Mashinka

I'd like to co-sign that. Let's face it the Kirov is notorious for changing casts at the last minute and last year I backed off from Baden Baden for that reason. To replace Lopatkina with Somova is a real slap in the face, a gratuitous insult to the paying audience. I agree, but to be fair he dances with the others too and is particularly wonderful with Obratzova and Osmolkina; however any male dancer of quality is wasted opposite Somova. I am a huge fan of Igor Kolb and and consequently went to a Somova performance to see him. Needless to say the best things about the partnership were his solos!

There is no hard and fast rule on this, but in most theatres you can take alcohol into the auditorium so long as it is in plastic glasses. It has to be plastic for health & safety reasons.

If we could leave Alina Somova aside for a moment, because c'mon guys we all knew she'd be awful, it's worth noting that in this mornings papers the critics are hailing Vladimir Shklyarov as a star.

The name change for Kizzy Howard would indicate she and Tim have formally tied the knot. Congratulations to both of them.

Calm down. I am not a Daily Mail reader nor am I a Guardian reader for that matter, however part of my work is with a press office and although we employ a professional press cutting agency, they are less efficient at digging out articles on the web. When things are quiet, such as now when parliament is in recess, I trawl the sites for relevant articles and sometimes come across interesting pieces such as the one I posted. On line the Daily Mail seems to specialize in celebrity gossip (definitely not my thing) whereas The Guardian on line has a section called Comment is Free where the readers post their thoughts on issues of the day. I’ve read a few and have to say it doesn’t say much for the papers readership. Again you miss the point, people have paid good money for a night out regardless of the fact their personal taste in entertainment is far removed from your own, they still have the right to enjoy their night out Surely the point of this anecdote is that it illustrates the levels certain audience members have sunk to. I imagine a lot of people must have witnessed that and were too embarrassed to do anything. Ideally someone should have alerted an usher, it is technically an act of gross indecency and a criminal offence. The Opera House would have been within its rights to press charges and a spot of name and shaming in the press (whether Mail or Guardian is irrelevant) would have put an end to their particular fetish. It’s clearly not that uncommon as he evening paper, unlike the Mail, referred to a show (unnamed) being stopped after a couple began having sex in the stalls. Well I’ve seen Godot at the National in the past and was planning on taking a friend who sobbed his heart out when Michael Jackson died to see Thriller. Having read the article though, I’ve changed my mind about that. Well this woman has been mugged by two youths just yards from her front door. It may be illegal to ‘pee, poo have sex in the streets’ but that doesn’t stop people doing it. I imagine there has never been what you describe as a crime free Utopia, but there was a time in the 1950’s, 60’s and part of the 70’s when it was unusual to find anyone who had been a victim of crime now it is highly unusual to find anyone who has not been a victim of crime. .Simon, you do appear to have a serious hang up about the Daily Mail don’t you? A former colleague of mine is married to a ‘Father of the Chapel’ who has a rabid hatred of Rupert Murdoch and all his works. That I can understand, but what is your excuse? My prerogative? Well perhaps it is. Seriously off topic as this might be I’m going to tell you about my own little corner of London. I live in a fairly ordinary street in South London that is adjacent to a railway station, it is also a main road, noisy perhaps but I liked the convenience when I first moved in. That station has been targeted twice by armed robbers; an elderly woman was beaten almost to death on one of the platforms and last year a woman was badly stabbed outside the station after refusing to give a gang of children a cigarette. Lone commuters are regularly targeted for their laptops and mobiles. That is what happened to me when I was attacked. Over the years the number of people travelling on that line at night has plummeted and most nights I am in a virtually empty carriage. Coming home from the opera a couple of weeks ago a young woman leaving the station with me commented on how brave she thought I was to travel alone, she didn’t say it, but I think she saw me as reckless. That is just the station: in my road there was an armed siege, a woman seriously sexually assaulted by six men and in the house next door a man was found dead in mysterious circumstances. A feud between two neighbours in my house led to an arson attack and I woke in the early hours to huge sheets of flame outside my window. This is the serious stuff but burglaries, casual violence and anti social behaviour are a daily occurrence. Police sirens and helicopters punctuate my sleep and one of my sisters jokingly describes me as living in a war zone as she has never called me on the phone without hearing the sound of sirens. Perhaps you will agree that when I described a tidal wave of crime, in my personal circumstances I wasn’t exaggerating.

It's very sad to see that Somova is being wheeled out for interviews to the exclusion of Obratzova, Tereshkina or Kondaurova: superior dancers all. This is media hype - nothing more.

Simon G takes a snobbish attitude to one of the largest selling papers in the UK. Sadly all British newspapers are politically biased however most of them don’t make these things up, as you can tell from the quotes. I admitted that I rarely watch musicals so I cannot say from personal experience just how great the problem actually is, but I know from film going that hooliganism is now an out of control problem in cinemas throughout the UK so it is hardly surprising that that phenomena is now spreading to live theatre. By the way, the production where the ‘patron’ peed against the stage was ‘A Little Night Music’, hardly ‘karaoke night’ Here is more evidence of what goes on; perhaps as it is reported by the BBC rather than the Daily Mail, Simon G. will give the story some credence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yo...ire/8181052.stm At one time great art was regularly created in the theatre, if you didn’t enjoy Waiting for Godot, why did you simply not leave? Something the texter should by rights have been asked to do. I see this as a very sad sign of the times as I can remember when pubs didn’t have bouncers nor did shops have security guards So What? That is a very casual attitude towards an act of anti social behaviour that may well have ruined someone’s night out. If these things happen they merit reporting. Actually it is that bad in London and it is terrifying to think that one of the last bastions of normality, the theatre, is also falling victim to the tidal wave of crime that is ruining a once great city.

I rarely go to musicals but it seems audience behaviour at these shows is so bad that it is becoming necessary to employ bouncers to control them. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...0CB709D01CD3B5C Drunkenness in the UK has in recent years taken on Hogarthian proportions, though the worst excesses that I've seen personally have been outside of London. I’d like to reassure everyone that the things described in this article go far beyond the worst things I've experienced at the ballet.

The reason Baryshnikov achieved fame with the general public was, I believe, because of his successful parallel career as a film star rather than his dancing. I wouldn't argue with a word of what Leonid says about Nureyev and I would like to reiterate what he said regarding publicity machines. Nureyev never needed a publicist, and although his spectacular arrival in the west put him on front pages across the world, his name would have sunk like a stone had he not possessed those extraordinary talents that kept him on those front pages until the very end of his life. There are manufactured 'stars' in abundance today and most have a degree of talent e.g. Bussell, others such as Somova (read Saturday's Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertai...et-1765910.html ) have none. By the way, Zoë Anderson's use of the term 'superstars' in that article is totally inappropriate. Getting back to Malakhov, I've always thought he bears a slight facial resemblance to Nureyev but otherwise they are very different types of dancers, however being a Londoner, I've seen precious few live performances by him and therefore am unable to make an in depth assessment of his abilities.

I imagine the picture was taken in the summer of 1974.

When you can walk up to anyone in the street, in any country in the world, and ask them who Roberto Bolle/ Herve Moreau / Jeremie Belingard / Frederico Bonelli or any of the others on that rather odd list actually is and they reply that he is the world's most famous ballet dancer. Then, and only then, can you make a comparison to Rudolf Nureyev.

Margot Fonteyn, a love everlasting.

Badly behaved audience members are a recurring theme on Ballet Talk, here are some examples from today's Times of peoples experiences in theatres going back quite a number of years: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle6723375.ece The example of Spike Milligan re-starting the performance for a latecomer must have been in the comedy 'Son of Oblemov' and I think he always did this if someone turned up late, he certainly did when I saw that show.

On reflection I'd nominate Edmée as a sympathetic character in Cheri. I think I must have read just about all of Waugh; my favourite book of his being Decline and Fall which I've read over and over again. It took the British ruling classes longer to discover that times were changing than the rest of the world, probably until the 1950's when tugging the forelock was finally consigned to history. Things are different now of course when even the wackiest of the aristos such as Lord Bath have to engage with the real world to survive. I have fond memories of a TV programme from a couple of years ago when people were challenged to live with those they most despised and a self styled 'class warrior' was sent to stay at the estate of an hereditary peer in Scotland. The result was hilarious with the man of the people unable to keep up with the Lord who rose before dawn striding across muddy fields, erected fences, drove tractors and looked after the animals whilst the class warrior wittered on about inequality despite clearly never having done a day’s manual work in his life. You couldn't make it up. How I missed a Petit version of Cheri I don't know, but I suppose it is something to do with giving up on reading ballet magazines at about that time, mainly because I can't bring myself to bin them after reading and was running out of room to store them.

I gave this a miss because of the very negative reviews here in the UK. Cheri (and The Last of Cheri) are in my opinion Collette's best works and for women the books strike a powerful chord as they are about relinquishing youth and in particular the pleasures of the flesh. I learnt by reading Collette that the only good thing for women to look forward to as they age is that as the skin loses its firmness perfume lasts longer on it. For me this wasn't a book with sympathetic characters but fascinating ones none the less, rather like Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the books were terrific but the people in them weren't. What came across most strongly was how the first world war changed European society and how the lotus eating world collapsed and was forced to face a new reality, one that Cheri, despite his wartime heroism, can't get to grips with. Here is a review of the film that was posted as a blog on The Guardian's web site. It convinced me that I would do well not to go. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...s-cheri-bidisha I've always thought Cheri and Last of Cheri would make a tremendous ballet. In my mind's eye I can see Fonteyn and Nureyev dancing it; sadly some things are never to be.

The 1958 film A Night to Remember starring Kennneth More has always been the best film about the sinking of the Titanic as far as I'm concerned. Based on the autoritive book by Walter Lord, the sets were based on original blueprints of the ship and one of the surviving offficers worked closely with the director to ensure authenticity. The film appeared to be a near exact recording of events, but most importantly the cast retained the manners and mores of the time and in particular they spoke with the accents of their parent's generation. More modern films have never convinced me that I'm watching Edwardians.

I find that a very odd assertion when theatres are packed for Handel Operas. Was Agrippina with Sarah Connelly at the ENO difficult to engage with? Not for the packed audience the night I went and when Danielle de Niese sings her Cleopatra at Glyndebourne tickets aren't to be had for love nor money. Handel did create the odd work where you are better off buying the CD (Orlando springs to mind) but out of about 40 operas there are few that don't offer opportunities for imaginative stagings. As for Handel's other works Messiah, Water Music and Royal Fireworks are staples of every concert hall in Britain making me think he is the easiest of composers to appreciate, certainly in the UK. Bournonville's works are the balletic equivalent of a de-tox and I defy anyone to leave a performance of his in Copenhagen without either a smile on the lips or a tear in the eye.

I watched the Classical Brit Awards on TV recently, or at least part of it as I had to turn it off to prevent an attack of apoplexy. That was presented by a Catherine Jenkins who resembled a singing Barbie doll: horrific.

I barely understood a word of Philip's last post, could someone please explain what 'Marketing through networks' means.

I seem to remember that Prince of the Pagodas became a major ballet when Nina Ananiashvili danced the lead. What struck me most about Bussell's career was that it was very media driven and that her time with the RB coincided with a big push to sell the company to the general public. If I remember rightly, pre-Bussell it was Bryony Brind a dancer with a lot more potential who was wheeled out for media attention, but there was far more attention focussed on Bussell than there ever was on Brind.

Heading towards perhaps, but not quite there. I remember the 80's as a period of upheaval when the most favoured dancer in the company was (God help us), Marguerite Porter, who got the lions share of everything going. The other guest at the time was Markarova, another super-slender dancer but one I consider far superior to Kirkland and she also danced Juliet. As someone who felt ambivalent towards the RB's policy of restricting guests I looked forward to seeing Kirkland, but was disappointed by the reality of her dancing as after having been watching the ballets she danced in for around twenty years at that time, I felt she had nothing special to contribute to those roles. Though I concede that for those used to watching the likes of Porter, Ellis and Paisley she must have looked pretty impressive.

Yes, I saw her in both R&J and The Dream dancing with Wayne Eagling. Her physical appearance came as something as a shock to most as we’d never seen anyone that thin at the time, she looked rather like an olive on a stick I seem to remember. The general opinion was that she wasn’t significantly better than most of the RB principals.

Thanks for that report. I am something of a fan and spent yesterday listening to a CD of Savall's that I've just bought of music by Tarquinio Merula, 'Su la Cetra Amorosa: Arie e capricci', with the singer Montserrat Figueras. Wonderful music that has the power to transport me to another time and place. Spanish baroque music is in general unjustly ignored.

For myself I usually try to see ballets where both principals are of a certain standard, but surely only Yanovsky in the RB is unusually tall and until he retired last year Mason imported Kenneth Greve to dance with her. The idea of male dancers gaining the status of principal on the basis of height rather than achievement quite appals me.

I judge him primarily on a performance of Bayadere just over a year ago when he was the worst Solor I've seen anywhere - ever. Since then I've avoided his performances, but the dreadful Black Swan pas de deux just reinforced my initial opinion. To be fair to the guy he was an okay dancer in smaller, undemanding roles but definitely not prince material.