Melissa Hamilton

I have recently set up this new production company with my husband. Our production company is Hamilton Christou Productions, the combination of me, Melissa Hamilton, and my husband, Michael Christou. And it stemmed from many years of conversations of me with a desire to bring ballet back home, actually, to Northern Ireland. I've had such an incredible career of opportunity and chances to travel the world and perform at all different kinds of countries, all different kinds of galleys, but the amount of times I've been home to perform has been minimal within my career. Twice, in fact, over the span of two decades. It really came from those conversations with him of wanting to bring everything that is seen so widely around the world to my home country, which sees it so little. I think Northern Ireland, it doesn't have a ballet company, it doesn't have vocational ballet schools. So me, myself, when I was growing up, I had to leave home at 16 to move across to England to train. So it really came from that, that yes, we have galleys all around the world. We see so many of them. But in Belfast, this will be the first international ballet gala. So there is definitely a need for it, for sure. I'm very lucky that I am going to be able to bring dancers from the Royal Ballet Company, being my home company. I'll have Rhys Clarke, principal of the company, and two young and up-and-coming dancers, Bethany Bartlett and Martin Diaz. When I was young in the company, I was always fighting to try and find opportunities and entered into competitions to try and get experience. So one of the big things I wanted to do with my galleys was to bring younger members of companies who don't have these opportunities. So that's why I wanted to bring a young and up-and-coming couple to give the chance to be on stage and perform. Then we'll have a newly promoted principal, Gareth Hough, from English National Ballet Company, with Fang Yun Li, two dancers who I worked with when I had a sabbatical in St. Proper in Dresden, and I came to admire both of their work very much. And we'll have Sevlad Mievski from English National Ballet, also performing with Lyudmila Konovalova from Vienna State Ballet Company. And then I will be performing a world premiere creation by Valentino Cicchetti with New English Ballet Theatre. I've been a patron of the company for many years and it felt like a great chance to collaborate. I was so pleased to be able to work with Valentino Cicchetti on these galleys. He is also a patron of New English Ballet Theatre and he has worked with them many times for choreographies as well as main stage on the Royal Opera House stage. So for Hamilton Christie Productions to be able to have a new creation by Valentino is incredibly special. We had initial conversations about bringing New English Ballet Theatre and then he presented his ideas for music and he presented some opera tracks. And I have remembered vaguely from previous performances that had happened within the Opera House that Northern Ireland Opera had been here to perform. And my little mind started to fizz and I thought it would be absolutely incredible if I could bring talent from Northern Ireland on stage within a production. And I contacted Cameron Menzies, the Artistic Director of Northern Ireland Opera and asked if he would be interested at all in collaborating and performing within the gala and told him that it would be my homecoming and coming back to the Grand Opera House. And he jumped at the chance. It was such an amazing conversation to have such an open conversation with someone within the art form that was willing to jump headlong into an idea and that's where that sparked from. So now we have Mary McCabe, a Northern Irish soprano. She'll perform live for the three performances. And we have new costumes being designed and made by Lisa James. And I actually have a meeting with her today to look over costume designs. And that's another thing that I have created costumes in the past for some work that I've done. So me and Valentino are working together on that also. So bringing in another kind of collaborative effort. And yes, so it will be on point. And Valentino is going to create on myself and Jose Alves and Jerome Anthony Barnes of New English Ballet Theatre in two songs from Strauss's Four Last Songs. And it will be a world premiere for the gala. My husband, he owns his own company. He's a property developer and interior design house, 1.61 London. And so he's entrepreneur, businessman and he's kind of brainchild of the collaboration of our two worlds of what he can bring with his skill set, my skill set and come together and create this. It's impossible, impossible without not only his backing but his knowledge, his support of me, the confidence he has given me to make this step and not be just performer but to trust my thoughts of production and my wants of what I want audiences to see, what kind of opportunities I want to give to people and bring to audiences and dancers alike. So yes, it's all privately funded. So as we all struggle with the hours trying to find new ventures, ways to make things work. But challenge is always what I enjoy. We met very early in my 20s but we didn't actually get together until I had my sabbatical in Germany. We were in touch quite a lot when I was younger in my early 20s and then lost touch completely. I think I was so hell bent on work and my focus of work and then somehow reconnected when I was on my sabbatical and I said, well, I'm not in London anymore. I'm in Germany, but feel free if you want to come over to Germany. And he got a flight to Berlin. I got the train to Berlin and we met one weekend there and that was it. We were like, OK, timing is right. And I moved back to London from my sabbatical. We moved in together and that was it. I think that's the thing. I think there's so many people say that timing is everything and that was really, really true for us. He actually had a contract, a singing contract in L.A. when he was signed to Disney Records. But he suffered really badly from stage fright. So he left L.A. He couldn't continue. He is an avid composer. He plays the piano. We have a piano in the house and he's actually, he started to compose music because my dream is for him to compose a piece and for me to dance a new work to it. I think that's in the pipeline. We have that coming up for hopefully future endeavors because we really want it to be a proper joining of the two of our skill sets and also I want his artistic side and creativity to be brought back to the stage. I think he came back to London and he set up his own company and that became very much just a hobby or something he did just to relax but he's too talented for that to be wasted. I think that it's something I see all the time. I can't bear talent going to waste. And when I hear him on the piano and when I hear him sing I'm trying to rekindle that within this production company as well. My dream was always to go home to Northern Ireland. I wanted to bring ballet home to Northern Ireland. But then I was guesting with Wayne McGregor's company for Tree of Codes in the Esplanade and I had a conversation with the woman that was teaching class, Rosa Park. She is ballet mistress of Singapore Ballet Company. And I said I would love to come here more often. I fell in love with the city and the culture and the people and I was like I really feel like this is such a great place and not enough dances here either. And she was like oh maybe I can have some conversation. So before I left and came home to London I had coffee with the dance department and the programming department for the Esplanade and just had initial conversations that I was thinking and had been thinking after multiple conversations with Michael that this was always in my head of trying to branch into maybe doing my own productions, doing my own galleys. And we had a really nice conversation but I came back to London and then nothing. And then it was a few months later out of the blue I got an email and then it picked up from there. They had dates for the Dance Focus Festival and it all rocketed. So it was kind of, I think that's the thing again, conversation, being open to opportunity, not being afraid to go with ideas no matter how crazy they are. And it stemmed and it was fantastic. It was such an incredible experience for me personally as a dancer and the first time that I produced a show and to have so many beautiful dancers from around the world. Just more so the energy and the feeling that it brought together. It was so wholesome and it felt so fulfilling and rewarding. I said to Michael after, I was like, oh dear, this is really, really something. And I think he was hooked as well. He really got the theatre bug. And I think because he has been in the audience, he has seen so many productions and he has watched me on stage but this was the first time he had kind of seen from backstage, from the wings, felt the adrenaline, felt that energy that the audience brings also. And yeah, he was hooked. So I was like, this is good, this is success. Roberto Bolli and what he has done for Ballet in Italy is phenomenal. The vision that he has had and the initiatives that he has brought and the awareness that he has brought to the population of Ballet is unrivaled. I don't think there's any other artist around the world that has done something like he has for Ballet in his culture and his home country. Absolutely, it has been an inspiration to be able to see how many people he can bring joy to, how many people he can inspire, give opportunity, educate. It's really incredible to be a part of and to say that I have been able to be some part in that journey. I started with him and his galleys back in 2015. And it's just incredible the initiatives that he can think of, what he can come up with and year upon year. A true inspiration. Yes, really. The venues in Italy that I perform in with Roberto are phenomenal. But I mean, the Arena di Verona is just... there are no words, there are no words. I think you have to experience that to kind of be able to understand. I mean, I think the first year I performed there, I danced Balcony Pas de Deux with Roberto, Romeo and Juliet by Sir Kenneth Macmillan. And I mean, I am terrified one of heights and stairs. And so the opening scene is obviously Juliet runs down the stairs, but from the height of the podium in the arena is quite phenomenal. So I think as a very young dancer, having the pressure of dancing with Roberto in the arena kind of dissipated because I was so terrified of falling down the stairs and not losing my mind to vertigo. So that probably helped that experience. But I've danced there now many times and it's just, it never fails to be incredible. It never loses that magic. It really is truly special. I do have to, again, greatly thank Roberto for the amount of inspiration he has given me of thinking outside of the box. I think within my company, I've been able to work under also Monica Mason and Kevin O'Hare to see the differences in directorship and how a company can change and evolve and grow. I think is particularly important now that starting a production company, I can see how many different factors can come into making choices and decisions. And so to learn from people like that in companies and establishments like the Royal Ballet is, I have the best place to learn a skill set that hopefully I can now bring forward with my company.