Jane Simpson

I thought it was a brave choice to open with Door and a Sigh - one in the eye for those who think Balanchine's ballets are all the same! I'm interested to hear that early reviews related it to Bejart, as it's with him I associate this score - he did a solo called Forme et Ligne to some of the music, which Maina Gielgud danced in her Steps, Notes and Squeaks show in the late 1970s. I enjoyed the Balanchine though I don't think I'd want to see it very often. Is Kowrowski the current NYCB cast? The rest of the show was a bit of a disappointment after the last Danses Concertantes programme here. Most people raved over the Wheeldon Liturgy but I didn't think it compared with the Whelan/Soto duet in Polyphonia, and the new Millepied piece didn't have the life and originality of the pas de deux he did for the previous show. Hallelujah Junction looked like a piece of diligent craftmanship. Great to see these dancers, but a rather downbeat evening overall.

For the interest of NYCB followers, this is the programme the group performed at Sadler's Wells last night: Variations pour une porte et un soupir (Balanchine) - Kowrowski, Gold Circular Motion (Millepied, world premiere) - Angle, Hall, Ramasar, Ritter Liturgy (Wheeldon) - Whelan, Soto Hallelujah Junction (Martins) - Taylor, Marcovici, Millepied with Bouder, Dronova, Fairchild, Ricard, Carmena, Hall, Ramasar, Stafford (Any clues on sorting out who was who amongst the men in the Millepied piece, and the women in the Martins? I though I could guess which was Fairchild, but what does Bouder look like?)

So far I've only watched the seasons bit. I thought Beriosova was lovely, but television has moved on a bit in the succeeding 47 years!

I got Cinderella about 10 days ago, but as it was from Dance Books in England that's probably not much help to you!

The programme has photographs of 17 principals, 8 soloists and 41 corps de ballet, and we certainly saw all of the principals - not sure if every last one of the corps got on stage.

I've seen the company's three programmes in London now, and enjoyed most of them a lot. There were stories that it wasn't selling well but maybe the booking has picked up at the last minute as the theatre has looked more or less full every night, and the audiences have been very enthusiastic. Lots of strong individual performances but as usual it's the company as a whole that impresses. (Though I can't resist mentioning Lorena Feijoo in Allegro Brillante - magnificent!)

There are lots of interesting questions, I think, and no doubt lots of details to be sorted out. But in principle it looks a good thing! By the way, Phoebe Fonteyn is the widow of Fonteyn's brother, Felix, and Derek Rencher is the current owner of the works originally left to Brian Shaw.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Frederick Ashton's birth - cue for champagne and fireworks, I think!

She's currently a repetiteur at the Royal Ballet, often listed as having coached the principal dancers, especially in the Ashton repertoire.

Just a few more triple bills, mostly suitable for companies with very wide-ranging repertoires: HAPPY FAMILIES Fall River Legend Elektra My Brother, My Sisters TRAINSPOTTING Le Train Bleu Union Pacific The Road of the Pheobe Snow BUGS and THINGS The Life of the Bee The Spider's Banquet Les Papillons TRANSPORTS OF DELIGHT Landrover A Streetcar named Desire Filling Station THE CONCERT Overture Concerto Symphony WATER, WATER Lake The River Ocean's Motion and, picking up on Mme. Hermine's idea, GROUNDHOG DAY Carmen (Petit) Carmen (Ek) Carmen (Alonso)

What are the rules in US? Is there an enforced retirement age, and must they advertise the job or can they (they = the board, presumably) just appoint whomever they like?

I'd assume Beriosova was Winter - I don't remember reading of her dancing any of the others. However... I just found a review of the original transmission (by Arthur Todd, in Dance and Dancers) and one of his complaints is that 'it was almost impossible to recognise the individual dancers who appeared as the four seasons...I could only identify them by their costumes'. On the other hand I suppose we'll be watching on much bigger screens than then. Interestingly he says the programme was transmitted in colour to the 1% of the audience who had colour sets. He liked Ashton best and thought MacMillan was trying too hard. I just found another review - Lillian Moore in the Dancing Times. She is rather more enthusiastic and could see well enough - she saw it in colour - to give 'special honours to Beriosova as Winter'. She says 26 million people watched it! - though 30 million had watched Sleeping Beauty.

A sharp-eyed ballet.co poster has discovered two potential treasures apparently to be released later this month: the Sadler's Wells/Royal Ballet in Cinderella and Sleeping beauty, dating from 1957 and 1955 respectively, both starring Fonteyn and Somes. I assume these are the two which were shown on American television at the time - does anyone know any more about them? NYPL only lists the two leads, but the video site mentions Beryl Grey in Beauty, and possibly Ashton as Carabosse, and Ashton and MacMillan as the Ugly Sisters. Cinderella: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...yle=movie&Bab=E Sleeping Beauty: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...yle=movie&Bab=E

There's a nice page about Froustey and Hoffalt at http://webperso.easyconnect.fr/haydn/haydn/inter_math.htm

And similarly, Joshua Offal is presumably her partner, Josua Hoffalt.

I was at a screening of the film Violette et Mr B last night, in London, and it was followed by a piece from the BBC's archives showing Verdy and Villella in a studio performance of the Tchaikowsky pas de deux - fabulous!

"This piece would have resounded in a great, ominous drumroll if we’d seen it on September 12, 2001." As it happens BRB gave their first London performance of Dante Sonata on September 13th 2001. Thinking about it beforehand, I couldn't imagine what might happen - I'd found it very powerfully moving the first time I saw it, a few months earlier, and I had visions of the whole audience in tears. But for me, at least, it didn't work - it didn't have the passion of the earlier performance, and I wonder now if it was just too much for the dancers, so soon after the event. (And by the way I'm sure Ms Shapiro really knows that Thais isn't an extract from a longer ballet.)

However I do remember that when the Royal Ballet did Hermann Schmermann, which is probably the work referred to, one of the later casts (Deborah Bull?) wore a bra under the see-through top - so there was evidently some choice.

I wonder if the place name Mme. Hermine couldn't quite pick up could be Aix-les-Bains? Ashton spent a holiday with Stein and Toklas near there one year, according to Julie Kavanagh's book.

Leigh, I never look for it - it was years before I knew how I would recognise it, anyway - but I do sometimes notice it, with an inward nod of recognition, as I do other Ashton trademarks like the 'walking on air' lifts. Sometimes it's just there, sometimes it's a mild joke - like in Cinderella; but I think the only time it carries any meaning or emotional weight in its own right is in the little piece he made for Fonteyn, as mentioned above. But I'm sure it's mainly there as a touch of piety for Ashton himself and it wouldn't matter at all if the audience never noticed it. However - one of my plans for making these old ballets a bit more exciting and interactive is that a green light would flash on the proscenium arch every time the step came along and it would become traditional for the audience to greet it with some unison chant, like 'Fred STEP' clap clap clap.

I saw her in David Nixon's Midsummer Night's Dream a few months ago and I thought she was lovely - very serene and adult.

Galeazzi has been in the company since 1992 and has been a principal for a couple of years. As Alexandra says, she's a strong dramatic dancer - Tatiana in Onegin suits her very well and she's also got very good reports for two different roles in Mayerling. I didn't see her Lise but heard enthusiastic descriptions from friends, but she's not cast for it this time round. Nunez is much younger - in fact she's younger than Cojocaru, though I doubt you'd guess that. She danced in Buenos Aires before coming to the Royal Ballet School for a year; she'd been in the corps de ballet for a season or so when Anthony Dowell suddenly promoted her by 3 levels. As an Ashton dancer she's almost an unknown quantity - but she gets Sylvia next season and also the first night of Fille (with Acosta) . She's technically strong and does things on a big scale - she made a lovely debut as Nikiya last season, confounding those who thought she ought to stick to Gamzatti. In the right role she's gorgeous.

I don't know if it's already been mentioned here, but a sharp-eyed ballet.co poster has pointed out an addition to the RB's programme on July 13th: TBA - Sibley, Dowell A nice treat for some lucky people!

Was that Pattra Sarikaputra? The night I was there she did the second of the two Blue Girls in Patineurs.

Jasper, when the Royal Ballet did The Taming of the Shrew they quoted from a music note by the composer/arranger, Kurt-Heinz Stolze: "The music.. is drawn from the...550 Sonatas for keyboard by... Scarlatti... 'After Scarlatti' is to interpreted in a broad sense: variations on themes from the Sonatas are untilized, appearing sometimes as brief sketches and sometimes in a more formal style, typical of the composer." So it sounds as if knowing which of the 550 he started with might not be all that helpful.