IRELAND’S LEADING ballerina, Monica Loughman, brings her Irish Youth Russian Ballet Company to Galway on Thursday February 18 at 8pm with its production of La Sylphide.
Joining the IYRB for the occasion will be guest principal dancers Robert Gabdullin, of the Perm State Ballet Company, and Hannah Windows, formerly of the English National Ballet, and the event promises to be a real treat for ballet devotees in the west.
Ahead of the company’s Galway visit, which forms part of their inaugural national tour, Loughman took time out to talk about her work teaching ballet and what drew her to La Sylphide.
Having enjoyed an illustrious career with Russia’s prestigious Perm State Ballet, four years ago Loughman established her own School of Russian Ballet in Dublin’s Whitehall, and one year later founded the Irish Youth Russian Ballet Company.
“Slowly but surely we’ve progressed,” she observes of the company’s development. “The girls who have been with me for the three years since we opened have become very very strong dancers so I find it considerably easier now than when we first opened.”
How would Loughman sum up the defining characteristics of Russian ballet as taught to her pupils?
“The ballet I do is very fast-paced,” she replies. “The children here are always being pushed. Initially they might not get the step but because they’re being pushed toward the next level, the next time they come to do the step they get it and I find they improve at a higher and faster rate than with other styles of ballet done in Ireland.
“Our pupils can do steps in various kinds of combinations not just one; generally in this country pupils tend to be taught to do a particular step only within a particular combination of steps. It’s like teaching a child how to read, here they would teach them only to read from one book whereas I would get them to read from every book that is out there.”
As a young ballerina Loughman once declared she would never want to end up being a ballet teacher. Now that she finds herself doing just that she has discovered that teaching has been personally fulfilling for her.
“Funnily enough I actually love it more than I loved dancing,” she reveals. “I found when I was dancing it would just be me and my thoughts and it was a bit lonel,y whereas with the girls not only is there the teamwork but personally I feel more of a sense of accomplishment in the fact that all I’ve learned through the years and all the hardship I went through didn’t go to waste, and they don’t have to go away like I did to attain that kind of level.
“I can give them a shortcut if you will, they don’t have to leave their folks, they can get their training here in Ireland.”
In 2008 Loughman’s considerable teaching skills received a broader exposure via the hit reality TV series Ballet Chancers in which she put six hip-hop dancers through their paces in the hope they could perform alongside Irish Youth Russian Ballet regulars. How did she find the experience of working on the show?
“It was difficult because there was a lot at stake,” she declares. “I went into it perhaps slightly naively - which I do with quite a lot of things! - and my main goal was to show that ballet wasn’t this flouncy, easy, kind of thing that it’s sometimes perceived as being.
“Ballet is like a sport, you’re an athlete first and then you become an artist. So that was my goal, to prove to people it wasn’t easy. The kids were great, they really wanted it. Thank God, they didn’t want to go away with mud on their face either so that’s why the whole format seemed to work.
“The kids wanted to prove that they could do something that was difficult and at first they didn’t think ballet was going to be that difficult. It was hard because you’re putting yourself out on the line but somehow it stuck together and it got a huge following. When it was over I’ve never been so tired in my entire life! Looking back, I did a lot of work in it and I maybe did a bit too much.”
Loughman reveals that two of the six dancers featured on the show have since taken up ballet; Annaleigh Megan from County Louth has enrolled in Loughman’s own school while Dubliner Ian Harris is doing a fulltime course elsewhere in the capital.
And so to La Sylphide. Why did Loughman select this work for the Irish Youth Russian Ballet?
“Firstly, it’s a story that anyone in the audience will be able to get,” she explains. “As a dancer I always really really liked it myself. When I was in school at Perm watching the company dance it I loved it; it was easy on the eye and it moved, it’s not just dance, there is a story the whole way through it.
“There is always something going on and it has a strong theme, and it’s just over an hour long. So for our first tour to make our first impression, it’s exactly what’s needed. Before I do a ballet a lot of consideration goes into deciding what I am going to present before the public and how I can keep them interested and entertained.”
There are 25 dancers in the IYRB’s corps de ballet and they all feature in La Sylphide. And the troupe includes two young dancers from Galway, Catherine Walsh and Emma Collins, who are senior students of the Regina Rogers School of Ballet.
“The whole thing is 99.9 per cent Irish and it’s of a professional standard,” Loughman notes. “I am glad to put my name to it, don’t think you’re coming to look at kids you’re not, they’re professionals they just happen to be young – but I started my professional career at 16!”
Tickets are €25/20 and are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777.
