The Snowman Ballet (orchestral version in One Act)

The first ballet version of ‘The Snowman’ in 1993 was in one act lasting 55 minutes. It was based on the book by Raymond Briggs and the film by TVC with additional material by Robert North and Howard Blake (who wrote 30 minutes of additional music for it). It ran succesfully for a Christmas season at The Stora Theatre in Gothenburg in 1993 and transferred to the new opera house (Goteborgs Operan) with seasonal runs (1994-1996). In 1997 Robert North agreed to collaborate with the artistic director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre Bill Alexander and composer Howard Blake to revise a 2-act stage version that Bill and Howard had created (also in 1993). For this version new scenes had been added and Howard had composed a further 30 minutes of music. Robert North decided to use a specially-chosen cast of dancers with miming and acting skills, in the process perhaps creating a new genre- certainly a unique piece of dance-theatre. This proved succesful and was filmed the following summer by Thomas Grimm for Reiner Moritz and being shown on BBC TV at Christmas.  This version was now in two acts and lasted about 84 minutes. However in 2000 it was felt both by Howard Blake and Ian Albery (then head of Sadler’s Wells, who were backing the London version of the show at The Peacock), that the second act could be improved. Howard re-arranged the acts musical numbers and introduced the characters of the Ice-Princess and Jack Frost, writing a dramatic ‘Storm Dance’ for him. When Robert North mounted a production of The Snowman ballet for Scottish Ballet in 2001 he largely followed this new format, also casting his production in two acts and also adding the characters of Jack Frost and the Ice-Princess. The earlier one-act ballet had thus to an extent been replaced by the longer version, whose content has remained unaltered since the revisions of 2000.