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Tracey

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Posts posted by Tracey

  1. We land in NY for 3 nights on 17th December and would love to catch a performance of the Nut. But the website indicates that it's a bit of a lottery on getting tickets so I would like some advice on the best way to get some! We are on a budget so would be looking at Fourth Ring, although we might be able to stretch to Third if the exchange rate keeps going in the right direction!!

    Thanks in advance!

    Tracey

  2. Just back from tonight's performance and my BF has been called into work because of a faulty power switch which has taken down half the office's computer systems, so he has to go and bring them all back online again!!

    Anyway, ballet! It's the first time I've seen all of these ballets so it was a truly interesting evening.

    Drink to me only with thine eyes

    I'm not a big fan of contemporary music, so this took a little time for me to get into - really after the music settled into something more harmonised. Some really challenging choreography with unpredictable enchainements, but most of the cast managed to make it look easy.

    Trapèze

    I really enjoyed this. It seems that it's new choreography by Christopher Hampson on Prokofiev's original score. The ballet is set around a trapeze with a bar that's approximately 5ft above the stage hanging from a frame. Six dancers comprising three 'couples', two male/female couples and one female couple. The main male/female couple (Sarah McIlroy and Jan-Erik Wikström tonight) perform their first pas de deux on the trapeze. McIlroy also had a beautiful solo on the trapeze where she shows amazing upper body strength combined with grace to make it all seem effortless, including a one-handed balance leaning against one of the hanging ropes, and the splits above the trapeze bar with her feet pushing the ropes either side! There is some really interesting choreography, definitely worth seeing if you can get to a performance.

    Melody on the move

    How much fun was this! This is a new work from the ENB by Michael Corder - a suite of 8 dances performed to classic British light music of the 1930's - 1950's. They were comprised of one opening showpiece, with the corps providing a musichall style opening; 2 'comedy' pieces, the most memorable being 4 working class housewives and a middleclass housewife wearing tutus with their hair wrapped in turbans 'Hilda Ogden' style (for those of you that know Coronation Street of old!!) and marigolds - after waving their husbands off to work the middleclass housewife runs off with the milkman; the remaining pieces were more classic and the whole thing was rounded off with a musichall style finale.

    Thoroughly enjoyable evening! Agnes Oaks gave me goosebumps tonight, both in Drink and in Melody, but especially in the latter in a pas de deux to The Girl from Corsica with hubby Thomas Edur. Trapèze was excellent, as was the footwork in Drink.

    Go see if they're coming to a theatre near you!

    Tracey

  3. Tickets usually sell out really quickly here, but the theatre had to send out extra fliers to their mailing list in order to sell out this time :shrug: . And what is more unusual is I found out from the box office that the triple bill had sold out faster than Cinderella. That should be speaking volumes to the company. Here's hoping the ENB decide to bring something different next autumn.

  4. I'm a bit happy cos I'm going to see the ENB twice next week :D !

    We will see Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes, Trapèze, Melody on the Move on Tuesday, and Cinderella on Friday. I'm really looking forward to it and will try (with my usual poor attempt at reporting) to let you know how both performances are.

    I have one gripe though - in the last few years the ENB have done Swan Lake (more than once), Nutcracker, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty in Bristol, plus a few mixed bills. That's it for full length ballets! And guess what - they're back in Feb with Swan Lake again! Now, don't get me wrong, I love Swan Lake - I love ballet full stop - but ENB's tour last year included Coppelia, but not in Bristol! We get another company (Ellen Kent International) who seem to just do Swan Lake and the Nutcracker, and next year Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is coming too, not that I'm complaining about that one! Are you seeing a pattern here :thumbsup: ?

    I will probably go and see all of it - I usually do - but I know my BF is going to start getting bored. He's new to ballet and I'd quite like to keep him interested!! And we can't afford to keep travelling all the time to see ballets.

    How do we get and keep people interested outside of London if we get the same stuff all the time?

  5. I found my way here while doing a massive internet trawl to find adult classes when I wanted to return to class last year after a 15 year break. I lurked for ages, visiting 2 or 3 times a day, before I finally registered! I absolutely love it here, everyone is so nice and helpful, I've learned so much since I found it, 'virtually met' some fantastic people (and physically met one so far) and I still visit 2 or 3 times a day, and get withdrawal symptoms when I can't get the internet!

    Alexandra and all the moderators, thank you so much - this is by far the best board around, no competition :) !

    Tracey

  6. Kate, I'm jealous! I was looking at trying to come up for one of the La Bayadere performances, but Paul can't get the time off (and he won't let me travel back on my own that late - not even going to broach the subject with him!) and I can't believe the prices! They want £45 for our usual £25 seats, so I was even prepared to go in the slips and watch 'half' a performance!

    Next time I guess......:)

    Have fun, let us know what it's like.

    Tracey

  7. Had a letter from the ROH yesterday saying that Darcey is scheduled for bone spur operations soon, and will be out for the rest of the season.

    I am a little disappointed as we had booked to see her and Roberto Bolle in R&J in June, but I would like to wish Darcey all the best for her op and we hope to see her back soon.

    We have Alessandra Ferri as a substitute for Darcey's performance still partnered by Bolle, which I am looking forward too.

  8. Not that I know of, grace. The only other one is 'uncoded' which means it can be played anywhere on any player - it may be that someone has decided to call it region 0 but it's not an 'official' coding. Here's a link to list of the regions.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/bro...3286176-4522233

    There is also a region 7 which has been reserved (not in use yet - ready for space stations maybe ;) ), and region 8 for special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.).

    Tracey

  9. OK - DVD help! The world has been split into DVD regions - US is region 1, UK and Europe is region 2, the Far East is region 3 etc etc. Over here in the UK we can get what we call 'multi-region' DVD players, which basically have a chip inside so we can watch DVDs from all over the world. Alternatively, you can buy a DVD player and get it 'chipped' (I'm not sure how legal chipping is - you can also do this with PlayStations). The main reason that this has been done is so that the big movie-makers can control who gets what film and when. I have noticed that some ballet DVDs have not been 'regioned' so you can play them anywhere (see www.dancebooks.com).

    So, if you don't have a multi-region DVD player make sure you check what region the DVD is issued in before you buy it :) .

    Hope that helps,

    Tracey

  10. My friend and I took her 5 year old to see The Nut (matinee) this year - her first ballet .... her first anything longer than 1/2 hour actually. My friend had gone armed with various bribes in order to get her usually hyperactive daughter to sit still throughout the performance (the 'sit still until the interval and you will have this for being a good girl' scenario). Bless her little socks, she didn't move through the whole thing - she was mesmerised, and wanted to go back in and see it again straight away when it finised :cool: .

    On the other hand, in the row in front of us were two women with a little girl, who was fine, and two boys, one of which paid no attention at all to what was going on and spent his time forcing open as many binocular cases as he could reach (you have to pay for them - 40p)! Mum totally ignored him all through and then when he gave a pair of binoculars to his little brother who showed them to his mother, she then told the little one off!

    It took all of my patience to get through the performance without saying anything. I was brought up to show respect to others in public places (ie restaurants, theatre etc) from a very early age and wouldn't dream of letting my children (if I get around to having any) behave in such a disrespectful manner.

    Tracey

  11. Originally posted by BilboBaggins

    "Posh and Becks" are indeed Victoria (the former Posh Spice) and David Beckham (UK soccer star extraordinaire and captain of the UK Team).  

    BB

    Being English as well as British, can I just be pedantic!! He's the England team captain, not UK team - we don't have a British football team only seperate England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland teams, hence no participation in Olympic or Commonwealth soccer competitions!

    OK - back to subject ....... :D

  12. Another good website for last minute (6 weeks) worldwide hotels is www.laterooms.com.

    This is where hotels put their rooms up for sale when they're not booked. All ratings of hotels from guest houses up. On our last 2 trips to London to see RB we stayed in the 5* Grosvenor House, Park Lane for £116 reduced from £455, and the 5* Radisson Hampshire, Leicester Sqare for £99 reduced from £435!! Those are room prices, not per person!

    We train and tube it in there, breakfast in MacDonalds, but have a sumptious hotel room!!

    Our next trip is in June but is on a 'school' night, so we'll be coming straight back after the performance :D !

    Tracey

  13. Hi BilboBaggins,

    I'll be going on 4th June - just missing you!! I couldn't go on that weekend because I have to go to my Open University residential week. We're (hopefully) seeing Bussell/Bolle which will just be so fantastic! Can't wait already :) .

    Tracey

  14. Hi JaneD, do you have any latest news on that case? I can't find the original links to the stories that were posted on here, and the last I heard was that BRB were stepping in to help.

    In general, I was very lucky at my ballet school when I was young because we had 3 boys in my class, one of which went on to the RBS (but don't know what happened to him after that), and also William Tuckett in with the older students to watch :) .

    I pointed out to my brother the other day when he was whingeing that his wife had put their son in for dance classes, that I thought him being in a studio with lots of pretty girls was a far better place for him to be than sat in a communal bath with a bunch of guys after a football match!

    Cavalier - you keep at it, and don't let them get you down :) .

    Tracey

  15. Lolly, don't panic - we are out here, it's just some of us don't manage to get up to London that much! When I do manage to get there I have put up my 'reviews', but please don't stop with yours because although I am extremely jealous I do love to read them :( .

    I'm going to see the Chisinau National Ballet down here on Monday - not sure that they'll be too good but I've decided that bad ballet is better than no ballet at all!! I booked 4 tickets today in the stalls for Monday - that's really unusual for Bristol - ballet sells out very quickly down here!! We don't get very much coming through Bristol - usually the ENB, the Northern Ballet Theatre go to Bath, and then these odd ones that are here at the moment.

  16. Does anyone know anything about this company? They are coming to Bristol in January but the only reviews I can find are poor ones of their production of Grigorovich's Nutcracker. They are bringing that to Bristol but I thought I might try their Petipa's Swan Lake (in the cheap seats if they're not that good). I think they are struggling to sell tickets (which is very unusual for Bristol) because I keep getting promotional gumph in the mail.

    I'm starving for some live ballet and can't afford to go to London at the moment, so I was thinking that maybe not so good ballet was better than none at all :confused: .

    Can anyone help?

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