Fitness and diet play important roles in the life of a ballet dancer
THREE years ago Alan Foley answered his insistently-ringing phone.With no preamble, a loud male voice bellowed:“There are no pink tights in Skibbereen!”It was the father of one of Foley’s tiniest ballerinas. Charged with the purchase of the tights for his six-year-old daughter’s upcoming appearance in Foley’s Opera House production, Dance Offering, the man was frantic.It’s just one of the many gems the charismatic Foley (who later managed to source the crucial garment) has collected during his years as artistic director of the dynamic Cork City Ballet, which later this month stages a spectacular performance of The Nutcracker.
The production features prima ballerina Erina Takahashi from the English National Ballet as the Sugar Plum Fairy and around 70 dancers in total. The cast includes child dancers from Foley’s popular dance classes around the county. The Opera House performance – which boasts costumes made at the Kirov Ballet in St Petersburg, and choreography by Yury Demakov from the Bolshoi Ballet – will go ahead despite years of recession and no funding from the Arts Council since 2011:
