colwill

Frequently! Every time the veil is lifted off Nikiya by the Brahman in Bayadere. It happened again last night in the Royal Ballet performance of Bayadere with Alina Cojocaru. Following a performance of Swan Lake with Altynia Asylmuratova I wept for over an hour after the final curtain.

I have always wanted to be backstage during a performsnce to observe the real effort and work involved in a major staging.I enjoy watching Class, rehearsals and coaching as much as actual performances. I would pay whatever it cost to be backstage and watch the Kirov dance Bayadere. One can only dream!

I used to collect programmes from every performance including many duplicates when I attended repeat performances by a company. However these started to fill my available storage location so I compromised and now collect only the list of performers and staple my ticket to the list. The pile of programmes I gave to our local ballet school where they were seized with enthusiasm by the younger students.

Although not comparable to the terrorist attacks, I have had a physical problem for over 40 years. I discovered Ballet some ten years ago and since then have found attending ballet and watching the elegance and sheer beauty so uplifting as to take me into another world. A concept difficult to put into words since it is an emotional thing.

I find it amazing that attempts to sell ballet is done by telemarketing in the USA. It is uknown in Britain although double glazing, new kitchens etc. are regularly telemarketed. Perhaps the Royal Ballet could try this for their regular attenders and take away the anguish of waiting to hear if you have been successful in your postal application. I regularly receive postal fliers from the theatres I attend ballet, invariably long after I have purchased tickets.

Every year I make the trip to Paris to watch the Paris Opera Ballet dance, this year I attended two performances of La Bayadere on the 19th and 21st November. The heart of any ballet company is the corps de ballet; the POB is served most magnificently. The dancers, both male and female, performed with outstanding professionalism and superb musicality. The sheer beauty of those arabesque penchee on the entrance to the shades act, with never a fault, was enough to melt the hardest heart and worth the ticket cost alone. Many revues praise the principle dancers and forget the artistry of the c-d-b. The cast on the 19th was: Nikiya Delphine Moussin Solar Jean-Guillaume Bart Gamzatti Leatitia Pujol Fakir Fabien Roques Golden Idol Benjamin Pech 1st Variation Nathalie Aubin 2nd Variation Clairemarie Osta 3rd Variation Fanny Fiat I was disappointed with this performance. Bayadere is a ballet where the drama is driven by passion and pathos with mime paying a large part. Moussin, Bart and Pujol danced technically without fault but with a total lack of the emotion needed to convince the audience that this was a love story thwarted by jealousy and betrayal. The dancing of the 3 variations (and the c-d-b.) lifted the whole performance. It was interesting that Fanny Fiat danced two totally different parts, as well as the 3rd variation she also danced the Indian pdd. The cast on the 21st was: Nikiya Agnes Letestu Solar Jose Martinez Gamzatti Eleonora Abbagnato Fakir Lional Delanoe Golden Idol Benjamin Pech 1st Variation Isabelle Ciaravola 2nd Variation Clairemarie Osta 3rd Variation Fanny Fiat This was a different Bayadere! Letestu was the most perfect Nikiya I can remember, she was desperately in love with Solar and he with her. She has the most expressive arms and hands and her pointe work was a joy to watch. Martinez danced Solar with tenderness, passion and despair. The air was electric whenever either or both were on stage. I had watched Abbagnato dance Gamzatti when the POB visited the Lowry in Manchester last year when she gave a very poor performance – in this performance she seemed like a different dancer. I was very impressed with her interpretation of the music, maybe she was not aggressive enough in the ‘fight’ with Nikiya, but sparkled in her solo and pdd in Act 2. Finally I have to say that the POB dances the most enjoyable, musical and precise version of Bayadere of the five companies that I have seen. Maybe the Royal Ballet will change my mind in February! [ November 30, 2001: Message edited by: colwill ]

I think I had my ultimate ballet rage at a POB performance of Bayadere at the Opera Bastile last week. Seated behind grandparents and two grandchildren who constantly questioned every action on stage. The bobbing of heads and the endless conversation nearly drove me to take physical action. However, since I can barely speak a word of French, their actions went unchallenged. The one redeaming feature was that the seating rake at the Opera Bastille is such that I had a comlpetely unobscured view of the whole of the stage and the dancing was superb, quite one of the best Bayadreres I have seen.

Most modern video machines will play both PAL and NTSC tape formats, so Ballet videos I purchase in the US will play perfectly back in the UK. I only discovered this while reading the small print in the instruction manual (when all else fails read the instruction manual).

Agnes Oaks (English National Ballet) Leticia Muller (Birmngham Royal Ballet) Miyako Yoshida Darcy Bussell Diana Vishniva Mayo Dumchenco Larissa Lezhnina Altynia Asylmuratova Yoshida danced with great precision but little emotion. Bussell is almost the perfect Aurora. Muller - the most delicious. The Kirov are all of a high standard, but the most outstanding of all was Asylmuratova. I was so overcome with emotion that not only did I weep during the performance but was unable to speak for over a hour after the performance.

La Bayadere performed by the Paris Opera Ballet, my favourite ballet danced by my favourite company. I will be watching the above live next Monday and Wednesday evening at the Opera Bastille- sheer bliss!

I am intrigued to see that guest dancers will be performing with the POB. I have tickets for La Bayadere on 19th and 21st November. Estelle do you have a performer's schedule for these dates.

I hope it will be of some comfort for my American friends to know that throughout Britain, three minutes silence was observed at 11.00 am Friday in memory of those killed and our thoughts were with the bereaved families. This terrible act has cast a cloud over the pleasure of my visits to watch ballet in both New York and Washington only a few weeks ago.

Every summer my two small grandchildren (8 and 6) come over from Washington DC to visit me here in the north of England. I have little time for other activities but I have just booked tickets to watch Roja and Kobborg and also Cojocaru and Persson dance Don Quixote in November. This helps to keep me calm when all around is chaos!

Every performance I attended the line awaiting returns always stretched down toward the shop for matinees as well as the evening. There were no empty seats in the stalls area.

The Les Saisons Russe curtain was certainly used during the 1997 and 2000 Fokine performances. I attended the Matinee on the 5th July but have lost my List of Performers - did any one attend then and can they Email me the details please? hyderabad@btinternet.com

Yulia Makhalina danced last year with the Kirov at the ROH. She danced a powerful Firebird on 15th August. She also performed with a small company led by Igor Zelensky at the Lowry Theatre Salford on 25th August. She danced the Don Quixote PDD with Igor Zelensky.

I know this is late for the original Peeves thread but I will burst with anger if I do not get this off my chest! The Sleeping Beauty danced by the Kirov started at 7.00pm some 30 minutes before the normal curtain up at the ROH with a number of empty seats. So far so good, the Prologue was enjoyed by all. The empty seats filled before the start of Act I including two right in front of me, two rows down. Immediately the orchestra started to play this couple started whispering to each other in a most intimate way until she put her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. Eventually the girl in front of me leaned forward to complain she could not see the stage at all, got a withering look as the couple parted but at least they did move even though they occasionally whispered in each other’s ear! The ballet was not scheduled to end till around 10.45pm and a number of people, including the two in front of me, left before the start of Act III, no doubt to get the last train/bus home. It was at this point that my misery started. The girl noticing the now empty seats behind her pointed this out to her companion and the whispering restarted. First she whispered in his ear then he leant across and whispered in her ear, she stroked his hair put her arm around him and then began a non-stop conversation accompanied by nodding her head side to side to the bits of the music she thought catchy. I was helpless to do anything about their behaviour, it was impossible for me to reach over two rows of seats and I could not request loudly for them to stop and disturb the rest of the audience so I just got more and more angry. I wanted to shout at them a ballet has no words and the foyer was available for conversation. Why would any couple pay £142 ($220) just to talk and ignore dancers as great as Diana Vishneva and Anton Korsakov? Sorry to go on at length about this but a most wonderful performance was marred by their incredible ill-mannered behaviour without doubt the worst I have ever experienced. To round of my tale of woe, the following night with Uliana Lopatkina holding the audience spellbound with her dancing in the quietest section of Act III in Swan Lake a cell phone started to play a loud pop tune in the row in front and the lady had to search for her handbag under her seat then rummage about to find the phone. Thank god she turned it off and didn’t start a conversation!!

Overheard at the first intermission of Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House: "She looks like a swan, she dances like a swan, just perfect" The dancer was Uliana Lopatkina.

I travel every year to Paris specifically to see the POB dance, My visit this year will be in November. The only exception was last year when the POB danced Le Bayadere at the opening of the Lowry Theatre; I attended all three days! I visit my daughter in Washington DC every year and go by train to New York to see ABT. This year I also managed to see three ballet performances at the Kennedy Centre. I am not sure if this counts as travelling to watch ballet. The ultimate travel purely to watch ballet would be to St. P. to the see the Kirov in their home theatre, maybe next year. Giannina, what performances are you going to in London, maybe we can meet at the ROH.

I have three extreme goosebump experiences. Beckster, my first ever goosebump was the same as yours but at the Coliseum London The moment the curtain rose on the last act of Swan Lake with the dancers arising from the swirling dry ice. It was then that I fell in love with ballet. I can easily remember the occasion, it was the Kirov in London with Olga Chechicova dancing Odette, but then I was only 60! The moment I entered the Palaise Garnier in Paris and walked up the magnificent staircase. Even now the thoughts of it sends shivers down my spine. The other goosebump event, and it happens every time I watch Le Bayedere, is the moment when Nikiya enters in Act one and the high priest lifts the veil. It never fails whatever company is dancing.

The following quotation from the Daily Telegraph is a tribute from a great ballerina. In the farewell gala programme for Sir Anthony Dowell’s departure as artistic director of the Royal Ballet, Sylvie Guillem, the ballerina he called “Mademoiselle Non”, puts her side “As you know, I dislike not to have the last word,” she says. "Therefore here are some ‘Yes’s’. Yes, I admire and respect you. Yes, sometimes you were right. Yes, I appreciate your sense of humour. Yes, I said ‘No’ many times. Yes, Rudolf Nureyev was right when he said you were the finest dancer in all the world. Yes, I love you. Yes, I like gardening and not because you said I bury all my enemies in the garden."

This is going back some time, but on the 18 July 1991 I watched a performance by the Ballet National de Espana at the London Coliseum. This was a stunning performance and featured pure ballet and flamenco style dancing (not the usual heal stamping flamenco for want of a better description). I have scanned the press for further performances but have heard nothing of the company since. I wonder if other members have seen or know any more details of this outstanding company.

Giannina – at last another ballet fan who admits to liking only classical ballet, I thought I was in a minority of one in Ballet Alert! I find full-length ballets more enjoyable; you can watch the development of the theme and the emotions portrayed ( essential for me since I have no knowledge of ballet technique, it has taken me ten years to distinguish an attitude from an arabesque). The exception for me is the Fokine ballets the Kirov perform, my most vivid memory is the white-hot emotion and passion between Asylmuratova and Zelensky in Scherazade. The POB recently opened the Lowry Theatre in Manchester and danced LeB on each of the three evenings but using different principle dancers, each performance was thus full of interest. I do however have to declare a vested interest since LeB danced by the POB is my favourite combination. The sets and costumes are magnificent and I look forward to reading your report. I only wish I was in Ca to watch every performance and I am sure you will enjoy those you attend. The question of touring companies performing the same ballet because of the costs is no doubt true, however the Kirov are bringing seven different programmes to London this summer. In one week alone they will dance Jewels, Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake.

I belong to that group of balletomanes who will cheerfully attend any companies productions, good, bad or indifferent. I just adore ballet and often think that I have seen a different performance than the critics. Yes, I will be attending both the Bolshoi and the Kirov in London. The Bolshoi have one huge plus for me - they are going to tour the provinces. A week after booking for the London performance I discovered that they will be dancing some 20 minutes from where I live in the North of England. At last ballet enthusiasts (of all variants) will have a chance to see these Russian dancers locally.

I told you we Brits have a sense of humour!