Lynette H

David Bintley did a Beauty and the Beast for Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2003 and it has been revived since. There's some photos at http://www.brb.org.uk/4851.html And a listing of reviews here http://www.brb.org.uk/4774.html

You and me both, and many others too... I found details of a performance of the solo from The Wise Virgins quite recently - rather a surprise for me. It was peformed at a ceremony in Westminister Abbey http://www.balletassociation.co.uk/Pages/company.html#changes1011 You need to scroll down a long way but there is a picture of Natasha Oughtred in this.

Thanks for posting that, rg. I've seen some film clips of Venus and Mars (without sound) - I don't know if it was from 1932. An early example of Ashton's love of ribbons, I think.

There's an article about the forthcoming exhibition on the V & A web site http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/theatre_p...ilev/index.html This has links to other V&A resources - including an article on ealier work involved in conserving Ballet Russes costumes (more than 1000 hours on one costume alone...).

I have a charming little book - photos of Fonteyn by Gordon Anthony (brother of de Valois) published in 1950 with brief notes on his recollections of the works she appeared in. Of The Wise Virgins he says: "As the Bride in this very lovely, slow but strangely moving lyrical ballet of Ashton's, Fonteyn was the very personification of the dawn of womanhood.....The grace and beauty of the stylised movements of the arms and hands suited her to perfection and, giving full rein to her lyricism, she appeared literally to melt from one posture to another. A perfect complement to the imposing, celestial dignity of the Bach fugue, she seemed to surround herself with a great tenderness and peace." I've always been struck by the number of ballets he was obviously so impressed by which did not survive - nice to see a little clip of this one.

Probably no more so than any other of us when we reach certain age. I also love this music but it is for me associated with an embarassing memory of Serge Lifar standing up in the stalls waving his hand to the audience to acknowledge the applause of a performance of this ballet and sadly few people seemed to know who he was and the applause dwindled, but that did not stop him waving. It is the type of celebratory exhibition ballet I am happy to see, but like Etudes, it no longer gets performed in the UK. English National Ballet have been enthusistic performers of Etudes in the UK for many years, notching up several hundred performances. The last one was last summer, at the Festival Hall. Suite en Blanc is vary rarely performed in the UK.

The choreographic additions apart from the Ashton’s Neapolitan dance which was resuscitated in the 1992/93 season, include David Bintley’s Act 1 Waltz, Irina Jacobson’s pas de trois variation and the National Dances in Act 3. Leonid, has your focus moved here to Royal Ballet versions of Swan Lake rather than Sleeping Beauty. Are you in fact referring to Ashton's Neapolitan dance being reintroduced to the ballroom act of Swan Lake i 1992/3 ? Likewise the other changes that you mention. My cast sheet from the RB Beauty from 1994 (which says it is being recorded for TV) gives the following notes on the choreography "The choreography for the Fee des Lilas Variation in the Prologue is by Feodor Lopokov; for the Garland Dance in Act 1, Kenneth MacMillan: Aurora's variation and the Prince's Variation in Act2 and the Sapphire variation in Act3 by Frederick Ashton: entree and coda in the Act 3 pas de quatre, Anthony Dowell after Frederick Ashton" This version has gold, silver, sapphire and diamond in Act 3. (I miss that sapphire variation - didn't Sarah Wildor use to do this ?) The May 2006 "after Messel" production cast sheet gives the following: "Additional choreography Prologue: Carabosse and Rats, Anthony Dowell Act 1: Garland Dance Christopher Wheeldon Act 2: Aurora's variation and The Pronce's variation Frederick Ashton Act 3, Florestan and his sisters, Frederick Ashton after Marius Petipa Polonaise and Mazurka Anthony Dowell assisted by Christoher Carr" This version does not have gold, silver etc but Florestan and his sisters instead.

A documentary has been made about the Royal's Cuban visit: The Royal Ballet came to Cuba at the end of their summer tour to Washington and Grenada, and brought with them a small group of Royal Ballet supporters who made individual donations to the tour. This was supplemented with unprecedented support-in-kind from the Cuban Ministry of Culture, Performing Arts Council and a small amount of local British support. Cuban journalists are now talking about the visit of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the autumn, these visits considered by many to be the most high-profile cultural exchanges with ‘the West’ since the revolution in 1959. In addition, Ballet Boyz (ex Royal Ballet dancers) have made a documentary about the visit which will be shown on TV towards the end of the year http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-dance-r...ballet-cuba.htm I don't have further details but I assume this will be on Channel 4 (as for their Wheeldon at the Bolshoi documentary).

I was at the performance on Thurs 6th. I wish I could say that the company made a case for this work to be a masterpiece, but they didn't, at least not for me. I didn't feel that all the performers really believed in it, and that it was real for them. Coherence of purpose seemed to be lacking: the performers seemed to be in different ballets. I last saw this in London in 2000 with Asylmuratova and Zelensky, and I admit I remember far more about her glorious performance than the work itself. She outshone everything. The critics at that time were certainly not so dismissive of the work (there is a review from 2000 available on Ismene Brown's web site). But I did come away last night wondering how a production where some performances in the past had been so revered could prove such an unrewarding evening in the theatre. It makes you gloomy about the fragility of the art form.

There is a Stravinsky database at Roehampton university in London which gives lists of works made to his music (at least up to 2002) but not to any other composer. http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/stravinsky/

I hope you get to see All's Well That Ends Well. I saw it at the National recently and I think the staging will present more of a challenge to those operating the cameras. There's a lot going on in the background, Here's a review to give you some idea of the production http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8df0c9c4-4f8c-11...144feabdc0.html

The picture on ticket sales from the ROH is very mixed. All the Nutcrackers before Christmas are completely sold out. The Bayadere performances with Acosta on 15 and 19 January are completely sold out in the lower parts with just a few seats left in the slips. But the opening night of the same production with a less stary cast does seem to have hundreds of tickets available.

The opening night of Infra was filmed by the BBC. a documentary on the making of the work, followed by the performance, is available via BBC iplayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ft...World_Premiere/ I think this will be available until next Saturday.

Oh, do! Alongside the ballet listings, you've got Dayton in a piece by Asadata Dafora and Sheron Wray doing Jane Dudley's Harmonica Breakdown -- modern works we don't get to see very often. Not to mention the hula... It's been quite a while since I saw Harmonica Breakdown, but it's defintely worth making an effort to see. I think Hofesh Schechter is on the same bill - he has gathered a lot of attention in the UK.

We get a sligtly different line up at Sadler's Wells in September. Programme 1 is: Polyphonia (Christopher Wheeldon) Monotones II (Ashton) Other Dances (Jerome Robbins) New Christopher Wheeldon Ballet (same as Programme 2) Programme 2 is: Fools' Paradise (Christopher Wheeldon) New Emily Molnar Ballet New Christopher Wheeldon Ballet (same as Programme 1) As I recall, there were slight differences between the UK programe and the US one last year too. The list of dancers on the Morphoses web site for 2008 includes Martin Harvey of the RB, but I didn't spot his name in any casting.

The Royal Ballet of Flanders are visiting Sadler's Wells in London this autumn, in November. They are just bringing Impressing the Czar - no other programmes. Not sure if I will see this or not - my earlier exprience of this company was the Jan Fabre Swan Lake, which was not a recommendation. That poor owl....

Monica Mason hads been made a Dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. There's a fleeting refernce in here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...nours-List.html and in here http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/14/monarchy

You can look this up on the ROH's performance database http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/Performances.aspx A useful information source. It was indeed Bussell and Cope back in 1996.

Remember that as regards the ROH's funding, that is the total budget for both opera and ballet. Many of us would like to know how it is split between the two. But it covers the Royal Opera, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet.

Alina Cojocaru sustained a significant injury ten days ago: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...8/nopera128.xml However, the June 6 performance is still listed on Mr. Kobborg's site. Not to minimize any injuries Cojocaru and Kobborg might have, but June 6 is a long time from now. I think it's too soon to eliminate hopes that Cojocaru will perform as scheduled. Cojocaru's neck injury was some time ago, late last season. It kept her out for quite a while.. I suspect she pulled out of Chroma because of the particularly contorted positions that role required which might have been too much of a risk to it. She has been dancing other roles recently.

You may be interested to know what ballet is being broadcast in the UK. On the various BBC channels this includes Rojo and Acosta in Romeo and Juliet, Darcey Bussell's full farewell performance, and Ashton's Tales of Beatrix Potter from the ROH (which they can't have recorded yet). And a new version of Ballet Shoes (Noel Streatfield's children's novel). And other stuff. Here's the BBC press release - http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressrele...christmas.shtml I found rather more detail on most of this at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/...tml#arts_darcey Also on Christmas Day is the documentary on the making of Wheeldon's Elsinore for the Bolshoi, this time on Channel 4.

That's both funny and oddly insensitive. I wonder how Ashton responded? About "ballet under the bombs": am I right in assuming that male dancers were in short supply. How was that handled? Were less experienced young people brought in? Was the rep changed to emphasize ballets with largely female casts? And how about audiences: was ballet something that appealed to servicemen on leave? How about the choice of ballets? I assume that Swan Lake and other ballets which depict worlds far from wartime reality would be popular. Was there generally an escapist, everything-is-beautiful-at-the-ballet emphasis to what was chosen to be danced? There was an exhibition at the Cabinet War Rooms in London earlier in 2007 called "Dancing though the war", which covered this period. This featured a film with recollections from Beryl Gray and others. I don't know if this will become available at some point. There was an evening viewing of this plus a talk from (among others) Julia Farron and Jean Bedells. As I recall from that evening, they did Les Sylphides a great deal because it needed only one man. Some details about this are still availableat the Telegraph site http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml.../btballet05.xml

I do hope they give Fete another try, but I'm not certain that they will. There's an interview with Monica Mason at the Ballet association website where it says 'Monica felt that Fete Etrange was not successful: “I didn’t think we quite brought it off”. She had hoped it would be a ballet that could be brought back once more before her time was up but is now not sure. ' There's more details of the nature of the problem with the designs too. NB you need to scroll a long way down, but it is an interesting interview http://www.balletassociation.co.uk/reports/monicamason.html

Interesting to see how different the programmes are for the company in different locations. You can see the Sadler's Wells programmes at http://www.sadlerswells.com/show/Morphoses...heeldon-Company In summary, over here we get After the Rain and Allegro Brillante but we don't get Tryst, There Where She Loved, Mesmerics, Propeller or Satie Stud. Both venues get Morphoses, Slingerland pdd, Fools Paradise, Prokofiev Pas de Deux. I haven't seen After the Rain and look forward to it. I have seen the others on the list that won't make it to London, but I'd very much like the chance to see some of these again. I've always thought it a pity that There Were She Loved which was made for the RB in the Linbury was never revived. The City Center programming does look a little more generous.

The Royal Ballet School has announced where this year's graduates have found contracts. The following are noted as Ballet de Espana, Madrid Daisy Brodkis Tracy Jones Misa Kim Russell Ducker Toby Malitt More are joining this company than any other (four each went to the Royal and BRB)