Pulcinella

I was at the encore screening this afternoon and all three ballets were a lot darker than when I saw a live performance. The backdrop of Danses Concertantes couldn't be seen at all. Requiem, for which the lighting is a lot brighter was quite dark at times. Even one of the staff mentioned it to me on the way out.

This ticket has now been returned to the Box office.

I have one ticket I can no longer use in the Amphitheatre, price £49. I will return this to the box office tomorrow if no one asks after it.

I found it interesting that this piece used the Welsh spelling of Prelude. I know Bracewell is Welsh but I don't think he speaks Welsh. I wonder what the reasoning was.

Carlos mentioned at the season launch yesterday that he hoped to programme some more Ashton works in the future, including some lesser known ones, as part of the Frederick Ashton Foundation's international festival 2024-2028. So here's hoping!

Yes it is. It's correct on the brochure.

The dates for booking for the Birmingham performances are BRB Dancers' Circle: 6 Feb, Gold and Silver BRB Friends: 9 Feb, Bronze BRB Friends: 13 Feb and Public booking: 21 Feb. All at 11am. At the season launch at the Hippodrome this afternoon we were treated to a truncated clog dance by Rory McKay in full costume and makeup as Widow Simone. The season brochure has Beatrice Parma and Lachlan Monaghan on the cover as Lise and Colas so that is one possible cast.

I have one SCS ticket which I can longer use priced at £5.

The new season announcement will be on 1st Feb. There is an event for Friends early afternoon that day and then there will be a general/press announcement to follow.

I seem to remember that Sir Peter Wright's production for Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet/BRB had a pas de quatre in Act 1 but without checking my cast lists I can't be certain.

Each volume has 250 pages and is priced at £200. The recent biography of Balanchine, Mr. B, has 784 pages and is £35. I assume the price is having to account for all the time it took to do the research for the book, which I imagine was considerable.

The only proviso I would say about booking any cast for BRB (the exception being Cojocaru in London, injury excepted) is that the cast may well change from that announced as I found out to my cost for the Nutcracker performances.

At the very least surely they could say Cast 1 and Cast 2 so that people could book for different casts.

Apologies for putting reviews of these two companies together but I couldn't see any other threads for them and having seen them within two days of each other it made sense to review them together. Living in Mid Wales, as I now do, we don't get very much live ballet in the area so it's a little irritating to have the two companies performing so close together. First was Ballet Theatre UK at the Wyeside Arts Centre in Builth Wells. They were performing The Wizard of Oz with choreography by their director Christopher Moore with a cast of twelve (8 female and 4 male). The company apparently has twenty dancers but the stage at the Wyeside must be one of the smallest they perform on, if you're sitting in the front row you can literally touch the dancers. There was no programme or cast list so I was only able to identify some of the dancers from their website. All the dancers were good but I particularly liked those dancing Dorothy, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Cowardly Lion. I have great admiration for this company coping with one night stands on all sorts of stages and always try to see them when I can. Two nights later it was travel in the opposite direction to the Hafren Theatre in Newtown to see Ballet Cymru in Roald Dahl's Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs with choreography by Dariusr James and Amy Doughty. In a way this company is even smaller the Ballet Theatre UK as they only have eight dancers many of whom have to double up roles. For this ballet one of the dancers, Robbie Moorcroft acted as a narrator and had a BSL signer, Liz May, alongside him. Based on Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes this was the well known stories with a twist. Kotone Sugiyama was a feisty and unusual Red Riding Hood. Effective use is made of projections for the scenery with three "houses" for the Three Little Pigs. There was an appreciative and enthusiastic audience with a lot of children who were all well behaved.

Thanks Emeralds, I'm hoping to be able to change my ticket for the evening performance. Luckily my daughter lives in B'ham so I will be able to stay with her if I can change it. The 9th matinee seems to be sold out.