" A Night to Remember at Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle" 

Back in March of this year, the Central Germany Branch was approached by the company Arran Arts International – conductor Russell Harris and soloist Richard Morrison were planning a concert with a Scottish sinfonie orchestra on Nov. 5th in the Laeiszhalle and were looking for six young dancers to perform with them. Our secretary forwarded this request to me and I immediately knew we had to do it – the Laeiszhalle is Hamburg’s second most well known concert hall after the Elbphilharmonie, so this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity! 

After recruiting five other young dancers (two of them from Lueneburg and the other three from around Bonn), I set out to choreograph something we could use as a display. None of us had ever performed with an entire orchestra on stage before, so early on we were quite worried about the amount of dancing space available and therefore had a few different versions of possible choreography ideas. Since we only got the final version of which tunes we were going to be dancing to (including Bantock’s „The Inverness Gathering Quickstep“) at the end of September, we had to be quite flexible in our ability to change those ideas as well. 

Another problem was posed by the fact that Bonn and Lueneburg are about 440km apart – so there was no way of meeting up and testing things out before the big day (let alone practice them multiple times). So the first time that all six of us met and could walk through the entire display was actually at the dress rehearsal one day before the concert! We then spent two nights in Hamburg, coordinating our outfits, finally practicing the dem and even fitting in an escape room for us to get our minds occupied with something else for a change. 

But Wednesday evening came sooner than expected and before we knew it, it was time to go on stage! It was such a surreal thing to experience, to perform at a venue like that with an entire orchestra of about 40 musicians behind you … and the audience absolutely loved it! The whole concert was very well received, especially the pipers from Arran who added that extra bit of Scottish flair. We even got a standing ovation at the end before singing Auld Lang Syne together which was truly the icing on the cake. 

I am so proud of my friends for being up for this slightly crazy experience and for giving it their all, especially since the music wasn’t the easiest to dance to both tempo and rhythm wise. And since we couldn’t practice together, they all dedicated their free time to learning the display on their own (which anyone, who’s tried walking a reel of six with five ghosts will tell you, is quite hard!) which should also not betaken for granted. Both the conductor and Richard Morrison were very happy with the result and have already expressed interest in doing this again next year, so we’ll see what the future holds! 

Watch the Performance here