Photo credit: Northern Ballet
Joseph Taylor In Conversation with Christopher Marney
July 10, 2024
The evening’s In Conversation was with dancer Joseph Taylor. Born in Lincolnshire, Joseph trained locally in Skegness and then at Elmhurst Ballet School. Upon graduation he joined Northern Ballet as an apprentice, remaining with the company for some twelve years and being promoted to Premier Dancer in 2022. The company excels at narrative ballet and Chair of the London Ballet Circle, Susan Dalgetty Ezra spoke of the quality of Joseph’s work. He is now joining London City Ballet, an old-established company being resurrected by this evening’s interviewer, Christopher Marney. Susan warmly welcomed them both.
Christopher started the conversation by exploring Joseph’s introduction to the world of dance. He replied that really he had little idea how he got to here. He was just an ‘average Joe’ from Skegness, in Lincolnshire. Over the summer months his parents would be extremely busy and he would often be looked after by his aunt who lived next door. She had a daughter, nearly ten years older than Joseph, who went to classes at the local theatre and dance school run by Janice Sutton. He was inquisitive about the nature of these classes, but extremely shy.
Eventually – at maybe 6 or 7 – he plucked up the courage to go and see what the classes were all about. He liked what he saw and joined the school, where his confidence gradually built. Nevertheless, he still felt insecure and would sometimes miss the weekly class. He was clearly displaying some talent, because after a couple of years his teachers suggested he apply to join the Royal Ballet School’s Associate Programme, which he did. This involved monthly classes in Manchester, not an easy journey.
At the age of 11 he auditioned for and was accepted into the Royal Ballet School itself. What a different environment White Lodge was for a shy boy from Lincolnshire! He went home for the first weekend of the term after which his parents had the most difficult job trying to persuade him to go back – apparently having to lock him into the car…. However, the second week definitely proved too much and he went home not to return, even though Gailene Stock, Artistic Director at the time, called his parents a number of times to invite him back. He realised that he was too young to know what he wanted to do, and leaving his family and small-town Skegness at such an age was just too much for him.
Even after his difficult two-week experience at White Lodge Joseph retained his interest in dance, remaining a student at the Janice Sutton school and also a member of the Royal Ballet School’s Associate Programme. By the time he was 13 this involved commitment to travel to the Upper School in Covent Garden every Saturday and as a teenager he admits that he did not always do this willingly. That he kept at it, he believes, is very much down to his parents’ attitude. Thus it was that at the age of 16 he once again auditioned for ballet schools, and was accepted by Elmhurst Ballet School, which is associated with the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Fortunately it felt quite different from the way it had been at White Lodge, and he approached the training with enthusiasm; nevertheless, he was still not entirely sure that he wanted to dance as a career. He also found that he had a tremendous amount of catching up to do, as his peers already had some years of full-time training behind them. Up to that point Joseph had taken part in nothing more than weekly classes.
You are known for your acting ability; for the characterisation you give to a role, said Christopher. Did this develop during your time at Elmhurst? Or had it been there from the time you started to dance? That was an element developed by Northern Ballet, replied Joseph, who then went on to tell how he had become a member of that company. During his graduation year he still felt that he was not good enough to aspire to a job with a British company. Accordingly he sought auditions with various overseas companies, such as in Germany, Estonia, Spain, as well as on cruise ships. He was well aware that the competition for jobs was immense.
One day, however, David Nixon, then Artistic Director of Northern Ballet, came to observe daily class, ostensibly to assess the performance of one of the other dancers. At the end of the day he invited Joseph to Leeds to audition in a professional class with Northern Ballet, at their base in Quarry Hill. He jumped at the chance and went to Leeds, where David Nixon offered him an apprenticeship contract with the company. He was then 19; still young; very green. He was welcomed into the company and found that very quickly he was presented with great opportunities.
Primarily a touring company, his first season with Northern Ballet involved some nine weeks on the road, living out of a suitcase, on stage practically every night. Pushed to perform, by his second year he was dancing his first solo and principal roles. He tried to learn from everyone around him in that very talented company; to absorb it all like a sponge. In his first two seasons Joseph reckoned the company had mounted eight full-length productions each involving at least three and sometimes four casts, in addition to a number of smaller shows.
Christopher commented that such a heavy touring programme, with the opportunity to perform on so many occasions and constantly push yourself further, provided an invaluable introduction to the professional world.
It was during these early years with Northern Ballet that Joseph developed his talents for characterisation. One of David Nixon’s maxims was that the dancer worked hard in the studio but it was on stage that you would learn the most. Joseph discovered that he was able to find depth in his roles, to see and develop the artistry in every part.
So what was your first major ‘breakthrough’ role, asked Christopher. In his second year Joseph had, as second cast, danced Wadjet, the Snake God in David Nixon’s Cleopatra. It’s a big role, the Snake God opens and closes the show and dances a lot with Cleopatra throughout the ballet. The role had been set on first cast member, Kenneth Tindall, whom Joseph then got to know extremely well. He considers that his enormous help and support taught Joseph how to sustain the whole length of a two-hour show.
Christopher noted that he had seen Joseph perform a pas de deux from Cleopatra at a Northern Ballet gala – had this been one of the Snake God variations? No, said Joseph, on that occasion he had taken the role of Marc Antony, a part which involved several unusual and difficult lifts. He was fond of Cleopatra; he particularly liked the music, by Claude-Michel Schönberg of Les Miserables fame.
The talk then turned to Swan Lake in which Joseph had performed the part of Anthony, in David Nixon’s own reimagining of the classic story. Set in a New England estate, Anthony – analogous to the Siegfried of the original tale – has tragically lost his brother in a tragic accident when both were swimming in a lake. Anthony is a tortured soul, blaming himself for his brother’s loss.
Early in the ballet we see Anthony with his friends Simon and Odilia, in a triangular confusion of relationships involving friendship, sexuality and jealousy. Eventually Anthony wanders off towards the lake, where he comes across the swan women, and where he then dances with Odette. While there is no ‘black act’, the course of the story follows the same broad lines as the original and in the final act Anthony dances again with Odette until he is overcome by the water and drowns. While perhaps not as technically difficult as the classical Swan Lake, there are some unusual lifts and it is a challenging ballet to perform.
Joseph explained that, while dancing Anthony in some of the performances, he was taking the part of the father in other performances, and taking a quite difficult spot in the corps in yet other shows. This was exhausting but he was anxious to demonstrate that he could cope with such a schedule. That was clearly successful as when the ballet returned in the next year he came back as first cast Anthony.
Both he and Christopher agreed that seeing the production from several different viewpoints provided a deeper insight into the story and indeed into the company itself; doing one role helps considerably with interpreting another. Joseph also spoke of this in relation to The Great Gatsby in which he had played all the male roles except one. None of them can be played in isolation, he said, as they all depend on each other. The cross-over and interaction is enormous; what you do in one scene may have a profound effect on quite different characters two scenes later. And, he added, this is yet another reason why Northern Ballet is so good at narrative works – we experience the story from many different angles.
You’ve done Casanova a number of times over the years, said Christopher. Was that your first experience of working with Kenny (Kenneth Tindall) as a choreographer? The first full-length ballet, replied Joseph; he had known Kenny a long time and taken part in several of his shorter works. Joseph had not danced the lead role from the start, because when the ballet was introduced he was a member of the corps. He had been, however, third cast for Casanova, and the experience of working with Kenny in the studio every day had been a real joy.
Christopher then went on to talk about partnering, in particular citing Abigail Prudames who had just retired from Northern Ballet. Joseph responded that Abigail had essentially been his ‘work wife’ in that they had been dancing together for some ten years. David Nixon had brought them together as a partnership more or less from their start in the company and although Joseph had danced with others his relationship with Abigail had been extremely special. The close working relationship, the mutual trust and understanding it involved, had enabled both to develop their individual talents to the full. It had been wonderful; he knew that not every partnership would develop to that level and he was extremely sorry to see her go.
Romeo and Juliet was a most significant ballet which had been revived and toured this year, including performances in London at Sadlers Wells. This was the version choreographed by Christopher Gable and Massimo Moricone, not staged for nearly 15 years, and after which all of the ballet’s sets and wardrobe had been lost in the Boxing Day flood of 2016.
Joseph said that from the moment he joined Northern Ballet there was talk of this legendary production, of how great it had been and how much they would all like to revive it. He knew that Federico Bonelli, the recently appointed Artistic Director of Northern Ballet, very much wanted to restage the masterpiece having danced the same version in Italy with Alina Cojocaru. Clearly, however, he could not consider this until the necessary funds were available for the massive amount of work required.
All that remained were a few photographs of the original production, and Joseph paid tribute to those departments which had successfully taken on the enormous challenge of remaking the costumes and reinstating the sets. He also paid tribute to those original cast members who had coached the company so effectively. Jane Regan Pink and William Walker, who in 1991 had played the two lovers, together with Moricone himself came back to stage the production. Sir Gregory Doran, former Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, had taken them all through the text of the play, which had also hugely enhanced their understanding and interpretation of the work.
The whole enterprise had been a great success, completely justifying Federico’s intense desire to remount the ballet. An iconic production, and very much the highlight of my career, said Joseph. Achieving it had shown so much respect to Gable and Moricone, and to all those who had been associated with it.
A member of the audience then asked about the other Romeo and Juliet in which Joseph had taken part (although not actually on stage). This was not the MacMillan version, but the ballet choreographed by Jean-Christoffe Maillot, originally for Monte Carlo Ballet. The Gable/Moricone version, said Joseph, was rough, raw and very physical, and played out in real time. By contrast, the Maillot version was completely different. It was a very contemplative work, centred on Friar Lawrence and the way in which he looked back on the lovers’ life and death. He had married them and it had been his ‘potions’ which had actually precipitated the deaths. Visually very different, both versions were iconic, said Joseph, and he loved both.
And so on to London City Ballet, the relationship with Christopher Marney, and the rationale behind Joseph’s involvement with the new venture He explained that a couple of seasons back he had been experiencing what he described as a ‘mid-career crisis’. He was looking for something more, perhaps another challenge.
Through a friend he had made contact with Christopher who was at that time planning to restage Ballade, the MacMillan ballet loosely based on Kenneth’s own relationship with his wife Deborah. It had not been seen since the Royal Ballet had staged it in 1972. There appeared to be no record of the show although some rough Benesh notation existed. Joseph was interested in the project and, coached by Samara Downs from Birmingham Royal Ballet using this notation, it had been successfully mounted for an invited audience including Dame Monica Mason and Deborah MacMillan herself.
Some time later Christopher had intimated that he would like to talk to Joseph again. To take part in some other show, thought Joseph. But no, this time Christopher put to him the whole new concept of resurrecting London City Ballet. Might he be interested? Joseph replied in the affirmative, without giving it a second thought. And so he became one of the group of 14 dancers who were to form the nucleus of the rebuilt ballet company. Half the group consisted of tried and tested experienced dancers, with the remaining 7 newly auditioned individuals from a variety of different backgrounds.
The brand-new London City Ballet company was just about to commence its first tour, opening at the Theatre Royal in Bath in about a week’s time, from where it would move on to places such as Windsor, Cheltenham and York, and to other weekly venues until the end of September. It was to be an exciting, and hardworking, summer.
In fact, said Christopher, they had already shown off their dancers. Joseph, together with Isadora Bless, another member of the new company, had appeared at the Sintra Festival in Portugal a few days previously. They had danced the 2nd Movement of Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto and Liam Scarlett’s Consolations and Liebestraum. Laura Morera, who had danced in the original Scarlett production, taught them and they both paid tribute to the sensitivity of her coaching. The location in Sintra was stunning, and the event was especially significant because the original London City Ballet had taken part in the same festival in the 1990s.
Joseph went on to assure listeners that he had not left Northern Ballet but would simply be ‘on sabbatical’ with London City Ballet for a period. Northern Ballet management had always been keen to promote all manner of career development and were content that he should appear with both companies. He would be dancing with them in the coming season and was especially looking forward to Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre, which was scheduled for 2025. Becoming a character such as Mr Rochester was a real challenge; he did not feel he was a ‘natural’ for the part. Cathy took dancers out of their comfort zone, often providing a list of words describing their characters and inviting the dancer to develop their movements based on those words. Her style sits well with Northern Ballet’s ethos.
Were there other choreographers whose work he would like to perform? MacMillan, Joseph responded at once. And he looked forward to other works by Moricone and Kenneth Tindall – even John Neumeier. In fact, if more or less any opportunity occurred he would take it……
In concluding the evening, Susan, as Chair of the London Ballet Circle, thanked Joseph most sincerely. Audiences had watched his performances; had at times both cried and laughed with him, and it had been fascinating to listen to him speaking with such enthusiasm about his roles. She was also most grateful to Christopher; he had posed just the right questions and the evening had been extremely interesting and entertaining.
Written by Trevor Rothwell, approved by Joseph Taylor and Christopher Marney.
Copyright LBC 2024
