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Royal Ballet 2017-18 season


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4 hours ago, Jane Simpson said:

The RB has just announced that Hallberg will be replaced by Shklyarov in botth the Manon performances he was due to dance with Osipova.

The news on Hallberg is so upsetting....wishing him the very best.

 

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Only a few weeks to go before we discover what the Royal Ballet's  "reimagined" Swan Lake looks like, It will be interesting to see just how far "after Petipa" it proves to be and how accepting of it the Covent Garden audience will be. It does seem strange to embark on a completely new, possibly exceptionally Petipa-lite, production of an iconic ballet created under Petipa's directorship in the year when we should be marking the bicentenary of Petipa's birth. Perhaps Kevin feels the need to put his mark on the company's nineteenth century repertory by staging new productions. If the production fails to please it is likely to be a major problem for him as those who disliked the Dowell production directed most of their ire at the designs and had few problems with the text being danced apart, perhaps, with Bintley's waltz,. With this production we are promised, among other delights a new fourth act. I think that most people had assumed that the 2018-19 season would see further performances of the new production with some really exciting debuts and remedial tinkering with the text where needed, The fact that the new Swan Lake is not being danced next season raises the suspicion that management  anticipates  that there may be rather a lot to remedy. Mind you it is not as if there are no alternatives and no patching material readily to hand. The company has a very fine alternative act four created by Ashton for the 1963 production as well as at least two versions of the waltz by him in the form of a pas de douze created for the Covent Garden company and a pas de six made for the old touring company as well as several versions of divertissements for act three. Of course if Kevin had wanted to do something which would mark his directorship out as something special artistically  he would have tried to get someone to reconstruct the waltz using the original floor plan.

 

Edited by Ashton Fan
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Is Swan Lake in the UK, as it is in the US, a 'sure-fire' ticket seller for companies? That is, no matter what the production -- as long as it's at least loosely traditional (tutus etc.)?  

(I must admit that I would take the Dowell production danced in pretty much any costumes and with any sets over most of what passes for Swan Lake nowadays.)

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 Call a ballet Swan Lake and the tickets for it sell themselves is, I suspect, an almost universal truth. Now while it may be true that there are some people who have not darkened the doors of Covent Garden to see a Royal Ballet performance of Swan Lake since the Dowell production was premiered simply because they loathed the Sonnabend designs their dislike was not reflected in reduced box office receipts. The fact that some regulars have not bought tickets for the Royal Ballet's Lac for the best part of thirty years has simply meant that more tickets have been available to the general public and visitors to London than would otherwise have been the case.

Something similar happens at Christmas with what has become the company's perennial Nutcracker . The fact that a considerable proportion of the regular audience is heartily sick of the Nutcracker is not reflected by a drop in box office receipts as the tickets are bought by a wider range of the public than would usually be the case. At an artistic retreat for ballet company directors held a couple of years ago Kevin said that the company does not stage the Nutcracker each year to fill the company's coffers but because it attracts an audience at least 40% of whom are first time ballet goers. I assume this means that he is able to demonstrate to Arts Council England that he is not simply staging ballet for a cultural elite and this enables the company to meet targets which A.C.E. has set for it.

Edited by Ashton Fan
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8 hours ago, Ashton Fan said:

At an artistic retreat for ballet company directors held a couple of years ago Kevin said that the company does not stage the Nutcracker each year to fill the company's coffers but because it attracts an audience at least 40% of whom are first time ballet goers. I assume this means that he is able to demonstrate to Arts Council England that he is not simply staging ballet for a cultural elite and this enables the company to meet targets which A.C.E. has set for it.

I have a feeling that Nutcracker does this for many of the companies that stage it, and I think that is an incredibly valuable thing.  Not only does it help the art form become more diverse, but in that 40% are people who are stepping beyond their familiar pursuits, are some people who will be swept away by dance -- they are part of the new audience we need.

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There's quite a few insight events programmed around the new Swan Lake Production.  There is one on 10 May, a week before the opening with Scarlett and the designer John MacFarlane. 

http://www.roh.org.uk/insights/insights-swan-lake

 

It's showing as being filmed. Many previous events in the Clore have been live streamed, so it's possible that this one might be, or be made available later. 

 

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8 hours ago, Lynette H said:

There's quite a few insight events programmed around the new Swan Lake Production.  There is one on 10 May, a week before the opening with Scarlett and the designer John MacFarlane. 

http://www.roh.org.uk/insights/insights-swan-lake

 

It's showing as being filmed. Many previous events in the Clore have been live streamed, so it's possible that this one might be, or be made available later. 

 

I will look out for this. I enjoyed the McFarlane Frankenstein designs (at least as they appeared on video).

Edited by Drew
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