fadedhour

Thanks so much for your help, everyone. I just called the box office and they told me that the front row will be Row B for these performances. Really looking forward to it!

I have a question for those familiar with this venue. I found a seating chart (link to PDF) on their website, but there are 2 different seating charts shown for the orchestra seats - one with an orchestra pit (where the front row is Row B), and one without (where the front row is Row BB). I would guess that the first seating chart applies for the Royal Ballet's performances, since the listing on their website says it will have a live orchestra. But when I go to book seats, the seating map shown starts at Row BB. There aren't any seats available until further back from that, but I wasn't sure what has been sold already. If you have tickets to this or have been to this venue before, can you help? I'd really appreciate your thoughts - thanks so much!

Great detective work, volcanohunter! I'll update if I find out any new information.

Well, I've already bought a ticket, so hopefully they'll all be there

Is anyone else going to this? I wasn't planning on it but they've just announced the cast and it looks great so I've purchased a ticket. Here's the info: http://www.eno.org/whats-on/other/russian-ballet-icons I'm really pleased to see Alexandre Riabko & Silvia Azzoni together with Vadim Muntagirov and Daria Klimentova on the same bill - and I'm looking forward to seeing Sergei Polunin, who I haven't seen yet. In fact, there are quite a few names there I recognize but haven't seen perform yet, so I'm very excited. If anyone's been to the past galas, I'd be curious to hear what you made of them.

Yes I'm seeing this in July and really looking forward to it. Would love to hear everyone else's thoughts.

There's a great feature on this program from CNN, if anyone's interested, with several clips from the ballets performed: http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/02/06/spc-art-of-movement-ballet.cnn.html

I love it (and many of these Ballets Russes pieces, too. I think there are quite a few good Spectres, but not so many great ones. But Muntagirov was really perfect. Too bad it's only ten minutes long!

ENB have announced that Daria Klimentova will retire after performing in Romeo and Juliet in June: http://blog.ballet.org.uk/daria-klimentova-farewell-performances-romeo-juliet-royal-albert-hall/ Vadim Muntagirov will return for her three performances, including her very last one on 22 June. I'm very sorry to see that she's leaving, but I'm looking forward to seeing her in June (I have tickets for the 14th and 22nd) - I'm sure they'll be really special. And I'm glad I'll get to see Daria and Vadim dance together, which I haven't seen yet.

I went to see this on Thursday night and really enjoyed it - some performances more than others (there were 15 different pieces), but overall, really liked it. I especially enjoyed Vadim Muntagirov in Spectre de la Rose - I enjoy Nijinsky's ballets and I couldn't have asked for a better performance from him. He really has extraordinarily beautiful arms. The other Ballets Russes items on the program - L'après-midi d'un faune and an extract from Petrushka - didn't fare as well, unfortunately. But I appreciated that they were there. Other highlights for me included a new piece by Javier de Frutos, performed by Edward Watson and Marijn Rademaker, who had incredible chemistry together, and Marijn Rademaker in Marco Goecke's Äffi - I found the style of choreography completely fascinating. Rademaker was great - I'd love to see him dance again. I've posted a review with some more thoughts on my blog. Did anyone else go to this? I'd love to hear your thoughts if so.

Welcome, Ilona! I am a huge fan of the Hamburg Ballet and there's not that much in English online about them, so I read your blog posts avidly. It's really wonderful to hear someone else's opinions about them. I would like to see some other companies in Germany at some point, Stuttgart especially - I just saw Marijn Rademaker in a performance here in London and he was wonderful. I'd love to hear more about your ballet travels!

I'm a little saddened to hear this, although of course I can understand why he would want to go and I wish him all the best. I appreciate what ENB is trying to do and I enjoyed seeing him dance with them. He's only 23, though, so there's much more to come. I am actually seeing him dance later this week, in this.

What a wonderful video! Looking at where the shop is located, I must have walked past it many times - I'll have to stop in someday. Great article, too. I didn't realize the Royal Ballet had so many rules for these things, though! I feel bad for the male dancers not being able to get any flowers. Oh, and thanks for the tip, kbarber!

I'm curious about how different companies approach casting. For companies you follow, what's their general philosophy? For instance.. Do dancers seem to be cast according to certain "types," or do they often dance a variety of different parts? How often do lower-ranked members of the company dance lead roles? And how often do principals dance minor (or at least non-lead) roles? When a ballet is announced, are you usually able to guess which dancers will be cast in which parts? Or do the casting choices surprise you? Have there been times when you were particularly surprised by a piece of casting - and if so, was the dancer ultimately successful in the role or not? Do dancers continue to play the same roles in certain ballets throughout their careers or do they take on different parts over time? Do you prefer to see the same dancers regularly or do you like seeing different interpretations from dancers new to the role? I'm curious about this subject, having noticed some creative casting (some successful, some not) recently, and having often thought (probably like most others here) "I bet so-and-so would be great in x role." It's funny how you can develop a certain image of a dancer and their strengths, based on the roles you've seen them play, and then they'll get the chance to do something totally different and completely destroy your preconceptions. I'm also curious how this looks from the backstage point of view, if anyone has any insight into that. Does the choreographer, or whoever's staging the ballet, begin with a cast in mind, or try out different people, or do dancers put themselves forward for certain roles?

I've come across a recording of the Royal Danish Ballet performing John Neumeier's Romeo and Juliet, from 1987, with Mette-Ida Kirk and Ib Andersen, and I was wondering if anyone else has seen this? I can't find any references to a video or DVD online, which is unfortunate, because the copy I saw looks like it was recorded from a TV broadcast and the quality is not great. The performance is absolutely wonderful, though. There don't seem to be any clips of it online, either, so I posted one on YouTube if anyone's interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sa1N4gvvyU

Thank you for this review. I would love to see this, but I'm not going to be able to, unfortunately. I really like Vadim Muntagirov - I'm seeing him in Spectre de la Rose in a couple weeks and I can't wait to see what he does with it. He's wonderful.

Well, I finally decided to do the sensible thing and actually ask the venue of the company I mentioned in the original post about this. They said: -Audience members are free to throw flowers at the end of the performance, but because the orchestra pit is particularly large, the flowers sometimes don't make it to the stage. But members of the orchestra usually retrieve the flowers and toss them up onto the stage if they fall in the pit (!). -Alternatively, audience members can leave flowers with the ticket office before the show, but they should include a little card with the flowers if they do so. I think I will try this sometime, but the size of the orchestra pit is putting me off - I'd be mortified if I wasn't able to throw them across! I did actually go to one performance a few months ago where someone's flowers landed in the orchestra pit... sure enough, a few moments later they popped back into the air and landed up on the stage.

Thanks! I love this illustration - it's so unrelentingly weird and unsettling. And it fits the ballet so well.

I'm curious about the practice of throwing flowers and whether it varies by company/country &c. I haven't done it myself but have sometimes thought, at curtain calls, it might be nice for a great dancer (if I was sitting close enough, that is). At a performance of one European company, I noticed that the dancers in leading roles were all thrown the same type of bouquet from one or two people who rushed up to the front once the performance ended. I then figured that the company must have some group that arranges the flowers and that's that. But at the next performance of this company, all the leading dancers were thrown flowers except the dancer I thought was best (he was dancing the main role, too!). This slightly confused me and I thought, "well, if I'd known no one was going to bring flowers for him, I would have got some, because it looks a bit strange to have 5 other dancers get flowers and not the lead dancer." Can anyone shed some insight?

It is! This reminds me, actually, of when I went to see one of my favorite plays live - I'd read it many times, but never seen it before. One of the main actors was just OK, but the other two were so good they taught me things about the play I hadn't seen before in just reading it. I loved that.

I'm going to sheepishly raise my hand here and realize that while it may sound crazy, I've done this myself. But it's with a film, so it's slightly different as I can revisit it as often as I'd like. It was (this is pretty embarrassing to admit) the 1970 film of Wuthering Heights. The film had its flaws, but I loved Timothy Dalton's performance and decided that that was that, I wouldn't watch any other of the many versions of Wuthering Heights. I've kept this up for quite a few years now, and actually only last week changed my mind and decided that I have to watch the Laurence Olivier version. I haven't seen it yet, but I don't think I'll be disappointed (at least, I hope not, after all that!). I actually have a vague memory of watching a film with a perfect performance by one actor, and deciding that he was so wonderful that I actually couldn't watch any other films he'd made for fear of ruining the image of him as that one character. I can't remember who this was, though presumably not anyone too too famous or it would have been difficult. But I definitely don't hold this as a general principle - that if something's so good, I won't see any other versions of it - and I can't really say why these two performances provoked this sort of reaction. In fact, for ballet, if I like a piece, I like to see many different casts in it, to see their interpretations and maybe learn new things/explore different ideas about the ballet through them. This year, I saw my favorite ballet with a new cast that featured a couple dancers that I didn't think would do well in the roles they were cast in. And they were excellent and I'm so glad I got to see them.

It's great, isn't it? I've just seen the ballet this weekend and it looks wonderful huge.

After spending a couple hours yesterday evening searching the depths of the Internet for this, I've actually just stumbled across it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ngadc/status/343389286466453504

I'm sure I've seen a decent quality, decent sized picture of Alexandre Benois' terrifying curtain from Petrushka, but I can only find this and this right now. Does anyone have a better image?

Cool, hope to see you there!