Mashinka

Although this beautifully written article relates to the Oscars, I thought it deserves a thread of its own. Interesting that it is actually written by an American. http://film.guardian.co.uk/oscars2007/stor...rticle_continue Anyone in agreement with these sentiments?

It’s not often that a quote from a ballet critic sticks in my mind, but the first time I became aware of Alistair Macaulay was when I was shown a ‘critique’ written by him in a strange, rather obscure UK publication called Ritz. He wrote that Margaret Barbieri, a hugely popular dancer of the time, was “to ballet what Kevin Keegan is to Shakespeare”. I remember that as being possibly the most spiteful and inane thing I’d ever read about a dancer. Macaulay’s early writings were mostly unpleasant attacks on dancers he didn’t care for (I remember he was always particularly vicious in print towards Wayne Eagling) and I decided he was simply beneath contempt and have never bothered to read a word of his since. Overheard mindless remarks regarding Frederick Ashton when I had the misfortune to be sitting behind A.M. at Covent Garden recently, confirmed that this particular leopard hasn’t changed his spots.

I've never seen it live either. You would need a small girl and a strong catcher for that one, Osipova and Uvarov perhaps? By the way it isn't the Moscovite Waltz, it's the Moszkovsky Waltz named after the music's composer Moritz Moszkowsky. Moszkowsky is a neglected figure these days but he wrote a really sunny piano concerto and some wonderful solo piano works including the waltz. For anyone interested in this forgotten composer there is some basic information about him on the Naxos website: http://www.naxos.com/composerinfo/716.htm

I enjoyed reading this article about modern day tenors and their struggles with top C’s http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre...icle2259485.ece I Don’t think Alvarez, wonderful though he is, can rival the memory of Pavarotti. He really strained with 'Di quella pira', and never had the soaring quality I expect from that aria. It was the American Azucena Stephanie Blythe who wowed the audience on the first night at Covent Garden the other week in Il Trovatore not Alvarez, in fact Ms Blythe looked astonished at the response she received when she took her bow. But the Covent Garden opera buffs recognize a great voice when they hear one and she really was fantastic. It’s not just at La Scala where they boo as I’ve witnessed a Manrico being booed off stage in London before now. Zeffirelli makes a good point though; perhaps it is better to shelve an opera than have it under-performed. Florez is very much my favourite these days, but on the night I saw him in La Fille du Regiment he did not sing nine top C’s, but five b flats instead, though I’ve heard him sing the nine in concert. Perhaps top C’s are the operatic equivalent of those fouettés being discussed on another thread, virtuosic but not always necessary?

I found this in today’s Daily Telegraph, an attack on the much-loved opera Madame Butterfly. Oddly, Parker doesn’t pick up on the feminist issues involved in the opera. Read the Complete article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...14/nopera14.xml Seen through the eyes of modern day audiences the opera certainly is racist, just as Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is anti Semitic, his Taming of the Shrew misogynistic and Henry V the glorification of a war criminal. It’s misleading of Prof. Parker to make comparisons with modern day Shakespearean productions because whatever ideas they have about staging, directors leave the text alone along with the odious sentiments contained within that text. The current Butterfly at Covent Garden has been very popular, it is a powerful production that had my male companion and myself in tears when we last saw it about a year ago. For my own part though, I always feel at the end of the opera that I’d like to give Pinkerton a good kicking.

The Royal Ballet's current heaver of taller, heavier ladies is the Royal Danish Ballet's Kenneth Greve and I'm happy to report he is far superior to Solymosi in every respect.

I haven't heard that strange expression 'cod' for a long time, nor to I care to hear dancers called 'poor dears' it's very inappropriate for classical ballet and rather as if the late Kenneth Williams had written the review. I suppose the reviewer was referring to Spartacus, a work that depends more on charismatic dancers than his other ballets, but Grigorovich handles large numbers well and is a master of the effective tableau, e.g. end of 2nd & 3rd acts in Spartak and the finale of Ivan the Terrible. He has created beautiful love duets in most of his ballets too. His works are very Russian of course and I'm not sure the themes are always to the taste of western audiences, but performances of Grigorovich's ballets are always guaranteed an ecstatic response in Moscow. The Bolshoi soloists dancing at the gala performed very well, though Matvienko was seriously miscast as Spartacus in my view but Antonicheva, Allash, Lunkina and Yanin were all fantastic. Have to agree regarding the orchestra though - they were awful. Grigorovich fans came from far and wide for the gala and all left as happy bunnies; I agree with Bart that these were "ungracious" responses to what was after all a birthday celebration.

The venerable Clement Crisp was not left dispirited by the event as the venerable Clement Crisp didn't write that particular review. The reviewer was someone called Gerald Dowler, whose thoughtless scribbling seemed to damn Simon Virsaladze and Dmitri Shostakovich as well as Grigorovich. The FT has always had a terrific arts page but that particular review damages the paper's reputation for objective reviewing. I was at this gala and it was a fabulous evening with Grigorovich getting storms of applause at the end, dispiriting is the last word I would use.

I also went to Saturday's performance of La Sylphide and agree with every word Leonid has written about Sarah Lamb. Ms Lamb is the best thing to happen to the Royal Ballet in years and her recent performances in Sylphide, as Aurora and as the Queen of Fire in Homage to the Queen have all left an indelible memory. She is a true individual on stage and able to accentuate every nuance of the role she is dancing. Though she may not be to Ms Simpson's taste, to many of us it looks as if the RB has finally found its prima.

I think it must be, I haven't heard that he's doing anything alse there. I'm particularly looking forward to Hamlet as it will be the first narrative work of his I'll have seen.

Not so rare in the Soviet era. They were called defectors.

As someone who is U.K based, I am intrigued that of the people ‘outed’ in the original Guardian article including an alleged associate of Prince Charles, a servant at Buckingham Palace and the founder of the popular tourist attraction The London Dungeon, the media has only gone after Ms Clarke. Now why might that be I wonder?

I suppose that with her imminent retirement in sight she feels she can be more honest in her opinions. The remarks about the physical deterioration made unpleasant reading, but its no more than I've heard from a number of dance professionals concerned about the injury rates among classical dancers obliged to dance a variety of styles that ultimately take their toll on the body.

Over the years the ROH audience has altered drastically, in the 1960/70’s the house would be packed with enthusiasts, but with the generally acknowledged decline in standards at the RB the once loyal audience for ballet has dwindled. At the premiere of Chroma I went with two friends, one in her eighties who has seen just about every RB production for the past six decades and the other in his thirties – too young to remember the RB glory days. They both enthusiastically go to every performance they can manage, but are aware that they are part of a diminishing minority of dedicated ballet-goers. The ROH has had to bend over backwards to attract new funding since the 80’s and that means going all out for the corporate audience that buys blocks of tickets (mainly in the stalls) and are given all sorts of incentives to contribute to ROH funds. I remember being highly aggrieved on being denied entry to the vast Crush Bar at Covent Garden due to a corporate event on an occasion when I was with two very distinguished Russian dancers, one of whom wanted to look around the theatre. In any other house in Europe she would have been allowed to at least go in for a quick look, but not in the new Covent Garden, which ironically is supported as much by my taxes as by the corporate champagne crowd. Laughable ticket prices will remain the barrier that prevents a wider public attending RB performances, as London is now officially the most expensive city in Europe and Londoners’ salaries have a lot of demands made on them so theatre-going of all kinds becomes a low priority. The success of Chroma brought out a number of ‘lapsed’ balletomanes who queued in the cold for day tickets and returns on the night; often both as I’m told the queues were prodigious in the mornings. I really don’t think the appointment of ‘trendy’ Wayne McGregor will have any impact on attendances unless they lower prices for every new work he puts on. He certainly has his fans that support Random Dance and they will no doubt take themselves to the RB too – if they can afford to, but he is popular with the regular RB audience as well and I’ve discovered from asking around and reading comments on other dance forums that my ambivalence about his appointment puts me in a minority. The general consensus is that his acquisition is a brilliant move.

ROH audiences can hardly be called "non-classical". If a different audience demographic was in evidence after the first night, it was almost certainly due to the much-reduced prices luring Londoners into a venue that they are usually priced out of.

Point taken. But Midsummer was written as incidental music to a play, not as a ballet and the choreographer(s) using it have presumably adapted it to their needs. When I first saw Ashton's Dream in 1964 the scherzo was taken at a cracking pace by Anthony Dowell, but subsequent casts never quite matched his speed. What I had in mind was the music of composers such as Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky who wrote masterpieces for the ballet but whose work is increasingly not played with due respect in many instances.

Absolutely not!

I find that ironic as the house conductors of the Kirov Ballet take their tempi so slowly that they almost grind to a halt. This summer the Kirov danced in an all Shostakovich programme in London, the highlight being a performance of Leningrad Symphony conducted by Gergiev and it sounded superb, my only regret was that the ballet only uses the first movement. A lot of very great music has been written for ballet and most of it in strict collaboration with the choreographer. Therefore as the music is written, that’s how it should be danced and if some technically limited dancer is incapable of the proper tempo – find one that isn’t.

I was also at the premiere of Chroma and can’t say the audience looked that much different from any other night. From my seat in the amphi I could look down and see the usual scattering of empty seats in the stalls where (as usual) the corporate patrons simply hadn’t bothered to turn up. The ballet regulars appeared to be out in force as it was a first night, but the ROH actually has a very small regular ballet audience, probably no more than about 5% - 10% of the house. Speaking as someone who could never be called a ‘younger member of the audience’ and whose ballet going pals are in the main as long in the tooth as I am, I can put my hand on my heart and say we all loved Chroma and until reading Leonid’s post I thought that the audience reaction had been 100 per cent positive. The critics (with one miserable exception) were close to ecstatic as it was a powerful work danced with commitment and obvious enjoyment by all the company members. As for it being ‘the wrong sort of direction for a classical ballet company to go in’, the RB has been dancing modern works of this kind for years now and at least McGregor engages with the company and presents the dancers in a positive way unlike those dreadful acquisitions from Forsythe a few years back. Actually Leonid, sketchy port de bras and weak execution of steps has been an unfortunate feature of the Royal ballet’s performances for a number of years now and the slipshod dancing you witnessed is fairly standard with or without new ballets by Wayne McGregor. Chroma was a terrific addition to the RB repertoire, but I have serious reservations about McGregor being resident choreographer, he is a choreographer of undeniable brilliance but one that I imagine does best with a group of dancers dedicated to his works – exactly what he has at present with his Random Dance company, in the long run I don’t think this appointment will benefit the RB, Random Dance or McGregor himself.

First and foremost - Plisetskaya. I found former Kirov dancer Lubov Kunakova very moving in the role and I also liked the Bolshoi's Ludmila Semenyaka whom I saw dance it in The Hague, where Pavlova died. Before going on stage Semenyaka commented that she hoped that given the location, dancing DS that night wouldn't prove fatal. Happily it didn’t. Irma Nioradze, a dancer I don’t always care for, also has a feel for the role On film, Pavlova of course, but I also liked Mezentsova, a dancer much maligned on this board. I’m not a fan of this piece as I consider it a dreadful balletic cliché, rather like the Don Q. pas de deux taken out of context. Those dancers that impressed me I liked in spite of a general aversion to the piece, all possessed qualities that breathed life into the role. Margot Fonteyn danced it only once, at a gala for Sir Winston Churchill. She took a lot of persuading as she felt the role was Pavlova’s alone and should stay that way. She was absolutely right of course and my heart sinks every time I see it performed (usually badly) by Russian dancers that should know better. I even saw a Royal Ballet dancer mangle it back in the summer. Ideally it should be performed once by an Assoluta every twenty five years or so.

I ‘m not sure whether the company actually has a native language anymore as the old Royal Ballet style has all but disappeared. Chroma was a massive box office hit, but its worth asking if those long queues for tickets were made up of people eager to see the new Wayne McGregor or whether it was the affordable ticket prices being charged for that particular programme that was causing a stampede. One way or another though, Chroma was a massive hit and perhaps the RB management thinks its struck box office gold at last. The RB has been flirting with McGregor for some time now starting off with a programme with some of the company along with dancers from his own group at the ROH's smaller auditorium, the Lindbury, before creating work for the main house. I'm wondering if this is a first move away from classical ballet and towards the POB model. The dearth of classical choreographers is nothing less than a global crisis and new work has to come from somewhere. Also there are now dancers within the RB, e.g. Watson, Galeazzi, Yanovsky, that are more impressive in the modern rep than the classical and several more that excel in these crossover works. I would have put money on Christopher Wheeldon getting this particular job - shows how much I know. :blush:

I agree: in a city that doesn't even speak Spanish it would be an unlikely choice for a national ballet company, but Like Leonid I also have a fondness for the Liceu. After the tragic fire it was completely re-built and the cutting edge technology that has been installed probably makes it number one in Europe, not just in Spain. A pity though that the interior is more utilitarian than attractive and I loathe those ticket barrier machines in the foyer, before long us fat Europeans will start to have trouble squeezing through them. The biggest problem though may be that Barcelona is a city of staunch opera lovers and although the locals turn out for the ballet, they give it a fairly luke-warm reception. If the Spaniards were to base their national ballet company there it would be rather like the Germans deciding on creating a national ballet company and then basing it at Bayreuth, it just wouldn’t work. A bit off subject, but is there still a summer dance festival held in Santander? I’ve only spotted listings for pop groups on the festival web site in the past couple of years. It would be a great shame if they dump ballet from the festival as it used to be a lovely place to combine watching ballet with a summer holiday.

Next week Darcey Bussell will be appearing in a series of performances with Igor Zelensky at Sadlers Wells and today The Independent features her on the cover of its arts supplement (Arts and Books Review) Here is the link: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre...icle2008024.ece There are strong hints that Ms B. will actually be retiring from the RB in June next year, but she's had quite a good season this year and was outstanding in Violin Concerto and The Four Temperaments. I tend to avoid her in the classics as they are not her forte, but in the modern and neo classical rep she was and is excellent. The opening anecdote about an overheard conversation on a train is uncannily similar to something I overheard on a train whilst going into work a few months ago. Apparently the man I overheard talking has a pal in the ROH box office and he was relating how after a TV appearance on a talk show, the box office was swamped with requests for tickets to see Bussell in what had up till then been an undersold programme. He was telling the story to illustrate the power of television, but it gives some idea of how famous Bussell has become over the years thanks to a persistent PR campaign on her behalf by the ROH.

In the past: Maximova with Vasiliev More recently: Ananiashvili with Uvarov Now: Osipova with Matvienko

Not a mystery to me Estelle, the Parisian public is fairly starved of classical works at the POB these days. They probably go crazy when they see Giselle scheduled.