Jane Simpson

Thankyou, rg - I don't think my correspondent knew about either the Mad Tristan film or Lute Song.

Someone has asked me for any information about this dancer, who appeared with the Theodore Kosloff Ballet in the 1930's. Does anyone know more about her than can be gleaned from the NYPL entries?

Alexandra, I think Clive Barnes' comments on later MacMillan carry a lot more weight exactly because he hasn't always been harsh about him - in the early days he was extremely supportive and admiring, but gradually became disillusioned - in common with many others, especially where the three-acters are concerned. Maybe we're all harder on those who've disappointed our highest hopes.

I haven't seen Cojacaru and Kobborg this season, but I agree Kobborg is an outstandingly good Romeo. He's turned himself into a very fine naturalistic actor. The only R&J I've been to so far was way below the RB's norm - I hope it was a one-off aberration.

The National Ballet of Canada did do it - see review at http://www.canoe.ca/TheatreReviewsF/fourseasons.html As I've never seen the Kudelka ballet mentioned here, I can't comment on the reviewer's opinion that it made Month look ridiculous...

Eva Natanya made her first appearance (I think) with the RB in the opening section of Four Temperaments on Saturday, dancing the first pas de deux with Thiago Soares, thought she's still not included on the company list. I haven't seen her yet - hope to catch her at a later performance.

Yes - to quite a large extent I think the RB is reaping what is has sown.

I've seen three of the Bayadere casts, and although I enjoyed the Rojo team a lot, for sheer excitement I'd go for the one performance given by Nunez, Thiago Soares and Lauren Cuthbertson. Nunez was just wonderful - confident, expansive, emotionally moving - it was the night she stepped out of 'very promising soloist' into 'young ballerina'. The even younger Lauren Cuthbertson is expected to take this step before too long - she's doing Juliet in the spring - and already she's a fine Gamzatti, rather gentler than most. Soares is a potentially exciting dancer, and he can act too - has anyone seen him in his pre-RB days? Altogether a real night to remember.

Though I too hope some people who weren't planning to go will be persuaded by this offer, I'm sorry it's necessary - it's a shame that such an interesting bill apparently doesn't sell. I suppose none of the titles is familiar to the general audience. I'm really looking forward to it!

Mel, we haven't seen the Three Ivans at the RB for a long time - they last appeared in the early performances of the 1977 de Valois production, but so far as I remember they didn't even last out that season.

I've grown to like lots of ballets either more or less over time, but only once have I had an instantaneous conversion. The first time I saw the Bolshoi's Golden Age I thought it was dreadful; the second time, days later, the curtain went up on the Tea for Two bit (beginning of Act 2?) and I fell in love, just like that, and had to spend the next interval hiding in corners to conceal my foolish grin. I've never seen it since and have no idea which way it would strike me now!

Things can change faster than you think, too - reading about Zhong-Jing Fang reminds me that it's less than 4 years since Wendy Ellis pulled another unknown out of the corps, at the Royal Ballet, to dance in Symphonic Variatons - a girl called Alina Cojocaru. So just maybe...

There's a sentence missing from it, though - something along the lines of 'Much of this article was written by Jane Simpson and has been copied without permission from the website ballet.co, where you can see the original at http://www.ballet.co.uk/old/legend_js_alic...cia_markova.htm .' The article about Anton Dolin on that site is from the same source. Maybe I should just be flattered!

I remember Derman most fondly as a glacial Wife in The Concert, and she was also well-cast as the Bride in Les Noces and as the tall girl who danced with Wayne Sleep in Elite Syncopations. I think Swan Lake was the only full-length lead she had, but she didn't get it till very late - she'd already been in the company 13 years. She did classical solos by the dozen, though - I think she's in the Park/Wall Sleeping Beauty that was shown on television in the US. I always found her line a bit too angular for the classics.

I believe I remember reading that when Antoinette Sibley was first dancing Princess Florine she went to C.W.Beaumont to ask him what it was about, and he told her that the Princess is imprisoned at the top of a tall tower and the Bluebird is trying to teach her how to fly so that she can escape. So that would explain the fluttering.

I think this is probably someone different, Pamela. I'm afraid I misremembered the date she was in London - it was 1922 rather than in the thirties, and she was already presumably well-established by then. The NYPL index lists a cuttings file for 'Mme Karina', and there's a 'Karina' amongst the 'Little Biographies of Famous Dancers' in the Dancing Times for December 1917, along with Genee, Bedells, Kyasht and Astafieva. The reason I asked in the first place is that I was looking at the website for the British Pathe News archive, and you can download a film of Mme Karina dancing the Dying Swan - at least you can if you've got a faster connection than I have!

Please can anyone tell me anything about 'the Danish ballerina, Mme Karina', who danced in London in 1931?

She did a very promising Aurora. I like her a lot - she dances 'big', with an open expansive style which I find very attractive. At the moment she's still doing first sketches of her roles and there's a lot of detail to be filled in, and although she is very strong and confident technically I feel she maybe hasn't yet got a real confidence in herself as an artist. I'm looking forward to her Nikiya next month. She's been rather overshadowed by the rise of Cojocaru, which works both ways - she can get on with developing her roles without the glare of publicity which surrounds Cojocaru, but on the other hand there are perhaps heavier expectations on her because of the Cojocaru phenomenon. It's almost impossible to believe, watching her, that she's actually the younger of the two - she looks far the more mature - and she's a very different dancer and at a different stage of her development.

One of the things I most like is the way Fonteyn and Somes do supported pirouettes - he puts both hands on her waist to steady her and then takes away his right hand whilst she pirouettes on her own. So much more elegant and effective than the 'human corkscrew' approach!

Thankyou, Leigh - and lucky ABT! But I'm really disappointed we won't see him with the RB.

Please can someone tell me what's happened to him? He was supposed to be doing 4Ts with the Royal Ballet this season but his name has just been withdrawn, and he doesn't seem to figure on the DTH site, either.

The RB has announced that Daria Pavlenko will dance Nikiya in La Bayadere on October 21at and 31st, replacing Darcey Bussell. She will be partnered by Roberto Bolle.

Markova's method may have been hard work for her partner, but it worked - I've never seen such an amazing illusion of flight as her entrance for the pas de deux in Les Sylphides - you could 'see' that her partner (Bryan Ashbridge I think) was holding her down rather than lifting her.

The Royal Ballet has announced that Darcey Bussell is expecting her second child in February and has withdrawn from all her performances in the new season. A Press Release gives details, and revised casting will be announced as soon as possible

Any idea what year it was, Glebb? In the late 70s Derman used to dance it with Derek Deane and Mark Silver, but Silver left the company for a short time in 1981.