Jane Simpson

The photographer Kasper Nybo has just opened a website which includes a series of photos of the RDB on their recent tour to China and also a short film (the first one on the page) featuring 9 dancers including the RDB's Sebastian Haynes and Magnus Christoffersen (and also Juliette Schaufuss who was trained mostly at the RDB school).

According to Holly Dorger's Instagram page, she will be dancing Odette/Odile with Sebastian Haynes on October 7, 12 and 26 and November 4. That could be a really interesting pairing, if it works.

In a long interview in today's Berlingske Silja Schandorff reveals that there will be 3 principal casts in the new production of Giselle which she and Nikolaj Hubbe are preparing: J'aime Crandall and Ulrik Birkkjaer Holly Dorger and Gregory Dean Ida Praetorius and Andreas Kaas The production opens on October 29th.

Thank you for the links, Syrene Hvid - but just for the record, it wasn't Amy Watson's debut as Teresina - she danced it some years ago, in the second run of this production I think, with Alexander Stæger

Actually the RDB gave the ballet on its own and I agree it made a rather thin evening.

I had the great pleasure of getting to know Giannina in 'real life' after first meeting her on this forum: for a long time she and her husband came over to London every spring, mostly to see the Royal Ballet, and we used to spend a morning together over coffee and pastries, she and I putting the ballet world to rights whilst our husbands talked about ... something else, I guess - we didn't take time out to listen! It's a couple of years now since she could make the journey, but we still spoke online until a few months ago. It's a sad loss for all her family and also for the many friends she made through Ballet Alert.

Margarita Schrainer is dancing Kitri during the Bolshoi's London season.

Announced this morning, next season's programme includes: Swan Lake (last season's new version) Giselle (a new version by Hubbe and Schandorff, telling the story from Giselle's point of view in a 'modern and abstract language) Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Dangerous Liaisons (a new piece by Cathy Marston) Balanchine's Jewels Triple bill: Vertical Road (Akram Khan)/Falling Angels (Kylian)/ new piece by Wayne McGregor Triple bill - as I read it, an act of Bournonville extracts, another act of Petipa to Nemeier pieces, and Balanchine's Theme and Variations Dans2Go (low price introductory programme) - Conservatoire (Bournonville)/Other Dances (Robbins)/new piece by company dancer Oliver Starpov Also the usual programmes hosted by Hubbe, and the children's piece Fabelmageren

To answer my own question - I'm told the Dryads' short tutus are a return to the original designs - it was only for the last production (the Cuban one, which is the only one I've seen there) that the long ones were introduced. (This is the fourth time the Danes have used the rest of these Don Q costumes - literally the same ones - some of the dancers have been posting photos of all the name-labels inside their jackets etc, and there are a lot!)

Interesting that they've changed some of the costumes - didn't the Dryads use to wear long tutus?

From today's photos it looks as another cast is J'aime Crandall/Jon Axel Franssen

Also to note - dancers from the Alvin Ailey will appear in Chroma alongside the RB dancers. I have to say I look forward to a year when the RB doesn't have any anniversaries at all and just does interesting programmes.

Any more news of this - e.g. who is staging it?

The RDB Principals and Soloists Facebook site has an interesting and thoughtful interview with Susanne Grinder, covering amongst other things her feelings about moving from Juliet to Lady Capulet. The company really does love this version!

Eva Kistrup has already posted a very warm review of last night's opening R&J - sounds like a big success for Praetorius and Kaas. And it was nice to see them both in this morning's livestream of the RDB company class!

And this morning, just in time for his Romeo debut, Andreas Kaas has been promoted to soloist! See Eva Kistrup's article here

Very happy for her! - I've always liked her generous style and her Dane-like 'joy in dancing'. More analysis from Eva Kistrup here

Lots of photos here

Gudrun Bojesen's son, Gabriel, was born 10 days before Christmas. There's a long piece about her, in Danish, in Berlingske Among other things it says she's hoping to get back into condition for a farewell performance of some sort next season, and that she hopes she will be involved in teaching at the RDB school - I hope so too!

Natalia, the cheapness or otherwise of the costumes is surely dependent on the budget rather than on the designer? When Kaplan designed Christopher Wheeldon's production of Sleeping Beauty for the RDB, I got a brief tour of the costume shop and the fabrics - all from Paris, I believe - were enough to make you faint with bliss - exquisitely beautiful but must have cost the earth. Kaplan's designs for the RDB's latest Kermessen in Bruges were also very beautifully detailed and, I believe, historically correct. So don't panic yet!

Sorella Englund, the extremely respected and loved former principal dancer at the RDB, was 70 yesterday and Berlinske published an article to celebrate. "Sorella Englund has, through a long life in the service of dance, set her own stamp on the Danish ballet, where she is still active as character dancer, director and producer." Outside Denmark she's mostly known these days as Madge in La Sylphide, most recently seen in London and New York at the beginning of this year - one of the most definitive performances of our time.

There's a long interview with Ida Praetorius currently in the Danish newspaper Politiken, pegged to the roles she's been dancing in Balanchine's Nutcracker. It takes her from her stage debut - a 10-second appearance in A Folk Tale when she was 9 - to her recent Odette/Odile, when she sat on the floor in the wings and thought she just didn't have the strength for her next entrance (though the music carried her through, fortunately). ( I tried Google translate but for some reason it only gave me the first couple of paragraphs.)

The thing that constantly surprises me about the SW Theatre Ballet at that time is just how young the dancers were - at the premiere of the Ashton Casse Noisette, Fifield was 20, Blair 19 and Beriosova 18 - and it was already a year since the three of them had created the leads in a new Balanchine ballet (not a very good one, by the sound of it, but Balanchine even so) and 6 months since Blair and Fifield had created 2 of British ballet's most enduringly successful characters in Cranko's Pineapple Poll. Dancing in that company in its first 20 years or so must have been grindingly hard work but they had opportunities way beyond what teenage dancers could hope for these days.

FLOSS, I think you can be certain that Ashton's Casse Noisette was never danced at Covent Garden - the SW Theatre Ballet only danced it in the UK for about 3 years and that was long before they ever appeared at the ROH, and the redsident company never danced it at all. (By the way, do you use the listings and statistics at the back of Alexander Bland's book on the first 50 years of the RB? I find them far more complete and accurate than anything online for this sort of thing!)

The Royal Opera House has put up an article about the RB's previous Nutcrackers, including a lot of pictures of the Ashton version (mostly new to me) and some of the Nureyev version too