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Melody

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  1. The thing that worries me about these people is that this mindset is unlikely to stop with opera. When are we going to be told that the ballet companies need to drop all repertoire that involves tutus and turn into contemporary dance troupes or that Shakespeare plays must be reimagined to be set in present-day third-world countries or that Gilbert and Sullivan operas are banned in all forms because otherwise they aren't relevant? Apparently when the Greek government shut down the Greek National Orchestra for lack of funds (and presumably because orchestras aren't high on the priority list), the orchestra played Elgar's Nimrod as its last orchestral composition in its final concert before signing off with the Greek national anthem. When our government via the Arts Council decides to get rid of symphony orchestras in the UK because they aren't "relevant," we'd better hope that Elgar's music hasn't been banned as being elitist so that the last orchestra can at least play it on its way out.
  2. I remember seeing a Christmas Carol ballet by Northern Ballet, if memory serves. I enjoyed it a lot, but there's something about that story that doesn't seem to translate to ballet as easily as some others. Drama always seems to be more important in the arts than comedy, from novels to plays to dance to music. I remember reading a biography of Sir Arthur Sullivan, where people were constantly telling him he was wasting his time writing the G&S operettas and ought to be concentrating on serious music if he ever wanted to really make his name. I also remember interviews with Sigourney Weaver and Allison Janney, both of whom are somewhere in the region of 6 ft tall, where they said that early in their careers they were told that all they could expect in their careers was to be cast in comedy (and science fiction), because nobody wanted to see tall, gawky, not conventionally beautiful women as dramatic leads. I'm wondering if the people who make the decisions about what's important in the arts are taking serious material more seriously because it makes them feel more serious and important.
  3. Original post deleted. Just wanted to say that I think that while it may be a worthy endeavour to hire more directors and producers who can create more diverse modern productions that speak to our current culture, we're still somewhat restricted in terms of producing what audiences want to see. We know what the bums-on-seats shows are, and they're generally traditional and generally European. Hopefully we can tolerate having top-rate performers from anywhere in the world cast in roles that were originally written for Europeans. As for how far we go to make actors of one race look like characters of another race is a different and currently pretty thorny issue, but it's no reason to avoid the production or the particular casting altogether.
  4. I was rather concerned to read that some companies, both amateur and professional, are being advised not to stage The Mikado (generally considered G&S's best work) because it involves Japanese-ish makeup and is basically a caricature that could be considered offensive. Same thing with portraying Othello (in plays, opera, and ballet) in blackface. I know this is a different issue from some ballets being dropped because they don't appeal to current tastes, but it's rather worrying that pieces which are considered some of the best things written by their authors/composers are on the chopping block because of these issues.
  5. For example, would ballet have been better off if Lynn Seymour hadn't existed? Unfortunately, today's Lynn Seymours probably aren't going to have careers in ballet. Personally I don't think that's a good thing. One of the greatest Juliets was Galina Ulanova in her 40s, and she looked like a woman.
  6. Unfortunately, there seems to still be an element of wanting to grab the shiny object of a young foreign dancer doing well in international competitions, and to do that they have to assess out a home-grown student. I don't see that stopping, although I think it's a shame that home-grown dancing students seem to be regarded in so many ways as expendable. I think it'd serve several purposes to have these junior schools not be boarding schools - they could take more pupils, some of whom might at some point in their school life be able to transfer to a track that led to a career in the industry but not necessarily as a performer; it'd give children the ability to spend more time outside the hothouse and with supportive parents/relatives/friends who can keep track of their experiences more easily; it'd be cheaper than boarding school for families that can't afford the full boarding fees; and it'd be altogether less elitist and just more normal. But the UK seems to have a culture (not just in performing arts) of boarding schools being regarded as giving the best education. I don't think it'd make a lot of difference for people to boycott the ballet companies, especially in a city like London where there are always loads of tourists who want tickets and have no idea what goes on in the schools. I'm reading in other threads that the ROH seems to be making it harder for core enthusiasts to buy more tickets because they want to encourage a wider range of new audience members. As long as the tickets are selling out, regardless of who's buying them, boycotts by core supporters might not be effective anyway.
  7. I'm just saying that a taller dancer will weigh more than a shorter one with the same physique, and this might be why, with taller dancers being more in fashion than they were, schools and companies have encouraged the dancers to be thinner. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I don't know what the actual criteria are - whether they're trying to make it easier for men to handle some of these complicated lifts or whether this androgynous look is a requirement for contemporary dance or whether Balanchine's desire for female dancers to be rail-thin has finally become the criterion or what the reason actually is. Personally I don't especially like the look of a bunch of swans or fairies in tutus with totally flat chests and no hips, but that might be because I grew up in the days before that became the standard.
  8. I wonder how much this really is just at the school level and how much is because a certain body type is required by companies these days, with the sort of gymnastic choreography they're doing, and that schools have to produce the sorts of dancers that the companies want. Especially now that the dancers seem to be taller than they were, which makes some of the lifts (especially involving the man walking around the stage with the woman draped around him) more strenuous unless the dancers are thinner to compensate for the extra height. With companies getting more and more homogeneous, there isn't that much scope in the ballet world for a prospective dancer to look elsewhere without leaving ballet altogether. It's sad to think that dancers with feminine bodies like Margot Fonteyn and Lynn Seymour might very well not make it through school these days, if they were even accepted in the first place, because the body type is so important. Frederick Ashton did have a grouse about the shapeless dancers he came across later in his career (what he actually said was a bit more X-rated, but that was the general idea). Honestly, when you see a dancer in profile in her tutu, from the neck down it could very easily be a boy- no breasts, no hips. But that's the style Balanchine wanted from the start, hence his baby-ballerina choices very early in his career, and that's what we seem to be stuck with. I don't know how things are in Russia nowadays, but I remember one documentary where a dancer was proudly saying at around midday that she'd had nothing to eat all day but just existed on black coffee, and it cut to a scene in the cafeteria where another dancer took what seemed to be several minutes to choke down one forkful of rice. This is giving youngsters a terrible example - being tall and thin, not eating, existing on black coffee and cigarettes, and having to deal with much more physically challenging choreography requiring all sorts of injury-risking extensions and acrobatics, is just dangerous.
  9. I have the same problem with having my social media feed full of post from people I'm not interested in following, but I've found that if I stop opening their posts, their content pretty much goes away after a few weeks. I suppose one thing about social media is that the dancer has basic control over what gets posted, unlike depending on stuff in the tabloids, which can be very damaging because unfortunately that's what sells. But you always have the impression that what you're seeing is very curated and not necessarily a truthful version of their lives - if you can take it all with a large pinch of salt, it's entertaining enough.
  10. Not sure if this is accessible in the UK, but it's the Telegraph obituary at MSN and isn't behind a paywall, at least in the USA. Lynn Seymour, superstar ballerina who embodied the rebellious and flawed heroines of 1960s dance – obituary (msn.com) I saw her in A Month in the Country a few times back in the 1970s, as well as in The Invitation, and she was unforgettable in both. It's always nice when a retired ballerina spends so much time helping the younger generation, and she's going to be missed by a lot of people. Interesting that, like Alicia Markova, she died within a day of her birthday.
  11. It's really depressing that stuff like that is still being produced in great volume and still has a wide audience. Honestly, I think we've gone past the point of no return, and I'm sort of glad I'm old and have no children or grandchildren. I don't even want to think about what's going to happen when the resource wars really get going.
  12. It's sad that we lost so many years of seriously addressing this problem, while governments were encouraging people to use energy-efficient light bulbs and increase their insulation and suggesting that that was all we needed to do, when really we've needed governments to step up and do some large-scale stuff all along. They're doing better now, but all indications are that it's too little too late.
  13. The ENO has been doing some very creative striking back. Whoever wrote these lyrics deserves a medal.
  14. That very observation in the Guardian article was part of why I posted this thread - I mean, we're sort of into "you couldn't make it up" territory here. I mean, fine, perform opera in car parks. Just don't expect ENO to be the company doing it. Plus, if they're serious about making opera accessible to people everywhere and performed in all sorts of new and exciting ways, we're going to need significant investment in music education at all levels in school, and from what I'm gathering from reading newspapers and blogs and whatnot, that's the exact opposite of what's actually happening.
  15. Just seen this article about ENO's Arts Council grant, and the money seems to be dependent on ENO moving out of London and (good arts-administration lingo) reimagining itself. "We don’t want to bring down the curtain on ENO, but opera has to change" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/14/eno-opera-funding-arts-council-audiences Is what they're suggesting actually realistic? When a funding organisation is excusing its decisions by saying, more or less, "we aren't trying to kill you off, but...". that tends to make me suspicious. (Also wondering if they have something similar in mind for ENB at some point in the future as they look at ways of saving money.)
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