Fitting swansong to enthrall at black-tie ballet ball in Cork

Saturday’s farewell performance of The Dying Swan will see the curtain fall on Monica Loughman’s career as a dancer, writes Jo Kerrigan. 

Cork City Ballet’s 25th anniversary black tie Gala Ball at the Rochestown Park Hotel next Saturday is going to be quite an occasion, both socially and balletically.

Former and current dancers from the company are flying in from around the world to participate, with the star of the evening definitely Monica Loughman, formerly soloist with the renowned Perm State Ballet and frequent dancing partner of CCB’s artistic director, Alan Foley.

It’s more than just an appearance by Loughman, however. This is to be her farewell performance, and she will dance that most iconic of solos, The Dying Swan, made legendary by prima ballerinas from Pavlova onwards.

You have to be tough to get ahead in ballet, and Loughman had that determination in spades from the start.

That’s what got her noticed by Perm when they made a talent- spotting trip to Dublin dance schools and offered the then 14-year-old a scholarship to train in Russia.

“It was quite a challenge — I was just a kid after all — but it was something I went for with everything I had,” she says.

“Yes, it was tough, and I missed home, my family, my friends, but I knew it was what I wanted to do more than anything.”

Promoted to solo roles, it was when she came back to Ireland on tour with Perm that she met up with Foley, who was delighted to discover a kindred spirit.

“I knew she was with the company, but thought she would be one of the corps de ballet,” recalls Foley.

“I was really impressed when I found she was a soloist. I sat in the bar with her afterwards and summoned up the courage to ask her if she would consider coming over to dance with me sometimes, and she said ‘Oh my God, I’d love to!’ I couldn’t believe it.

“We clicked straight away and that started 10 wonderful years of working together. We brought out a book, Ballet Through the Lens, and a DVD, The Magic of Ballet. We danced the length and breadth of the country, travelled everywhere abroad. It was a wonderful time.”

Loughman agrees. “We just hit it off. We’re like-minded, and that made the relationship work so well. We danced together right up to Alan’s retirement, and it’s a decade I will never forget — so full of happy memories.”

Balletomanes will remember many Loughman performances for CCB, but perhaps in particular her heartrending Giselle in the winter of 2007. Her voice changes as we talk of that particular role.

“I danced it the year after my mother died,” she recalls. Her whole perspective on life changed after that loss, she reveals, and a great deal of the experience went into Giselle’s bewildered heartbreak, which in turn resonated powerfully with the audience.

And now Loughman is retiring from public performance. Why has she chosen The Dying Swan?

“I first danced that at the age of 19. I was trained for it by Elena Koulagiana who was near the end of her career and she made me cry when she danced it. She taught it to me as she stepped aside, and now I see it as the right way to go out.

"I think you look great dancing it as a young one, but your life experience is what makes it most meaningful.” It is also, she points out, the first piece she danced at Cork’s Firkin Crane.

“It was the first and it will be the last,” she says. “I’m so glad to be able to do it for Alan and CCB.”

Passing on her own love of ballet will now become Loughman’s full-time job.

“It’s the right time to go, when people are still saying they wish you wouldn’t,” she says.

“You have to step aside and let the next generation come forward. I really love teaching and it’s more challenging to me currently than dancing ever was. It’s a new phase of my life.”