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The Royal Ballet announced its 2016-17 season today.

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/ballet-and-dance-201617

There will be six live-to-cinema transmissions.

2 November: Anastasia
8 December: The Nutcracker
8 February: Woolf Works
28 February: The Sleeping Beauty
11 April: Jewels

7 June: The Dream / Symphonic Variations ( :yahoo:) / Marguerite & Armand

But y'all know how this works. If you want your cinema to carry Symphonic Variations, you've got to go see Anastasia and The Nutcracker, otherwise cinema owners may give up on the season long before June 2017.

I will be curious to see what American movie theaters do with The Sleeping Beauty, given that this season's broadcast of Frankenstein has been embargoed in the U.S. and replaced with an older recording of Beauty.

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But y'all know how this works. If you want your cinema to carry Symphonic Variations, you've got to go see Anastasia and The Nutcracker, otherwise cinema owners may give up on the season long before June 2017.

I really don't know how they expect us in Manhattan to support this program when its only showing at 1 theater (Symphony Space) and they are choosing to schedule them at 1 PM on Wednesdays. NY has a large ballet community but a lot of us work!

I took off 1 day of work this year to see the Rhapsody/Two Pigeons program. I would have seen more if they were shown evenings or weekends.

I may take off once next season to see Wolfworks, but thats really all the time I can take off of work for ballet.

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In New York at the beginning of the current season there was a Landmark Theatres cinema on Houston Street that was showing the Royal Ballet on weekends, but the chain dropped out of the season very quickly and is now showing productions from Italian opera houses rather than the ROH.

I don't know why the Royal Ballet has elected to revive and broadcast Anastasia. For broadcast purposes, it may be counting on familiarity with the story to attract viewers. Others will probably say this is another of example of Deborah MacMillan holding the Royal Ballet hostage, as there's this persistent perception that she periodically forces the company to revive her husband's bad works in exchange for continued permission to perform hits like Romeo and Juliet, Manon and Mayerling.

I did not see the complete Anastasia by ABT, but I remember that it was a flop and that Viviana Durante couldn't save it. I have seen the one-act (final-act) version, and Lynn Seymour made it compelling.

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The first two cinema relays have been cast, subject to change, of course.

Anastasia (November 2)
Anastasia / Anna Anderson - Natalia Osipova
Mathilde Kschessinska - Marianela Nuñez
Kshchessinska’s Partner - Federico Bonelli
The Husband - Edward Watson
Rasputin - Thiago Soares
Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna - Christina Arestis
Tsar Nicholas II - Christopher Saunders

http://www.roh.org.uk/showings/anastasia-live-2016

The Nutcracker (December 8)
The Sugar Plum Fairy - Lauren Cuthbertson
The Prince - Federico Bonelli
Clara - Francesca Hayward
Hans-Peter/The Nutcracker - Alexander Campbell
Herr Drosselmeyer - Gary Avis

http://www.roh.org.uk/showings/the-nutcracker-live-2016

I'm not thrilled by the casting of Osipova as Anastasia, even though I suppose it was to be exptected. I worry audiences will be in for an evening of over-acting.

Last year Cuthbertson had a nervous time of it in the relay of The Nutcracker, which wasn't helped by a last-minute partner change, I'm sure. If I remember correctly, this will also be the second broadcast of the ballet for Bonelli, and the third for Hayward and Campbell. Will we never see anyone other than Avis as Drosselmeyer? I would think more varied casts would be of greater interest to potential viewers.

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The first two cinema relays have been cast, subject to change, of course.

Anastasia (November 2)

Anastasia / Anna Anderson - Natalia Osipova

Mathilde Kschessinska - Marianela Nuñez

Kshchessinska’s Partner - Federico Bonelli

The Husband - Edward Watson

Rasputin - Thiago Soares

Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna - Christina Arestis

Tsar Nicholas II - Christopher Saunders

http://www.roh.org.uk/showings/anastasia-live-2016

The Nutcracker (December 8)

The Sugar Plum Fairy - Lauren Cuthbertson

The Prince - Federico Bonelli

Clara - Francesca Hayward

Hans-Peter/The Nutcracker - Alexander Campbell

Herr Drosselmeyer - Gary Avis

http://www.roh.org.uk/showings/the-nutcracker-live-2016

I'm not thrilled by the casting of Osipova as Anastasia, even though I suppose it was to be exptected. I worry audiences will be in for an evening of over-acting.

Last year Cuthbertson had a nervous time of it in the relay of The Nutcracker, which wasn't helped by a last-minute partner change, I'm sure. If I remember correctly, this will also be the second broadcast of the ballet for Bonelli, and the third for Hayward and Campbell. Will we never see anyone other than Avis as Drosselmeyer? I would think more varied casts would be of greater interest to potential viewers.

Seriously, for the most part i don't think the people who go to see the Royal Ballet cinemacasts of Nutcracker care all that much about who's dancing. those of us who do are, I think, a tiny minority.

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It was almost impossible to get to these films in my town as well (Seattle), except for Nutcracker, and honestly, I already see enough Nut in live venues! These broadcasts are such a good idea, but they don't seem to be able to connect with the existing dance communities -- all of them, including the Lincoln Center programs, have done a miserable job promoting themselves to their audiences.

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The problem with the Symphony Space presentations of the RB films is that they were always on weekdays at 1PM. Therefore, the majority of people who work for a living could not attend. I note that the Royal Opera broadcasts at Symphony Space are always on Sunday afternoons, and they are well attended. Clearly, a decision was made by someone at Symphony Space that the ballet showings were not as important as the opera showings. The time slot for the balelt showings made them doomed to failure from the outset.

Certain of the RB films were shown through Fathom Events at numerous theaters. In particular I'm referrign to the Swan Lake with Osipova. It's possible that Fathom might show the ballets featuring Osipova.

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I wonder if this morning's shocking Brexit news from the UK will have an effect on these cinemacasts or on cultural exchange in general?

It may not be so easy for our English friends to "Chunnel down" to France for their POB fixes or vice versa.

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The Chunnel construction started and was planned before the EU came into existence, Were the UK to opt out of Schengen, then border crossings would be impacted.

At least from news reports, the UK was never in Schengen, although that might be wrong.

update: According to BBC online, the UK and Ireland opted out of Schengen long ago, but have their own travel agreements for easy passage.

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There is an odd wrinkle in the distribution channels for Royal Opera and Royal Ballet broadcasts. Peter Gelb and the Met Opera have prohibited any distributor of the Met Live in HD operas to also distribute the Royal Opera broadcasts. There is no such restriction on ballet broadcasts. That is why Fathom Events has never shown/distributed any of the Royal Opera HD broadcasts in the U.S..

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We did not need visas to go to France, Belgium or anywhere else in Western Europe before we joined the EU. I shall be very surprised if there are problems about visiting the Continent or people from Western Europe coming here as tourists. There should not be any change for at least two years after the UK gives notice it wants to leave the EU. It has not given notice yet. The difficulty comes when you think about the British expats resident in places like Spain and Malta and EU citizens living and working here.

The Brexit campaign had a very simple message. Leave and we shall regain control of our borders and be able to govern ourselves.The problem is that it is much more complicated than that. None of the models for our trading relationship with the EU has really been thought through. We have had three potential models set up each of which proves to have serious flaws. But that sort of thing does not matter when a significant number of people are fed up with the government and fed up with being ignored by all the major parties. Each party has spent the last thirty plus years ignoring its natural constituency and core supporters in favour of the swing voters in the key constituencies which actually win and lose in General Elections. Our political parties discovered salami slicing and we are all going to pay the political and economic price for that discovery.

As far as I can see the referendum has been decided by people living in those parts of the country that have lost their industries and decent well paid jobs. They, no doubt, feel that they have shown the governing classes what they think of them and given David Cameron a boot up the backside. A minute's pleasure to be paid for by years of no one is quite clear what? But why should we worry if the decision has been based on empty assertions and simple emotional appeals to love of country and belief its future? It must be right because Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are with us against the political establishment. No one seems to have noticed that they are actually part of the political elite themselves. The decision is a bit like having an unsightly boil on your little finger and deciding to lop off your entire arm to cure it.

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I don't want to take this too far off topic, but visas and passports are quite different things. Once inside Schengen, you don't even have to show a passport. Getting inside the zone is difficult and the EU fortified borders in 2007 around newly admitted countries - Poland, Czech R, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia were admitted Jan 1, 2008. But rules have just been tightened because of the migrant crisis.

The bigger issue of concern for ballet is employability and training of dancers in other countries and how this might impact them. And trade could impact dance - will Freed shoes be sold without tariffs in the EU? So much is unknown at this point...

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This is failure to reach an agreement with cinema distributors is becoming a chronic problem. The ROH has gone through a dizzying number of distributors since 2007, which leads me to suspect that it's the opera house that's playing hardball. This, of course, would be a stupid tactic, since there is a finite number of distributors and cinema chains out there.

The UK was never part of the Schengen Area. I could show you passport pages that include one stamp for entering the UK and a second Schengen stamp I got when boarding the train for France or Belgium. Keflavik International Airport is another example. Iceland is not an EU member, but it is part of Schengen. Passengers traveling to and from, say, Barcelona or Warsaw don't go through any border checks. However a second part of the airport services flights to and from Canada, the US and the UK, and that does involve a Schengen border crossing.

I wouldn't be surprised if the future border looked a lot like the one between the US and Canada. Once upon a time the crossing, especially by land, was very lax. Today it requires an international travel document, but it is still a visa-free (as opposed to visa-waived) crossing. However moving from one country to the other as a student, worker or resident involves a lot of red tape. I wouldn't expect ballet fans to be affected much. (For example, last weekend I caught up with a ballet lover who came from New York to Toronto to go to the ballet. By Monday she was back at the Met.) I expect it's non-British dancers working in the UK or British dancers working in the EU who will have to go through more hoops than before, although there are plenty of Japanese, American, Australian and Russian dancers who already do that. I can't imagine the Royal Ballet reverting to a Commonwealth-only policy.

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