Alymer

On the subject of Ashton, his Facade has a good many laughs in it, and a now forgotten piece, The Creatures of Prometheus, has a hysterically funny Napoleon, complete with ragged army. But with Ashton it's essential that the dancers play the roles straight and don't respond to the laughs otherwise the jokes don't work. And has anyone seen Bejart's Le Concours about a murder at a dance competition complete with detective in a trench coat (originally Jorge Donn) and Ballet Mother?

David Wall, the former Royal Ballet principal and much loved balletmaster of English National Ballet died at home this afternoon. He had been suffering from cancer.

According to Serge Grigoriev the programme began with Les Sylphides, then came Sacre and the programme was completed with Le Spectre de la Rose and the Polovtsian Dances. Reason for this programming was, he says, that the company's stars - Karsavina, Nijinsky and Bolm, would all appear during the evening.

Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg are leaving the Royal Ballet after the summer tour to Japan. Their last performance at the Royal Opera House will be on 5 June in Mayerling. News came in a press release from the Royal Ballet this morning,

who boycotted Nureyev because he could drive a hard bargain and never picked up a dinner tab?

Well he bought me lunch in Vienna. Does that count?

A picture in today's Times shows Filin with heavy scarring on the right side of his face and neck, even though most of his face his hidden by dark glasses and a woollen hat pulled down to his eyebrows. Clearly the damage caused by the acid is extremely severe and not just to his eyes.

Noir et Blanc is now generally known as Suite en Blanc. Choreography is by Serge Lifar and it was recently danced by the San Francisco Ballet.

Michel Descomby directed the ballet at the Opera from 1961 to 1969. He made a few ballets for the company of which I saw one and can remember little about it except that I kept on checking my watch. He also staged a new version of Coppelia which was I believe, widely thought to be not very good. The critic Marie- Francoise Christout wrote "the score by Delibes, made at a time when each theme, nearly each bar, suggested an appropriate step or action, might have embarrassed the choreographer. Not at all; he has been able to listen to all suggestions in the music with serene indifference". Not encouraging!

There is a private support organisation for the Opera de Paris, it's known as Arop (association pour le rayonnmont de Opera de Paris), but it is comparatively recent I believe dating only from the time when Nureyev was director. My impression at the time was that it was involved in raising the money to send the company to the USA. I seem to remember there were some pretty impressive names on the list of donors. But I would confirm what Helene wrote; support for the arts is generally considered in France to be government business. But as an aside, I was interested to see when I was in Venice recently that a number of restoration projects were being funded by companies such as Prada.

A concert number which used to be popular is the Ocean and the Pearls.

Doubtful. Outside France I think the only one of Lifar's ballets currently being performed is Suite en Blanc.

It used to be that all the female etoiles were referred to as Madame, married or not. That custom was abolished around 1970 as was listing dancers in order of seniority. We don't know the rank of these ladies and the term corps de ballet as used in describing dancers in a French company doesn't mean dancers of the lowest rank, but everything below premiere danseuse and etoile (a rank introduced by Serge Lifar) It could perhaps be that these ladies were 'grand sujets' which would ha ve been the second highest rank in the company and thus entitled to be called Madame. One would have to look in the archives of the Opera.

A cur down, but still full evening, version of Laurencia was staged for the Mihailovsky ballet a few years ago. It must still be in the company's repertory as I belive it was one of the ballets danced by Osipova and Vasiliev when they first joined the Mihailovsky. There were some extracts from the Soivet film on youtube.

There is a charming account of Beretta in Karsavina's memoir, Theatre Street. Karsavina studied with Beretta for two months in the summer of 1904 following an illness. At the end of the period she says "I had undoubtedly improved considerably under her tuition; my jumps wre higher, my 'points' were stronger and my general standard of precision had improved beyond all measure."

She was not the first Mariinsky dancer to study with Beretta; Pavlova and Trefilova had preceded her.

Karsavina clearly found the classes hard and during her first lesson she fainted.

According to Le Figaro it has been announced officially that Brigitte Lefevre will retire as director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 2014. Several candidates are mentioned as being in the running to replace her including - to my mind the most unlikely - William Forsythe. The actual choice will be made by Nicholas Joel and will be announced in spring next year wwhen the 2013/14 programming is made public.

In this month's Dancing Times there is a short but interesting inteview with Yuri Fateyev. The interviewer is Professor Igor Stupnikov whose late wife was a soloist (?) with the Mariinsky and has been close to the company for many years. Some of the questions are quite tough; "..you have wasted in my opinion the dancers' energy on such short-lived pieces as Benjamin Millepied's Without, Emil Faski's Simple Things and Yuri Smekalov's Bolero." Or ".............rumour has it that (Vaganova Academy ) graduates are not eager to join the Mariinsky", and it seems to me that Fateyev is very defensive and not very convincing in his responses.

I remember that the Bolshoi danced one act of Legend of Love as part of a mixed bill on a tour to London. They also performed a shortened version during a season at the Albert Hall. Like Nanarina, I wasn't at all impressed by the ballet which I thought very repetitious. I also recall a conversation I had with Maris Liepa about the ballet and it was clear that he found it, shall we say, less than convincing despite the fact that he was in the original Bolshoi revival.

John Neumier has also choreographed a ballet based on the story of Othello.

There is a version of Fille by Heinz Spoerli which was performed at the Opera some years ago. I've also seen it in Finland. The Balashova version is taken from the production she danced when a ballerina in Moscow. That was by Gorsky (who gave Balashova the nickname "Little Pony") and based on the Petipa/Ivanov version premiered in Petersburg and danced by Karsavina. Obviously one doesn't know how much Gorsky changed. The Balashova version has been notated and is in the Benesh collection. I have seen one of Lisa's variations reproduced from that notation.

The Swedish choreographer Ivo Cramer produced a charming version, a reconstruction based on the Dauberval original and performed to popular songs of Dauberval's period - I have an idea that it was the original score, but I can't be sure of that.

give me amazing, hard, solid ballet technique to go along with it-

Most dancers who perform the role of Ashton's Lise will tell you that it is very, very, hard and requires a really strong classical technique.

Let me add though that I doubt that Ashton would sanction the overplaying of the comic and travesty roles which one sees in his ballets today.

Most of the ballet season will have been planned before Kevin O'Hare was appointed, but I imagine he will have had a major say in who would replace Rojo in her scheduled Swan Lake performances.

At various times and in various versions - all purporting to be genuine Fokine - I've seen:

Chopiniana/Les Sylphides - both Royal Companies, Festival Ballet, Kirov, Bolshoi.........

Firebird - Royal, Kirov

Dying Swan - any number of misguided ladies

Schehrezade - Festival, Kirov

Petroushka - both Royal Companies, Festival Ballet, Joffrey, POB, Kirov (but it didn't look much like any of the other "Fokine" versions)

plus any number of attempts at Spectre.

I also saw Danilova's staging of the pdt from Pavillion d'Armide with Baryshnikov and on film, the dances from Ruslan and Ludmilla - though I do wonder if these are actually entirely by Fokine.

Polovtsian Dances - Festival, Kirov

Carnaval - Northern, Scottish, POB

Le Coq d'Or- Festival

Anton Dolin once told a good friend of mine that in his day all Albrechts caught the flowers thrown by Giselle in mid-air. Not to do so was considered to be poor form.

Letting Giselle sink into a bed of flowers stage left is intended to show that she is no longer a Wili, Myrtha has no power over her and she can rest quietly - or at least that's what Ninette de Valois told me. Obviously, you have to have traps in the right places!

The most spectacular ending to the ballet I've ever seen was in Dusseldorf where the production had wonderful filmed effects and at the end Giselle simply disappeared into the rising sun.

I think it was a personal taste of Makarova's having danced the original jaunty uptempo theme at the Kirov

Did Makarova in fact dance Nikiya when she was with the Kirov? I was told by one of her contemporaries that she danced Gamzatti, and the clear implication was that she didn't therefore have a real sense of Nikiya's role - which may be unfair. In either case, I think the variation as seen in the reconstructed original made far more sense, and if you can't have that, then keep the coda because it makes the variation more complete.

The fantasy of having time for a "normal life" must be seductive from time to time.

Especially when you have existed in such a hothouse atmosphere from a very early age. And while the Royal Ballet understandably wanted to make the most of such a box office attraction and also give him as many chances as possible, he had a pretty heavy workload for some one who has only been a member of the company for a comparatively short time.