Jack Thorpe Baker: A British ballet sensation finds his second chance in Jerusalem
Jerusalemite of the Week: Jack Thorpe Baker had a star-studded career in ballet, before dropping it at age 24. But after being drawn to Israel, he has made his comeback nearly 12 years later.
Many aspiring dancers burn out early, failing to keep up with the rigorous pace. However, Jack Thorpe Baker is different; not only has he been an active ballet dancer from a very young age, but after leaving the dance world, he wound up living in Israel and returning to dance after an almost 12-year hiatus.
Now, Baker, scion of a family steeped in the arts, is an active member of the Jerusalem Ballet, helping to give rise to what he describes as the eventual national ballet technique of Israel.
But having arrived in Israel right around Oct. 7, 2023, he also immersed himself in Israeli society, leading fundraisers and bringing stories to the attention of numerous Western media outlets.
In Jerusalem sat down with Baker to discuss his work at the Jerusalem Ballet and the experiences that brought him to Israel.
What got you into dancing?
I come from a family in the arts in the UK. My grandmother was Gillian Freeman, a prominent novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, who wrote, among other things, the scenarios of two prominent Royal Ballet ballets, Mayerling and Isadora, by Kenneth Macmillan.My grandfather was Edward Thorpe, a writer, and for about 25 years he was the Evening Standard’s dance critic. My mother is Harriet Thorpe, a well-known British TV and theater actress.
My grandfather took me to see ballets from around age five. But my family really wished that I would take a more reliable career path. Ultimately, I had to push quite hard and raise my voice quite high to get them to support me in studying dance because it was something I had an instinct and a passion for.
It’s a hard, demanding career. It takes a lot of strength and work, and it can be very challenging. And yet, when I think I showed my real passion for it, my family was completely behind me and really supported me in every way.
Between the ages of 10 and 14, I was learning with the Royal Ballet School's Associates Program, as well as other small dance schools in London. Then, at the age of 14, I decided to go into full-time training, and I went to the Elmhurst Ballet School.
While I was there, it relocated to an associated status with Birmingham World Ballet, and we spent a year working there. Thereafter, I went back to London and joined the English National Ballet School and also worked with the Stuttgart Ballet.
I danced in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in their national ballets, and then danced in the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago.
I was lucky that, in a relatively short career, I was able to dance a really wide range of styles and roles in the ballet canon.
But I stopped.
Did you ever think you would go back to dancing?
At the age of 24, I stopped dancing and moved into 11 years of other work in the creative industries. But it’s engaging with the Jerusalem Ballet that has brought me the opportunity to start again full time after a nearly 12-year break. This is very rare, and it’s something I never expected to happen.When I stopped ballet for what I thought was for good, I had no bitterness about doing so. I went on to a new job that I was very excited about, which was directing in London.
I stayed very engaged with ballet. I taught and coached students and professionals, used to dance in shows I directed, and many of my friends went on to become very successful principal dancers, both in the UK and internationally. But it never crossed my mind to dance.
I want to pay thanks to my mother and my partner, the Israeli actor Guy Alon, who encouraged and supported me throughout making aliyah and returning to dance after so long.
What was your connection to Judaism throughout your life?
I did not grow up very connected with Judaism. I am Jewish, but it was nothing more than something my family and I were. It was not an identity or a religious or a ritualistic or a dietary thing at all.There was nothing Jewish about our lives. It just so happened that I have a Jewish mother, and yes, I was always very proud of it. My family wouldn’t even say the word “Jewish” in public; they would just say the letter J.
Over many years, my interest in what it is to be Jewish grew to the point that when, in my late 20s, I started to take Jewish study seriously, and I went for a few years as a ba’al teshuva [Jew from a secular background who becomes religiously observant] with a kiruv [outreach] organization.
I was never trying to become an Orthodox extremist, but I felt there was a school and a canon of thought that I was not familiar with that was part of my identity, and I could only make sense of myself if I knew it.
A lot of my Jewish family thought I had gone crazy and become some kind of radical, but I wasn’t. It was to try to become a deeper and better version of myself.
But I think what all of that learning taught me, in the end, was that if a Jewish life in action is anything, it’s one where you follow your actions, follow through to the most obvious, necessary action that must be done to do great things and to be a good person.
I wouldn’t say I live an especially rigid Orthodox lifestyle, although I still love to engage with Jewish prayer and Jewish communities, particularly in Jerusalem. But what I feel much more excited about is that by joining this country, I can also join the dance world and perhaps even other sectors and play a part in enriching and developing this country.
What was your first experience living in Israel like?
I was unlucky enough, or I would, perhaps, say lucky enough, to arrive here on Oct. 1, 2023, just six days before the massacre.I was living in Beersheba, intending to work with a dance company. On the night before Oct. 7, I was out with the rehearsal director and some of the dancers from the company. I sort of skipped home, did a few dance steps on the street, went to bed, and then I woke up to my first siren.
I had visited Israel a few times before, but I had never been present for any of the sirens. But I immediately felt this was bizarre because, as somebody who has been very engaged with Jewish and Israeli activism in the UK, there are usually weeks of escalation [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] in the news. So you know something is coming.
That day, I woke up, and my first thought was that this really doesn’t feel right because there was total silence from Hamas. So already, my spidey-senses were tingling.
It was an amazing thing to see, not just in a military way, but the activation of the whole society on those days after the attack to see everybody get involved. And I have to say it was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever experienced.
From then on, it never crossed my mind that I might go back to London for a second. I have to do what I can to help. But even if I thought it would be best for me to leave, I could never look people in the face again if I left at this time. And I’ve always been proud that I stayed and I did what I could.
I led a fundraising campaign for Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, and I put a lot of stories on the news in the UK and America – we worked with CNN, Fox, the BBC, the Times, and so on.
What makes the Jerusalem Ballet so unique?
The first thing that makes it different is that the directors, Nadya Timofeyeva and Martin Schönberg, are possibly the only directors who would look at me at the age of 35 with a 12-year hiatus and say, ‘Do you want to come and dance again?’I don’t know if there are many people in the ballet world who have the sense of opportunity and devotion to dance and ballet that motivates them to offer me a chance to dance again.
I thought, ‘I’m not completely sure that I should dance again,’ but within a few weeks, I think we sort of settled into what I am starting to feel could be a really exciting and creative relationship, which I really enjoy.
Nadya is so creative and limitlessly capable, and Martin arrived recently and has revolutionized the company with his incredible talent.
They run a dance company that I think is starting to make its voice known in Jerusalem in a really special way and also around Israel.
The company has grown a distinctive repertoire, largely Jewish and Zionist in theme. It’s an attempt to create a ballet voice for Jerusalem and Israel, which I think is exciting to be a part of. That was one of the things that really motivated me to say yes.
There has been a big learning curve for me, reminding myself of how challenging some of this is; and for a small company, I think it’s a place that really punches above its weight because everybody is so committed.
Can you elaborate on what it means to make a ballet for the city of Jerusalem?
The ballet canon is a 450-year-old tradition. It’s very longstanding.Israel has done amazing things in ballet, but the real powerful movers and the shaping organizations of the dance world were the folk dancers originally and then the contemporary dance companies, principally the Batsheva Dance Company.
I think what you’re seeing now is actually the beginning of a serious attempt to take the foundations of the classical ballet here that were founded by some very charismatic and determined people and, perhaps, to do something like create a national technique, and that’s really significant.
And I'd like to take this opportunity to mention two other amazing people in Israel's dance world who played such a big part in welcoming me and helping me settle here: Claire Bayliss Nagar, Artistic Director of the Israel Ballet, and Yair Vardi, founder of the Suzanne Dellal Dance Centre. Dancers are a bit like a secret society, and having such warm, understanding, creative people here made such an enormous difference. They both do so much to elevate dance in this country as well.
The world of ballet has a style of dancing on pointe, wearing fairy costumes, and so on. But inside ballet, there are several schools. American, French, Italian, Russian, English, and Danish are the main ones. These are all several decades, if not centuries, old in their traditions. And Israel doesn’t necessarily have a real identity, a classical ballet technique and school of its own.
But I think it’s possible to say that in a couple of decades, you can look at a national style that can be identified by its specifics, and that’s really exciting. And I have to say, I would really like to play a part in that as time goes on as a dancer and perhaps in other roles. I would like very much to play my part in developing a national style in ballet.
What advice could you give to aspiring dancers who may want to join the Israeli ballet scene?
My advice would be to really commit. I think that the arts and culture scene here is very rich, and it’s very exciting to be part of it now. It is small, but it punches so far above its weight. I think the reason is that the people here who have built companies and styles and the performers who create success here do so with extraordinary commitment, grit, and determination.There are ways to get good training and have a career, whether here or abroad. But it does require a lot of hard work.
Here, the ballet world is quite distant, but if people want it, there is excellent training at the main schools, and there are companies that are really working hard.
It is a place where there are very strong signs of a good future for an art form that is very beautiful and strange but powerful in terms of its ability to communicate emotion and deep sensations that other art forms struggle to touch.
