6 days ago
Melissa Hamilton: 'It's a really special moment'
Melissa Hamilton is Ireland's most illustrious ballerina and she's bringing her brand-new show to Dublin. RTÉ Entertainment's John Byrne catches up with her as the final touches are being applied.
There are two activities that require insane levels of commitment from a very young age in order to be successful: playing tennis and being a ballet dancer.
They're also two disciplines that haven't featured many Irish people on the top tier. On the tennis side of things, we rarely get a player into the top 500 on the ATP tour, while in ballet, top level ballerinas are as scarce as books of poetry in Donald Trump's White House.
Then there's Melissa Hamilton. The Belfast-born ballerina grew up in Dromore in county Down and ballet was a hobby until her mid-teens – which put her way behind contemporaries in terms of development.
Despite having to play catch-up in what's an incredibly competitive world, she trained at the Elmhurst School of Dance for two years and then privately for one year, before winning the 2007 Youth American Grand Prix and entering The Royal Ballet.
There, she moved up the ranks, promoted to First Artist in 2009, Soloist in 2010 and First Soloist in 2013. She also created a role in innovative choreographer Wayne McGregor's Infra in 2008 and has since created several other roles for McGregor and elsewhere.
Now firmly established as Ireland's globally celebrated ballet dancer, she's bringing what promises to be a spectacular show, Melissa Hamilton's Ballet Stars Gala, to Dublin.
This star-studded show, created exclusively for Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, will run on September 17 and 18 at the Docklands venue.
Ahead of the show's two-night run, we caught up with Melissa Hamilton to find out what audiences can expect.
John Byrne: Hi Melissa! Can you tell us about your show?
Melissa Hamilton: It's produced by my production company, Hamilton Cristou Productions, which I set up with my husband, Michael Cristou.
This show at the Bord Gais will not be replicated, it won't be seen on any other stage. It will be what I'd like to call, a greatest hits of ballet and dance. You can expect to see the big names that you always think of when you think of ballet.
So, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote. . . but there will also be neo-classical, contemporary, modern dance also coupled in in the same evening. We have a collaboration with Ballet Ireland, I'll perform to a live soprano on stage from Irish National Opera, and we have dancers from the Royal Ballet, English National ballet company, Bavarian State Ballet in Munich - it's going to be quite a spectacle.
It also sounds like it took a hell of a lot of hard work to get together!
I absolutely love what I do and to be able to bring world-class ballet and some of the brightest artists to the stage in Dublin, and to the audiences of Dublin, is a privilege. And it's something that I think audiences need to see. They need to be exposed to this, world-class level of dancing, this art form.
For me, I get to share the stage with some of my closest and most endeared friends that I have built up over the years. For me, it's a really special moment.
Would you agree that ballet is beginning to lose its 'only for posh people in evening dress' image. It's something that a lot more people can relate to - once they give it a chance.
Relate to - exactly! That's something that I really love. Like bringing human emotion and human stories. The thing is now, to be able to have an audience empathise with what is happening on stage, to have some emotion attached to what is going on on stage, is so important.
And that's why I like to choose dancers and artists who have that ability to transcend the quintessential ballet - the idea of the trinket box ballerina - and have real stories on stage. Have that emotional connection.
And not just have a kind of child-like image of what a ballerina is . . .
That's it! When you see ballet live, it's pretty hardcore. You guys are throwing yourselves around the place. And there can be a lot of death as well! It's very emotional, and you get that experience through the music and the dancing.
Yes. Exactly. And there's nothing like live performance. I know there's so much exposure now on the internet and on cinema screens, and live streaming, but there's something about being at live theatre that will move you, and touch you, that you just can't get past a screen.
That human connection that is embodied by dancers on stage, it transcends through the theatre and into the audience. It's really an experience - and it's worth buying the ticket to have that experience, rather than watch it on your screen or in a cinema. It's night and day.
And people might look at you and go, 'Oh Royal Ballet.' But there's much more to you than that, as you've done more contemporary work such as Wayne McGregor's Maddaddam.
Well, actually, Wayne McGregor will be showcased in the gala!
The thing is, I'm very much from humble beginnings. I'm a little girl from Northern Ireland who didn't train until I was 16 - but now I class Royal Ballet as my home.
But the Royal Ballet is not just your classical ballet, your tutus and tiaras. There's so much more to it. We get to work with Sir Wayne McGregor and the innovative nature of our art form means it's so much more open.
What really strikes me about you is that you're not a typical ballerina who is in intense training almost from infancy. Weren't you dancing locally until you were a teenager? That's ancient in ballet terms!
It wasn't until I was exposed to it when I went to Summer school at 13. I was in class with students who were training vocationally - vocational training is when you're doing ballet all through the day, Monday to Friday - whereas I was doing ballet as a hobby one day a week after school.
It was after that that I went home at 13 and told mam and dad, Oh, I want to be a ballerina. At that point, they didn't know that that was a career choice. They hadn't put two and two together and think: well, if there are ballet companies, people work as a ballerina.
I wasn't exposed to it. I didn't see ballet companies coming to Northern Ireland. Until little ol' me, I don't think Dromore ever featured in anything to do with ballet (laughs).
