colwill

I have only watched this ballet once on 20th July this year(between the Kirov productions) and thought it was great. I found it a feast of dancing with lavish costumes and lovely music. I watch ballet for the sheer pleasure it gives me and do not get too concerned with the nuances of the choregraphy.I was impressed by the emotions portrayed by the principle dancers, Gillian Reeves and Carlos Acosta. Ballet is for enjoyment not nit picking.

I was a great fan of the BRB and was a Friend of the BRB for many years. However when Bintley took over from Peter Wright as artistic director the repertoire has gone steadily downhill. I now no longer go to watch the BRB and from the posting on this topic you will understand why!

Alexandra, since I started this topic I am amazed at the wide range of annoying items, so will you please post the 10 'rules' of good behaviour. I would like to be able to pass them on to some members of the audience. It really surprises me that people will spend large sums of money to get good seats at a performance and then behave so badly as some of the comments on this topic.

The flash cameras going on at the Kirov performance brought the stage manager out before the curtain went up on the second act to appeal to the audience to stop since it was a danger to the dancers concentration. Offenders should be ejected.

What irritates you most about audiences at a performance? The usual rustling of sweet wrappers, talking, humming are a normal hazard but I attended two performances by the Kirov last week and was driven to distraction and felt real 'ballet rage'. The first night I had a bobber and weaver in the seat in front. Eventually I had to ask her to choose one side or the other because with her constant movement following the dancers I was seeing nothing. She smiled sweetly and said yes she thought that might be the case! I just wanted to strangle her, but at least she did sit still for the rest of the programme. The next night, two rows in front of me, a man enjoyed the music (Swan Lake) so much that he 'conducted' the orchestra but moving his head from side to side constantly. There was nothing I could do to stop him but I was filled with 'ballet rage' Any other fans had similar or worse occurences?

I have just watched a TV presentation of ABT dancing La Corsaire and was most perturbed by the constant interruption to the ballet by applause which seemed to occur after most variations and frequently in the middle. This demonstrated bad manners in distracting the audience from the dancers who were also peforming simultaneously and broke the flow of the dance. Here in the UK there is often no applause at the end of a soloist's performance, mainly due to lack of knowledge of the ballet (Royal Opera House audiences excepted). I find that I have to start the applause and the audience then often wait for me! I do think that the Russian companies extract every last drop of applause by repeated returns for more.

This is not a topic for debate (or is it?) but I have often wondered what difference stage rake makes compared with dancing on a flat stage. When Darcey Bussel performed at the Maryinski Theatre last year many comments were made about how well she danced on the raked stage. I have just watched a performance on a raked stage which prompted this query. One of the panels many dancers will be able to answer this question which I have never seen discussed previously. Does it affect balance for a ballerina and does it affect male dancers to the same degree?

Thank you Marc for your Dancer of the Week. I only saw Elizabeth Platel dance once at the POB when she danced Nikiya in Bayadere. I was totally enchanted with her performance and would include her in my list of Great ballerinas.

Every time I watch a live ballet I experience a wide range of emotions.There are the moments of intense joy and exhilaration: watching Sylvia Guillam's extensions seemingly reaching for the sky with such consumate ease, enjoying a perfect execution of fouettes in Swan Lake or enjoying the fun and games in Don Quixote. However it is the spine tingling moments when I go ice-cold and shivers run up and down my spine that live in the memory with great intensity. No matter how often I watch the moment in Bayadere when the veil is lifted from Nikita in Act 1 or the first entrance of Odette in Swan Lake the effect is always the same - intense spine tingling excitement. I would be interested to hear of other spine tingling moments in ballet.

The title of this thread is favourite dancers. It is interesting that every posting refers to famous ballerinas. I would like to include not a ballerina but a corps de ballet. These dancers are rarely mentioned and yet they are the heart of any company therefore I stake a claim for the Paris Opera Ballet corpes de ballet as my favourite dancers. Praise is often lavished on the Bayadere Shades scene - I have just watched two performances of Bayadere and was overwhelmed with the superb dancing by the shades. The timing and precision of every movement of the 32 dancers was the epitamy of profesionalism. They get my vote!

I came to ballet very late in life. I retired at the age of 58 and out of curiosity went to see the Kirov dance Swan Lake at the London Coliseum that year. I must be one of the few Balletomanes who can define precisely when I fell in love with ballet. It was at that Kirov performance on the 15th June 1990 and the exact moment was the opening of the last act when the curtain rose and I saw the dancers through swirling mist bathed in a dark blue light. My heart almost stopped, I had never experienced anything so beautiful in my whole life - from that moment I became a passionately devoted ballet enthusiast attending as many performances as I can wherever I am. I know nothing of the technicalities of ballet, at my age I have neither the time nor the opportunity to learn that which takes dancers a lifetime of effort. However, as a "Friend/Associate " of most of the English companies, I do enjoy attending daily class,rehearsals and coaching sessions almost as much as performances. All I do know is that I am transported into another world the moment the curtain rises, no matter how many times I have watched that ballet, arousing emotions that I never knew existed. In fact last year watching Altynia Asylmuratova dance Princess Aurora with the Kirov I was so overwhelmed with emotion at the shear beauty of the dancing and the interpretation that tears filled my eyes and I was unable to speak for over an hour after the performance finished. That for me is the importance of ballet in my life. I await with breathless anticipation a visit to Paris to watch the Paris Opera Ballet perform my favourite ballet, La Bayadere.