Jane Simpson

She's actually doing just a couple more shows, of a piece called Ballet Relay, made by Sebastian Kloborg and Tim Matiakis for a tour last summer as a sort of ballet-meets-the-Olympics: it was very popular and there are dozens and dozens of photos of it, including Højlund, here.

The RDB website has been updated to show company changes for the season 2013/4:

Soloist Tina Højlund has left the company (she has reached the retirement age)

Corps de ballet dancers Shelby Elsbree and Tara Schaufuss left towards the end of the 2012/3 season - Elsbree has joined the Boston Ballet and was already dancing with them during their recent visit to London.

Aspirants Viktoria Falck-Schmidt, Magnus Christoffersen and Sebastain Haynes have been promoted to the corps de ballet

There are two new aspirants, Benedicte Bøjer and Madeleine Carstensen, who join Louise Brorsen, Tobias Prætorius and Oliver Marcus Starpov.

A few more:

Lifar: Suite en Blanc

Lander: Etudes

Ashton: Birthday Offering, Monotones

MacMillan: Symphony, Concerto, Danses Concertantes

Massine's symphonic ballets

etc

The full text of the original interview with Rojo, by Lindsey Winship for TimeOut, is now available online so Rojo's remarks can be read in their proper context.

Well, well, well - not many people saw that one coming. I wonder how often she'll appear with them? - and who she'll dance with? - and if it means Rojo herself witll dance less?

Also I saw Galeazzi as Vetsera on 30th April and she certainly danced the child as well - - but she was standing in for Cojocaru that night so maybe it was different at her scheduled performances?

It has just been announced that Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg will leave the Royal Ballet at the end of this season 'to pursue other artistic challenges'.

They will dance with the company as scheduled in Tokyo in July but their last London performance will be in Mayerling on June 5th.

Press release

A long interview with Nikolai Hubbe, in connection with the Benois awards but also ranging more widely, has appeared on YouTube. It's in English with Rusiian subtitles.

I've just discovered that there is an online collection of 100s of photos of the RDB repertoire taken from the programme books from 1748 to 1973 (realistically, they start at 1941). They are unindexed and mixed with photos of the operas and plays as well, but there are some wonderful things in there if you have time to scroll through - some are well known but most of them I've never seen before.

If I understand it correctly they are from the collection of the state library, put online to help publicise what they have there.

Start here and link from one set to another, or choose a few years from here

Kaplan has set Kermessen in the 17th century and in his programme note thanks Rmbrandt, among others, for his 'invaluable help' - e.g. compare the woman's cap in this painting with the one worn by the housekeeper in the ballet as seen in the 4th photo in Eva's review.

The whole piece looks good but what I most loved were the skirts for some of the women's costumes - four in shades of dark blue for the corps in the first scene, the ones in shades of cream for the ladies in the garden scene - they are so perfectly cut and move so beautifully, and also make their wearers look fabulous. I'd guess it's partly thanks to the fabric he chooses - he also did Wheeldon's Sleeping Beauty for the RDB and I was allowed a brief tour of the costume shop just before its first night - the fabrics were all from Paris and were the most beautiful I've seen in my life - impossible not to keep stopping to stroke a sleeve or even just a little offcut.

Thank you for the link, Anne - I too saw Bojesen as Marguerite and thought she was wonderful!

Also from the RDB, 3rd-year apprentice Magnus Christofferson won one of the 'talent prizes' for young newcomers in different artforms.

The version shown in 2001 was a version of Nureyev's production - Ross Stretton opened his one and only RB season with it.

Hmm... I think we must be seeing her through very different eyes, Natalia - to me she looks quite shockingly unstylish.

Anne, I've been waiting till I'd seen this programme in Copenhagen before I commented - though as it turned out it was rather different, with Chroma instead of The Lesson, no Tchaikovsky pas de deux, and the whole of the Shades scene instead of the engagement scene from Bayadere.But there was no orchestra there either - not just an economy they saved for their out-of-Copenhagen tour. Admittedly they'd only have had the Shades scene to play, but even so it was a pity. I saw the programme twice and by the end I'd got to like The Unsung much more than when they first did it a couple of years ago, and it's a very good piece for some of the older dancers.

Eva Kistrup reviewed a couple of different nights:

First cast

Second cast

And my own review is here.

Chmelensky has just danced his first big leading role, as Solor in the new production of Bayadere.

Eva Kistrup saw him and was impressed - her review is here . She also liked Holly Jean Dorger's Gamzatti (the characters have different names in this production but I still think of them as Solor and Gamzatti) - this has been a break-through season for Dorger and I'm glad she's been given this big opportunity.

I see from the vai Classics site that their next ballet release is to be Ballet Rambert's production of Bournonville's La Sylphide, filmed by Margaret Dale for the BBC in 1961.

Lucette Aldous is the Sylph and Flemming Flindt is James; Madge is Gillian Martlew. I think the film was last seen in public at the National Film Theatre in London in 2005, as part of a Bournonville film season arranged by Jane Pritchard. As far as I remember, Aldous is charming and it's a fairly straightforward production, originally staged for the company by Elsa Marianne von Rosen. It's so long ago that the two solos in the first act are still danced by 'village boys', so that, except for the reel, James doesn't dance till Act 2 and Gurn never gets a solo at all.

Also on the DVD is a Flower Festival at Genzano pas de deux danced by Nureyev and Merle Park - I don't think I've ever seen it.

There's a long interview with Carla Korbes by Marina Harss on DanceTabs - and some lovely photographs too.

(I've never seen her and was amazed to find she's blonde - I'd always imagined her as having very dark hair!)

Marina Harss has a very long interview with Nancy Reynolds on DanceTabs , covering the Balanchine Video Archives, her own career and much else.

The French-born dancer Jonathan Chmelensky has been promoted to soloist at the RDB - he's been doing some good work recently.

Eva Kistrup gives the background here

The name is to be revealed at a press conference tomorrow morning

There are some very interesting things on this channel - scan down the listings and you will find documentaries about

Balanchine:

http://www.uitzendin...eringen/1267057

Nureyev:

http://www.uitzendin...eringen/1112600

and more.

New to me though may be old news to others!

One thing at least: I just found a photo of Zubkovskaya dancing Odile onstage in the London season in 1961 and she is wearing the headdress in your photograph.

Arthur Todd wrote in Dance & Dancers (11/61):

"The Metropolitan Opera House was sold out for the Leningrad Kirov's three-week season so Sol Hurok quite wisely moved the company over to the mammoth Madison Square garden, where prices ranged from $2 to $8 a seat, for an additional ten-day engagement that alternated between performances of a scenery-less Swan Lake and [two] Highlight Programmes."

He mentions some of the casting but not Odette/Odile.

But what exactly does "performances online" mean?

It means the website carries details of the casting etc for each of those performances, taken from the nightly programme sheet. No video, I'm afraid.

The RB Ballet Imperial clip is taken from the gala reopening of the Royal Opera House in 1999 and there may be a few more seconds of it but that's all - it was a programme of short extracts from significant works from the past repertoire.

one can't speak for Makarova, to be sure, but i wonder if in '80 when she was staging her BAYADERE for ABT, she still had unshakable views of her Kirov-heritage Shades in her mind's eye and couldn't see how to get ABT's differently (and less homogeneously) schooled female corps de ballet to approximate Kirov schooling.

Thank you, rg - from the wording ("she was obliged to modify the poses" was the exact quote) I'd thought it meant that for some reason the western dancers couldn't stand in that position for a long time, but I guess your explanation is far more likely.