Jane Simpson

Thankyou, rg - I've also managed to find one available in the UK so I'll probably go for that to save the postage.

It's one of life's little trials that every other ballet I want to read about seems to be covered in Ballets Past and Present, which in my case I have not got. I imagine it as being as long as the original volume!

Rodney, I wonder if you know a tape called Mime Matters, which the Royal Academy of Dance brought out a year or two ago? Among other things it features Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell doing the 'mother's tears' mime scene - in street clothes and at their then ages, but very detailed - and rather touching, too, to see a middle-aged Odette and Sigfried! You also get glimpses of such things as Sarah Wildor as Swanilda and Alina Cojocaru as Giselle, and lots of discussion, demonstration and explanation led by Monica Mason (who also appears as Carabosse, with Deanne Bergsma as the Lilac Fairy). Dance Books can supply the tape in PAL or NTSC, I believe A couple of other things about Mam'zelle Angot: I was amazed to learn (or probably re-learn, my memory being what it is) that the original heroine in the Ballet Theater production was Nora Kaye - a long, long way, I imagine, from the people who danced in the RB's last performances. I was also surprised to see C. W. Beaumont, reviewing the SWB's first night, describing it as 'the first original work to be composed by Leonide Massine for the Sadler's Wells Company' - I'd always imagined it was the Ballet Theater production, with just a few minor changes. But he obviously thought it was different enough to be called a new work. Would he have seen the BT version, I wonder? Some of it must have been completely new as Noel Goodwin (writing a programme note for the RB) says that 'it was given... a new musical arrangement by Gordon Jacobs, who drew on other Lecocq sources besides the eponymous operetta to make the present score, comprising an overture and thirteen numbers'. Beaumont, by the way, thought the choreography of Act 1 'excellent', and of Act 2 'good', but found Act 3 'still untidy and uncertain in design.'

An article called 'Who was Madame Angot?' by Ivor Guest in Richard Buckle's Ballet magazine (Jan 1948) reveals the following: Madame Angot made her first appearance in 1795 at the Theatre d'Emulation in 'Madame Angot ou la Poissarde parvenue'; and later that year she reappeared... in a one-act ambigu tragique, 'La Mort de Madame Angot', a very inferior piece that was loudly hissed...Between 1795 and 1803 there were at least a dozen pieces performed at various Parisian theatres with Madame Angot as the central character. The most successful of them all was undoubtedly the Chevalier Aude's 'Madame Angot au serail de Constantinople, which ran ... for 237 consecutive performances and was the outstanding theatrical success of the year 1800, The character of Madame Angot was the essence of vulgarity.' ...and lots more

Just for the record, the original cast for Monotones 1 had Georgina Parkinson with Sibley and Shaw - I don't think Merle Park ever did it. I'm hoping this will be one of the things theRB revives for the Ashton season.

Ed, you might try the Theatre Museum - or did you go there last time? The only problem is that their reading room gets booked up very early, so if you do find they've got some interesting stuff you need to be reserving a space very soon - like now!

Ed, you need Richard Buckle's Ballet magazine for June 1952, which has an immensely detailed description of the action by Cyril Beaumont - pages and pages of it! There's also quite a lot about it, with rather more pictures, in Dance and Dancers, May 1952. I assume NYPL would have both of these.

Nadia Nerina was indeed famous for her jump, as shown off by Ashton in Fille, and earlier in her solo in Birthday Offering. She was wonderful in Fille in the early days - dazzling technique, funny and charming - but within three or four years she'd become much too coy and self conscious for my taste. I remember her as more 'earthy' than Fonteyn and Beriosova, and in fact more of a soubrette than a classical ballerina. The first time I saw her in Swan Lake I thought she was terrible - 'Nadia Nerina looking rather cross' in Act 2, and a circus act in Act 3. (I can't remember if it was that occasion or later that she obviously had a terrible cold, and is the only ballerina I've ever seen who could whip a handkerchief out from the bosom of her tutu, blow her nose, and stuff the handkerchief back, all whilst she had hser back to the audience in the course of one promenade in arabesque.) In Sleeping Beauty I liked her best in the Vision Scene - something I've noticed with other dancers I'd describe as soubrettes - as if having to subdue their natural exuberance for that act brought out some extra quality. A couple of years ago I saw the television film of Giselle she made with Nicolai Fadeyechev - he looked like someone from another age, but she could have stepped into a Royal Ballet performance today and looked perfectly at home.

The RB has evidently had several different versions of this dance - in the famous composite film of the production in the early fifties, the four princes danced with Auroras friends during this number.

The bit about the grand pirouette is actually in both of the DT articles , word for word. In the second one she adds "In the Kirov version this passage was also interpreted as a grand pirouette". However in the rest of the second article she is extremely critical of the Kirov version, complaining about 'blatant changes' and describing it as a 'flashy, self-consciously "charming" presentation'. She never names names, though, writing throughout of 'the Kirov reconstructor'.

Until the recent new production, which doesn't specify who did what, the RB has credited the Lilac Fairy variation to Lopokov since the 1973 production - maybe it's 'Ashton after Lopokov' but I don't remember ever seeing that in print, and it's not listed in David Vaughan's book. Is there some information somewhere that I've missed, Ari?

When the RB first did the Sleeping Princess, in 1939, the prince was called Prince Charming - it was changed to Florimund when the ballet was revived in March 1942, I don't know why or by whom.

Peter Williams' report on the revised RB Sleeping Beauty in January 1952 describes 'a lovely new variation' for Aurora in the Vision Scene, 'reconstructed by Ashton to some music we have not heard before, and said to be correct'. He also says 'It was a good idea to put in a variation for the Prince in the last act, and although it has been well reconstructed by de Valois, full justice has not yet been done to it...' - so that's presumably the one you were reading about, Mel.

Leigh, I never had the good fortune to see Ashton making or teaching one of his ballets, but I've been looking to see what I could find in various books. It's difficult - many people talk about working with him, but it's almost invariably in terms of creating the movement rather than its relationship to the music. A couple of things from David Vaughan: "Ashton, unlike Balanchine, does not read a score nor play an instrument, but he does familiarise himself thoroughly with the music and then relies on the collaboration of the arranger and/or rehearsal pianist to help him with such technical analysis as may be necessary, such as breaking the music down into counts for the dancers." - which implies that he did occasionally give counts - maybe to the corps de ballet, perhaps? "The quality of the choreography depends not simply on the nature of the material the dancers give him but on their ability to enter into this symbiotic relationship with him, and to share his intuitive response to the music. Very often, the fitting of the dance to the musical phrase is done afterwards, by further adjustment, and for this reason the relation between the two is something that has to be felt by the dancers rather than analysed. When I asked [a dancer] how Ashton fits the movements to the music, he said, 'If I knew that, we could all be choreographers'." - so no counting there, obviously. The book Following Sir Fred's Steps, papers and transcripts of discussions from the Ashton Conference in 1994, has lots of interesting insights. Philip Gammon, who worked as rehearsal pianist with Ashton, says "He never actually wanted to work out counts as such, as so many choreographers like to do. Kenneth MacMillan, for instance, would always want me to work out the dancers' counts before he even started to create the choreography." And there's a very interesting bit from Lesley Collier, talking about the creation of Rhapsody: she says she found learning the pas de deux very difficult, as Baryshnikov heard the music quite differently from either her or Ashton, and Ashton let him do it his way - she only finally enjoyed dancing it when Dowell took over the leading role and "it became a 'Fred' ballet for me, and it was quite wonderful".

I was rather disappointed by it, I'm afraid, especially by the choice of programme - I'd expected a gala celebrating 300 years of St Petersburg would have shown us a selection of the greatest works created there over as long a period as possible. I don't think non-ballet people in the television audience would have got the impression that this was one of the greatest and most influential companies.

Thankyou to all for this - I love it when a chance find opens up a chapter of history I know nothing about! (grace - the scrapbook was just among a shelf-ful of books for guests to look through. I think the owners had been given it by a previous guest who knew they had an interest in dance.)

I've just been staying in a small hotel which included in its treats for guests a wonderful scrap book of cuttings and photographs about theatre and dance in the first quarter of last century. It was mainly about London, but I was intrigued by some photographs of Andreas Pavley and Serge Oukrainsky, 'who are pronounced by the critics to be the two most wonderful male dancers since Nijinsky', in Samson and Delilah at the Chicago Opera. I knew nothing about them, but after some checking in Koegler etc I've learned who they were, and that they formed their own company - but what sort of company was it? Who choreographed for them? Who were their ballerinas? How long did it last? Did they tour the country or stay in Chicago? Any information would be much appreciated!

The Royal Ballet has had occasional 'open' classes for the last 3 years, for which the public could buy tickets - but they're stopping this after the end of this season, on the grounds that 'the dancers' well-being is paramount'. Nobody is quite sure what this means.

The RB's Sleeping Beauty, in the Peter Wright production was shown in full on BBC television, on Jan 26th 1969 - i.e.the month after the premiere. There is a short review in the Dancing Times of March 1969, and a much longer one by Peter Williams in Dance & Dancers of the same month. It was introduced by Christopher Gable, very well apparently - among other things he explained that 'the goat in the Prologue was for the Royal milk, and the reason for the last act being in a tent was because the castle lay in ruins'. The cast was led by Sibley and Dowell, and Deanne Bergsma was the Lilac Fairy. Peter Williams thought it looked much better on TV as it was much more brightly lit than for a normal performance. He liked Sibley but raved over Dowell. I've never heard of anyone who has a tape of the full production. Ironically, Williams ends his first paragraph thus: 'The important thing is that the ballets [sB and Nutcracker] were done, recorded for all time, and can be held in cold storage against the time when (in the not too different future) all channels are in colour.' Ha.

Thankyou, Marc - I can now add it to my spreadsheet!

Yes, it has the house courtain as end-papers: I'd guess it's the next-to-last of the ones you list. It has some amazing photos, especially of the Bronze Horseman - but a lot of them have been rather clumsily retouched.

I've just bought, secondhand, a large book about the Bolshoi Ballet. It has a 20-page introduction, a list of the company in 1951-2, and then hundreds of photographs. It was published in Moscow in 1955, and the cover shows the corps de ballet in Swan Lake (in colour). My problem is that it is all in Russian, and although I can work out the names of the ballets and the dancers, I can't read the name of the author or the publisher so I can't add it to my list properly! Can anyone enlighten me, please?

grace, it's quite a long review of Kontakthof, which was shown in London earlier this season. Kontakthof, as you probably know, is the work in which all the performers are over 65, with no previous stage experience, and it's particularly interesting to read the feelings of a dancer watching untrained bodies. It's the third piece Bruce Sansom has done for DanceNow - he wrote about Requiem in a recent issue foucsing on the works of Kenneth macMillan, and also a long piece on his experience of working in America with San Francisco Ballet and at the Vilar Institute for Arts Management.

And he was an amazingly good Red King in de Valois' Checkmate at his graduation performance.

Marc, I take it you didn't see Darcey Bussell?