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Royal Ballet season 2004-2005


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The 2004-2005 season of the Royal Ballet has been announced on its web site:

http://info.royaloperahouse.org/News/Index.cfm?ccs=578

There'll be quite a lot of Ashton :blushing:

The season will include:

-a mixed bill with A wedding bouquet (Ashton), Requiem (MacMillan), Les noces (Nijinska)

-Ashton's Sylvia

-an Ashton mixed bill with Scènes de ballet, Divertissement and Daphnis et Chloé

-Ashton's Cinderella

-Dowell's production of Swan Lake

-Ashton's La fille mal gardée

-MacMillan's Manon

-a mixed bill with Symphony in C (Balanchine), a new work by Christopher Wheeldon, Rhapsody and Marguerite et Armand (Ashton)

-a mixed bill with Tombeaux (Bintley), Enigma variations (Ashton) and The rite of spring (MacMillan)

-Ashton's Ondine

-a mixed bill with Ashton's The Dream, a new work by Christopher Bruce and alternatating The rite of spring (MacMillan) and Symhony in C (Balanchine)

-a mixed bill with Les biches (Nijinska), Symphonic variations (Ashton) and A month in the country (Ashton)

Wow! What a season! Compared to the extremely unexciting 2004-2005 season, it really makes me wish I lived in London!

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Thanks, Estelle. That is a fantastic schedule, emphasizing the company's heritage. I wonder if this is the first time that Monica Mason has been able to plan a season entirely on her own, rather than having to deal with leftover plans made by her predecessors. If so, it makes me hope that the powers that be will waive the mandated retirement age for artistic directors and let Mason get the Royal back on track.

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So, what do the RB fans here think of the upcoming season?

By the way, I was wondering: among the works of Ashton which are still "alive", which ones won't be shown next season? The only ones coming to my mind are "Les deux pigeons", "Les patineurs", and "Monotones", but then I'm not an Ashton specialist at all...

According to what's written on the RB web site, it will be the first performance of "A wedding bouquet" in 15 years, and also of the full-length version of "Sylvia" since the late 1960s; also the "Divertissements" in the mixed bill will include a pas de deux and male solo from "Devil's holiday" (1939), staged by Frederick Franklin.

It's so great to see a program which emphasizes so much the company's unique repertory and heritage (very far from the "National Ballet of Anywhere" programs that seem to become the norm for many companies). Ari, I had wondered about Monica Mason's influence too (that definitely is very different from the Ross Stretton years programming) and indeed she deserves to be applaused for that.

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I'm wating for the Gala to celebrate "Entente coridale" 100th anniversary which will be at Palais Garnier at september 29. It's THE event of the parisian next season. ROH and POB principals will dance in this evening. They don't speak at all about it, I hope they will present Ashton pieces during this evening as they make for their US tour !

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What an exciting calendar!

Haven't been to London for far too long - but this will most probably make me travel again. It's such a pity that you hardly get to see any of Ashton's ballets elsewhere, particularly the full-length ones apart from La Fille - plus this gives me some hope that the focus may switch back to that typical English ballet style that seemed to have gone a bit in the most recent past?

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Estelle, besides the ones you mention, there are a few others which have been done quite recently - Birthday Offering (one of my favourites), Les Rendezvous, La Valse, Facade - and others which have been done not all that long ago and should be reviveable relatively easily - Illuminations, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Capriol Suite, Apparitions, Jazz Calendar - and of course Romeo and Juliet. There's also Dante Sonata, which the Birmingham company does.

I've heard that Monica Mason said there may be some added in the 2005/6 season which she couldn't fit in this time so maybe we'll see some of these then. The real pity is that some of them would look much better in the smaller Linbury Theatre than on the main stage but there don't seem to be any plans to use it.

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Thanks for your reply, Jane. I seem to remember that the Ballet de Toulouse did stage "Illuminations" a few seasons ago, but am not totally sure.

It would be great to see some more in 2005-6, and also if some of those works would continue to be performed in the next seasons...

The problem of needing a smaller theater sometimes happens in Paris too. For example, I remember reading that some works of Tudor looked really better in the (smaller) Opéra Comique when Nureyev had added them to the POB's repertory in the mid-1980s than later when they were performed on the larger stage of Garnier (but now, there is, as far as I know, no link between the Opéra Comique and the Paris Opera).

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Jane,

Kevin Mckenzie ,in the Nov/03 of Dance magazine interview,stated that ABT was doing a coproduction of Ashton's Sylvia w/ RB. Is there any mention in the press release of the RB season?We would be very excited if it does occur.Thanks for any info. Joe

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