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Becca_King

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  • Connection to/interest in ballet** (Please describe. Examples: fan, teacher, dancer, writer, avid balletgoer)
    I'm an avid balletgoer and dance for fun
  • City**
    Co Durham, England
  1. Do people think the noise is often worse in opera houses, which were intended to carry every (operatic) sound as far as possible, rather than in dance theatres such as London's Sadler's Wells? Edit: Someone's already said that! But I think more manufacturers are beginning to pad the pleats of the shoes - the pleats of Bloch Serenade II are padded. And in Russia, aren't dancers taught to spring onto pointe rather than roll there? Could that have somehting to do with anything?
  2. The performances are not going to take place on the days and times they are scheduled to? Or the dancers scheduled to dance are not going to dance?
  3. I don't know if you're being serious or not, but - there's no pointe work in Highland Fling. The girls wear jazz shoes in Act 1 and bare feet in Act II. I doubt I'll make myself popular by saying this, but I think Bourne's sylph is more 'otherworldly' than the balletic sylph. That doesn't mean I prefer his version - I love them both. From where can one get hold of the POB 1972 video, please? I've never seen it anywhere online or in a real shop.
  4. Thank you. I didn’t realise the students were assessed on pre-set material – I thought they were assessed in a standard class. And the jury seems to represent the whole spectrum of the organisation. Edit: Sorry, I posted this before the French text had been deleted - my posting doesn't make sense anymore!
  5. I'd like to ask some questions of the POB regulars here. Firstly, I take it that the students from the top divisions of the school (as well as the other divisions) are put in rank order. Is the director of the company obliged to admit into the company the student(s) who came top of their class? If so, does this make the selection of new corps de ballet members very fair and transparent, or is it still very subjective? How many people assess the students, and are they assessed mainly on technique, or on artistic elements which are, by nature, more subjective?
  6. I have a recording of 'A Folk Tale' which I taped from a UK TV channel, Artsworld. I assumed it had once been released commercially, as most of Artsworld's output has been, but I may be wrong.
  7. Thanks for the information. Could you explain the POB school system to me? I try to follow the French forum on another website and I gather that the students are put in rank order each year and on the basis of this can be moved up, asked to repeat a year or asked to leave? Can they only be asked to repeat once? I'm interested because I think the company's corps are just amazing and of course this is greatly due to the schooling.
  8. One would assume - perhaps incorrectly - that Daniel Stokes is not French. Is this true and do you know for how long he trained at the POB school? It would be unusual for POB.
  9. I’m intrigued - what does marketing have to do with ticket prices, other than that people will respond favourably to marketing if it includes information of low ticket prices? In the UK things have separate budgets as far as I know, and so lowering of ticket prices would not come directly from the marketing budget. It would be more likely to come from education and access. Perhaps the would need to decide whether reducing the marketing budget and giving more to education and access, for example, would have more positives or more negatives to the welfare of the company. In the US does the company just have onebig pot of money rather than lots of little ones?
  10. 'If done correctly, which means tight controls on the number available and where they are. It won't work in a theater with general unassigned seating, for instance. A discounted seat has to be less valuable than a regular price ticket. Otherwise it only drives the price point down, and makes people expect to pay $10 for a seat that has an actual cost of $120. Or it pisses the people who paid full price off.' The Sadler's Wells in London offers a limited number of £8 seats for students for every performance. That sort of thing... I undertstand that it's different in America - that's why I'm asking. But I was really explaining what happens in England after Bart mentioned the BRB ticket pricing policy. Also, individual sponsors and legacies can cover the cost, like with the Paul Hamlyn matinees at the ROH, so it doens't have to come out of the company's main budget.
  11. But in some cases, the seats would just stay empty anyway, so surely better to have someone in the seats and not get any money, than not have someone in the seats and not get any money?
  12. Bart said 'Most ballet performances have (sadly) a lot of unsold tickets right up to the curtain, and some offer discounts at the last minute, for those who don't want to commit early on. This is random and inconsistent, probably put into effect when things aren't selling well. This encourages the one-time attender, but does not provide for followup and return. That's why I think that more companies would benefit from a 10-pound a seat policy (for some performances at least) or something like the Fourth Ring Society.' Bart, I just want to pick up on this £10 seat policy before I run off to class, as I agree with you very much on this. The BRB £10 seat policy was only applicable in Sunderland, in the north-east of England (now it's £15 adults, £7.50 children) and is still applicable for programmes of all -new choreography in Birmingham. The thing about these tickets is that they can be booked in advance. A theatre in York also does a £3.50 policy for under 25s. For less popular programmes, all tickets are £3.50 for this age group, and for more popular programmes (like ballet), the first 50 under-25s to book get £3.50 tickets. This encourages people to book in advance, and to return eventually *without* the incentive of cheap tickets - it builds loyalty. The Royal Opera House (which doesn't do concessions for children, OAPs etc) has recently introduced two new forms of standby tickets at £10. However, as the word standby suggests, they are only released a day or so in advance and there is no indication of which performances will have them, so for people like me who live a couple of hundred miles away or more, they are no use - we would make the journey if we could plan it in advance around the £10 tickets, but the day before the performance train tickets will cost astronomical prices. Far better, IMHO, to have a certain number of guaranteed bargain tickets on a first-come-first served basis, particularly if it can be assumed in advance that a programme won't sell brilliantly - ie if it's a mixed bill rather than Swan Lake. As a child, I started watching ballet regularly on the BRB £10 scheme, and now I buy tickets for most performances of their northern England tours - ie up to five in a week when they're here, plus tickets for a companion- so it does pay off for companies, I think, particularly as when I'm away from Sunderland and watching BRB I'm more than happy to pay 'normal' prices (as happy as a student can be to hand over money! ) And if I get rich :blush: I can see myself donating large sums of money to the company, as well as attending more and more performances.
  13. Do you have to buy a subscription, or can people just buy individual tickets? And in the US is the loss covered by individual sponsors, seeing as there are no state subsidies? Did there used to be state subsidies, and if so did they help towards touring? In London last October we saw Danses Concertantes, with members of NYCB, which I think was during their autumn break. Do dancers organise things like this within the US when they're on holiday?
  14. Helene, you say Of course it's a big deal for the regional company, but is it a big deal in NYC? Or do a lot of people in NYC just say 'that's nice' and carry on watching the NYC-based companies? Do you think brief exchanges between companies would be a good idea? Of course they would have to be companies of roughly the same size and reputation, but simplisticly wouldn't it be cheaper for companies if they had the use of another company's orchestra and theatre on tour, and more or less only had to pay to lug their equpiment between theatres? Do you think that would also encourgage less 'overlapping', ie. one regional company spending time in NYC and therefore leaving its region without a company for a while, while both ABT and NYCB were also performing in NYC at the time, so the regional company didn't get the audience it deservered anyway? Also, what about 'splinter groups'? In England, next season the Royal Ballet will have 99 dancers, but there will probably be some times when only half of them are needed to perform the programme in London. Therefore, in my dreams it would be lovely if twenty or so dancers broke off for a week at a time to do a bit of touring in the UK and abroad, not of big three-acters but of triple bills made up of one-acters in the current RB season, or even of one one-acter and some solos and pas de deux. Could that happen/does that happen in the US? Similarly, some of the UK companies do small- scale touring when money allows. This involves a company splitting in two and touring two seperate mixed bills to lucky smaller theatres (which wouldn't normally see the full company) around the UK. For example, in under two weeks this spring BRB covered 8 more venues than it normally would by splitting in two, with each half doing a few nights at a time in four smaller venues. Does this happen?
  15. Bart - just to make it clear, I admit to having *no* knowledge of the geography of the US. When I talk about the geography of the UK, I am just pointing things out/remarking on things in case anyone should care to know. What I mean to say is, it may seem like I've been 'correcting' your UK geographty knowledge, which isn't the case at all - I was just putting the vague facts as I see them forward in case they were important to the discussion. It would be very hypocritical of me to do otherwise!
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