The Royal Ballet: Ashton Triple Bill, June 2017

[Mary]

3 minutes ago, Sim said:

Was he in the Royal Box?  I had no idea he was there.   I guess it was a private visit!

Yes- with Camilla and some other people I didn't recognise:  they slid in quietly once the lights were down each time. I only noticed because the friend I was with was just saying we hadn't seen any royalty there for ages, and so we were looking in the direction of the royal box  and noticing a special blue velvet cushion with a crest that hadn't been there before - when lo and behold, in came the heir to the throne. He did seem very wrapped up in the performance which was rather nice to see. But weren't we  all.

 

I do hope there will be a dvd of tomorrow.........

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BMC]

Mary - eerie is a very good word. There was that odd gasp / shriek that Osipova let out that was a very shivery moment indeed.

 

I happened to sit next to a lady who had recently returned to ballet following many years of children and grandchildren - she was coming to these ballets directly from having seen The Dream with Anthony Dowell and M&A with Fonteyn and Nureyev. Her verdict was 'magic' - quite some compliment in those circumstances!

[Lizbie1]

I'm probably betraying my ignorance, but is there any reason, other than Fonteyn's own age as well as custom since the ballet's revival, why we should see Marguerite as past her twenties?  I'll confess to not having read La dame aux Camelias - what is her age in the novel?  

 

I only ask because this genuinely confuses me: Marie Duplessis herself was only 23 when she died and I don't recall anyone ever remarking on a soprano being too young to portray Violetta in La Traviata.  Yet several posters consider Osipova's youth (at 31) to be a handicap which she either has or hasn't managed to overcome.

[Mary]

I believe in the novel she is not meant to be much more than 30? -but I think we are all comparing subsequent portrayals to Fonteyn, who was in her 40s I think? rather than literary inspirations for the ballet.

[Mary]

..but of course 30 in the 19th century  was middle-aged for a woman, whereas now  it is young....

[Lizbie1]

2 minutes ago, Mary said:

I believe in the novel she is not meant to be much more than 30? -but I think we are all comparing subsequent portrayals to Fonteyn, who was in her 40s I think? rather than literary inspirations for the ballet.

 

That's exactly what confuses me - I can't think of another role where the originator's age has set expectations for others following in her footsteps, at least to this degree.

 

Another thought: seeing as Ashton meant the ballet to die with Fonteyn, it would be stretching it to attribute the preference to him, I think.

[Lizbie1]

6 minutes ago, Mary said:

..but of course 30 in the 19th century  was middle-aged for a woman, whereas now  it is young....

 

I'd have said that "middle-aged" is overstating it - 35 perhaps might have been considered so.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Lizbie1

[mshovelt]

8 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

I'd have said that "middle-aged" is overstating it - 35 perhaps might have been considered so.

 

According to the ONS, a woman was unlikely to make it much past her mid 40's in the 19th Century.  So late middle age then. 

 

http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/

 

[RuthE]

33 minutes ago, Mary said:

I believe in the novel she is not meant to be much more than 30? -but I think we are all comparing subsequent portrayals to Fonteyn, who was in her 40s I think? rather than literary inspirations for the ballet.

 

In the novel she is once described (through Armand's eyes) as a "beautiful creature of twenty" so isn't meant to be much older than that, and as Lizbie1 said, Marie Duplessis was 23.  Indeed, only just turned 23 when she died, so 21/22 for most of the story.

 

I'd find it very odd to see the Ashton danced with a young ballerina, though. (I've also seen some really interesting productions of La traviata which deliberately make a point of having Violetta played older - the one that Opera North did in 1999 with Janis Kelly particularly springs to mind.)

[Lizbie1]

5 minutes ago, mshovelt said:

 

According to the ONS, a woman was unlikely to make it much past her mid 40's in the 19th Century.  So late middle age then. 

 

http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/

 

 

At the risk of going very off-topic, I don't think it's correct that so loose a term as "middle aged" was linked to something so scientific as average life expectancy, which, as that link makes clear, was much influenced by high infant mortality. If anything it would have been considered in the context of a woman's child-bearing years and/or the biblical expectation of "three score years and ten".

[bridiem]

1 hour ago, RuthE said:

 

In the novel she is once described (through Armand's eyes) as a "beautiful creature of twenty" so isn't meant to be much older than that, and as Lizbie1 said, Marie Duplessis was 23.  Indeed, only just turned 23 when she died, so 21/22 for most of the story.

 

I'd find it very odd to see the Ashton danced with a young ballerina, though. (I've also seen some really interesting productions of La traviata which deliberately make a point of having Violetta played older - the one that Opera North did in 1999 with Janis Kelly particularly springs to mind.)

 

That's really interesting - I had assumed she was an older woman in the book. Presumably the point then is that Ashton's version is deliberately different from the source. But last night proved to me that it works with a younger ballerina too; whether that's a tribute to Ashton, or to Osipova, I'm not sure! (Perhaps both.)

[Two Pigeons]

As I remember it Garbo played the character as older than her lover in Camille.  I gave never read the book but I think there are a number of artistic versions of the story where  Marguerite/Violetta/Camille is older than Armand/Alfredo/ whoever.

[RuthE]

In "Camille" I'm never quite sure of what the age difference is meant to be, because I can't gauge how old either Garbo or Robert Taylor are meant to be individually. I see that in real life she was six years older than him (she was 31 and he was 25).

[Johnpw]

2 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

That's exactly what confuses me - I can't think of another role where the originator's age has set expectations for others following in her footsteps, at least to this degree.

It's especially odd if, as I think I've read, the ballet was created to celebrate Fonteyn's "rejuvenation" (or at least that of her career) through the partnership with Nureyev.

 

The ballet is very pared down compared with the book or with La Traviata. I wonder if the originators' actual ages were intended to give an older woman-younger man (or last chance of "true love") aspect to the story and so provide an extra "emotional charge" to the narrative which is all over in less than 30 minutes. Whether intended or not, that seems to have been the effect, especially as Fonteyn continued to dance it until well into her 50s. The fact that the ballet has recently been mounted for farewell performances must also have an effect on expectations about ages and on the "emotions" of the occasion - Marguerite's renunciation and death as symbols of "farewell to dance". Nonetheless, Osipova and Shklayrov have shown that a different kind of intensity can be generated with a younger dancer.

 

I'm glad I had the chance to see the three pairings, all satisfying in different ways. In "The Insult" scene, Shklyarov seemed to me to render the "verbal abuse" represented by the  choreography in a particularly visceral way, a real violent fury; I hope Osipova was prepared for being thrown down quite so harshly. 

 

What riches this Triple Bill has provided in terms of both repertory and dancing, ending the season on a high note and perhaps creating high expectations for the next.

 

 

[capybara]

Interestingly, I felt that Osipova looked more mature last night - much as Cojocaru managed to do in Act 3 of Onegin when she was a very young Tatiana.

[Two Pigeons]

Actually I think the key thing here is that Marguerite, like Natalya in A Month in the Country, is more worldly than Armand who is more of an innocent, swept away by passion.

 

Let's be honest, she's been around the block at least once.

[Lizbie1]

1 hour ago, Two Pigeons said:

Actually I think the key thing here is that Marguerite, like Natalya in A Month in the Country, is more worldly than Armand who is more of an innocent, swept away by passion.

 

Let's be honest, she's been around the block at least once.

 

Yes, that makes much more sense to me, thank you!

[alison]

Some quick comments from me on what I've seen so far of this bill.  To put it into context, when I saw this bill was being broadcast to cinemas I was over the moon at the prospect of *finally* having The Dream and Symphonic Variations on DVD (yet the first night wasn't actually being filmed - are they just going without any backup tomorrow?).  Yet on the first night I was distinctly disappointed with The Dream, and thought "Oh dear, is this the one they're going to record for posterity?"  I realised afterwards that to my mind the various different elements of it hadn't seemed to "gel" properly, unlike in the previous run, and it hadn't evoked quotations from the play in my mind in the way that I usually find a truly satisfying performance does.  I also found myself missing some of the Pucks from the previous run, and hope to see James Hay in particular in the role again soon.  I thought Steven McRae as Oberon wasn't quite as good as I remembered from last time - there were a few occasions when I thought he was a little lacklustre, as if he'd lost focus - and the whole thing didn't really seem sharp enough.  Akane Takada made a very good debut as Titania, though - as did Francesca Hayward in the second cast, where I was also really impressed by David Yudes' Puck debut - far preferable to the overblown reading in the first cast.  Marcelino Sambe did very well as Oberon too - a few wobbles here and there, but then many more senior dancers than he have had similar problems with the role, and I thought he really took command of the stage (what I could see of it!).  It was good to see the same pairs of lovers getting some more stage time ahead of the live relay - but oh, how I miss some of the previous casts.  Then I got a similar sense of dissatisfaction with Monday's Dream, which made me wonder whether my location had something to do with it: mid-amphi for 1 and 3, stalls circle for 2.  I'm sure it'll be fine for the live relay, though.

 

As for Symphonic Variations, the first night's performance was deeply satisfying.  I didn't quite get that "Wow" feeling from the first night of the previous run, but possibly that was because I knew what to expect, so it wasn't so much of a surprise.  Monday night's performance, though, felt virtually perfect to me: sheer heaven.  Yet I still find myself harking back with great affection to *those* casts in 2005 and 2007: I decided that the current cast, while being excellent in themselves, are somehow rather homogeneous, yet the casts from a decade ago seemed more like 6 very individual dancers coming together to produce something special, which I guess may have been more how it was when the ballet was new, given the very different dancers who created it.  I wonder how many members we have who can remember back that far?

[Shade]

So enjoyed Monday's performance. The perfect way to uplift the spirits after the terrible events of the past few weeks. MSND was perfect, music, dance and production. First time of seeing SV, from the amphi you could really appreciate the beautiful patterns. The dancing was superb.

Was also a first viewing of M&A. What a weight of expectation there was for Osipova and Shklyarov with all the fuss over polunin. Like true professionals they delivered. The last 10 minutes when you could hear the breathing right up in the amphi was so moving. I think they are a perfect physical match too. Just wow.

fantastic end to the season. Wish I could be there Saturday.

[Mary]

Very interested in your comments Alison and pondering on what makes a good Dream. For me, Oberon has to be right.

I love A Campbell whose dancing is a delight,- and his was definitely the sexiest Oberon, but, trouble was, I found myself thinking- here is a sexy man! Not - here is the King of the Fairies!

With Sambe, I felt- here is a marvellously buoyant and exciting boy- not, here is the King of the Fairies ( but in a few years maybe....)

 

With McRae- I definitely think the latter: here IS the king of the fairies. (Just as I do watching film of Dowell.)

It would take a lot of minute analysis to show how these effects are produced no doubt.

(And of course one would always ignore the odd wobble but a dancer who never wobbles and has total command does have an advantage in so many ways and certainly in Oberon's key solo.)

 

Of course these things are all very personal.

 

The pairs of lovers in the Saturday matinee were perfect, in my view; perfect timing in that tricky scene where everything has to work and work fast. Searching for the cast list to get ther names right may take some time.Matthew Ball was brilliant.

 

[capybara]

7 hours ago, alison said:

: I decided that the current cast, while being excellent in themselves, are somehow rather homogeneous, yet the casts from a decade ago seemed more like 6 very individual dancers coming together to produce something special, which I guess may have been more how it was when the ballet was new, given the very different dancers who created it. 

 

This comment makes me wonder whether some of the current 'stagers' of ballets (including their owners) have a different vision from the original as to how things should look.

 

But I actually don't find the SV casts homogenous. And how come that critics and people on here are singling out individual dancers?

[Petunia]

I’m looking forward to the cinema broadcast!

As I haven’t seen any of tonight’s ballets live on stage, I prepared myself by watching what I could find on youtube: MSND with ABT (Ferri / Stiefel) and a quite fuzzy one with the RB (Dowell / Sibley) which I nevertheless enjoyed very much.

 

I also found a recording of SV, with Bonelli, Marquez, McRae, Morera and two dancers I didn’t know, I’ve watched it many times now and I think it’s already a favourite. So many wonderfully surprising twists and turns and what an abundance of terre-à-terre and exciting arms. If I were in London right now, I’d watch every single performance of SV.

Hopefully the camerawork doesn’t ruin it, like Rhapsody last year.

 

I don’t know if I will love M&A except for Zenaida Yanowsky, I’m sure I won’t be able to take my eyes off her. Such a pity I haven’t seen more of her, I should have come over to London much earlier and more often…!

[alison]

Dowell/Sibley?  Where???!!!

 

Belinda Hatley was one of the others in SV: I'm having a bit of trouble remembering who the other male was: Ludovic Ondiviela, perhaps?  At least, I'm assuming it was Hatley's retirement performance you've seen.

[Petunia]

I'll try and post the links when I'm at home, I think I've bookmarked them. I saved both ballets to my computer.

[alison]

BTW, some tickets have come online for Saturday's performance.

[FLOSS]

Our response to the performance of ballets and  performances by individual dancers is a very personal thing. It inevitably depends as much on our earliest ballet going experiences as it does on our experience of the ballet in question and the strength of the impression our first cast made on us.

 

 According to an interview which Ellis-Somes gave when she was staging Symphonic Variations for Australian Ballet in 2015 she selects the casts for this ballet and what is important is that the women are fairly evenly matched as far as height is concerned. On paper the cast led by Nunez and Muntagirov is the better of the two and they give a fine account of the text. But I found that I got far more from watching the second cast led by Cuthbertson and Clarke was it because it was fresher, slightly softer and less obsessed by crystalline purity but it had something special about it perhaps that something was Joseph Sissens. It is an extraordinary work which manages to look fresh every time it is revived on the Covent Garden stage because it is totally at variance with dance fashion. Made as a riposte to Helpmann's dance melodramatic dance dramas it now rebukes ballets which are full of technical tricks for no apparent reason and performers who are happy to distort choreography and music to display their favourite feats of technical skill and asymmetry. As a polemical ballet it should be boring and yet it is the most perfect  fusion of dance and music,calm and still where other choreographers would feel the need to let the cast show off. and always satisfying for its understated elegant, and apparently effortless,pure dance. 

None of the casts of the Dream are ideal. McRae is the only experienced Oberon on stage in this run but while I can't fault him technically, for me he is not Oberon,because he remains resolutely Steven McRae an exceptional technician but not much of a dance actor, which is strange after his exceptional Rudolf. Oberon's changing mood and his a story telling through dance and gesture fail to register clearly because they seem to be subsumed into balletic gesturing. Takada gave a fine account of the role of Titania but to me she was not as at home in the choreography as Hayward who made her debut the following day.  Hayward gave the audience an account of the role that was a close to Sibley's account as I have seen at a debut. Morera, the one experienced Titania in this run, is an exemplary Ashton dancer. All of the detail which Ashton put into the choreography including the voluptuous movements at the end of the reconciliation pas de deux are in her account of Titania and she makes all of the choreography look totally natural.

 

I think that we all have to understand that the Dream is an exceptionally difficult ballet to get absolutely right and the last few revivals have involved largely experienced casts. I have been told, by those that were there, that even the original cast of Sibley and Oberon took some time to get it looking absolutely right. I suspect that it is one of those ballets which the dancers playing Oberon and Titania are pleased to have got through their first performance. For that reason it is best to see debuts in the leading roles as work in progress rather than the finished product.

 

Campbell dancing Oberon for the first time to Morera's experienced Titania  was not completely in command of the choreography but he made much more of the story telling elements in his choreography his squeezing of the flower and the application of its juice was clear and was not lost in wafty balletic gestures  which I thought they were with McRae. I have no doubt that Campbell will have improved considerably by his second performance and if I had to choose between Campbell and McRae even at this point I would probably choose Campbell  because I find his assumption of the role more convincing than McRae's. Sambe made an extraordinary debut but while he seemed to be unfazed by the challenges which the choreography presents the role of Oberon is not just about dancing it is also about projecting character through dance and gesture with clear story telling through gesture. and it was here for me his inexperience was revealed. I think that it was this which made his performance  less effective than some of us may have anticipated. Zucchetti the first night Puck was less effective than I had expected him to be it was not that he did anything wrong but was as if he did not understand that some of his choreography was drawn from lines in the text and that his choreography including the gestures have to be crystal clear if they are to work. Yudes made an excellent debut as Puck with the cast headed by Hayward and Sambe .Acri looked as if he thought that he should be dancing Oberon in Campbell's place.

 

 

Bottom is an extraordinarily difficult role to get right. It is not all pointe work,pantomime and clowning, and it is a mistake to play it as if that is all there is to the role. There is the very last section of Bottom's choreography which is the balletic equivalent of the Bottom's Dream speech in the play.Here the dancer has to combine wonder at his experience during the night; feelings of profound loss and his inability to express anything about the experience and loss. It's what all those shrugging gestures are  about. Very few dancers apart from Alexander Grant have ever been able to express Bottom's thoughts after his night in the Athenian woods. Gartside with the first cast is probably as fine a Bottom as either Royal Ballet company can muster at present. But even he does not really achieve this completely. Howells appeared with the Hayward cast and was a surprisingly bland Bottom.Whitehead appeared  as Bottom with the Morera cast I have not seen him in the role before so I assume it is his debut. His account began well but petered out towards the end. His performance should probably be assessed as work in progress. I look forward to seeing him again.

 

I do wish the rude mechanicals were a little less doltish and cartoon like. I also wish that they would stay up stage  masking Bottom's transformation as that is their sole function. They now fail to fulfill this function moving down stage as if their mothers were sitting in the front stalls and leaving the transformation all too visible..

 

The eight dancers taking on the role of the lovers in the two casts are all very good and will no doubt improve considerably during the course of the short run. Ball is particularly amusing.

 

Setting to one side the argument as to whether or not Marguerite and Armand should ever have been revived there is something more fundamental to be asked about it and many other older ballets and that is whether or not dancing a ballet is simply a question of reproducing steps and body movement accurately or whether it calls for something more. According to the review in the Guardian Ashton towards the end of his life thought that the company's dancers were reluctant to dance his ballets full out for fear of being thought camp. If that was the case in the 1980's I wonder what he would have thought of some recent performances of Marguerite and Armand which have been either blandly correct or in Guillem's case totally unlike any Ashton ballet. you have ever seen.

 

Marguerite and Armand is as much a portrait of the original cast as it is the story of Marguerite Gautier. Faced with the choice of seeing this work danced with such great care that it is reduced to a series of tableaux vivants with beautiful poses but no real energy let alone pent up passion and desperation or one that is full of dynamism,fervour with the occasional slight technical error  I know which version I want to see.

 

I  want the vehicle that goes rather than one which stops and starts in a way which obliterate's Ashton's dynamics and is little more than the performance of classroom steps.This is one of those ballets which needs to succeed as a piece of theatre with dancers far more concerned with telling the story and displaying the emotions locked inside the choreography than anything else. It's one of those ballets in which ideally the dancers are no longer concerned with what they have learned in the rehearsal room, forget about fixating on the steps,and simply get on and dance the ballet.

 

Of the three casts on offer I am afraid that I found the Bonelli Ferri cast the least compelling. Perhaps if you are a fully committed Ferri fan you will discern far more in this cast's performance than I was able to find in it.I was never caught up in anything except noticing how limited Ferri's technical armoury now is. Lots of being carried about like a piece of precious porcelain and flailing arms which was what I was most aware of with this cast unfortunately they do not add up to a gripping performance of the work.It was far too static looking and the choreography did not work for me. Yanowsky and Bolle seemed considerably less concerned with producing a series of beautiful static stage pictures than Ferri and Bonelli were. I found their performance effective  because although Bolle is no actor his height and strength give Yanowsky the freedom to dance her role with great emotional abandon. I liked the Osipova, Shyklarov far more than I had anticipated I would and I have no doubt that their second performance will be even better.She has got her performance near pitch perfect he could do with being a little more operatic in approach. 

 

It seems to me that modern performance practice which is more concerned with freeze framing effects and not making mistakes than it is with the dynamics of ballet has robbed Margueritte and Armand of a great deal of its theatrical effectiveness. I asked myself why so often there is so little feeling of urgency in these performances and I have come to the conclusion that the lack of urgency and passion in  ballet is largely attributable to the modern dynamics of performance in which the flow of movement is not simply held almost imperceptibly and the dancers always seem to be moving, but one in which  the brakes are slammed on at regular intervals and the action is freeze  framed to capture a beautiful pose. It lacks passion because it lacks the feeling of the inevitability of the movement. If you stop the movement it suggests that the relationship between the dancer's movements and the music are not inevitable and that  there are other choices which could have been made as far as the choreography is concerned. If the movement does not feel inevitable then the  impact is lost and the work fails as theatre.

Edited June 7, 2017 by FLOSS

[alison]

Thank you, FLOSS.  You've managed to put your finger on a lot of the things which had been nagging at me.  But is Morera that experienced a Titania?  I thought she only made her debut in the previous run.

 

And I'd forgotten to do my usual moan about the Rude Mechanicals.  They really really need to stay upstage to mask the transformation, which has been painfully obvious even from the front amphitheatre so far.  This is not their chance to show off.

[capybara]

I should start by saying that I have always LOVED all three ballets in this Triple Bill so this all too short run is blissful territory for me. I think that I had better post separately for each ballet otherwise I shall risk going on and on and on...........

 

In the first cast, Steven McRae is technically faultless as Oberon but I cannot quite ‘get with’ his characterisation. To me, Oberon’s anger at the beginning felt rather like a hangover from Rudolf in Mayerling. Akane Takada continued to surprise me as she offered a beautifully danced and convincingly acted, really feisty Titania. My – how Akane seems to have grown before our very eyes since becoming a Principal. She seems to have benefited greatly from being this season’s ‘super-sub’ and is exhibiting considerable versatility. In this cast, Valentino Zucchetti was again a buoyant Puck.

 

Francesca Hayward (who I love, of course) was a delightful, light Titania but her portrayal was not a vivid as I expected it to be. Maybe her excellent Oberon (Marcellino Sambe) and this cast’s stunning aerial Puck (David Yudes) were so dominant that her qualities were somewhat diminished alongside them? But, hey, this debut line-up was a real joy overall and it was their first performance – of many, one hopes.

 

Laura Morera was a spirited Titania alongside Alexander Campbell (another debutante) and they played well together. Laura bent in true Ashtonian style and phrased her dancing pleasingly, but she lacked the fairy-like, youthfulness of the other Titanias. Alex always brings a winning sincerity to the stage and he tried hard to rule his kingdom. However, his physique and the choreography do not seem to be a good match and his dancing felt a bit laboured. Luca Acri was another fine, new Puck who, at times, appeared more in charge than his Oberon.

 

The quartet of lovers is exceptionally well-cast. Everyone – Ball/Calvert; Mock/Mendizabal and Edmonds/Harrison, Cowley/Emerton – judges the comedy deliciously.  Bottom is probably less easy to ‘get right’ and I feel the need to experience all three dancers again before commenting. It is always good to see the line-up of mainly young dancers as rustics but, once again, they seem to ham it up too much.

 

Three more shows to go – one for each cast – lovely   

[penelopesimpson]

1 hour ago, alison said:

BTW, some tickets have come online for Saturday's performance.

Thank you again, Alison.  Have nabbed one!

[loveclassics]

4 hours ago, alison said:

Thank you, FLOSS.  You've managed to put your finger on a lot of the things which had been nagging at me.  But is Morera that experienced a Titania?  I thought she only made her debut in the previous run.

 

And I'd forgotten to do my usual moan about the Rude Mechanicals.  They really really need to stay upstage to mask the transformation, which has been painfully obvious even from the front amphitheatre so far.  This is not their chance to show off.

I was sitting a bit further right than usual and I thought the transformation far too obvious - I'm sure it was better disguised in the past.  I could clearly see Bottom actively helping Puck which was most distracting.

 

Also the steps up the side of the tree were clearly visible.  Yes, we all know there must be steps but couldn't they be better hidden?

 

Incidentally, did I read on another thread that this bill is being made into a DVD or did I just dream it?

 

Linda

 

[loveclassics]

5 hours ago, alison said:

BTW, some tickets have come online for Saturday's performance.

Thanks so much for flagging this, Alison.  Have now snapped up a good seat and so I get to see another cast.  I don't usually go to more than one performance of each bill but this is irresistible!

 

Linda

[ninamargaret]

1 hour ago, loveclassics said:

I was sitting a bit further right than usual and I thought the transformation far too obvious - I'm sure it was better disguised in the past.  I could clearly see Bottom actively helping Puck which was most distracting.

 

Also the steps up the side of the tree were clearly visible.  Yes, we all know there must be steps but couldn't they be better hidden?

 

Incidentally, did I read on another thread that this bill is being made into a DVD or did I just dream it?

 

Linda

 

Yes, I noticed the very obvious putting on of Bottom's head. Quite honestly, it would have disgraced the most amateur performance - surely they can manage it better? I thought it may have been particularly noticeable because of my side  S/C seat but apparently not. Must say it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the performance, but a pity.

[ninamargaret]

On 2017-6-6 at 00:06, Mary said:

Back from another wonderful evening at this best of triple bills, and reading the reviews, I was struck by Anna Winter's description of Nunez in SV that 'some secret sublime knowledge seems to inhere within her, shaping the profound sensitivity of her phrasing'

 

Exactly.

Together with Muntagirov whose equally sublime elegance takes on a new meaning in this piece, it must be my ballet performance of the year.

 

Is this the same  Anna Winter from Exeunt who wrote so offensively a while ago?