the doldrums - rudderless, bereft and a tinsy bit sad.
I realised this after getting only 8 'likes' on my nascent Facebook page. Though I did receive 1 'Brilliant' - a review I've placed alongside my acclaimed performance as 'Charleys Aunt' in an otherwise 'run of the mill' * production at Leatherhead Rep. (*The Stage 1985)
Do the great British public not care? Is British Ballet too elite?
No! It's simply not enough Elliot! Billy Elliot!!!
I spoke to The Moose, my agent, via Skype, today about the terminal situation of dance in this country. And by that I include all forms of dance. How can this land be a bastion for devolping new Njinskys in a world that worships Widdercombe? There can be no chance for the next Wayne Sleep to grow (sorry Wayne!) in a field sown with Seargents and Savages.
So I said to The Moose, "Only I , like Vinnie Jones in that advert, can resuscitate the leaden corpse of The Royal Ballet Corp.
I will bury the hatchet with Sir Elton John and his husband, David and perform at his Classical Selection evening on stage at London's Covent Garden in August.
The Moose was rather muted in reply and then informed me, in a rather high falutin' manner as far as I was concerned, that, perhaps, it was not so much the demise of British ballet which was the cause of the singular response to my Facebook blog but, perhaps, it was the fact that my own 'comet' had waned.
I hung up and percolated.
I immediately conducted a straw poll of the 'Young At Heart' onboard our SAGA Mediterranean cruise, where I perform nightly as its 'Premier Entertainment Host'.
If I'm frank, many of them struggled to recall my epiphanic journey from pit slum to Prima Ballerina. But, in my defence, they are not a typical cross section of society as many of them are doubly incontinent and would struggle to recall what they had for lunch today.
But to my very core, I knew that the great British public may have forgotten my heart warming, life affirming tale on which a near Oscar winning film and long running musical (still in London's West End) is based.
I want to make clear at this juncture that although my dark nemisis, Sir Elton John and his husband David have, laid claim to my very being and soul others strode before them. Lee Hall, Stephen Daldry and Elton/David were not the first 'creative talents' that had wanted to capture my amazing story through an alternative artistic medium.
In the late 1970's a well repected/avant garde troop approached me to put my trials, tribulations and triumphants into a startling new musical format.
New wave composers Mitch Murray and Peter Callender were given the arduous task to 'mine' (pun intended) my life and express it through chords and words only.
Ingeniously, Mitch and Peter came up with the idea of juxtaposing and contrasting the internecine American Civil war; a burgeoning nation's apocalyptic, genocidal, cataclysmal conflict where families were torn apart: young men blasted and bayonetted to death, wives widowed, children orphaned, a mewling country cleft in twain and Hell's furious portals unlocked and issuing an infernal tornado that scythed across a Confederate landscape creating in its path havoc, ruin and despair....with me getting on a bus and going to London for my ballet dancing.
Friends!
I give you the genius of Murray and Callender.
Please click below for:
Billy Don't Be A Hero by Paper Lace
If you have any questions to ask me about my life since the film please contact me through the blog.
Please No Trolls!
Together we can save British balllet
Love One Another
Billy x
I will bury the hatchet with Sir Elton John and his husband, David and perform at his Classical Selection evening on stage at London's Covent Garden in August.
The Moose was rather muted in reply and then informed me, in a rather high falutin' manner as far as I was concerned, that, perhaps, it was not so much the demise of British ballet which was the cause of the singular response to my Facebook blog but, perhaps, it was the fact that my own 'comet' had waned.
I hung up and percolated.
I immediately conducted a straw poll of the 'Young At Heart' onboard our SAGA Mediterranean cruise, where I perform nightly as its 'Premier Entertainment Host'.
If I'm frank, many of them struggled to recall my epiphanic journey from pit slum to Prima Ballerina. But, in my defence, they are not a typical cross section of society as many of them are doubly incontinent and would struggle to recall what they had for lunch today.
But to my very core, I knew that the great British public may have forgotten my heart warming, life affirming tale on which a near Oscar winning film and long running musical (still in London's West End) is based.
I want to make clear at this juncture that although my dark nemisis, Sir Elton John and his husband David have, laid claim to my very being and soul others strode before them. Lee Hall, Stephen Daldry and Elton/David were not the first 'creative talents' that had wanted to capture my amazing story through an alternative artistic medium.
In the late 1970's a well repected/avant garde troop approached me to put my trials, tribulations and triumphants into a startling new musical format.
New wave composers Mitch Murray and Peter Callender were given the arduous task to 'mine' (pun intended) my life and express it through chords and words only.
Ingeniously, Mitch and Peter came up with the idea of juxtaposing and contrasting the internecine American Civil war; a burgeoning nation's apocalyptic, genocidal, cataclysmal conflict where families were torn apart: young men blasted and bayonetted to death, wives widowed, children orphaned, a mewling country cleft in twain and Hell's furious portals unlocked and issuing an infernal tornado that scythed across a Confederate landscape creating in its path havoc, ruin and despair....with me getting on a bus and going to London for my ballet dancing.
Friends!
I give you the genius of Murray and Callender.
Please click below for:
Billy Don't Be A Hero by Paper Lace
If you have any questions to ask me about my life since the film please contact me through the blog.
Please No Trolls!
Together we can save British balllet
Love One Another
Billy x
