Jane Simpson

The Royal Danish Ballet's first premiere of the season opens next week: a new production of Giselle, by Nikolaj Hubbe and Sorella Englund. Hubbe sees it as a tribute to the company's women, and especially to Silja Schandorff, in her last season before she reaches retirement age. Casting has yet to be announced (I wish they'd do it a bit sooner!) but Schandorff will be dancing with Nehemiah Kish and presumably they will get the first night - a nice, if testing, introduction to the company for Kish. I've never seen the Danes do Giselle before - does anyone remember earlier productions?

I'm just rather surprised that they've left it so late to make the change...

Two weeks before opening night, NYCB has apparently dropped Vienna Waltzes from its programme in Paris, replacing it with Tchaikowsky Suite #3. Any theories on why they might have done that?

The RDB has just given the first of two performances in Beijing, and at the end of it it was announced from the stage that Chinese soloist Yao Wei was promoted to Solodanser (Principal). Theatre chief Erik Jacobsen announced the promotion and said: "One of our traditions surrounds the appointment to principal dancer, the highest title obtainable at The Royal Danish Ballet. Only a few dancers will ever reach this level, and we normally make this announcement in front of our home audience in Copenhagen. But today we would like, in this extraordinary house, to promote a new principal dancer to The Royal Danish Ballet. It is a beautiful dancer with an exquisite technique, and a very expressive and lyrical style, a dancer who has already at a young age danced many leading roles in the greatest ballets of our repertory. Her professional attitude and disciplined approach serves as an example to all, and it is a great honour for me here in China to promote our Chinese dancer Yao Wei to Principal Dancer with The Royal Danish Ballet!” Yao Wei danced Tatiana in Cranko's Onegin for the first time earlier this year - there are some fine photographs on David Amzallag's blog.

If you look on Google you'll find a Chinese site with a translation of a piece by Cranko himself about his Swan Lake which includes "..and the Drigo pas de deux in the fourth act, which always seemed too light for the situation, has been replaced by the magnificent elegy for strings". Does that sound like what you remember?

Thankyou, rg - I had wondered if that might be the case.

I saw the National Ballet of China last night in a version of Swan Lake by Makarova, originally made for the Perm Ballet in 2005. Act !V is based on Ashton's choroegraphy but I think the ending is Makarova's own: the white swans disappear and von Rothbart and Siegfried are left on stage, pulling Odette from one to the other; then some black swans appear and... can't remember the exact sequence... it was a very hot night... Siegfried and Odette are alone on stage and she collapses in his arms (dead? - don't know) - he carries her into the lake and they both disappear under the waves. Rothbart reappears on his rock, writhes a bit and then dies (I assume) - Odette and Siegfried are seen walking towards each other over a rocky landscape and are finally reunited (in death, I also assume). It doesn't work for me but some people seem to like it. Also, this production plays the first two acts without a pause. Makarova has done too much tinkering for my taste: Siegfried's melancholy solo happens near the start of Act 3, the big Act 2 pas de deux happens after the cygnets' and the big swans' dances, etc. At the end of Act 2, where normally Siegfired holds Odette aloft whilst the swans run in a circle and offstage, Odette joins the swans and also runs off - then she comes back again for the big parting scene. I don't understand Makarova's motivation for some of her changes - they risk looking like change for the sake of change. Unless of course they come from some earlier production which she is trying to recreate.

The Royal Ballet has also announced that first soloist Martin Harvey is leaving the company at the end of the season, and going into the cast of Dirty Dancing in September. He's had some big roles in the last couple of seasons and also danced with the Birmingham Royal Ballet at the end of last year.

I'd go for contrast, in both experience and background as well as style: Silja Schandorff Lorena Feijoo Marianela Nunez Sarah Mearns I'd travel quite a long way for that!

I don't remember the two men well enough to comment, but I have to say I don't see Whelan as having the 'perfect physique' for Monotones - I think of the role as needing someone with a rounded, soft style and perfect line, and much though I admire Whelan I don't see her in these terms. Am I misjudging her, or are you looking for different qualities in the role?

The catalogue of the BBC's dance archives describes the 1962 programme as 'Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in the pas de deux from Giselle Act 2'. It lasts 18 minutes and so far as I know that's all there ever was - it wasn't an extract from a production of the whole ballet. The Fonteyn/Nureyev DVD/tape called The Perfect Partnership includes a Giselle extract - I don't have it to hand to check, but I assume it's this one - I don't think there is any other film of them in this ballet.

I agree she wasn't a great Odette/Odile but her acting made her performances worthwhile. When I put together my composite Swan Lake, stitching together all the best bits I've seen, she and David Wall always do the moment in Act IV when the Prince comes back to the lake and kneels at her feet - her gesture of forgiveness was both tender and magnificent.

nanarina, I think the Gypsy in the first Pigeons cast was Robert Mead rather than Donald Britton (that is if you mean the Gypsy girl's lover, rather than the young boy, who was Johaar Mosaval). I know it wasn't Britton because he was actually supposed to be doing the Young Man - I'd remembered it that he got flu or something, but I see that David Vaughan's Ashton book says he was injured on the day of the dress rehearsal. Either way, Christopher Gable took over. Britton was a very different dancer - older, tougher - and the ballet felt very different when he, and later Alexander Grant, Bernd Berg and others, took it over. It made the story less sweet but maybe a little stronger. (I saw the dress rehearsal, at Covent Garden, and I remember they kept the curtain up at the end whilst they started taking photographs, and just brought it down as they began on those famous pictures of Seymour and Gable and the chair and the pigeons.) I loved the early casts but Sarah Wildor's performances with Scottish Ballet a few years ago showed me new things in the last pas de deux - she was (is) a wonderful actress and she made it very clear that she wasn't just going to fall into the man's arms when he came back - he'd destroyed her trust and even though they were reconciled by the end you felt their relationship would never be quite the same again. It was as moving as any I've seen, but in a different way. And her two deep arabesques on the balcony before the man returns, so perfectly using, and extending, the music made those few seconds into one of my all-time Great Moments.

Millie, right now it seems only to be on the News page of the website, in Danish - but it only lists the names of the new joiners, without any more information except for Kish. Dancers who are leaving the company are soloists Sebastian Michanek and Izabella Sokolowska (who hasn't been seen for the last couple of seasons) and corps de ballet dancers Mie Fjelstrup and Nadia Dahl. Also, Instructor Christina Olssen is retiring. (And Kenneth and Marie-Pierre Greve have also left, of course.)

The Royal Danish Ballet has just announced the names of dancers joining the company for next season. Nehemiah Kish joins as a Soldanser (Principal) from the National Ballet of Canada (as already announced in the Canadian press) Joining the corps de ballet are: J'amie Crandall (Dutch National Ballet) James Clark (NBoC) Julien Schittenhelm (Zurich Ballet) Holly Jean Dorger (ABT) Bryant Gabriel Steenstra (NBoC) Aurore Casanova (POB) Gregory Paul Dean (Scottish Ballet) Laure Dougy (Royal Swedish Ballet) Four of the company's aspirants are also taken into the corps de ballet: Emilie Schack Amalie Adrian Hilary Guswiler Alban Carl Filip Lendorf That's a lot of new names - some familiar ones have disappeared from the online company listing but I need to check more definitely if these people have actually left the company.

Katherine Healy's paper at the Ashton Conference was a long and invaluable description of how he worked with her before her first performance in his Romeo and Juliet. You can read it in the online version of Following Sir Fred's Steps, the book which contained all the talks and discussions from the conference.

I haven't seen Fernando Bufala very recently, but he did a very nice, stylish Bluebird a couple of years ago with ENB - definitely worth keeping an eye out for him!

...and one Sunday paper, apparently, rather carelessly printed a full description of the first night!

As rg has said on another thread, this little dance was not in the version Makarova set for the Royal Ballet - it had not been done until Asylmuratova came along and the other Nikiyas didn't do it. It shows, I'm afraid, one of the problems of videos - all they show is that dancer in that performance.

Ami, Benazir Hussein eventually took her married name - Surtees - and googling her under that name produces an interview with a little more about her. (Her brother was the England cricket captain for several years and is much better known here than she is!)

She seems to be a fragile dancer. I hope she's able to keep her date for Other Dances at NYCB. Sorry, Carbro - they've pulled out. Inevitable, I'm afraid, given that she's cancelled all her London performances till the end of the season.

None of those. I don't actually remember the ending but looking at the reviews it seems that Bintley deliberately left it open to question and interpretation. Jann Parry wrote in Dance & Dancers: '[Grete's final solo] is heavy with the responsibility she accepts for getting rid of the creature she can no longer consider her brother. The burden is lifted from her family and the room floods with light. As the music comes to a close, Grete puts the flat in order and arranges the perplexing ending. Apparently, on the first night, Gregor's reappearance as himself was a surprise for most of the cast... I think it is his way of showing that his story is different from Kafka's; or perhaps he means that the beetle's death allows the family to remember Gregor as he really was... Or maybe it's just a good idea for a curtain call.' On the other hand, Mary Clarke in the Dancing Times thought that perhaps Grete's love had redeemed Gregor and returned him to normal life. (It's relevant that apparently Bintley said to his cast at the the first rehearsal 'You've read the book - well, forget it'. Maybe the Kafka ballet is still to be made!)

Yes - David Bintley did it in his early days, for the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet. It was rather good. You never saw Gregor after his change, so the ballet was actually about his sister, Leanne Benjamin in her first created role, and his parents. I don't think it's been seen in twenty years or so but I remember it with - not pleasure, but some admiration. The music was by Peter McGowan, who at the time was a violinist in the SWRB orchestra.

I think the costume is from Lifar's Le Chevalier et la Damoiselle - there's a photo in one of Buckle's Ballet magazines of her in a different pose but the same tutu.

Bart - (sorry about the delay in replying) - I was pleased that Wheeldon had really used the talents of the dancers he'd chosen; I liked the music he used; and on the night I was there the whole thing was coloured by the fact that Silja Schandorff and Kenneth Greve, who had two big pas de deux, were dancing together for the last time - I'd guess it's a rather sad piece anyway but that evening it was really extra touching. The 'clown' piece goes with the Naharin show and is apparently different with different companies - I've seen/heard references to a man playing the bagpipes or a man showing off ballet positions. I think Copenhagen was lucky to get Morton Eggert and his Latin American rhythms - he's a wonderful entertainer and performer, one of the few I can think of who could hold an audience solo for 20 minutes like this. And he'd already been spectacular in the Duato piece that opened the programme!