Jane Simpson

Nikolaj Hubbe announced next season's programme at a press conference this morning, Dates are for the first night of each programme. Swan Lake (Peter Martins) 15 Sep 2010 Napoli (this season's new production) 25 Sept 2010 Dans2Go (Serenade/Jord/pas de deux) 8 Oct 2010 Who the Hell is Nijinsky? (Danish title is Hvem f..#%&! er Nijinskij...?) 16 Oct 2010 Sleeping Beauty (new production, Christopher Wheeldon) 26 Nov 2010 A Midsummer Night's Dream (Neumeier) 7 Jan 2011 Choreographic workshop (New works by company members) 18 Feb 2011 A Folk Tale (new production by Nikolaj Hubbe and Sorella Englund) 11 Mar 2011 Ballet evening (Etudes, Conservatoire/new Kobborg) 30 April 2011 Dans2Go is a programme designed to introduce newcomers to the different things ballet can do - all tickets one price, much cheaper than usual. Who the hell...? is a programme devised and given by the RDB School's company, Kompagni B, and is aimed at their contemporaries. A Folk Tale will have new decor by Mai Stensgaard, who did the designs for the RDB's Manon The 'ballet evening' is to show Danish choreographers from 3 centuries; Hubbe and Thomas Lund are to work on the revival of Etudes, and Kobborg's piece, to continue the theme of the other ballets, will start in a ballet classroom.

The rest of the repertoire currently planned for the tour is: Etudes (Lander) Conservatoire (Bournonville) - just the dancing school scene, I assume Bournonville Variations The Lesson (Flindt) Jord (Jorma Uotinen) and new pieces by Johan Kobborg, Pontus Lidberg and Kim Brandstrup (the 2 pieces KB is making for the end of this season, I think))

News from the RDB press conference: the company will visit the USA in 2011: Orange County 23 - 29 May Berkeley, San Francisco 30 May - 5 June Washington 6 June - 12 June New York 13 June - 19 June Repertoire includes La Sylphide, Napoli, A Folk Tale (new prodn), Sleeping Beauty More later...

I saw Merrill Ashley last night and absolutely agree with Eva: she fits into the production very well and her interpretation is strong whilst avoiding the grotesque. I wonder if she's adapted her previous version ata ll for Copenhagen? I guess if she originally learnt it for a Sorella Englund production, she won't have needed to change much.

David Amzallag has just added some rehearsal photos of Cojocaru and Blangstrup to his blog - they look very good together!

Merrill Ashley danced her first Madge in Copenhagen a couple of days ago, and Eva Kistrup reports on it in Dance View Times. Sounds good: I'll be seeing her myself later this week and am looking forward to it - though I hope I'll maybe get a stronger cast in the rest of the programme!

To answer a question from some time ago, Adeline Kaiser has recently joined the corps de ballet of English National Ballet - it will be interesting to see what opportunities Wayne Eagling will give her!

Alina Cojocaru is to make her debut as Hippolyta/Titania in John Neumeier's Midsummer Night's Dream with the Royal Danish Ballet on the first night of the run, February 26th, and will also dance the performances on March 16, 29 and 30. She'll be dancing with Mads Blangstrup, his first appearance in a big role after a long absence through injury. Should be good!

I think there's actually more from L'Etoile du Nord than this implies - the Royal Opera House site and David Vaughan's Ashton archive both describe the selections as 'ballet music and one aria from Le Prophète, and Waltz from Act II, Prelude to Act III, and Ismailov's aria "Bel cavalier" from L'Etoile du nord'. If you go to the Classics Online page about L'Etoile du Nord you can hear the beginning of the Waltz (also the beginning of the ballet, I think) and of the Act 3 Prelude (one of the ensemble pieces?) - from what I can gather, Bel Cavalier is part of the sequence at the beginning of Act 2 but you would have to buy the tracks to hear it!

One of the reasons I posted this originally was to see if it raised any comments on Cojocaru - I was surprised to see her cast in 2nd movement but some private enquiries had also got the response 'Allegra Kent did it'. Leigh, of course you know the ballet far better than I do, but I thought it was her interpretation rather than her size which made her 'wrong' in Diamonds. For myself I'm pleased to see the RB get away from casting the tallest available in it, regardless of suitablity or ability - I have painful memories of one soloist in the 1990s looking as if she would die of fright at any moment. Cuthbertson did the role as long ago as 2004, when she was years away from being ready for it - it would be interesting to see her get another try but she is off at the moment. Yanowsky is on maternity leave and I doubt she'll be back this season. Nunez is one of the few who can do 'weighted' adagio and if she's anywhere near as good as she was in Diamonds I will be very happy!

I love this description of Sara Mearns from Mary Cargill's review in DanceViewTimes: "I have not seen a Lilac who seemed to wonder if, possibly, this Prince was the one, and the mimed questions (why are you sad, are you in love with anyone, would you like to see the most beautiful princess in the world) weren't just routine. I got the feeling that she had asked those questions before and been disappointed....There was a sense that Lilac had other kingdoms to run, that she hadn't spent the years just sitting under a bush waiting for her solo. " I've often wondered how many attempts it took the Lilac Fairy to find Prince Right, and what the failed candidates had said to get themselves crossed off her list. And I was very impressed by Mearns when NYCB were last in London - I'd love to see her do this.

I think quite a lot of people see Helsinki these days on Baltic cruises - Copenhagen, Helskinki, St Petersburg and Tallinn seems a common itinerary. Like Mashinka, I don't know anyone without ballet connections or friends in the city who's holidayed in Copenhagen, but I do know people who've visited Norway - the fjords are a big draw. One of the reasons people didn't visit C'hagen in the past was that it was very expensive to get there - when I was younger it was literally true that you could fly to New York from London for less than going to C'hagen. By the way one of the Finnish Ballet's casts for Taming of the Shrew looks as if it features a guest couple - Alicia Amatriain is a principal in Stuttgart and Iván Gil-Ortega was also there as a principal for some years so both of them will know the ballet well.

Helene, I have to say I just love the chandeliers! For me they add light and warmth and fun, and besides they make wonderful photographs. They've stopped using the studio theatre, incidentally, except for occasional talks - the theatre's finances have been severely stretched by the added expenses of the the Opera and the new Playhouse, and they're looking for all possible ways of cutting back. Next season there are to be fewer productions, too, though I think they're only cutting one from the ballet schedule.

Mel, if you're implying that Wendy Ellis died shortly after Somes, I think you have been misinformed! So far as I know she is still very much with us.

The RB has just announced its casting for 6 performances of Symphony in C in May/June and it's quite something: Nunez and Cojocaru alternate in the 2nd movement, Benjamin and Sarah Lamb in the 1st, and Rojo is still doing the 4th, presumably because she really wants to. Almost everyone of the company's principals is in one of the two casts. Wayne McGregor's Chroma and Christopher Wheeldon's Tryst are in the same programme - Eric Underwood and the rapidly rising Melissa Hamilton get the first go at the Jonathan Cope/Darcey Bussell roles in Tryst.

Shaw was considered the company's best male classicist for years, though I only saw him a couple of times myself before he moved to character roles. You might like to look at a piece about him I once wrote on ballet.co. He comes from Yorkshire, too.

... though of course he'd had a whole career already even before he was 22, in the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, which he joined when he was only 15. He not only had a leading role created for him by Balanchine but also created the role Mel mentioned, Captain Belaye in Cranko's Pineapple Poll - one of the great male roles in English ballet. And Cranko made other roles for him later, notably the Prince in his original version of The Prince of the Pagodas. He came from Yorkshire (like a surprising number of other RB men over the years) and had some of the down-to-earth, no-nonsense manner and confidence often associated with that county.

After his debut as James last week, Marcin Kupinski has been promoted to soloist in the Royal Danish Ballet. He has had some good roles recently, and is dancing Albrecht (with Gudrun Bojesen as Giselle) on the company's current tour, so this was not unexpected. He was trained in his native Poland and joined the company in 2002. The formal announcement is here, and David Amzallag has a nice picture of him as James. (And scroll down for some more of the new casts.)

Eva Kistrup's review of the new casts is now up in DanceView Times. She's quite critical of some of the performances and of Hubbe's casting policy and judging from what I've read, she's not alone. The star of both the evenings seems to have been Gudrun Bojesen in Symphony in C (Alexandra lo Sardo didn't appear in the end) - but I do hope she'll be taking time out from that to dance the Sylph herself next month.

The dates for Merrill Ashley's Madges have now been announced: February 20 and 24. The Syphide/Symphony in C run opens tonight with Grinder and Birkkjaer as the Sylph and James; lots more debuts tomorrow - Kupinski as James, Christopher Rickert as Gurn, Louise Oestergaard as Effy and (I think it's a debut) Hilary Guswiler as the 'first Sylph'. (Christina Michanek is the Sylph) Some very interesting debuts in Symphony in C tomorrow, as well - particularly Alexandra lo Sardo, lately of the Dresden company, in the second movement; also J'aime Crandall and Julien Roman in the 3rd movement and Lena Maria Gruber in the 4th - her first big role, I guess. (Lo Sardo is by no means tall and that reminds me that Alina Cojocaru's website says that she will be dancing 2nd movement for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in the spring.) There are just these two performances now, then a gap whilst the company tours Giselle to seven locations round Denmark, then 6 more Sylphides starting in mid-February. Presumably we'll then see at least one of the more established casts.

He's just been dancing Theme and Variations with the Royal Swedish Ballet at a couple of special performances for the New Year, I think.

One thing that worries me about the idea of other companies doing more Bournonville is that there's so little of it: already we're well on the way to La Sylphide being a standard repertory piece, but after that, what? Napoli would suit some companies, and the dancing lesson from Conservatoire, perhaps (though it's so difficult) - but A Folk Tale, Kermessen in Bruges? Would audiences round the world see them as anything other than quaint novelties? And how long till someone started adding bits, and ornamenting them? (A couple of nice solos for Junker Ove would make A Folk Tale much more accessible, don't you think?) But would it really help the RDB, anyway, to have their 'crown jewels' danced by everyone else in the world? On the other hand I'm very happy for them to limit their Petipa repertoire to Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty (which they've danced on and off since they first acquired the RB's Sergeyev version more than 50 years ago) - I didn't think Don Quixote suited them and would not be at all sorry to see it quietly dropped.

The RDB has just announced that Merrill Ashley will dance Madge in two performances of La Sylphide during the run which opens on Jan. 7th. She has been in Copenhagen to stage Symphony in C, which is on the same bill. Also announced are two new James - Ulrik Birkkjaer and Marcin Kupinski - and a new Sylph, Susanne Grinder. Details here for readers of Danish with or without Google translate

There's a very interesting interview with Jann Parry, by Ismene Brown, at the ArtsDesk today - among other things it knocks on the head the idea that there was a critical 'conspiracy' against MacMillan (at last!).

The MacMillan Estate has today launched an extensive official website devoted to MacMillan and his ballets, on the eightieth anniversary of his birth. The site gives details of all his works and also includes video, photographs and essays. It is edited, and partly written, by Brendan McCarthy and some of the content is by Jann Parry, author of the recent biography of MacMillan. Kenneth MacMillan website