Hamorah

Going back to the first post on Enigma Variations - I was fortunate enough to see the original cast and it was amazing. As far as I am concerned no-one can replace Svetlana Beriosova as Lady Elgar - she was simply divine in it. The whole cast was brilliant, including Anthony Dowell, Antoinette Sibley and Wayne Sleep. A review by Mary Cargill that I found on the web sums it up perfectly I think - "Enigma Variations is a picture of Elgar’s friends, but it was also a picture of Ashton’s Royal Ballet in 1968, and like so many profoundly subtle works, its success depends very much on casting. Derek Rencher was a dignified and distinguished Elgar, but the soul of the ballet was Svetlana Beriosova’s Lady Elgar. Beriosova’s dark eyes had untold sympathy and understanding, and her elegant line had a unique dignity." I seem to remember seeing it on TV - I just wish they would release it on DVD - oh and Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley in Les Deux Pigeons too..........

I'd been abroad for a while and somehow missed all the broohaha about Baryshnikov's defection. I went to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden to get tickets for a matinee, because in those days matinees were always with cheaper priced tickets. The tickets for this particular matinee were normal prices and I really couldn't afford it. When I protested they told me that it was because Baryshnikov was dancing. Me in my ignorance still protested - so what! So I missed out on an amazing opportunity to see him dance live and kicked myself ever after. And every time I'd watch him in films I'd kick myself again at what I'd missed........

"Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythm of your life. It's the expression in time and movement, in happiness, joy, sadness and envy." - Jaques D'Amboise

I didn't see the Russian happy ending to R & J, but I did see their happy ending to the "duck pond". The Kirov/Maryinsky performance was brilliant - after the third act we were in tears and then came the 4th act........... The music soared and there we were expecting duck and prince to rise up to heaven in their duckmobile, when the prince somehow manages to kill Rothbart and he and aforementioned duck stand centre stage in a very mundane pose, whilst the divine music makes us long for some matching visual magic. It was like everyone in the audience started muttering together - "Why did they do that? How could they do that? Talk about lame duck.............

I first saw Onegin with Maximova in 1989 at the London Colliseum. I can't say that I remember much about the actual ballet, but I will never forget Maximova. She was 50 and danced like a young girl. She was amazing. I did not see it again live until in 2001 the Israel Ballet was given permission by the Cranko foundation to mount it. I am proud to say that I was approved to play the nurse, even though I am shorter than they normally like to have! Having performed in it now tens of times, I have to say that it's a very special ballet. The company rented the costumes and sets from the Berlin Opera and they are beautiful. I have heard criticism that the Royal Ballet's version has sets that are rather dark and heavy, ours are not and when the curtain rises on the 2nd ballroom scene in the palace, there is always applause. The sets are huge and the only place therefore where there is room for side of the stage storage of them is the large Tel Aviv Performing Arts Centre. The scenic effects are very impressive and require long technical rehearsals for the stage staff. There is actually a lot of dancing in it for the corps and that too required a great deal of rehearsal to get it perfect for the Cranko foundation. One of the most impressive parts for the corps is the Russian peasant dance, which starts with the men leaping and showing off and finishes with an amazing run across stage, in which the men run and with one hand help the women do a series of split grand jetes across the stage. They exit from the downstage corner and run like mad to the upstage corner to start the run again to the opposite side. Anyone waiting in the wings has to get very hurriedly out of the way not to get trampled on in the rush! My favourite piece is the final dramatic pas de deux (even more than the dream scene pas). It is simply so tragic and so moving that even the dancers come and watch it from the wings every performance, at least ours do! For many of the performances we had a Russian guest star, who was/is an incredible Tatiana. She finishes the final scene in tears and so does the audience. The irony of her tearing up Onegin's letter as he once tore up hers is pure theatre. I can hear the powerful music now as he holds on to her legs and drags himself after her along the floor. It sends shivers up my spine. Also extremely dramatic is the duel scene and Lensky's solo before it. What is nice too is that all this drama is broken with some nice touches of comedy in the first ballroom scene with the old people. That is such fun to do - I can "ham" my head off! The weakest link as far as I am concerned is the extra long pas de deux in the first scene with Lensky and Olga. It has a whole piece of the choreography repeated, which is one of the things that irritate me about Cranko's choreography. It's a beautiful pas de deux, but too long. We have had other guest artists dancing the leading roles and although I prefer our Russian ballerina, the performances are still very successful, so I would say that yes great artists can lift the performance more, but it is never boring and always an impressive ballet with gorgeous music. We once did a closed afternoon performance for school children. I remember they started off with whistles and cat calls when Lensky came out in his white tights, and were very restless, but they gradually got swept in by the story and the drama and by the end of the very long three act ballet they were so quiet you could hear a pin drop, until suddenly they burst out in a storm of applause. It was quite something to experience.

I am so pleased that someone mentioned Paul Clarke earlier on this thread. I immediately thought of him when I started reading this topic and just couldn't remember his name from the clouds of 45 years ago. He was at the Royal Ballet upper school when I was there and he was every girl students' heart throb. Blonde and beautiful and an amazing dancer. I remember leaning over the balcony in the Sadlers Wells Studio to watch the senior mens class just to ogle him! We knew he would get into the company and he did, I believe almost before he finished his training. The story as well as I can remember it, was that he went to the dentist and had a procedure with a full anaesthetic. He was told to rest in order to recover properly from the anaesthetic, but insisted on performing that evening. He died of a heart attack as a result. Absolutely tragic and sadly unneccessary. Another former dancer to die tragically was Alan Hooper, one of my pas de deux partners at the RBS. (I was always partnered with him and Wayne Sleep, because I was short enough for them!) After his performing career was over he became the Artistic Director of the RAD - an excellent one too. On a visit to Australia for the RAD, I believe that he fell out of a window from a skyscraper.

I don't ever remember going to see Nutcracker at the Royal Ballet when I was young (1950's early 1960's) . What I do remember was going every year to see the London Festival Ballet's (now ENB) version. Clara was always danced by a talented little girl in their version (how jealous I was of those lucky girls!) and there were loads of children in it as party goers and mice. It was a very traditional version with the Christmas tree growing and growing until it turned into a giant fir tree in the land of snow. This is from the ENB's website - I hope I'm allowed to copy it here. " Above all the history of English National Ballet is entwined with that of The Nutcracker. Markova and Dolin loved performing the pas de deux in their gala programmes and from the Company's first performance at Southsea on 14 August 1950, Act II, 'The Kingdom of Sweets' was part of the repertoire. A complete production was mounted for the first season at the Stoll Theatre in London and a succession of productions by Lichine, Carter, Hynd, Schaufuss, Stevenson and Deane have made the Company's Christmas season unimaginable without this well-loved work which was remarkably little known 50 years ago" I loved the version that was performed by the Birmingham Royal Ballet some years ago. It was also Peter Wright's choreography, but it was different from the RB's current version that I have on DVD. Looking it up I discovered that the RB are still basically doing (with adjustments) the version Wright did for them in 1984, whilst the BRB version was choreographed by Wright in 1990. Nureyev's 1968 version for the Royal Ballet was very different from the other versions around in England at the time. There is an interview with Ninette de Valois as part of a Youtube clip of the Grand Pas de Deux. In it she says that she believes it was based on the Kirov version. It probably was. One unusual element in Nureyev's version was that Merle Park (aged 31) danced both Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy and I believe that Nureyev danced both the Prince and Drosselmeyer!!!!!!!

Well for me this song from Chorus Line rather sums it up - ".All I know how to do is to point my toes and leap. I... Oh I'm a dancer.That's what I am .What I do... I...I am a dancer, Give me the steps. I'll come through. Give me somebody to dance for. Give me somebody to show. Let me wake up in the morning to find I've somewhere exciting to go." Here I am still taking morning class and I'm in my 60's. Dancing has been and still is my life. My technique is slowly deteriorating and I live in dread of the day when I'll finally have to stop - when I'll finally have to accept that I am old . In the meantime I dance and teach and my day is filled with life...........

I don't think that the uniformity has anything to do with pointe shoes, but more to what the AD's are looking for in dancers they give contracts to. I saw the Zurich Ballet some years ago (not on this last visit, so it may be different now) and the girls actually looked like clones from where I was sitting. Their bodies, " long lean leg muscles" and height of extensions were totally uniform. They were all amazing, but how I missed the days of individuality.............

I saw the Stuttgart Ballet performing Romeo and Juliet some years ago now, so I too don't remember all the details. One of the things I don't really like about Cranko's choreography is that he tends to repeat quite long passages, as if he's run out of things to choreograph. The same thing happens in Onegin, which I love, but in that seemingly endless pas de deux in the first act, they actually start again from the beginning - true the music also repeats itself, but still. Unfortunately, what I do remember about the performance I saw of R & J was that they used real fire in their ornamental beacons and one of them caught the curtain alight next to it. The audience held its collective breath wondering what would happen and when the guy dancing Romeo pulled the curtain down and started stamping out the fire, they closed the stage curtains in rather a hurry! The performance started again after a few minutes, but it was scary for a while there! Although I saw the Bolshoi's Romeo and Juliet first, MacMillan's Romeo has always been my favourite. For me his pas de deux are what makes all of his ballets special. I read that he used to start by choreographing the pas de deux and then worked on the crowd scenes, so I imagine that he found the latter harder to create. His balcony scene stands on its own as a masterpiece and is often shown at Galas as a set piece. I remember going to the Covent Garden exhibition in the 1960's. As part of the exhibition they showed a recording of Fonteyn and Nureyev in the balcony scene. I just stood there and watched it over and over again. Ashton also choreographed a version of Romeo, but I didn't find that as strong as Macmillan's. Nureyev's version has a rather wierd pas de deux with homosexual undertones between Romeo and the priest, which I thought was unnecessary. I know of two other versions by in-house choreographers, which for small companies were very good, but for me Macmillan's is still the most powerful. By the way I have performed in both R & J and Onegin in recent years (I now do character roles) and we presented both ballets before audiences of school age children, not connected to dance, as part of the cultural programme for schools. When the ballets started it took the children time to enter into a totally different world from their normal experiences - there were even a few whistles when the soloist came out in white tights - but slowly the drama captured them and the storm of applause at the end was amazing. Someone mentioned a feeling of sheepishness in the acting he/she saw, but I think romantic tragedy can still be appreciated nowadays - if the cast believe in what they are performing, the audience will too.

Thank you I have been posting on BT4D for several years and for some reason never clicked on to the Ballet Alert heading to see what it was! It looks very interesting and I'm glad to have discovered another ballet board!

I trained at the Royal Ballet School upper school in the '60's and went often to performances at the "Garden". If I can help I would be happy to. This is my first post so I don't have PM facilities yet.