Jane Simpson

There are some beautiful pictures of Plisetskaya in an item currently for sale on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW

Also I've remembered there's a company in Tokyo that does Cinderella - the RB sold them the sets and costumes from their last production.

Up till 1991, Cinderella had also been danced by the Australian Ballet, PACT Ballet (South Africa), the Dutch National Ballet and the Royal Swedish Ballet. Fred Step: David Vaughan defines it as 'pose en arabesque, coupe dessous, small developpe a la seconde, pas de bourree dessous, pas de chat'. Quoting from an article by Adrian Grater from 'Following Sir Fred's Steps' - "In Cinderella...Ashton uses the step... for a small mise-en-scene in which the Dancing Master is attempting to prepare the Ugly Sisters for the ball, first demonstrating the basic version with absolute precision to a dreamily delighted Ashton... It is also danced by Cinderella herself, when she performs it in the kitchen to her imaginary Prince" [though this is a slightly adapted version]

I think she's from Thailand but I could easily be wrong!

I was at one of the Royal Ballet School's annual performances last night, and the programme listed those students who have already got contracts for next year - including Nutnaree Pipithsuksunt, who has a soloist contract with SFB, straight from school. From the look of her last night, she's a very classy dancer in the making - please watch out for her and let us know how she gets on!

To be fair, though, the £105 tickets are for a limited number of 'super seats', which buys you champagne and smoked salmon and a souvenir programme as well. The top price for 'normal' seats is actually less than the Royal Ballet charged for Cinderella this season. But I do agree that the cheaper seats are more expensive, if you see what I mean, and the standing is also much dearer than normal.

Sorry, I can't have expressed that very clearly: the complete ballet was last given in 1944, but the solo for the Bride was revived, on its own, for the 1970 gala and for Ballet for All.

LDS, are you talking about Ashton's ballet? If so, there is quite a long description of it, with pictures, in David Vaughan's biography of the choreographer; and the Bride's solo was danced by Fonteyn at the Ashton gala in 1970, and also given by the Ballet for All group in the 1970s - so some posters may have seen it. (The solo is described as consisting mostly of 'gestures and arm movements, soutenu turns and kneels', and many people thought it was influenced by Hindu dancing; but Ashton said it came from his observation of Baroque art.)

We had a pre-announcement of this in yesterday's press release giving the casting for the Bolshoi's visit to London! Alexandrova opens the season in Don Quixote and also dances in romeo and Juliet and Pharaoh's Daughter.

Thankyou all - it sounds as if he's no longer dancing, anyway.

If you've seen the George Piper Dances stage show, or the Ballet Boyz television programmes from a few years ago , the Rough Guide will look very familiar - too much so, for someone who's seeing some of their video clips for the fourth time. They are following Trevitt and Nunn as they work towards making a piece of their own, with some fairly low-level generalities about choreography thrown in, and some unrelated stories about life in GPD - the first episode featured the night last year when Nunn pulled out of the show to attend the birth of his son, with all the dramas of last-minute substitutes going on. I'm not sure what their target audience is - from what they say, it's people new to the idea of choreography, but I think you'd have had to concentrate very hard to learn much from this first programme - Akram Khan on improvisation and Kathak is not exacly beginners' stuff. I felt the whole concept of these films is getting a bit self-indulgent - you have to like the Boyz a lot to go along with it. But the next epsiode may be better.

Can anyone tell me about this dancer, who was trained in Paris? The last trace of him I can find on the net showed him dancing in Berlin in the mid-1990s.

There was a 'bleeding chunk' of Symphonic Variations, with Miyako Yoshida and Bruce Sansom, in the Royal Opera House Reoopening gala at the end of 1999, which I THINK was briefly available commercially; otherwise nothing else that I know of. Better news is that the BBC has just announced that they will transmit an Ashton programme from Covent Garden in the autumn - Scenes de Ballet, Daphnis and Chloe, and some shorter pieces including the recently revived extracts from Devil's Holiday. These broadcasts are usually brought out on DVD a bit later.

I haven't seen anything in the last few weeks - have you heard something specific, Riccardo? There has been talk of problems ever since the theatre reopened but they have managed to survive so far.

The RB has announced that Kenneth Greve will dance Swan Lake with Zenaida Yanowsky next season - sounds like good news to me. For those who've not seen her, Yanowksy is tall, strong, and a very good actress, and the company finds it difficult to find partners who can match up to her.

GWTW, I'd guess you're thinking of MacMillan's Las Hermanas (The Sisters), which is based on The House of Bernarda Alba. The Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet's Blood Wedding was by Alfred Rodrigues - I saw it several times, years ago, and I seem to remember David Howard being in it, as the Moon.

Apparently MacMillan told people that he planned to expand Rasputin's role for Mukhamedov - only he died before he got round to doing it. So for this revival someone (presumably Deborah MacMillan + Monica Mason + ?) has done it, using what MM described, I think, as 'existing steps and existing music'.

I have to say my view is quite the opposite - the third act, when seen on its own, is one of MacMillan's best pieces, whilst the first two acts are just padding. I'll be interested to hear what difference the changes to Rasputin's role will make, though.

Alina Cojocaru is injured and won't be dancing again till mid-May. Mara Galeazzi and Federico Bonelli replace her and Roberto Bolle in Romeo and Juliet on April 12th, and Jaimie Tapper replaces her in her first 2 scheduled performances in Daphnis and Chloe.

Estelle, besides the ones you mention, there are a few others which have been done quite recently - Birthday Offering (one of my favourites), Les Rendezvous, La Valse, Facade - and others which have been done not all that long ago and should be reviveable relatively easily - Illuminations, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Capriol Suite, Apparitions, Jazz Calendar - and of course Romeo and Juliet. There's also Dante Sonata, which the Birmingham company does. I've heard that Monica Mason said there may be some added in the 2005/6 season which she couldn't fit in this time so maybe we'll see some of these then. The real pity is that some of them would look much better in the smaller Linbury Theatre than on the main stage but there don't seem to be any plans to use it.

Kathleen, the RB only used this bit when Asylmuratova was dancing (so far as I remember).

Thankyou, Coda. I believe Vladimirov also danced the first night of Ivan the Terrible in New York; and I notice that his name was still on the list Principals when the Bolshoi came to London in 1986, though the programme doesn't include a biography of him so I assume he didn't come on the tour. (Mukhamedov was doing Ivan by then.)

All the references I can find claim that Vladimirov danced the first performance, and Koegler describes Vassiliev as having done the 'second premiere' - is this true, and if so what does 'second premiere' mean?

Rebekah, Galeazzi has done Juliet occasionally over the last few years - she and Bonelli did a matinee before Christmas which showed, shall we say, scope for improvement - it was Bonelli's first big role with the company and he's looked better in other things since then, so maybe he was too nervous on that occasion. I think more or less everyone is going to see a Cuthbertson/Watson performance - there are huge expectations of both of them, so I hope the pressure doesn't get to them!

I just this minute got my copy of this book and have just dipped into it; but these are the people Barbara Newman interviewed: Suki Schorer Kathryn Wade Marc du Bouays Anne Marie Vessel Maina Gielgud Helgi Tomasson David Bintley Francia Russell Mark Morris Jean-Pierre Frohlich Shelley Washington Yuri Fateyev Sorella Englund Violette Verdy Irina Kolpakova Margaret Mercier Robert Denvers Violette Verdy (again) Richard Thomas - interspersed with long sections by Newman herself. Looks fascinating, and extremely relevant to many of the discussions we have here.