Lewis Gardner's BAPP Blog

I’ve recently been performing one of my favourite ballets Onegin. It’s a powerful, beautiful drama ballet with a lot of dancing for the corp de ballet. It’s always very exciting and hard to be involved in this piece. The last time we performed it was in 2020, during the height of Covid. Every day during that time was uncertain, would we perform? Would someone get sick? We worked very hard as a company to make sure we were performing safely and to a level that we were proud of. Our performances in 2020 were some of the only big-scale performances that were allowed to take place in South Korea during that scary time. Revisiting this ballet now has made me wonder how the covid situation has changed our industry. Many more companies are offering live streaming of their performances either for free or at a small price. This is allowing people who might not be able to get to see a live performance easily the opportunity to watch more from the comfort of their own homes. I’ve also heard that ...

I finally feel creative again  I was recently asked to be part of new choreography as part of a friend's university graduation performance. I was very excited to be asked and be part of something like this. Although my schedule is already very full, I knew I had to make time to be involved in this process. I’ve recently been struggling with why I do this job. I sometimes feel like I’ve hit a wall and there’s nothing else for me to do within my practice. Obviously, this is nonsense and there’s always so much to do, but I started to see dancing as a job and not a passion for the first time…. I've definitely lost a sense of purpose over the last year. I’ve suffered an injury that has meant I haven’t been able to perform or dance as well as I would want and that can be a hard thing to deal with. Starting this course and having a new focus has really helped and now to be part of the creative process, something I haven’t done for a while, has been inspiring. As a ballet dancer, I don...