'People float out of the theatre'

A Bolshoi Ballet show sent Regina Rogers to the Ural mountains of Russia in search of a dance company to perform in Ireland, writes Lorna Siggins

Serge Diaghilev may never have heard of Galway when he combined the music of Stravinsky and Ravel, the designs of Picasso and Matisse, the choreography of George Balanchine and Vaslav Nijinsky to give western Europe its first real taste of Russian ballet a century ago.

Yet true to the spirit of the late impresario's approach, Galway came to him - to the extent that over the past decade his home city's most prestigious dance company has had the west coast capital fixed firmly on its map. When members of the Tchaikosvky Perm State Ballet of Russia take to the stage in Dublin's Point on December 14th, they will be doing so with the response of Atlantic seaboard audiences tingling in their ears.

When Regina Rogers took a flight east more than 10 years ago, she hadn't a word of the language, but she knew she wouldn't take "niet" for an answer. The Mayo-born ballet teacher had been stunned by a performance of Spartacus by the Bolshoi Ballet at the Point. She felt it was a terrible pity that her students, their parents, indeed anyone living west of the Shannon would not be able to share the experience.

Rogers had been exposed to dance from birth. Her mother, Marie Langan, had trained in ballet in Britain and married a doctor who was based in Castlebar, Co Mayo. Rogers's own first stage appearance was at the age of four in Galway's Taibhdhearc, and "like Diamond Lil", she was only six when she "refused to leave the stage".

At the time, ballet was regarded with "suspicion bordering on resentment" here, she recalls - one of those unwelcome foreign influences which might distract from the damhsa, the ringlets and the gúna. Undeterred, her mother would pack her gramophone in the front basket and her daughter on the back of her bicycle, and pedal off to give ballet lessons in Castlebar. She also taught in Westport and Ballinrobe. The Mercy sisters, who educated Regina initially, disapproved of such "immodesty and exposure". However, her own enthusiasm was nurtured when she enrolled with the St Louis convent in Balla. In later years she set up her own ballet school in Galway.

While her mother used to take her to see the London Festival Ballet in the Gaiety, Rogers was aware of the difficulties involved for many parents in catching the likes of the Bolshoi. Following her Spartacus experience, she phoned the Point to see what it could do for "three busloads" from the west and was told to get lost, politely. After "a thousand" more international calls, and much discouragement, about 10 years ago she secured a group of Russian dancers, some of whom had trained with the Bolshoi, for a performance in Galway's only half-suitable venue - the stage of Leisureland in Salthill.

She promised Leisureland management she would fill the venue, and she did, with over 1,000 people. Six months later, Michael Diskin, then the new manager of Galway's new arts venue, the Town Hall Theatre, said he would like to give her a hand. At this stage, Rogers had heard about Irish ballet dancer Monica Loughman, who was training in Russia. After many phonecalls and runarounds, she and Mike Diskin flew to Russia, and then took the train.

Rogers will never forget their 23-hour journeys on the Trans-Siberian railway, travelling through tiny villages, past vast fields of lupins, observing the variation in facial features as they went further and higher towards the Ural mountains. Formerly an administrative centre under the tsars, Perm had been a missile base which was closed to visitors for many years. It played a major role in the development of Russian ballet - first as birthplace of Diaghilev, who was founder of the celebrated Ballet Russes, and then as temporary home for the Kirov (now Maryinsky) ballet when it was evacuated there to escape the siege of Leningrad during the second World War.

Rogers slept in a spartan hotel, in the very room where Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov had stayed before he was taken out and executed by the Cheka in 1918.

She visited the Diaghilev House museum, which charts his influence between 1909 and 1929 when he hired the best of European composers, designers, choreographers to lift Russian ballet - nurtured under Peter the Great - into the 20th century and bring it to the west.

"So much was lost after the Russian Revolution, but Lenin kept the ballet to entertain the masses, and it was, and still is, like soccer to us, in that everyone goes and there's absolutely no elitist tag," says Rogers. The Ballet Russes never performed at home, such was the determination to use its propaganda value. Diaghilev, who was related by marriage to composer Piotr Tchaikovsky, was responsible for Pavlova and Nijinsky becoming household names.

Perm State Ballet was, and is, a "blue-blooded company", and yet such was the welcome for two apparent strangers from Ireland that there was little difficulty in booking the first of many Galway gigs.

"We agreed to pay the flights and accommodation and performance fees, which were really very low," Rogers says. First performance was Romeo and Juliet, Monica Loughman was among the cast and her fellow dancers were delighted with Shop Street - "they'd be in buying up everything in Penneys to take home."

Rogers remembers with great fondness the support of former Irish Times critic Carolyn Swift. Monica Loughman's influence was also critical.

"It was incredibly tough for her, such an achievement for an Irish dancer to have spent 14 years with Perm and to have been the only European ever to have been accepted by this prestigious company," Rogers says.

"Of course, she was getting the best of training but surviving winters where temperatures dropped to -40 degrees Celsius in fairly basic conditions," Rogers says. Loughman is now back in Ireland, has opened her own ballet school in Santry, Dublin, and gave a workshop with Rogers in Galway last July. She will be appearing as guest artist with Perm in Galway and Dublin in December.

On that first visit, the company also performed in Letterkenny, Derry, Enniskillen, Limerick and Ennis, and did so for several years after.

Over the years, Galway audiences have booked the house out for Romeo and Juliet, La Sylphide, Giselle, Swan Lake, Don Quixote and Cinderella.

Since then, the Tchaikovsky Perm has also performed the Point in Dublin, under the auspices of British impresario Simon Walton of Company International Leisure and Arts, who had been bringing Moscow ballet companies to Dublin for performances since the 1990s. In says that in 2002 he "heard that a lady in Galway, Regina Rogers, was herself organising small tours by the Tchaikosvsky Perm State Ballet in various small theatres around Ireland". The Perm started to perform at the Point in Dublin in 2002.

Rogers says she had several aims when she first travelled to Perm - to rid ballet of its elitist tag and to show her students professional excellence at work. Her students are now staying on into their 20s; significantly, it is still regarded as a female art form, though she can roll off the names of male dancers who have played international soccer.

Curiously, in spite of its commitment to the arts, Galway still hasn't come up with a major sponsor to secure the connection with the Russian city, although Rogers did set up a "friends of the Perm Ballet" scheme for local patrons.

"We sell out, we break even, people float out of the theatre - for me, that's more than enough."