June 14th 2018 was a big day in Chester. Some might say the biggest of modern times. The visit of Queen Victoria in 1859 had of course been a big moment, and the construction of Eastgate Clock in honour of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee another noteworthy celebration for the English mediaeval cathedral city. Then there was that day in 1957 when the whole flag-waving city, it seemed, came out to greet the young Queen Elizabeth II, less than five years into her reign. She opened a new County Hall on her visit.
But this, this was different, and not just because the Queen was back in Chester accompanied by the newly married Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. It was different because the Queen was returning to open the Storyhouse, a brand new home for Chester’s creative communities. Storyhouse would comprise of a library, a cinema, open performance and community spaces, and two theatres.
Behind the stage curtain as the Queen took her seat stood a man who was no stranger to royalty. In his prime he had danced for the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and for Princess Diana too. Paul was that good, his talent unmistakeable, his passion for dance undeniable. His early promise had secured entry into the prestigious Royal Ballet School where he learned the skills, stamina and technique required to grace the stage for any of the leading ballet companies at home or abroad.
From there Birmingham Royal Ballet beckoned. It would be his home and his life for the next eight years; the packed houses, royal performances, overseas tours, and rehearsals, always the long, tough, exhausting, relentless rehearsals. As with all ballet dancers, Paul had to be in the best of health, at the peak of strength and fitness, week in week out.
Except he wasn’t, not in the latter part of his Birmingham Royal Ballet career. Paul had first experimented with weed when he was 13 years old. Even though it didn’t do anything for him, he went in search of something else that would. By the time he was in full flight at Birmingham Royal Ballet, Paul was as committed to his addictions as he was to dancing. His weight dropped to little more than eight stone. He smoked crack cocaine and, as Paul later put it, he couldn’t stop drinking vodka round the clock. He reached the point where he wanted to die.
Tragically, inevitably, at the age of 30 Paul had to give up his ballet career, leave Birmingham Royal Ballet, and join a new company of rehab addicts like himself. To help other patients and aid his own recovery, he began teaching movement. It was during one of these sessions that Paul met a heroin addict, recently released from prison having served 17 years for armed robbery and more. On his phone, he showed Paul a picture of a painting he had done, of Christ, arms apart, broken in body, but with hope on his face. Paul thought so much of it that it gave him the idea to create and choreograph a dance piece based on the painting. He would call it Sacrifice.
A week later the dance of Sacrifice had been performed as a duet. Paul filmed it and showed the footage to the painter addict. When the man broke down in tears, a man who had never once thought about contemporary dance, Paul understood the potential healing power that dance could bring for so many others. He experimented more with choreography and observed the impact of dance on other rehab addicts like him.
Paul wouldn’t describe himself now as a recovered rehab dance philanthropist. He wouldn’t regard Fallen Angels, the dance company and charity he founded with Claire Morris and has built up so successfully since his rehab days, as philanthropy. He wouldn’t say how his sustained act of philanthropy has helped him to stay clean, to give his life purpose.
No. Paul would much rather talk about the addicts, those whose lives had been completely broken, so desperate, so close to the point of no return. Paul would prefer to recall their unforgettable moments on stage, and explain how the effect of those moments spread off stage, healing, transforming, saving lives that were lost.
Things do happen in recovery beyond your wildest dreams, Paul acknowledges, but only by sticking at it, only by staying on the path. Only then does Fallen Angels become a unique British dance company providing dance theatre experiences for people of all backgrounds in recovery from addiction. Only then does Fallen Angels succeed in being chosen as the resident dance company at the Storyhouse in Chester.
And only then, thanks to the deeply personal philanthropy of Paul Bayes Kitcher, do addicts-turned-dancers like Frank get to say that dancing for the Queen at the Storyhouse’s opening was the best day of his life.