A pas de deux with Jane Eyre

As we have informed previously, the London Children's Ballet is preparing a dance adaptation of Jane Eyre to be performed from 15-18 May at the Peacock Theatre (originally premiered by the London Children's Ballet in 1994, with an original score by composer Julia Gomelskaya and choreography by Polyanna Buckingham.). The Telegraph carries an article about the LCB and particularly the upcoming Jane Eyre performances:
Picture credits: Peter Teigen. Source.

The production they are working on is Jane Eyre: a ballet created specially for the LCB, to be performed in the West End this month. Very few professional dance companies have the chutzpah to invent their own full-length narrative ballets from scratch: music, choreography, scenery, the lot. The company does it every year, commissioning up-and-coming (and already arrived) composers and choreographers to turn a classic work of literature into a stage spectacle. The Happy Prince, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Canterville Ghost, among others, have received the LCB treatment.
Even those of us who tremble at the reinterpretation of Brontëan prose through the medium of dance have to admire the ambition behind it. For this, the credit must go to Lucille Briance, the LCB's founder and artistic director. A former magazine editor who moved here from New York to marry a Londoner, she still carries with her the bullish energy of her native city. Not many English mothers would start a dance company out of sheer frustration. (...)
It is everything this Government, with its cultural quotas for children, its dreams of a Billy Elliot generation, its avowed faith in the voluntary sector, should be embracing; so it hardly needs saying that the LCB has never received a penny of government funding. Instead, it scrabbles together what it can from ticket sales, sponsorship and private donations.
As for me: I must declare myself a convert. Watching Mr Rochester (aka Lee Hoy) practising a pas de deux with Jane Eyre (14-year-old Frankie Ferrer), I find myself quite moved. It's not so much the beauty of their dance - although even my philistine eye can see that they are good - as the dedication behind it.
These children are not precocious, so much as fortunate: they have found something they love, and an opportunity to live out their dreams. They know how lucky they are, too. 'My friends get annoyed when I can't go out with them,' says Daisy. 'It's like, just miss a practice! And sometimes I do get fed up, but then when I'm here I think, I've got the rest of my life to go to the cinema. This is better than anything else. (Jemima Lewis)

Another review of The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey mentions Jane Eyre:

Livesey's subtle characterizations draw the reader on, as the multiple views reveal them in unexpected ways. Each section has a literary partner — Keats, Dodgson, Bronte's "Jane Eyre," Dickens' "Great Expectations" — which enriches the story and engages the mind. Still, the strong sense of fatalism in these character's lives casts a pall over the whole. (Lynn Harnett in The Seacost)

Gwyneth Paltrow is interviewed in The Toronto's Star and clarifies her 'Charlotte Brontë kind of youth':

Paltrow admits she was not familiar with the Iron Man story as she was not a comic-book fan as a child. "I was more into fairy tales and the Roald Dahl books," she recalls. "Then I went though an obsessive Nancy Drew period and then I got very into Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen. But with any great character in fiction, whether it's a comic book or a novel, there's always a redemptive quality about them or something you can relate to or aspire to. (John Hiscock).

The appearance of the French translation of the latest book by Maggie O'Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, motivates this interview in Parutions, where the author says that Jane Eyre is one of her favourite books.

Parutions.com : Pouvez-vous citer quelques romans qui ont marqué vos lectures ?
Maggie O’Farrell : Jane Eyre est l'un de mes livres préférés.

Teen Book Review interviews Maryrose Wood, another Brontëite:

What book do you wish you had written?
I’ll pick three. Jane Eyre, because it’s a timeless classic. Harry Potter, because I would be rich. Feed, because it’s so cool and good. (jocelyn)

Also on the blogosphere: A Romanian blog that talks about Jane Eyre (in Romanian), Shoot for Eternity continues talking about Jane Eyre 2006.

Categories: Brontëites, Dance, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV