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Ashton Fan

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Posts posted by Ashton Fan

  1. Perhaps I am being naive but this stage I interpret the Royal Ballet's silence  as reflecting nothing more significant than the fact that the death of anyone in their mid thirties is unexpected. While I am sure that the management team has prepared any number of tributes for the deaths of major figures in the world of British ballet I don't think they would have anticipated this death. As far as company members are concerned it is just possible that most of them are still processing the news and coming to terms with it and as Janet has pointed out twitter does not provide the opportunity to say much, let alone anything nuanced.

    Scarlett had shown real promise as a choreographer while still at the Royal Ballet School. One of the unusual things about his works from a very early stage was his ability to get his dancers on and off the stage in choreography that was interesting in its own right. The exits and entrances  he devised  for his casts never looked like the logistical exercises they can often appear to be in works created by young choreographers. He was working within an recognisable classically based tradition and yet he had an increasingly identifiable voice and as he showed in his work for the school he had the ability to make works which showed young dancers of different ages and thus of different levels of expertise to their best advantage. At the age of twenty six a special choreographic post was created for him and he seemed to be on track for a bright future as he made well received ballets for his home company and companies abroad. Then allegations were made about his conduct and the golden future disappeared.

    The Royal Ballet School and the company were sufficiently concerned by the allegations made concerning the choreographer's conduct  to undertake an investigation into them. This was no more than you would expect any employer or any institution engaged in training children and young people to do in such circumstances. The internal enquiry revealed no child protection issues in connection with his conduct towards the RBS students who had worked with him on various projects. The Royal Ballet chose to sever its ties with him and he lost his post as resident choreographer which indicates, to me, that there were significant concerns about his conduct towards company members or at least some individuals in its ranks.  Various people have commented on the lack of criminal charges arising from the investigations but I think that does no more than indicate that the actions which the enquiry revealed did not cross the line from misconduct into criminality.

    I have no idea what employment law is like in the US but in the UK it is perfectly possible for an employer to find that  an employee is guilty of misconduct sufficiently serious to amount to breach of his employment contract where the behaviour complained of does not amount to criminal activity. The employee has a remedy in law, if he feels that he has been treated unfairly, and that is to take his former employer to the Industrial Tribunal. As to why so little was said at the time about the enquiry's findings it seems more than possible to me that giving any sort of detail would have made those who had complained of his actions almost instantly identifiable and opened them up to harassment from the press, in a sort of double victimisation. 

    I think that most members of the company will mourn the loss of a young choreographer with such obvious talent and potential regardless of what they think of him as an individual. His death seems such a waste.

  2. I am sorry to learn of Liam Scarlett's death as he was a young choreographer who during a short career managed to create a number of striking dance works which plenty of people many years his senior who describe themselves as choreographers would have been pleased to have made. I can't help feeling sorry for his family. His death must have come as a real shock given his age.

    As far as the Times' headline is concerned I wonder what happened to the old idea that you should not speak ill of the death? But of course the paper is now a part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire and has been for many years. Perhaps the only surprise is not the headline but that it took so long for the Times, which once had a reputation as a journal of record and a publication where serious journalism was undertaken , to find its place in the gutter along with Murdoch's other tabloid rags. 

  3. Reading through the names  does not suggest to me that there is any great need to worry about the long term viability of the company. The dancers named are largely performers who have probably come to the conclusion that having reached a certain age and without any realistic possibility of further further promotion or of dancing in the foreseeable future the offer of voluntary redundancy represented an offer they would have been foolish to refuse. As the redundancy is voluntary the  payment that each dancer will receive is likely to be quite generous and very useful for anyone who has been planning what they will do when they stop  dancing. As far as the company as a whole is concerned it may well make things more secure for the apprentice dancers  of 2020 and may, perhaps, make it easier to offer apprenticeships in 2021.

  4. A new recording of de Valois' production of the ballet is due to be issued on the 23rd October 2020. The cast in the recording is headed by Nunez and Muntagirov with Avis as Dr. Coppelius. Although Coppelia was the first nineteenth century ballet the Vic Wells company ever danced it has had a somewhat patchy performance history since the company acquired its royal charter and became the Royal Ballet with lengthy periods of neglect followed by enthusiastic rediscovery for relatively short periods. Last Christmas gave audiences the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with the work and once again raised the question why Coppelia does not have the regular place in the repertory it deserves.The cast selected for the streamed performance are excellent, even if Nunez is perhaps a trifle mature for the role of Swanhilde at this stage of her career, and does not bring the same freshness to the comedy of the second act that Hayward did on the opening night. Avis makes the role of Coppelius his own rather than trying to follow Helpmann's interpretation of the role while Muntagirov is charm itself and makes Franz's solo look ridiculously easy.

  5. The event held in October 2019 has been placed on the Foundation's website. It is of interest because a large part of the afternoon was devoted to coaching a section of Foyer de Danse which dates from the early 1930's when Markova was working in London and appeared at Rambert's Ballet Club. There is a film of this early Ashton work made by a ballet enthusiast which has tantalised people for years because it is clearly incomplete and many have thought it was too fragmentary to work on. On the basis of what was shown last October it seems that Ursula Hageli has solved many of the problems with the film . Using a computer she was able to slow the film down and found that by doing this the  choreography fitted the music. In her opinion, presumably based on the handful of bars which were left without choreography, the only sections of the stage action which are missing are the dancers' entrances and exits which were not filmed. However as the work was made for Rambert's Mercury Theatre which had an exceptionally small stage and a limited number of options as to how to enter or leave it devising something to provide stage action to fill those bars  of music should not prove an insurmountable challenge preventing the work being revived. The biggest obstacle is likely to be Kevin's limited enthusiasm for such works. As to whether it would be worth reviving the ballet? It was still in Ballet Rambert's active repertory when the company visited Australia in the late 1940's which suggests that it would be worth seeing restored to the stage.

    The second part of the event was devoted to a gala piece which Ashton made for Park and Eagling in 1975 which they only danced about three times and about which they admit to remembering very little. It is still of interest.

  6. While I am not a great Cathy Marston fan the Cellist may be of interest as it was made on Cuthbertson, Ball and Sambe all of whom are on top form in their created roles. My problem with it in the theatre was that I thought it could have done with some serious editing and that Marston had wasted a large number of talented dancers who seemed to have little reason to be on stage except to populate it as moving scenery and occasionally to act as props. My main interest in this DVD will be in Dances at a Gathering which again provides an opportunity to see a lot of the company's dancers but this time used to considerable effect. I was lucky enough to see the Royal Ballets original cast in the work and the impact of those performances has remained with me ever since. When it was announced that D A A G was replacing the previously advertised new ballet by Liam Scarlett I bought tickets for every performance which I could attend and I was not disappointed by either cast. This is a recording that I am likely to buy. It is due to be issued on the 22nd January 2021.

    There are rumours that last season's revival of Coppelia which was streamed to cinemas with a cast led by Nunez and Muntagirov will find its way onto DVD. I hope it proves to be true  because while I would have preferred to see a recording of the performance given by the first night cast led by Hayward, Campbell and Avis a new recording of Coppelia is to be welcomed.

  7. While I am not a great Cathy Marston fan the Cellist may be of interest as it was made on Cuthbertson, Ball and Sambe all of whom are on top form in their created roles. My problem with it in the theatre was that I thought it could have done with some serious editing and that Marston had wasted a large number of talented dancers who seemed to have little reason to be on stage except to populate it as moving scenery and occasionally to act as props. My main interest in this DVD will be in Dances at a Gathering which again provides an opportunity to see a lot of the company's dancers but this time used to considerable effect. I was lucky enough to see the Royal Ballets original cast in the work and the impact of those performances has remained with me ever since. When it was announced that D A A G was replacing the previously advertised new ballet by Liam Scarlett I bought tickets for every performance which I could attend and I was not disappointed by either cast. This is a recording that I am likely to buy. It is due to be issued on the 22nd January 2021.

    There are rumours that last season's revival of Coppelia which was streamed to cinemas with a cast led by Nunez and Muntagirov will find its way onto DVD. I hope it proves to be true  because while I would have preferred to see a recording of the performance given by the first night cast led by Hayward, Campbell and Avis a new recording of Coppelia is to be welcomed.

  8. These are the latest Royal Ballet performances to be made available to a worldwide audience during shutdown.

    Romeo and Juliet is being shown today at 7pm London time and will be available for a further fortnight.

    Now I know that I often feel that MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet is in danger of being done to death and that I would appreciate it much more if it were rested for several seasons and replaced, say by Ashton's version, but this is a performance that I shall be watching as the leading roles are taken by Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball. It was a revival of this ballet a couple of seasons earlier which made London audiences sit up and take notice of both dancers as potential company principals. The ballet is strongly cast and if I recall correctly Juliet's Friends at this performance included at least one dancer who was almost certainly making her final appearance in that role.

    Sleeping Beauty is being shown on 24th July at 7 pm and will also be available for a further fortnight.

    The cast is led by Fumi Kaneko and Federico Bonelli. It goes without saying that this is a ballet which gives the audience the opportunity to see a lot of the company in action. This performance is of great interest as Kaneko was replacing a senior dancer at short notice and had, I think, only made her debut as Aurora a few days earlier with a different partner. Kaneko is another dancer to watch and whose career is likely to be of interest.

     

     

     

     

     

  9. The latest Royal Ballet DVD will be issued on the 17th July 2020. It contains performances of three ballets which entered the company's repertory towards the end of the 1960's. Concerto has an interesting  cast which includes Hay and O'Sullivan in the opening section and Naghdi and Hirano in the central section of the work. The performance of Ashton's Enigma Variations has the best cast that the company has mustered in years with Saunders as Elgar, Morera as Lady Elgar, Gartside as Jaegar and Hayward as Dorabella. In fact this revival was exceptionally well cast and coached with only one dancer in three casts whose presence on the stage I would question. It came as a pleasant surprise to discover that the company had three Troytes in its ranks. Finally to round off what in the theatre was a good old fashioned style mixed bill full of contrasts rather than three ballets with some sort of uniting theme there is Nureyev's Raymonda Act III. This was one of Nureyev;s earliest stagings of versions of the Petipa classics and was heavily influenced by the activities of Russian folk dance groups of the period.

     I have not seen the recording because I was in the theatre when the performance streamed . This means that I have no idea whether the recording suffers from an over busy camera but on paper the recording  provides an excellent opportunity to see a good cross section of the company in ballets which for years were staples of its repertory.

  10. I don't see how anyone can do anything other than guess about when companies might be able to perform again. I believe that the experience from 1919 in Minneapolis and Saint Paul makes it clear that shutting down early means you come out of a pandemic much quicker and with much less. economic damage than you do if you delay shutdown. As both the US and the UK were slow to lock down we are likely to be stuck with the virus for much longer than say Germany which acted very promptly. Until we know what the real extent of the infection is and its rate of reproduction in our respective countries we can't really start talking about how and when companies will resume performing. What is clear is that until we know that the rate of  "R" is well below one anyone talking about when the theatres might reopen is asking a question very similar to "How long is a piece of string? "

    I suspect that places of public entertainment where people gather in large numbers and sit close together in confined spaces will be the last to reopen quite simply because they seem designed to be infection hot spots. Public Health authorities will be reluctant to see them reopen until they are satisfied that the virus is well and truly under control. It is one thing to gradually ease restrictions on the range of shops which can reopen with social distancing if they are thought to attract a limited number of customers drawn from a relatively small geographic area quite another to allow places which can't really impose social distancing because of the way they function and were designed to reopen . It becomes an even bigger problem if they tend to attract audiences from across a wide geographic area as this brings the danger of importing fresh infection. However pressing their financial needs no company is going to want to be accused of creating an infection hot spot by reopening prematurely. Of course it is not just the audience drawn from a wide geographic area sitting close together that presents the potential for spreading the virus and boosting its reproduction rate the working conditions of the performers also present opportunities for it to spread as they scarcely allow for social distancing in any form. Dancers cannot keep six feet apart when rehearsing or performing and nor can musicians sitting in the pit. Watching what happens in Germany and Italy and comparing the two when it comes to announcing that they are reopening their opera houses and when they actually succeed in doing so might give a clue as to what we might expect.

  11. Having pulled stumps on the ballet season some weeks ago I am surprised that the ROH has taken so long to officially abandon the remnants of the opera season. It will be interesting to find out when the management anticipates being able to open the doors again and what form the opera and ballet seasons actually take. At the moment i can't see much happening before Christmas. Given the number of dancers who were prevented from making major debuts in Swan Lake by the shutdown or made unscheduled debuts but never had the opportunity to dance with their advertised partners I suspect that "Lac" will be back next season and that the rest of the repertory will be popular rather than novel or e. A late start to the season will give plenty of time to decide what form "Lac" should take. I should be very surprised if its text was the one devised by Scarlett. The simplest solution would be to use either the text used by Dowell or the one used in the production which preceded it.

     

  12. I wholeheartedly agree with your concerns about the wisdom of donating ticket money to the ROH. I suspect that it will be more than a handful of regulars who are faced with the problem you described.

    There are quite a lot of regulars who seem to be just hanging on at present. The economic landscape is likely to be very different when the lock down is eased . Jobs in some sectors will be lost while those like teachers who work for the state could easily find that the government decides that the aftermath of the lock down presents a wonderful opportunity for salary and wage cuts. Such action would make no sense economically and would further reduce employment and the governments tax receipts by damaging the economy as a whole but it would certainly fit the ideological outlook of much of the current UK government.

    As far as the ROH is concerned I anticipate that tickets for both opera and ballet will cost considerably more next season than they did this season. Even if the ROH organisation is unable to persuade its donors to be more generous than they are at present it is quite possible that ACE will be anxious to reduce its subsidy so that it can prop up less high profile and less financially well connected arts organisations much further north than London and the South East. Any increase in ticket prices will of course make the ROH even less socially diverse than it is at present. I suppose how it chooses to handle ticket price increases will depend on how socially exclusive it feels it can afford to be seen to be. No doubt some donors would be happy to pay more and perhaps eliminate the state subsidy in exchange for greater social exclusivity.

  13. A cursory glance at the Royal Opera House website makes it pretty clear that the opera and ballet seasons have been brought to a premature close. I don't expect any early announcement of what the 2020-21 season will look like for either company as I imagine that both companies are currently revising their original plans and devising seasons which will sell without any effort on the part of the marketing department as its objective will be to deal with the losses which the truncation of the season has caused. The ROH has been trying to persuade people to donate the money that they have spent on tickets for the cancelled performances up to the end of April rather than asking for it to be refunded. It will be interesting to see how much luck they have with that, if only because of the sums involved.

    Alex Beard who runs the ROH organisation has written to the favoured few saying how much the organisation values its loyal audience members which is a complete reversal of the organisation's recent stance of treating its regular audience as a group who made unreasonable demands of it. The individual in charge of audience relations and marketing, who has since moved on, created the impression that it was an organisation whose main concern was to cater to the needs of the occasional visitor rather than its regular audience. In fact she gave the impression that the target audience were tourists or families celebrating granny's birthday who wanted the  ROH experience of wining and dining at the opera house but who beyond knowing whether they were going to an opera or a ballet on the evening they selected were not  much interested in what was being performed or who was appearing in it. We shall see how the appeal for donations turns out in the light of recent experience with the organisation.

     

     

  14.  I am not sure that I gained a lot from seeing Bathilde and the Duke of Courland arrive on horse however authentic that may be theatrically and socially. It was interesting to encounter a sympathetic Bathilde rather than the cold and aloof creature one is used to seeing in Bow Street. I know that this is an attempt to capture something of the flavour of the ballet as a nineteenth century creation and it is almost certainly authentic but I am not sure that Hans/ Hilarion's characterisation as a peasant clod adds much to the mixture. However I suppose that if Bathilde is to be played more naturally and sympathetically rather than as an unfeeling aristocrat then someone else has to be presented as an unsympathetic character. It was a pleasant change to see the peasant pas de deux danced as just that rather than being hacked about to provide opportunities for more than two dancers. The thing that struck me most about the first act was that the mime sequence used in the reconstruction is shorter and simpler than the version which the Royal Ballet has been performing since the 1960's. According to the company's performance records  its current version was introduced in the production which Ashton and Karsavina staged in 1960. This mime sequence which the company has retained in subsequent productions is the version which Karsavina said was performed during her time with the Mariinsky. In it Berthe not only has the opportunity to warn Giselle of the threat which her love of dance poses for her but to provide the assembled peasants with a full account of the way in which the Wilis force unwary men to dance themselves to death. In the mime sequence Berthe demonstrates the confrontation between an unwary traveller and a Wili playing both characters. I can't help wondering when Ratmansky's version of the mime sequence became the norm ?

    I found the second act extraordinarily effective and was more than happy to see the loss of the pressage lift which is little more than a twentieth century technical trick which adds nothing to the ballet aesthetically or dramatically.  The lift which replaced it is far more attractive and aesthetically in keeping with the rest of the choreography. I felt that when I saw Ball perform it when he took over as Albrecht mid performance at Covent Garden not so long ago. I didn't feel then that I had been cheated by not seeing what has become the Giselle cliche lift  or in this streamed performance. Its replacement looks far more stylistically appropriate in a ballet in which those performing the choreography should be more concerned with the creation of atmosphere and mood than having opportunities for technical display. I have to say that I was pleased to see a production which fell back on the use of nineteenth century stage technology with Giselle showering Albrecht with flowers from a tree rather than all but handing them to him. While there were elements which did not entirely convince me such as the cross formation of the Wilis which, as I understand it, has its source in Justament's notebooks I should love to have the opportunity to see the production live. I hope that it is one of the productions which the Bolshoi bring with them next time the company visits Covent Garden. It was good to have the opportunity to see a Romantic ballet text treated with respect and to have the opportunity to go on Ratmansky's artistic voyage of exploration.

  15. It is pretty clear that there are more potential candidates for promotion among the ranks of the First Soloists than there are likely to be vacancies for Principals at the end of the season. The company seems to have largely lost its dead wood through retirement. It is going  to be very interesting to see which dancers the management has decided have gone as far as their talents can take them. As the company does not seem to be touring abroad this summer perhaps Mr O'Hare will decide that he has no need to promote anyone at this time and that he can afford to defer what is likely to be a difficult decision for another season while he tries people out in a wider range of the core repertory than has happened so far. He is under far less pressure to make appointments than he would be if the company were visiting somewhere such as Japan, where the promoters demand principal dancers must be cast in leading roles as a contractual term.

     

  16. On what I hope proves to be a happier note. The Royal Ballet is increasingly becoming Kevin O'Hare's company rather than the one he inherited from his predecessor. It is usual for appointments to follow on from departures and retirement but some unusual things have been happening in the company as far as long serving personnel are concerned. It is almost unheard of for dancers to leave early in a new season but that is what both  Alistair Marriott, Principal Character Dancer,and Jonathan Howells, Ballet Master and Character Artist, chose to do making it necessary to modify the casting for Coppelia which had already been announced. With their early depart it is just possible that Kevin may find that he has enough money to fund more than one new Principal dancer at the end of the season.Here I am assuming that Hallberg's appointment as Guest Artist is not going to be a permanent feature in the life of the company.

    Kevin will almost certainly appoint someone to replace Soares who announced that his appearances as Onegin were to be his last with the company.The question is whether he will appoint a second Principal, even if he has no immediate need to do so? There are several dancers who in  recent months have been given the opportunity to reveal their potential for promotion to the company's top rank. While Clarke has consolidated his position as an extremely useful and adaptable dancer which explains his recent promotion to First Artist, dancers like Magri and O'Sullivan have been cast in roles which have not only expanded their personal repertory and range but have seen them performing key roles in ballets which are central to the company's core repertory.  It seems to me that the revival of the long neglected Coppelia has expanded the group of potential candidates for promotion. It is going to be interesting to see who will have proved to be successful when the promotions are announced at the end of the season. 

     

  17. Since his time as a student at the Royal Ballet School Scarlett has been seen as a choreographer of considerable promise and on the basis of his choreographic talent he was able to retire from dancing in his mid twenties and take up an official choreographic post at the Royal Ballet which was created for him. It has now been announced officially that he  was suspended from his company post in August last year and that his activities there and at the school are under investigation by an outside organisation. The investigation which concerns allegations of sexual misconduct and bullying are ongoing. He has been banned from the Opera House and the Royal Ballet School. Strangely although he had been banned from the Opera House last August it was only announced that "The Cellist" mixed bill was no longer going to include a new work by Liam Scarlett comparatively recently. Presumably at that point,the announcement was made for the practical reason that it isn't really possible to create a new work, if the choreographer is banned from entering the building where rehearsals are to take place.

    The investigations have not been completed  but I think that It will be interesting to see how much further the company feels it needs to distance itself from Scarlett, now that the broad nature of the allegations are known. There are revivals of his production of Swan Lake and his ballet Symphonic Dances scheduled in the coming months. While I am sure that the company is capable of reviving them in his absence there is the question of whether it will wish to be seen to do so. If they are keeping him at arm's length and denying him access to the building and the dancers will they want to be seen to be paying him royalties for these revivals ? Of course there is no problem if the allegations are found to be without substance.  But will the company or the Royal Opera House organisation want to run the risk of the enquiry finding that the allegations have substance to them at  very the time that his Swan Lake is being performed in Bow Street ? There is always the possibility that other former students and dancers will come forward and make their own allegations now they know that an official enquiry into Scarlett's activities and behaviour is under way.  The investigation is already said to concern his activities going back over a period of ten years. The company was able to drop Scarlett's  new ballet without explanation or comment when the investigation was not public knowledge  but from now on its decisions with respect to his existing ballets scheduled for performance this season are likely to come under scrutiny and may well be the subject of adverse comment. It is going to be interesting to see how the company decides to handle the situation . It is possible that it is just too late to do anything about the version of Swan Lake the company will dance this season. Symphonic Dances is likely to prove much easier to lose.

  18. The closer you get to the performance dates the more likely it is that you will find tickets appearing on the ROH website. In my experience the ROH puts tickets for resale on its site as soon as they come in. So while it may be true that returns are included in the Friday rush the point to note is that they are not held back until the date of the next rush. I see that the performances you want to attend are midweek ones so while I think that tickets can come in at anytime the days when you are most likely to strike it lucky are probably going to be the Monday and Tuesday of the week in which the performances are due to take place and the day of the performance itself.

     I hope this helps.

  19. It would seem that the ROH no longer uses the services of authorised ticket agents as it once did. Unlike the old one the current version of the website makes no reference to any authorised ticket outlets and states very clearly that tickets can only be obtained from the ROH box office. I shall be very interested to know if you get a more positive response from  the Ballet Co Forum website.

  20. As tickets go on sale months in advance of the performance dates to which they relate it is most unusual for the ROH not to receive tickets returned for resale for most performances. The ROH puts returned tickets on its website as soon as they are received. Returns are not held back for the Friday rush for the week in which the performance is scheduled to take place. My advice would be to keep an eye on the ROH website. Although returns, if any, tend to become available during the weeks immediately preceding a performance rather than six weeks before it, someone might return a ticket earlier than usual.  The tickets shown on the ROH website are genuine and they are sold at the original price which is not something you can say about tickets offered for resale elsewhere. As far as the casts you wish to see are concerned you might find it somewhat easier to get returns for the Nunez cast than the Osipova one for the simple reason that there is likely to be less demand for returns  from Nunez obsessed fans than Osipova obsessed ones with the result that there may be less temptation for purchasers to sell them at inflated prices on a resale site. Other reasons for trying for the Nunez cast are that Nunez is less likely to injure herself and be replaced at short notice than Osipova and you can be certain that Muntagirov has the artistry and the physical ability to dance the Prince. While Hallberg may still be an artist of note, sadly from what  little I have seen of him in performance at Covent Garden, his physical strength is somewhat uncertain.

    I would strongly advise against using resale sites. A couple of days ago, out of idle curiosity, I had a look at a couple of such sites to see what the scalpers were charging for the next Osipova/ Clarke Onegin. There were tickets available. I saw somebody was trying to get over six hundred pounds for tickets for a part of the auditorium from which you would be lucky to have any view of the stage. The more expensive seats on offer although in posher parts of the theatre were not necessarily  going to offer much of a view of the performance either. The auditorium is horseshoe shaped and there are plenty of seats which while they may be acceptable for opera performances are all but useless for ballet.  

    In answer to the enquiry about Ballet co Forum. It is a British based site.

  21. The film was given a limited cinema release in the UK and was shown on BBC 2 at Christmas. It is fine if you accept that it is not a film of MacMillan's ballet but an attempt to make a film which emphasises the ballet's narrative and gives priority to its choreographed action over its dance elements although it retains most of the significant set pieces. Its visual elements include an obtrusive bush which someone has identified as a rosemary bush and a fluttering curtain which gets in the way in some of the scenes set in Juliet's bedroom. Perhaps it was intended to be artistic. The film shows the company in a state of transition in 2019 as a generation of young dancers takes over from those who became its leading performers during Mason's directorship. In future years it may even come to be seen as an historic record of that change because of the minor roles in which some named dancers appear. Both Anna Rose O'Sullivan and Mayara Magri appear as Juliet's friends and given the way in which their careers are progressing it seems highly unlikely that they will dance those roles again and the same may also be true of both Tierney Heap and Beatrix Stix-Brunell who appear alongside Laura Morera as the ballet's trio of whores.

    There was some concern when it was announced that Matthew Ball, who is in his mid-twenties, was to dance Tybalt when the ballet was last revived because the role is generally seen as marking the transition from active dancer to character roles. The same is true when it comes to the role of Juliet's Nurse so there were concerns that Romany Pajdak might also be on her way out as an active dancer when she made her debut in the role during the same  run. The film's pluses include not only the performances of Hayward and Bracewell but  the opportunity to see Sambe dancing Mercutio and leading the Mandolin dance and the editing of much of the choreographic padding for the scenes set in the market square. Although this means that you don't get to see much of Morera or her fellow whores it spares the audience most of the townspeople's tiresome repetitive choreography which cannot be cut in theatrical performances if you want Romeo to survive until the tomb scene.

    If you are curious about the state of the Royal Ballet Company and want to see something of the dancers of whom you may have heard then the film will give you an opportunity to do so. The film was not made by the ROH and it is not clear whether there are any plans for a DVD to be issued although there would almost certainly be a market for one.

  22. It has just been announced that Reece Clarke has been promoted to First Soloist. This is unusual as promotions are generally announced at the end of the ballet season rather than half way through them. However I don't think that many people will be surprised that he has been promoted or that anyone will think that his promotion is undeserved given the range of works in which he has danced principal roles to considerable acclaim beginning with the  Michael Somes role in Symphonic Variations very soon after he joined the company. Although no reason has been given it seems that the promotion is not entirely unconnected with the cast changes announced for the forthcoming performances of Onegin. Clarke replaces Muntagirov as Onegin and dances with Osipova as his Tatiana, while Mendizabel dances Tatiana opposite Soares in his final performances with the company, Mendizabel replaces Cuthbertson who was previously announced. There are other cast changes but these are the most significant.

  23. l suppose that I have to begin with the very first ballets that I saw for the simple reason it was a mixed programme danced by Ballet Rambert which made me want to find out more about the art form and expand my knowledge of  what ballet was and what it was capable of being. Looking back I count myself extremely lucky that my aunt decided to take me to see a performance given by Ballet Rambert as a birthday present  because had the second ballet I saw been my first encounter with the art form I think that I might have been put off ballet for life. My recollection is that the Rambert mixed bill included both Glen Tetley's "Pierrot Lunaire" with Christopher Bruce as Pierrot and Antony Tudor's "The Judgement of Paris." They will therefore have to be the first two ballets on my list.

    if you want to know what my second encounter with ballet was it was seeing "The Stone Flower" at the Kirov and it was not Prokofiev's s core which i found so off putting. I had come to ballet with innocent ears and had no preconceptions about what a ballet score should sound like by which I mean that I did not think that if the score  was not  by Tchaikovsky or Minkus it was "difficult" and not really suited to ballet. I suppose it might have helped if I had seen a full length ballet before I saw "The Stone Flower " but I am not convinced that it would have helped that much. I don't think that it was my lack of knowledge of the conventions of full length ballets which was the problem. It seems to me that it was the extremely earnest nature of the narrative and the structure of the ballet itself which were the problems. Far too much of the score was allocated to setting the scene and in establishing the characters  the most important part seemingly being the need to establish the extraordinarily virtuous nature of the hero and the unbelievable wickedness of the baddies. What with that and the time taken up by the virtuous hero toiling away in the mine the denouement felt particularly rushed. Even at that age my limited knowledge of the rudiments of theatrical structure led me to think that perhaps you should not find yourself squeezing half the narrative into a quarter of the score. The experience was not enough to put me off ballet going but if it had been my initial encounter with ballet, and if I had had less experience of theatre going, it might have been the first and last time that I attended a ballet performance.

     I know that I was extremely lucky because not long after that I went to live in a town which the Royal Ballet Touring Company visited on a regular basis. The company danced a wide range of the company's pre-war repertory and although it was disbanded early on in MacMaillan's directorship I had the opportunity to see many works which were not part of the regular repertory at Covent Garden. The core repertory of the Touring Company included ballets by de Valois, Ashton, MacMillan and Cranko. The older Ashton ballets which it danced included Facade, Les Rendezvous and Les Patineurs. I think that it is Les Patineurs which fired my interest not only in Ashton's ballets but in Massine's as well. It has to be my third ballet .The fourth and fifth ballets which were significant in fuelling my ballet going habit were  some of the first ballets that I saw at Covent Garden a matinee performance of Sleeping Beauty with a cast led by Sibley and Dowell and a performance of Serenade danced by a cast headed by Beriosova and MacLeary.

    The five ballets which made me a balletgoer are: 

    1. Pierrot Lunaire.

    2. The Judgement of Paris.

    3. The Sleeping Beauty.

    4. Serenade.

    5. Les Patineurs.

        

     

     

    and to see eady knew that I

  24. I am very sorry to hear of McRae's injury and wish him a speedy recovery. Being realistic about his injury it seems unlikely that he will be fulfilling his dancing commitments in the ballets in which he has been cast during the first booking period and this raises the interesting question of who will replace him in his current scheduled performances ? His  injury leaves three leading roles to be allocated of which the prince in Sleeping Beauty is probably the most important in terms of career progression because of the place the ballet has in the company's history. Who gets to dance those roles is of interest not because of a lack of potential replacements within the company's ranks but the sheer number of talented young male dancers who might be cast in his stead. The first night of the mixed bill which includes Raymonda Act III is only a few days away and although Clarke is already cast in Concerto on the nights that McRae was scheduled to dance I can't help hoping that Clarke, rather than Hirano, will get to dance Jean de Brienne as he was very stylish in the role when he danced it on the main stage at his year's graduation performance.  As Kevin seems very keen to give junior dancers their chances, Clarke was only a First Artist when he danced the prince in Sleeping Beauty when it was last revived, so perhaps we shall get to see someone like Sissens in one or more of these roles ? The disappointment of not seeing McRae will, I am sure, be ameliorated by seeing the next dancer or dancers to be  given their opportunity to display their talents and their artistry. 

     

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