Teaching ballet dancers how to fight sounds like a routine from an old Monty Python sketch.

At the very least, says acclaimed fight director William Hobbs, it was an unusual assignment.

Hobbs is accustomed more to instructing film actors in the skills of fisticuffs and swordsmanship than to telling the likes of Margot Fonteyn how to punch someone on the nose - but modern ballet is nothing if not physical.

So it was to Hobbs that the Yorkshire-based Northern Ballet Theatre turned when it mounted its striking and strongly characterised version of Victor Hugo's novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

"They wanted realism," says Hobbs. "They regard the acting as being almost as important as the dance.

"And I was knocked out by the dancers' physicality and their dedication. The moves were alien to them but they picked them up incredibly quickly."

Hobbs had worked with a ballet company once before, when the Festival (now the English National) Ballet staged Don Quixote in the Seventies. His re-introduction came via the NBT's late artistic director, Christopher Gable.

"We met on a television production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Eric Porter, when Christopher was still acting." Hobbs says. "He wanted me to do his Romeo and Juliet a couple of years ago, but I couldn't because I was filming. Then he came back to me with this."

Hobbs spent several weeks with the cast before he and they were satisfied. "If it had been a film, I'd have made it much rougher," he says.

"But in the theatre you can get away with moves that would look too stagy in the cinema."

Hobbs knows not a little about the cinema, having instructed the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Depardieu and Leonardo DiCaprio in the finer points of battle combat. Immediately after working with the NBT he was engaged to choreograph Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes in Shake-speare in Love.

The Oscars the film garnered passed him by, however. "Sadly, there are no Oscars given for my line of work," he says. "You can't give awards for something which people might regard as being violent.

"So all I can do is bathe in the reflected glory of Shakespeare in Love and be grateful to have been part of it."

Hobbs's next project is similarly inspired. He has written and staged what he calls a Shakespearean conceit - a piece of musical theatre designed to be staged at English castles and manor houses for the benefit of tourists.

"At the moment it's called Pleasure and Action, which is a quote from Othello, but it makes it sound too heavy. I'm looking for a better title."

Meanwhile, The Hunchback of Notre Dame continues to tour Britain and will be at Bradford's Alhambra Theatre, with Amaya Iglesias dancing Esmerelda and Luc Jacobs Quasimodo, from April 27 to May 1. Tickets are bookable on 01274 752000.

David Behrens

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