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Royal Ballet in Hull 16th September 2017


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ROYAL BALLET MAKES FIRST APPEARANCE IN HULL FOR 30 YEARS

 

  • THE ROYAL BALLET TAKE’S OVER HULL FOR A DAY OF DANCE ACTIVITIES INSPIRED BY SWAN LAKE

 

  • HULL PUTS ITS OWN DANCE TALENT CENTRE STAGE

 

Hull’s New Theatre will re-open following a £16m transformation with a visit by The Royal Ballet, led by its Hull-born director, Kevin O’Hare, as a highlight of Hull UK City of Culture 2017, on Saturday 16 September

 

The Royal Ballet’s visit will celebrate Hull’s extraordinary contribution to dance and ballet with a day of Swan Lake inspired citywide activities and a gala evening at the New Theatre, specially curated by Kevin O’Hare bringing together artists from Hull with Royal Ballet Principals and Soloists. Throughout the day there will be happenings and a community project entitled Take Flight, a dance project inspired by flight. Choreographed with and performed by members of The Royal Ballet and 5 local dance groups, Take Flight will culminate in a Chain of Cygnets as over 100 dancers and members of the community perform throughout the city reimaging the famous cygnet pas de quatre from Swan Lake.

 

Joining The Royal Ballet on stage will be some of the exciting dance talent emerging in the city today as well as two of Hull’s own stars, Xander Parish, Soloist with The Mariinksy Ballet, and Joseph Caley, Principal with Birmingham Royal Ballet.

 

Hull has been the cradle of development of an extraordinary number of ballet and dance stars including Kevin O’Hare himself. The Skelton Hooper School of Dance, led by Hull-born Vanessa Hooper, who performed with The Royal Ballet, has discovered more talented ballet dancers than any other in the UK. Among these, 24 of its pupils have won places at the Royal Ballet School; Xander Parish is the first ever Briton to dance with Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet, and his sister, Demelza, is currently an artist with The Royal Ballet. 

 

Kevin O'Hare, Director of The Royal Ballet, said: "I am immensely proud of my roots in Hull, and what has been achieved so far in Hull’s year as UK City of Culture. For me this opportunity to return to my home city, for the company to take to the stage in the magnificent setting of Hull’s refurbished New Theatre and to create new links with the young talent of Hull is unique and special for all of us.”

 

 

Ends

 

 
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It is very disappointing to me that they have neglected to mention Ashley Dixon, a leading soloist with Northern Ballet and Neil Westmoreland who is ex-ENB, Northern Ballet and New Adventures, with whom he is still associated.

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I would have hoped the Royal Ballet could spend more than ONE day in Hull - why not do a run of something.  It is about time our own home grown company toured the UK instead of going abroad every summer (yes I know it makes more £ but the UK funds them too).

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I would have hoped the Royal Ballet could spend more than ONE day in Hull - why not do a run of something.  It is about time our own home grown company toured the UK instead of going abroad every summer (yes I know it makes more £ but the UK funds them too).

 

As far as I know the RB's annual international Tour is sponsored by private individuals, corporations,... as well as the host country. I don't think the UK has funds it would be willing to direct towards funding a national RB tour when there is already ENB, BRB, NB touring UK; and there would be an outcry that public money is spend on the RB touring the UK I think. 

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That is sadly true. It is about economics. I am sure we all wish they still  had a touring 'wing' and could regularly appear all round the country but in these days that is probably not going to happen.

 

Personally I was delighted to see the Hull date- as I have family near there who can't travel and rarely can get to any ballet.

Thanks Kevin. Maybe if it is a big succcess ways and means can be found for more such events.

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We all need to remember that BRB is the latest incarnation of the Royal Ballet Touring Company and it is not as financially secure as it might be. While it might be nice for the Covent Garden company to go on tour in Britain if it did so it would be in direct competition with those companies whose remit is to tour and whose grant reflects this. I fear that the result would be that one or other of the touring companies would find it even more difficult to cope financially than they do at present and would probably go to the wall. Wayne Eagling made it clear that ENB's London performances are needed to cover the losses it sustains on tour. Can you imagine the outcry, if as the result of the RB going on tour the ENB and BRB found that their audiences had disappeared and one of them folded? When Muntagirov joined the RB there were headlines about the company "poaching" him from the ENB  so you can imagine the sort of headlines and fall out there would be if ENB or BRB were to lose audiences and fold, even if this were to happen some years after the RB tour.

 

My understanding is that the RB's international tours are supported by sponsorship.As the RB  does not receive a subsidy for touring in Britain it would either need to obtain sponsorship for the tour, or charge outrageous prices to cover its costs. I think that it would be safe to assume that it might not find sponsorship and that if it were to charge the sort of prices that would cover its costs there would be outrage, resentment and criticism which I think means that the tickets would not be outrageously expensive.As a result the tour would lose a lot of money. I think that it is safe to assume that the losses would be covered by higher ticket prices at Covent Garden. It seems to me, being realistic, that such a tour could easily produce a lose, lose result for the company and ballet audiences across Britain.

.

Edited by FLOSS
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  • 4 months later...
21 minutes ago, Pulcinella said:

Website appears to have crashed and got a message when I tried to phone that the performance is sold out.

Yes, same with me. And I was trying to get a ticket for my sister-in-law who is local to Hull and used to run a cub pack of which a certain young Xander Parish was a member. I'll be keeping looking for 2 or 3 tickets.

Edited by MargaretN7
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24 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

My friend managed, eventually, to get through on the telephone around 11 and was told the tickets had sold out by 10:07 even though the website was down.

 

Wow!

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2 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

My friend managed, eventually, to get through on the telephone around 11 and was told the tickets had sold out by 10:07 even though the website was down.

 

Maybe a number of the tickets have been set aside for organisations in Hull. In which case, fair enough - the show should be for them. I just hope that agencies haven't hoovered them up.

Edited by capybara
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Well it does seem strange that they sold out so quickly with the website not being available.  If it had been stated that a limited number of tickets would be available to the general public that may have been a better way of doing it.

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And the hull2017 website can't cope with trying to book for the live screening today either.

 

Edit added later - But persevere and eventually after a number of "sorry technical problems" messages along the way can get through.

Although I'll still be trying for returns to get at least one ticket for my sister-in-law inside the theatre.

Edited by MargaretN7
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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Given that there was a  live relay to an outdoor venue in Hull, I don't understand why the ROH didn't also offer the opportunity for watching the gala online.

 

There is some interesting footage about individual dancers from Hull on the ROH's Facebook page and several Facebook posts of extracts from the Gala (e.g. Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude; Swan Lake pas de deux). Today's Sunday Times also has a photo of Yasmine Naghdi and Xander Parish in the Sylvia pas de deux.

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