Overview

St Anne, Highgate

Burgh House

Christ Church, Hampstead

The 2010 Hampstead & Highgate Festival will run from September 24th to October 3rd. It will promote over 40 of its own music (classical and jazz), theatre, dance, film, spoken word, and visual art events over the nine day period across several Hampstead and Highgate venues, all inspired by Sergey Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes company (1909–1929). Several umbrella events related to our festival theme will also be offered by partner organisations in the area.

Building on the Festival’s strong musical tradition, our classical concert series features internationally renowned artists such as Germany’s Fauré Quartett in their only 2010 appearance in England, soprano Dame Felicity Lott accompanied by pianist Graham Johnson in a programme devised especially for our Festival, two-piano team Simon Crawford-Phillips and Philip Moore performing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in its original version, and the acclaimed young International Baroque Players performing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with soloists Amy Freston and Louise Mott.

For the first time in the Festival’s history, we present a full week of free lunchtime concerts at Hampstead Parish Church, giving a much-needed platform to award-winning young professional musicians. We have agreed in-kind sponsorship of this series by Steinway & Sons and the Royal Over-Seas League.

Our theatre and spoken word events include: an evening with celebrity actor Simon Callow performing ‘Lightning Conductor’, a new monologue on the subject of Sergey Diaghilev written by playwright Matthew Hurt; Russian essayist and critic Zinovy Zinik reading and discussing Tolstoy with broadcaster Piers Plowright; director Jonathan Miller in an evening on Anton Chekhov, and a Commedia dell’Arte performance by music and dance troupe Chalemie. These events will take place at the newly renovated Embassy Theatre (Swiss Cottage) with generous support from the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Our film programme, includes a rare screening of Four Emperors, one Nightingale and a Ballet that was Lost, a film featuring Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, world-renowned Ballets Russes production revivalists and Hampstead residents, who will be present for a question and answer session immediately following the film with dance critic Marcia Siegel. Other screenings will include The Red Shoes (1948), The Tango Lesson (1997), Ballets Russes (2005), Movement Revolution Africa (2008), and La Danse.

Events for children and families include two performances of a unique 1920s Parisian children’s ballet involving four local dance schools, a children’s ‘Storywalk’ on Hampstead Heath, and a family concert where children’s TV celebrity Naomi Wilkinson (Channel 5’s Milkshake!) will narrate Poulenc’s version of Babar the Elephant.

Running throughout the Festival and for two weeks before its commencement will be a rare photographic exhibition at the London Jewish Cultural Centre (Ivy House, former residence of Anna Pavlova). This will feature photographs of the celebrated Diaghilev ballerina and Hampstead resident Tamara Karsavina, with some images seldom seen outside Russia. The exhibition will be opened by Dame Antoinette Sibley.

Sergey Diaghilev is an ideal figure to explore in a broad-ranging arts festival. He masterminded historically unique inter-disciplinary artistic collaborations, bringing together leading visual artists (such as Picasso, Matisse and Bakst), composers (such as Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Debussy), extraordinary dancers (such as Nijinsky, Karsavina, and Sokolova), and revolutionary choreographers including Fokine, Massine, and Balanchine. These visionaries together produced striking modern ballets that developed a huge following around the world and formed an important influence on generations of musicians, writers, artists, fashion designers, interior designers, choreographers, and dancers.