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Ashton Fan

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    ILFORD ,ESSEX
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  1. Perhaps the explanation for the lack of Royal Opera House based celebrations has less to do with the absence of an Ashton or a major compo=oser available to write an opera to mark the coronation and more to do with the King's apparent desire to make the coronation appear less.elitist than it has been in the past. It would seem. from what has so far leaked that the King wants a sort of people's coronation rather than one in which he is surrounded by the peerage and the political great and the good. My guess is that the palace has not approached the ROH to lay on some sort of gala because it wants to avoid any suggestion that the King is remotely interested in elitist art forms.It is one thing for him to go to the opera or ballet quietly and sit in the royal box quite another to do so with the sort of adverse coverage that the Sun and the Mail might unleash on a royal gala at a time of financial challenger. The strange mixture of composers engaged to provide music for the coronation combined with the list of performers lined up for the coronation celebratory concert suggests that the aim is to appeal to what is perceived to be popular taste and to avoid any idea that any member of the the royal family is anything other than safely middle brow and that the King in particular shares the tastes of his people,
  2. The death of Lynn Seymour has just been announced. Seymour was one of the Royal Ballet's great ballerinas at a time when the company had many great dancers in its ranks. Although she came to be regarded as a MacMillan dancer and his muse because of the number of roles he created on her she also worked with Ashton on a number of major roles. Both Ashton and MacMillan created roles for her which remain part of the company's active repertory. She was an extraordinary dance actress and both choreographers exploited her dramatic skills and expressive qualities to the full.
  3. Although not part of the Ashton Foundation's activities those who are interested in the changes that have occurred in teaching practices and performance style in the years following Ashton's retirement and death may find the short film "Dancing de Valois;Teaching the 1947 syllabus" of considerable interest.In the film Anita Young , a former member of the resident company and until recently a teacher in the Upper School, takes a handful of RBS students through some of the exercises and enchainements students and professional dancers would have encountered in de Valois' classes. What I found of real interest is that at least two of the students said that they found the exercises from the 1947 syllabus easier on the body than those they usually encounter. The de Valois syllabus requires the dancer to fit the combination of steps that has been set into the music to which it is to be performed. It is the music which regulates the speed at which the enchainements are to be performed. There is no thought of allowing the dancer time to complete and finish each step perfectly and adjust their balance between steps. The students' comments about the difference in approach and emphasis and the way it made them think ahead, it seems to me, helps to explain the difference in the quality and flow of the movement in the past and what sometimes seems like a lack of obvious flow today. It makes clear why the comment "We were always off balance" was a prevalent refrain in the past. I hope you find the short film as interesting as I did. It certainly provides food for thought.
  4. In addition to the Foundation's activities there are recordings of two fairly recent Royal Opera House insight events which are of interest to anyone who wants to look at the company's Ashton repertory. Both focus on Ashton ballets which have been out of the company's repertory for some years. One is easily identified as it is labelled "The Royal Ballet Rehearse Enigma Variations the other from about ten months ago merely refers to an Ashton triple bill without specifying what is being rehearsed. Strangely although it has a picture of Nunez as Natalia Petrovna suggesting that it may be concerned with rehearsing A Month in the Country it is in fact concerned with a rehearsal of Ashton's masterpiece Scenes de Ballet.
  5. Lynn Wake's film was shown at an event held at the Royal Opera House to mark the tenth anniversary of the Ashton Foundation.It was shown as the second item in the evening's programme. The first part of the evening was devoted to showing dancers performing pieces of Ashton's choreography most of which had been the subject of the Foundation's Insight events. This part of the evening's programme can be found by searching for Frederick Ashton the Influence of a Ballet Legend. The most interesting segments of this part of the programme I think are a performance of part of one of Ashton's early ballets called Foyer de Danse reconstructed from a film of a performance given at the Mercury Theatre; the men's choreography from the pas de quatre Ashton created for Helpmann's production of Swan Lake staged in 1963 danced by Leo Dixon and Joseph Sissens; the fisherman's solo from Le Rossignol danced by Matthew Ball and the reconstruction of a gala piece which Ashton created for Fonteyn and Nureyev which was originallly called Hamlet Prelude,The reconstruction now known as Hamlet and Ophelia is danced by Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell.
  6. The film is fascinating and well worth watching. It contains two precious snippets of film showing Beriosova in two roles which Ashton created on her. The archive material includes excerpts showing the original cast in the Dream and Enigma Variations . There is an extract from the 1962 recording of Ashton's Birthday Offering in which we see the solos with two of the original cast, Nerina and Beriosova, dancing their created roles . In this section Seymour comments on the qualities of each ballerina which Ashton sought to capture in the solos he created. The substitute dancers are more than acceptable as they include Sibley, Parkinson, Linden and Page, The archive film of the Dream includes commentary by Sibley and Dowell about working with Ashton on the ballet. The film ends with Wayne Eagling working with Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell on reconstructing Hamlet and Ophelia which Ashton created for Nureyev and Fonteyn but made on Eagling and Fonteyn because Nureyev was not available during the time allocated to the work's creation. .
  7. We all hope that the new production will be a success. I am not sure what, if anything, will be revealed about it on Sunday. I suspect that tomorrow will be far more concerned with coaching than providing information about its designs and its "exciting" special effects. If Ms Ellis-Somes and the Foundation have any sense they will ensure that the recording of tomorrow's event is posted on the Foundation's website with some speed in order to boost ticket sales. The Foundation took far too long to post the Daphnis and Chloe recording. The most interesting aspect of Dowell coaching Bracewell in the role of Daphnis is the emphasis he places on making the choreography speak to the audience by avoiding pure classroom classicism and instead making his movements naturalistic and expressive. Ronnie Hynde did not seem so concerned that Monaghan makes Dorkon far more classically correct than I recall David Drew making him in performance. Drew who would have been coached by Somes and had his performance polished by Ashton managed to show that Dorkon as a goatherd was an outsider through the deliberate and finely judged rough quality of his movements.
  8. A further reminder to look on the Frederick Ashton Foundation website where all the masterclasses which really matter up to and including that held on Daphnis and Chloe towards the end of last year are now available to view by the general public. The latest masterclass includes Dowell coaching William Bracewell in Daphnis' solo from the dance contest with Dorkon and Ronald Hynde coaching Lachlan Monaghan in Dorkon's solo from the same contest as well as the choreography for Dorkon's reappearance in the ballet's finale. The Foundation's next masterclass takes place this Sunday at the RBS Upper School when Wendy Ellis Somes will be coaching excerpts from Ashton's Cinderella which we are due to see in a new production in a couple of week;s time. It is difficult to predict who will appear in this forthcoming masterclass or what will be coached on this occasion.The ballet has been out of the repertory for such a long time that only the longest serving members of the company can be said to be familiar with the work. I have no doubt that the masterclass will in due course be posted on the Foundation's website.
  9. Dancers have relatively short performing careers and we all know that at some point each of them however distinguished will choose to retire. The great trick is to leave the stage before it leaves you. Morera has been a company member for more than twenty five years, she received her silver medal a couple of years ago, and despite some inexplicable gaps in her repertory she has almost certainly covered a far wider range of roles that are central to the company's repertory than most dancers manage in their careers. She is technically strong but never lets that get in the way of her performances which are always full of lively artistic and interpretative imagination. Her career has almost certainly suffered from her versatility and her usefulness She told London Ballet Association that when she was promoted to Principal dancer that she was told that she would still be dancing her usuak repertory which at that time was essentially senior soloist roles where you have to make a mark. At that point in her career she was dancing assorted Prologue Fairies. the Neapolitan dance. Fairy Godmother and Fairy Autumn and leading roles in the Ashton repertory where she had, and has, few equals, as unlike Rojo , she knew that Ashton's choreography, dance vocabulary and style is not something you can put on and take off like an overcoat. Morera by her own account arrived at the RBS as something of a bravura technician and initially questioned why she had to go back to basics.She has since said that it was the best thing that could have happened to her for her career as a dancer.Steeped in Ashton from an early stage she understands his musicality and dances his choreography idiomatically and was dancing leading roles in his works.long before she was was given leading roles in the nineteenth century repertory. Her nineteenth century repertory includes Giselle, Sugar Plum Fairy,Gamzatti and Swanilda. She has an extensive range of roles in the ballets created by the company's own choreographers which includes The Betrayed Girl (de Valois); Lise, Gipsy Girl, Fairy Godmother and Fairy Autumn.Titania,Nathalia Petrovna, the ballerina role in Rhapsody.Lady Elgar, side girl in Symphonic Variations, one of the Blue Girls and Diana (Ashton); Manon and Mistress, Larisch and Mary Vetsera. Anastasia, and the Woman in The Song of the Earth ( MacMillan); the Red Queen,Paulina and the mother in Like Water for Chocolate (Wheeldon) ; Mary in Frankenstein, leading roles in Asphodel Meadows, Viscera and Symhpnoc Dances (Scarlett). She is making a belated debut as Cinderella when the ballet is revived in a few weeks time and her last appearance on stage at Covent Garden will be as Anastasia in Anastasia act III. She will give her final appearances with the company in A Month in the Country in Japan in July. After this she will work with the company as a coach.
  10. Here are a few suggestions of people who both need and deserve biographies Rambert, de Valois, John Crankp and Peter Darrell. I will begin with Marie Rambert. Her autobiography Quicksilver is well worth reading but I think that someone who began with a hearty dislike of classical ballet; admired Duncan so much that she gave her own Duncan inspired dance recitals; studied Dalcroze euhrythmics and found herself working with Nijinsky on Sacre would be an obvious candidate for a biography. But that was only the beginning of the story. After the Great War Rambert settled in London where she taught euhrythmics and classical dance using the Cecchetti method. Among her pupils were both Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor. Among those whose choreographic skills she discovered and developed were not just Ashton and Tudor but Walter Gore, Frank Staff and Andre Howard all of whom danced with Rambert's company in its early days..Later generations of dancers turned choreographers included Norman Morrice and Christopher Bruce. Rambert as the company is now known dates its foundation to 1926 when Rambert and her dancers appeared at the Lyric Hammersmith in the first dance work devised by Ashton called A Tragedy of Fashion, Then there is Ninette de Valois an Anglo Irish woman whose family were part of the Ascendancy class with three contradictory autobiographies to her credit.As it is only nine years until we celebrate the centenary of the company she established it is quite possible that there is someone hard at work researching the subject at this moment. While the life of the founder of a major national institution ought to be of interest the life of someone which spans an entire century and brings that individual into contact with everyone who was anyone in the world of dance in the west during that lifetime should make the subject even more attractive to a would be author.But then there is the family story which on the Irish side of her family covers a not so young lady;s voyage to India as part of the "fishing fleet"in search of a husband; that lady's marriage to a second son who comes into property as the result of a fortuitous death which brought her husband an estate in Ireland; a great grand mother, I think, who wrote a definitive account of the Potato Famine in Wicklow; a will and dispute over property you might find improbable if you encountered it in a nineteenth century novel; some sort of financial crisis which forced the family to sell up and move to London. A father who dies of wounds in 1915 and is awarded a posthumous MC and a mother who was involved in the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland and was at one point accepted as a leading expert on Irish antique glass. There must be someone who would find that subject tempting. As far as my other potential subjects are concerned while there is the biography of John Cranko written by John Percival which was published in 1983 I can't help thinking that after forty years perhaps it is time for a new assessment of the man,his works. and his lasting influence on dance. There is still time to capture the views of those who were in the studio with him at Stuttgart and on whom he made his ballets. As far as Peter Darrell is concerned he belonged to the same generation of dance makers as Crankp and MacMillan. He is of significance both as a choreographer and as the man who established Scottish Ballet. I recall enjoying his creations and his repertory choices. He was able to give his new company the distinct identity it needed because he had a ballerina in his company who was particularly suited to romantic style ballets as a result among other works they had a lovely staging of Bournonville's Napoli. Other possible subjects include Walter Gore, Frank Staff and Andre Howard about whom I know far too little. And then there is Karsavina although her own memoir Theatre Street is wonderful and the book Diaghilev's Ballerina is of great value. Karsavina really does deserve a full biography.
  11. I think that both promotions have been anticipated for a couple of seasons. Clarke first came to notice early on in his time with the company when he replaced Matthew Golding in the Somes' role in Symphonic Variations. After that he began to acquire the princely roles as well as de Grieux and Romeo . He danced with Yanowsky in her last season with the company giving audiences a brief glimpse of what might have been if he had been a few years older or she a few years younger. as his height gave her a freedom of movement that she sometimes lacked with other partners. He gave an authoritative account of the leading male role in Scenes de Ballet. partnering two very different ballerinas with equal success. Bracewell spent several years with BRB where he gave some outstanding performances. A serious injury slowed his progress to the top in Bow Street. He is an extraordinary dancer who is very much at home in roles created on Dowell and in the sort of roles in which the older dancer made his mark. Coming back from injury he gave the best performance of Troyte in Enigma Variations that I have seen since Dowell retired from the role. He has since made an equally impressive debut in A Month in the Country again in a role made on Dowell. Given that these two promotions were not at all unexpected, being more a question of when rather than if I think that there will be more interest in seeing who else among the ranks of the very talented male dancers is promoted. Among the men there are far more candidates for promotion than there are vacancies. There are plenty of interesting and talented female dancers in the junior tanks of the company but perhaps fewer obvious candidates for promotion say to First Soloist. Perhaps the casting of the supporting roles in Like Water for Chocolate and the casting for the first booking period of the 2022-23 season will throw some light on which of the women is likely to move up the ranks of the company in due course.
  12. The season has had its ups and downs with a short lock down. over Christmas due to covid which led to the loss of several performances of Nutcracker. Covid continues to lead to unexpected cast changes and debuts in role being brought forward. The imminent arrival of the all Ashton mixed bill is something to look forward to after what has felt like an interminable run of Liam Scarlett's wrong headed, incompetent Swan Lake which despite its cost I hope will be dumped at the earliest opportunity. From this Saturday we shall be back in the hands of the man de Valois described as a "real choreographer" if only for a few days. There have been a number of changes to the advertised cast for the all Ashton programme the most important of which are Morera acquiring Cuthbertson's advertised performance in Month and Cmpbell's loss of the lead in Scenes de Ballet because Takada is off. Scenes de Ballet was the subject of an Insight evening a couple of days ago and for once most of the time was devoted to the rehearsal process rather than discussions and lectures. The inanity quotient was, as a result, remarkably low . The rehearsal was led by Christopher Carr and the dancers involved were Naghdi and Muntagirov in the leading roles with Dixon, Dubreuil. Ella and Rovero as the quartet of men who act as living sculpture ,partners to members of the corps de ballet and the ballerina's cavaliers. Apparently this quartet are the men assigned to dance with Naghdi and once you see the choreography at close quarters you can see why the men need to be assigned to a specific ballerina. At the moment Naghdi and Muntagirov are not due to dance together at any stage during the run but that could easily change. The rehearsal can be found on You tube and is well worth w
  13. I seem to recall the late chairman of the Royal Opera House Board complaining that the name of the building put people off attending performances there so perhaps the failure to arrange a gala or other celebratory event is part of a deep laid plan devised by him or there again it could be yet another oversight. One of the problems may be that Alex Beard who is responsible for the day to day running of the organisation has experience of working for arts institutions such as the Tate Gallery rather than theatrical institutions which are expected to mark state events and stage the occasional gala.It would not be the first time that an important event has escaped the notice of the powers that be at the ROH..My recollection is that Kevin managed to overlook the Fonteyn centenary or, putting it another way, nothing was announced when when the 2018-19 season was originally published and the event suddenly appeared in the schedule at quite short notice. I think that the thing that strikes me most is the sudden apparent obsession with marking anniversaries. Does the fact that we are to mark the thirtieth anniversary of MacMillan's death mean that we are now to mark that event at five yearly intervals? Then there is the weird programme to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the foundation of the Friends organisation which, as far as I am aware, includes nothing originally supported by the Friends
  14. A change of director has a different effect on a ballet company' s personnel depending on where the company is based, local law and employment practices in the industry Local practice varies greatly across Europe. in some countries being a company member means permanent employment until a set retirement age is attained while in other countries there is no fixed retirement age as such.In the UK a change of director does not automatically trigger a change in the company's personnel and it is unusual to see an exodus of dancers in the wake of an announcement of the appointment of a new director. In Germany, as I understand it, the appointment of a new director can result in a complete change of personnel as it is for the director to choose the dancers with whom he or she wishes to work I would be interested to know whether Tamara Rojo's imminent arrival at SFB seems to have triggered a greater number of departures from the company than is usual at or near the end of a season?
  15. I admit that my initial response to the announcement of next season's bill of fare was to identify the performances I feel no need to attend . Somehow I think it unlikely that the casting ,when it is announced, is going to make me change my mind. about the extended version of Crystal Pite;s' Flight Patterns which I fear will damage a theatrically powerful and tightly constructed work by over extending it; the revival of Woolf Works or the triple bill of contemporary works which includes a new work by Wayne McGregor, a revival of Wheeldon's Corybantic Games and Anastasia Act III. All in all this part of the season's programme does not seem that attractive. As far as the rest of the season's repertory is concerned it is restricted to four established works, Mayerling which is apparently not being staged because Lady MacMillan wants to make money but to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the choreographer's death; the now inevitable Christmas Nutcracker which only became a seasonal fixture during Dowell's directorship; a revival of Sleeping Beauty and a revival of Cinderella. I think that all four works have been allocated far too many performances . It will interesting to see at what point the demand for tickets dries up. Personally I think that management would have been well advised to revive a fifth ballet such as Fille or stage a really interesting mixed bill with a genuine bonne bouche in the form of a revival of Apparitions or Daphnis and Chloe. I don't think that I am being churlish when I say that it seems to me that the choice of repertory this season reveals even more starkly than usual Kevin's weaknesses as director of the company. He is much better than his predecessors in developing his dancers and giving them real career development opportunities allocating roles with less concern about dancers' place in the company's hierarchy than in the past but at the same time he is far weaker in his understanding of the importance of the company's twentieth century repertory of which he is merely the temporary custodian. He says the right things about Ashton and the Ashton repertory, "He made us who we are",but when it comes to repertory choices you can't help thinking that he sees the Diaghilev and Ashton masterpieces in the store cupboard as a barrier to further and greater creativity, if only because of the deman they make on time in the studio and on stage. There have been far too many occasions on which Kevin has given the impression that he sees the bulk of the company's twentieth century repertory as disposable works which do not require regular revival to keep them in pristine condition ; to maintain the chain of transmission and sustain a performing tradition as part of a living experience within the ranks of the company. I don't want to be misunderstood I am relieved to learn that Cinderella is to be performed after more than a decade's absence, it means that the stand off over the designs has been resolved and that with any luck we shall not be faced with coarsely inappropriate designs as we were with the new production first staged in the 2003-4 season.My rapture at the announcement of the new Cinderella production is however somewhat modified by a lack of faith in the rights owner's ability to capture that elusive quality of magic and mystery which can make Cinderella so compelling in performance. With any luck the new production will have designs which capture the mood of the ballet which Ashton created rather than evoking the world of pantomime. I know that everyone has to start somewhere but I find it rather worrying that neither of the designers involved in this important new production seem to have any experience of designing for ballet.Somehow that seems something os.f a weakness.
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