New Adventures apprentices: you’re hired!
Nick Smurthwaite
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
While much of the performing arts industry has made strides to seek out talent from underrepresented backgrounds, dance has remained dominated by the privileged few. Nick Smurthwaite investigates one company’s efforts to change this with an innovative apprenticeship programme.
Kaasam Aziz
Hannah Kremer is New Adventures’ Emerging Artist Apprentice for 2022. She joins the Aurora and the sleepwalkers for a rehearsal of Sleeping Beauty.
Starting out in any branch of the performing arts is never easy. Regardless of the talent you bring to the table, you must be brimming with confidence, promise and self-belief in order to succeed.
An innovative scheme by Matthew Bourne’s dance company New Adventures aims to help talented young dancers by offering two-year apprenticeships. These apprentices then go on to join the company. New Adventures is a prestigious ensemble, with six Olivier Awards to its name for groundbreaking shows including Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Nutcracker and The Red Shoes.
‘We’re providing the support for our emerging artists to build a career so there is time for them to reflect on their journey as dancers, and to know how to look after themselves,’ says Kerry Biggin, who is charge of talent development for New Adventures. The chosen apprentices are not required to audition. Instead, they come to the company’s attention through workshops and outreach programmes.
The key ingredients
What is it New Adventures look for in a potential apprentice? ‘Obviously technical accomplishment is crucial,’ says Biggin. ‘But we also look for the “something special” that we require for storytelling, characterisation and connection with an audience. What New Adventures does is unique, and our emerging artists programme helps nurture those special requirements that conventional dance training doesn’t always touch on.’
Kerry Biggin joined New Adventures as a dancer when the company was in its first year. She previously trained with Ballet Rambert. Reflecting on her own journey, she says, ‘The training at the Rambert School was fantastic, but there wasn’t a lot of preparation for a career in dance. When I started to dance professionally, I was immediately launched in at the deep end. What we’re hoping to do is to provide pathways into the industry to send out inspired artists, confident of forging their way in the industry.’
In the spotlight
According to 19-year-old Hannah Kremer, who graduated from the Rambert School last July and is now a full-time member of the New Adventures company, the greatest benefit of the scheme has been its ability to help her cross the bridge between being a student and professional. ‘People don’t appreciate just how big a jump that is,’ she says. ‘It has helped me as an individual to understand what it is to be a freelance dancer, and it’s been great being able to talk to such a wide range of people within the company at different stages of their careers.’
For Perreira Franque, 20, who dropped out of university in order to pursue a career in dance, being an apprentice with New Adventures has helped him focus of his own journey, ‘rather than trying to look like someone else.’ Though he dabbled in salsa classes as a teenager, Franque was a relative latecomer to dance, preferring football and athletics when he was young. Being selected for the New Adventures apprenticeship scheme came out of the blue. ‘I did some classes with the company while I was at Performers College and one of their talent scouts asked to speak to me. I thought I’d done something wrong. The offer came as a real surprise.’
©Johann Persson
New Adventures Emerging Artist Apprentice Perreira Franque (right) alongside Ben Brown and Paris Fitzpatrick in Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty
Enrique Ngbokota, 20, was the company’s inaugural apprentice in 2020, and has already appeared in three New Adventures shows: Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and most recently The Nutcracker, in which they played Cupid. ‘It’s been really brilliant to have that kind of support and advice when I’d just come out of education,’ they say. ‘It covered all the bases, helping me learn how to cope in a professional environment and understand the material and characterisation. You knew the help was there if you needed it, and it is so helpful to have people in the company of varying ages and experience to refer to.’
Both Kremer and Franque made their professional debuts in Sleeping Beauty at Sadler’s Wells over the Christmas period, each playing several different roles.
In the wings
One of the key objectives of the apprenticeship scheme is to increase diversity within the company and to address the imbalance of representation across the dance sector in line with other areas of the performing arts.
Among the facilities extended to each emerging artist is access to a psychotherapist as well as a physiotherapist. ‘There is a lot of mental as well as physical strain in dance,’ says Kerry Biggin. ‘It is common for dancers to be perfectionists, but you need to know how to deal with those instincts.’
© KAASAM AZIZ
Emerging Artist Apprentice Enrique Ngbokota joins New Adventures in a rehearsal for Sleeping Beauty
The apprentices also have a mentor, Glenn Graham, a former principal dancer with New Adventures. They join him for meetings every two weeks, alongside one-to-one coaching sessions with various dancers from the company. ‘I’m delighted to be mentoring a new generation of dancers because it’s something I never had,’ says Graham. ‘We hope the programme offers rigour and resilience, giving them the opportunity to learn all that touring life and the company environment has to offer.’
