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Found 6 results

  1. Run time: 2 hours 15 minutes, including a 20 minute interval. The Coliseum is ready to welcome you 75 minutes prior to the performance, with bars open on every floor. Please note: The Coliseum is a cashless venue
  2. Okay, hoping this works (to some extent: posts on another thread indicate that the casting links may not be live yet). The thread also indicates some new hirings we may not have been aware of before. We’re excited to announce principal casting for all existing repertoire works returning in the upcoming Season: Akram Khan’s Giselle, Wayne Eagling’s Nutcracker, Mary Skeaping’s Giselle, and Derek Deane’s Swan Lake in-the-round. Casting for each of these productions is detailed below and on each production page on our website. We can’t wait to share these performances with you! Akram Khan's Giselle 19 – 21 Oct 2023, Palace Theatre Manchester 26 – 28 Oct 2023, Bristol Hippodrome Akram Khan's groundbreaking production returns to Manchester and Bristol for the first time since its inaugural tour in 2016, having astounded audiences across the world. The title role of Giselle will be danced by Lead Principals Fernanda Oliveira and Erina Takahashi, and Junior Soloist Emily Suzuki*. Albrecht will be performed by Lead Principal Aitor Arrieta, First Soloist James Streeter, and Junior Soloist Henry Dowden*. The role of Hilarion will be danced by First Soloist Ken Saruhashi, Soloist Erik Woolhouse, and Junior Soloist Victor Prigent*. Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, will be performed by Lead Principal Emma Hawes*, and First Artists Isabelle Brouwers and Angela Wood*. Daily casting can be viewed online via the links below. *debut in role in this production View casting Learn more Nutcracker 29 Nov – 2 Dec 2023, Mayflower Theatre Southampton 14 Dec 2023 – 7 Jan 2024, London Coliseum Wayne Eagling's festive classic will light up the stage again this winter, touring to the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton before returning to the London Coliseum. Clara/Sugar Plum will be performed by Lead Principals Emma Hawes, Shiori Kase, Sangeun Lee*, Fernanda Oliveira and Erina Takahashi, Guest Artist Laurretta Summerscales, First Soloists Julia Conway and Katja Khaniukova, Soloist Precious Adams*, and Junior Soloists Ivana Bueno and Francesca Velicu. Nephew/Prince will be danced by Lead Principals Aitor Arrieta and Francesco Gabriele Frola, First Soloists Gareth Haw*, Daniel McCormick and Ken Saruhashi, Soloists Fernando Carratalá Coloma, Skyler Martin*, Lorenzo Trossello and Erik Woolhouse, Junior Soloist Vsevolod Maievskyi*, and First Artist Edvinas Jakonis*. The role of the Nutcracker will be portrayed by First Soloists Daniel McCormick and Junor Souza, Soloist Skyler Martin, Junior Soloists Henry Dowden, Noam Durand*, Rentaro Nakaaki and Victor Prigent*, and First Artists Matthew Astley, Miguel Angel Maidana* and Eric Snyder*. Dr Drosselmeyer will be performed by First Soloists Fabian Reimair, Junor Souza and James Streeter, Junior Soloist Henry Dowden, and First Artist Giorgio Garrett. Daily casting can be viewed online via the links below. *debut in role in this production View casting Learn more Mary Skeaping's Giselle 11 – 21 Jan 2024, London Coliseum Mary Skeaping's heartbreaking Romantic masterpiece will return to the London Coliseum for the first time since 2017. The title role of Giselle will be danced by Lead Principals Emma Hawes*, Shiori Kase*, Sangeun Lee*, Fernanda Oliveira and Erina Takahashi, and First Soloist Katja Khaniukova. Albrecht will be performed by Lead Principals Aitor Arrieta* and Francesco Gabriele Frola*, First Soloists Gareth Haw* and Ken Saruhashi, Soloist Fernando Carratalá Coloma*, and Junior Soloist Vsevolod Maievskyi*. Hilarion will be portrayed by First Soloists Fabian Reimair, Junor Souza* and James Streeter, Soloist Erik Woolhouse*, Junior Soloist Henry Dowden*, and First Artist Giorgio Garrett*. Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, will be danced by First Soloist Alison McWhinney, Soloist Precious Adams*, Junior Soloists Anna Nevzorova* and Emily Suzuki*, and First Artists Jung ah Choi and Angela Wood*. Daily casting can be viewed online via the links below. *debut in role in this production View casting Learn more Swan Lake in-the-round 12 – 23 Jun 2024, Royal Albert Hall Derek Deane's spectacular in-the-round production of the enduring classic returns to the splendour of the Royal Albert Hall in summer 2024. The dual roles of Odette/Odile will be performed by Lead Principals Emma Hawes*, Sangeun Lee* and Fernanda Oliveira, and Guest Artist Laurretta Summerscales. Prince Siegfried will be danced by Lead Principals Aitor Arrieta* and Francesco Gabriele Frola*, First Soloist Gareth Haw*, and Soloist Lorenzo Trossello*. The role of Rothbart will be portrayed by First Soloists Fabian Reimair, Junor Souza and James Streeter. Daily casting can be viewed online via the links below. *debut in role in this production View casting Learn more
  3. The first performance of this was tonight, with Alina Cojocaru in the title role. Thoughts here, please.
  4. As there was some interest in the article I wrote about the creative process of Mary Skeaping's "Giselle", here it is in its entirety. I hope people will find it interesting and that it will add to your enjoyment of English National Ballet's performances. Mary Skeaping and Giselle By Irmgard E. Berry (adviser to the Skeaping Estate) I was privileged to be Mary Skeaping’s assistant for the last five years of her life and honoured when, a few months before her death, she entrusted to me not only her extensive research material but also the guardianship of her choreographic copyright and the artistic integrity of her productions. During our many hours of working together, our conversation had often turned to the creation of her production of Giselle in particular and she was especially keen to teach me all the mime scenes she had restored to the ballet. Skeaping’s life-long love of Giselle began 1925 when she joined Anna Pavlova’s company as extra corps de ballet for a four-week season at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. To Skeaping, Pavlova remained incomparable as Giselle, although she greatly admired the interpretations of Olga Spessivtseva and Alicia Markova and, in her own productions, Alicia Alonso, Raissa Struchkova, Violetta Elvin, Galina Samtsova and Eva Evdokimova. To be in Act I of Giselle with Pavlova was a harrowing experience for the other dancers as, each time she performed the Mad Scene, it was so real that she reduced them to tears. The second act was easier to bear as the dancers were able to concentrate on portraying particularly evil Wilis. When, as Artistic Director of the Royal Swedish Ballet, Skeaping finally had the opportunity to create her own production of Giselle in 1953, staging it a few months later for Ballet Alicia Alonso (the forerunner of the National Ballet of Cuba), she approached it from a musical point of view. (Skeaping was a trained musician, having studied at London’s Royal College of Music in 1924). Having danced in both Pavlova’s production and Sergueyev’s 1932 production for the Camargo Society, and having rehearsed the Sadler’s Wells version originally staged by Sergueyev, Skeaping was always troubled by the brutal cuts and rearrangements in the order of the pieces which she felt would never have been sanctioned by Adolphe Adam, nor was the banal orchestration the work of this master of melodious and harmonious music. The ballet and its music had proved so popular in 1841 that the Paris Opéra had taken the unprecedented step of publishing a piano reduction of Giselle. (Hitherto, complete ballet scores had not been considered of sufficient interest to warrant the expense of publishing them.) However, this proved to be a double-edged sword because, although ballet companies wishing to perform Giselle could thus use the original music, rather than composing a new score, the orchestration was generally left to ‘house’ composers far less accomplished than Adam, often resulting in the loss of its dramatic quality. In the 1950s most companies used the Büsser edition of the piano reduction which had been prepared from Olga Spessivtseva’s 1924 performances at the Paris Opéra. Skeaping investigated the archives of the Royal Opera, Stockholm, and found that, although there was no complete orchestral score of the 1841 production, which was first performed in Stockholm in 1845, there was a copy of the 1841 piano reduction. Notwithstanding the lack of orchestral colour, the score proved invaluable in revealing the correct order of the pieces and for the dramatic instructions it contained although, of course, there was no indication of the actual steps danced. The archives also housed some orchestral parts of the scenes she wished to restore and on this Skeaping built her production until she was able to obtain a microfilm of the original orchestral score from the Paris Opéra. This was the score which would have been transcribed from Adam’s handwritten score (also housed in the Opéra’s archives) by one of the Opéra’s copyists for use by the conductor in 1841. Skeaping also collected as much information as possible on the original production, with Gautier’s writings, critiques, lithographs and newspaper cartoons all providing her with inspiration. In her research, Skeaping received tremendous help and support from Tamara Karsavina, who had danced Giselle in Russia a few years after Pavlova’s debut in the role and in the version staged by Michel Fokine for the Ballets Russes. Karsavina, one of the finest exponents of balletic mime, which she had been teaching in London since the 1930s, taught Skeaping the complete mime sequences which had been drastically cut or omitted altogether in many productions during the 20th century. She also discussed the restorations Fokine had made to the ballet at the request of Serge Diaghilev. To Skeaping’s delight, these included a number of the elements that she herself wished to restore, particularly the Fugue for the Wilis in Act II which had been cut from Russian productions at some point in the late 19th century. Skeaping was keen to introduce the villagers at the very beginning of Act I, as indicated in the 1841 piano score. In 1968, when Mary was staging the work for the Frankfurt Ballet, her designer Hein Heckroth (designer of Kurt Jooss’s groundbreaking The Green Table) told her of the autumnal custom still followed in some German villages of tasting the new wine at a different cottage each day. The selected cottage is indicated by a wreath-encircled wine-jug hung outside. For Mary, this seemed to answer a question that had long bothered her: Why does the royal party stop at Giselle’s cottage in particular? She therefore incorporated this little ceremony into her subsequent productions. This also gives the opening scene a focal point as the young villagers, on their way to the vineyard, acknowledge the wreath and the prospect of the celebrations later that day with the wine tasting and the crowning of Giselle as queen of the vintage. Restoring this scene musically also restores Hilarion’s first entrance and we learn of his love for Giselle and the friendly relationship which exists between him and the vine-gatherers. In the ballet’s original scenario, the first scene between Giselle and Albrecht contained a mime scene in which Giselle tells him of a troubling dream in which a beautiful lady comes between them, dreams being a popular method of foreshadowing in Romantic plots. Although not including the entire mime scene, Skeaping uses the idea as a motivation for Giselle being unsure whether or not to stay with Albrecht and doubting his love (“You love me not”), leading very nicely to the famous daisy scene. The two major restorations in Act I which Skeaping undertook in 1953 were Berthe’s (Giselle’s mother) mime scene and the suite of dances known as the Pas des Vendanges, both in their original positions. Romantic ballet was a blend of realism and the supernatural and, in the mother’s mime scene, we have the first indication of the supernatural, foreshadowing not only the music but also the action in Act II. Berthe, worried by Giselle’s passion for dancing and her infatuation with the young stranger (the Duke of Silesia in disguise), relates the legend of the Wilis, spirits of young girls who were inordinately fond of dancing and died as a result of being betrayed by faithless lovers. In death, they become female vampires, haunting the woods to avenge themselves on any male who crosses their path by forcing him to dance until he dies of exhaustion. Skeaping learned the mime sequence in full from Karsavina but simplified it very slightly for present day audiences. Skeaping restored in full Giselle’s meeting with Bathilde as performed by Pavlova and exactly as described in an article for The Dancing Times by Karsavina. According to Karsavina, the dialogue in which the two girls discover they are both engaged and Bathilde makes a gift to Giselle of a necklace, was to give a human touch to the otherwise purely functional part of Bathilde. It was at this point that Skeaping found the perfect place for the Peasant Pas de Deux. Although this was not in the original scenario, being a politically motivated interpolation to give the established étoile, Nathalie Fitzjames, the opportunity to upstage the newcomer, Carlotta Grisi, just before her mad scene and had obviously not pleased Adam or Gautier, it had become an accepted part of the ballet. To Skeaping, it made dramatic sense to move it to a less intrusive position as the perfect entertainment for the royal party. The original suite, put together from music by Burgmüller, contained six pieces. Skeaping decided to use only the entrée and adage, boy’s variation with restoration of the rarely used coda, girl’s variation and coda. It was orchestrated for Skeaping by Peter March of the Tchaikovsky Foundation in New York. In Skeaping’s production, this is followed by Giselle’s solo to music by Minkus, probably choreographed in the 1880s and first danced in London in 1932 by Olga Spessivtseva. At first, Skeaping omitted this Russian interpolation in her productions but, after much persuading by Galina Samtsova, Giselle in the première of the 1971 production by London Festival Ballet, Skeaping found a dramatic reason for its inclusion: it is Giselle’s way of thanking Bathilde for her gift of the necklace. There was also the practical reason that guest artists would have a solo familiar to them. The Pas des Vendanges is a suite of dances which Giselle and Albrecht perform to celebrate the height of the wine festival, following Giselle’s coronation as queen of the vintage. No record of the original choreography exists, although there are some indications in Serge Lifar’s book on Giselle. Giselle’s solo is described as a vivacious tricotage to a flute melody. Albrecht should dance the “acrobatic arsenal of the danse d’école”. In the finale of the pas de deux, Albrecht and Giselle “give an image of fidelity with kisses in arabesque”. Skeaping drew on steps from earlier in Act I, her own knowledge of Romantic technique and a lithograph from the original production to create a charming set of dances to this suite. In Skeaping’s production, Giselle’s mad scene is based on the performances of Pavlova and Spessivtseva. For many years, there has been a controversy as to whether Giselle dies of a broken heart or stabs herself with Albrecht’s sword at the climax of the mad scene. Skeaping found Gautier’s writings ambiguous so she followed Pavlova’s example: the sword is snatched from Giselle before she can stab herself. Her weak heart, already revealed to the audience in a telling moment which Skeaping restored earlier in Act I, cannot stand the shock of Albrecht’s duplicity and so she dies. The essence of Act II is the conflict between the supernatural and the religious elements. The dominant figure of the supernatural world is Myrthe, whose passion for dancing is so great that she is queen of the Wilis. Skeaping restored her solo music in its entirety to establish this extraordinary passion, creating the most virtuosic choreography in the ballet for what she considered to be a ballerina role with the instructions to dance “furiously and with great delight”. After summoning the other Wilis to initiate Giselle, Myrthe becomes cold and calculating as she instructs them to attack the gamekeepers who have wandered into her realm. Skeaping considered this scene crucial in establishing the Wilis as the cruel, vengeful creatures described by Heinrich Heine, luring any man to his fate. She found that, too often in 20th century stagings, the character of the Wilis is diluted so that they appear to be no more than sylphs, largely due to later orchestrations which remove the evil quality of the music but it should be remembered that, in the original score, Adam described the dances of the Wilis as an “infernal Bacchanale”. The Fugue for the Wilis (allegro feroce) has perhaps been regarded as Skeaping’s most controversial restoration but she regarded it as central to the conflict between the supernatural and the religious. Giselle has led Albrecht to the safety of the cross marking her grave. The myrtle branch, symbol of Myrthe’s strength, is shattered by the superior power of the cross as she tries to force him away from it. This marks a turning point in the action as, from this moment on, her power is continually challenged. During the Fugue, she sends wave after wave of Wilis to force Albrecht away from the protection of the cross but each time they are repelled by its power (a stage direction from the original score). On the final bars, Myrthe orders Giselle away from the cross, realising that Albrecht will not be able to resist the seductive power of Giselle’s dance. In Skeaping’s production, Giselle subtly gestures to Albrecht to remain by the cross but, as she is carried away by the dance, so he is enraptured by her beauty and cannot resist leaving his sanctuary. However, Giselle continues to thwart Myrthe’s destructive intentions until the dawn when the Wilis must return to their graves. In a beautiful mime sequence restored by Skeaping, Giselle tells Albrecht “the sun has risen, you are saved”. Skeaping’s production of Giselle has been acclaimed as powerful evocation of the Romantic era. However, in her view, the present day idea of Romanticism is very much distilled and therefore she decided to omit the final tableau vivant in which Bathilde and Albrecht are reconciled at Giselle’s grave. Instead, it is only Albrecht who receives Giselle’s blessing as her spirit sinks back into its grave, saved from her fate of remaining a Wili by her undying love. © Irmgard E. Berry London 2016
  5. Casting is now on the ENB website: http://www.ballet.org.uk/whats-on/giselle/
  6. ... replete with two different versions of Giselle (Khan/World Premiere ... and the lovely Skeaping) See link here.
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