Apr 10, 2019
"I love performing but actually, I'm overcoming it
now, but I really freeze up and get nervous when I have to talk in
public. I like the idea of a performance speech to the
public but the free, off-the-cuff, point a camera at me, I
just don't become myself.
When I performed at the Opera House, you can't see
the audience, nice big spotlight, only child here got to
be a princess for 13 years, when I wasn't being all the other
hilarious roles.
Pietra quite often says to me "I know you want to
go to Mars but we've only got the petrol to get to the moon".
I always hated it, I always hated performance. I
think that it takes a long time for people to realise what their
strengths are.
Ella took me to see a concert of Ladysmith Black Mambazo at
Cadogan Hall and that was just amazing but we could see a gap at
that moment to fill and it had never been done before so there was
no challenge at that point for us, we were just so
committed that it was a project that lasted five years
for us. It had a setback, it had a pilot phase where it wasn't
excepted and carried on, we wanted to do it ourselves and at that
point, it grew and then had different challenges again.
We were working on Inala, Ella composed the music with Ladysmith Black
Mambazo who Nelson Mandela took to collect his Noble Peace Prize,
the legends. She sat around a piano, in South Africa and we took
ourselves off there to start this project and she sat at the piano,
surrounded by nine Zulu men, at the grand age of 22, and just
played her music and they co-wrote five songs in that short time
that we came back with and presented to the Director of the Royal
Ballet.
He (Adam) sent me a message "Congratulations, that's
amazing! The Grammy nominations!" And he text me a
screenshot of the nominations that had just been announced and we
had been nominated for a Grammy award."
Welcome to episode #121 of #Screwitjustdoit. On
today's show, it's my pleasure to welcome the Sisters Grimm, that's Ella
Spira and Pietra Mello-Pittman.
I'm all for taking #Screwitjustdoit in different
directions, shining a light on different industries, different
businesses and this is very much the case with Sisters
Grimm.
I attended a British-American Business Christmas
lunch, back in December, and I was sat at a table sponsored by
Virgin Atlantic Delta and sat right next to me was
Pietra and Ella. We got talking and I literally spent the entire
Christmas lunch enthralled by an amazing business that they'd put
together which is just celebrating 10 years and I thought this
would be a fantastic subject for the show.
So, who are Sisters Grimm, what do they do? They're two of the
UK's most exciting and successful, original theatre-show producers.
They're best known for a fusion of the legendary sound of the
African male choral group, Ladysmith Black Men Bazoo, with ballet,
to create the Grammy Award-nominated show, Inala.
So Inala sold out the Edinburgh
festival, the UK tour performed five times in Moscow at the famous
Chekhov international theatre festival, returned to the UK for a
sell-out tour at Sadler's Wells. In fact, I believe they sold
something crazy 80,000 tickets - think of Wembley and you get an
idea of the number of people who have been to this show
and they're back again for a very limited run in the West End from
April the 30th this year as well.
The music from the show, which Ella composed
alongside Ladysmith, was released separately and won a Grammy
nomination and then they went on, Ladysmith, to win a Grammy
award.
The ladies have been to the Grammys, they've also been to the Royal Variety Show alongside the likes of Ed
Sheeran, Shirley Bassey, Simon Cowell etc. Ella has worked
with the likes of Bruno Mars, remixing in his music, and David
Arnold, the composer of several of the James Bond scores. Whereas
Pietra has danced all the classic ballets as a royal ballet
ballerina and her ability as a choreographer and creative director
has helped the duo win a 'woman of the future' nomination for arts
and culture.
They're celebrating 10 years as the Sisters Grimm, an incredible story spanning many
different continents, just been up for an export champion award as
well, looking at China, Japan and Dubai this year but they are back
in the UK for a limited time
I'm going to start off by asking Pietra to explain
exactly who the Sisters Grimm are and what they do and the obvious
question, of course, about where that name came from.
Let's start up!