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Royal Ballet: The Two Pigeons, Monotones I & II, November 2015 & Rhapsody January 2016


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I agree with Jennings that Cuthbertson was less than ideal in the young girl role.

 

Who would you have cast, MAB? I think that that role may have been a more difficult call for the RB than that of the Gypsy Girl.

 

I would have liked to have seen both Yasmine Naghdi and Francesca Hayward given a go as The Young Girl.

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Indeed- not for the first time I had mis read the casting because of ROH's odd headlining.

 

On the bright side, looking forward to seeing Alexander Campbell as the young man.I wonder whether anyone has seen him in that role before? ?

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Indeed- not for the first time I had mis read the casting because of ROH's odd headlining.

 

On the bright side, looking forward to seeing Alexander Campbell as the young man.I wonder whether anyone has seen him in that role before? ?

 

I believe it is Alex' debut in role on 5th December.  He did not perform the role with BRB.

 

And yes, I am there on 5th December in case anyone hadn't realised!

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Thought you might be, Janet.

 

 

I imagine Campbell would be ideal in that role but also it is good to have such  varied casts for a short run,- even though not everyone we admire might be dancing. I look forward to James Hay as well, and  I think Takada and Choe will also be well worth seeing as the Young Girl.

 

Do agree that Hayward and Naghdi would have been a treat. Maybe next year. They must have spent money on this revival so perhaps that will encourage a repeat.

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I enjoyed the first night cast of Two Pigeons.I am sufficiently familiar with the ballet to know that the role of the Young Girl bookends the ballet. I knew that I wasn't going to see a dancer remotely resembling Seymour in the role of the Young Girl,or for that matter resembling Nichola Katrack or Margaret Barbieri, but I was surprised by the way that Morera's Gypsy dominated the ballet.However good a dancer is as the Gypsy you usually come away remembering the last pas de deux.Although there was a contrast between Cuthbertson and Morera it was not as pronounced as I recall it being in the past.It is a contrast that I have found lacking in recent BRB revivals as well.There should be a real difference between the Girl and Gypsy. The Girl soft and lyrical, not limp or small scale in her movements,the Gypsy a shimmering,alluring technician.Although I think that the first cast managed a greater contrast between the two roles than Salenko and Kaneko did somehow Cuthbertson did not make as much impact in the final pas de deux as she should have done.Did Luke Jennings identify the problem?

 

In his review published in the Observer 22nd November 2015 Luke Jennings talked about Cuthbertson's performance lacking Seymour's "soft backed velocity of an Ashton dancer".He also says "Rather than dancing through the music, she dances on it,showing us not a skein of movement, but a series of cut glass positions". Interestingly in her book Frederick Ashton's Ballets - Style, Performance, Choreography Geraldine Morris attributes a significant part of the problem of performing Ashton's works in the appropriate style to the almost universal adoption of Vaganova training which she says claims to teach how steps should be performed in every ballet and which seems to encourage movement from pose to pose rather than a flow of movement.

 

It will be interesting to see how the other pre Christmas casts manage with the choreography.Let us hope that ticket sales pick up. If revivals are based solely on ticket sales Acosta's Carmen is more likely to be revived in future seasons than Pigeons and that would be a great loss. As far as the designs are concerned I should just like to remind everyone that so far Ashton redesigns have not been a great success and have done more harm than good.

 

Good ballet stage design is far from easy and as so many choreographers make abstract works opting for designs that are either a variation of the Balanchine uniform or knickers and vests few people have much experience of producing designs that establish time and place or create a mood.Both the redesign of Les Rendezvous and Daphnis and Chloe were disasters. As to the choice of colours in sets and costumes in Pigeons I have no problem with the bright colours of the Gypsies clothes.They are not intended to be anything other than stage Gypsies and the designs set them apart from the "nice" girls who are the Young Girl's friends whose clothes in pastel shades tell you that they belong to the safe world of the known,while the bright clothes of the Gypsies sets them apart as excitingly different.Change the designs and the colour palette and although you have not altered a single step of the choreography you will have changed the ballet for good or ill. I, for one,am prepared to accept that Ashton knew what he was doing.If he had been dissatisfied with the designs he would have replaced the original designs with some new ones. It was performed frequently enough in his lifetime to have made it a viable option.

Edited by FLOSS
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I knew that I wasn't going to see a dancer remotely resembling Seymour in the role of the Young Girl,or for that matter resembling Nichola Katrack or Margaret Barbieri, but I was surprised by the way that Morera's Gypsy dominated the ballet.However good a dancer is as the Gypsy you usually come away remembering the last pas de deux. [...] There should be a real difference between the Girl and Gypsy. The Girl soft and lyrical, not limp or small scale in her movements,the Gypsy a shimmering,alluring technician.Although I think that the first cast managed a greater contrast between the two roles than Salenko and Kaneko did [...]

 

That's interesting, Floss, because - not having seen the first cast as yet - my impression of the second cast was of Kaneko dominating it.  She certainly made the greatest impression on me.

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I (just about!) recall the Royal Ballet School performance in 1995 when Laura Morera similarly dominated Mayuko Maeda.

 

From a greater distance than I saw Morera last week, I also found the wonderful Fumi Kaneko totally pre-eminent as the Gypsy Girl. It will indeed be interesting to see what happens with further casts.

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Would just like to echo others in saying how incredibly informative your posts are, FLOSS. I am not a dancer and know nothing about ballet except that I enjoy watching it. However, as an academic I know expertise when I see it and that's why I come to this forum, to learn.

 

I so wish I could go and see this, to boost those ticket sales, but the prices remain too high for me even in the Amphitheatre.

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The Girl  soft and lyrical, not limp or small scale in her movements,the Gypsy a shimmering,alluring technician.

 

Interesting that Barbieri did both roles, with equal success!

 

A couple of footnotes:

 

1. Gail (Thomas) Monahan has just posted on Twitter that originally all the Gypsies (men and women) wore black wigs.

 

2. I keep reading that Christopher Gable danced the Young Man at the premiere because the planned first cast, Donald Britton, was injured at the dress rehearsal - but, assuming they mean THE dress rehearsal, i.e. the public rehearsal the day before the first night -  I was there and not only did Gable do the whole thing, from curtain up, but according to the notes I made at the time this wasn't a surprise - we already knew that Britton wouldn't appear as he had dropped out several days earlier, ill rather than injured. Anyone else remember it differently?

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I agree that it is surprising to find a dancer who was equally good in both roles but Barbieri always seemed to be a dancer with an exceptionally wide range.She was one of my favourite Giselles and had perfect command of the Romantic style. I don't think that I ever saw her give a bad performance in anything and she gave some very good accounts of roles that you would not readily associate her with such as Pineapple Poll. Peter Wright was very lucky to have her in his company and it always seemed to me that MacMillan was a complete idiot not to take her into the Covent Garden company.The company would have had a real ballerina when it needed one at the beginning of the eighties and we would not have had Collier in quite so many ballerina roles to which she was not entirely suited.Collier never convinced me in Swan Lake. I always wondered how a very nice woman who had spluttered "But she's a soubrette", when Park was programmed to dance Swan Lake, would have reacted to the prospect of Collier's Odette/Odile.

 

I went to the Covent Garden matinee at which Jeffries and Barbieri made their debuts in Romeo and Juliet.I think that the audience was very happy with the performances they gave.I know that everyone where I was sitting was surprised at the end of the second interval to pick up the rumour that only Jeffries was going to join the main company. It was suggested that MacMillan had said that Barbieri would never dance the role again, As she never did dance it again I assume that there was some truth to the rumour.

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I finally got round to reading Luke Jennings' review and noticed this comment in the section on Monotones:

 

"While all six dancers acquit themselves impressively, with only momentary wobbles reminding us how little real ballet the company has performed this year, Marianela Nunez's starry femininity elevates the piece to the realm of the sublime." 

 

Just wondering what exactly he means by "real ballet," but this does reinforce what several people have been saying about the inadvisability of trying to dance the Ashton repertoire without enough preparation.

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I agree that it is surprising to find a dancer who was equally good in both roles but Barbieri always seemed to be a dancer with an exceptionally wide range.She was one of my favourite Giselles and had perfect command of the Romantic style. I don't think that I ever saw her give a bad performance in anything and she gave some very good accounts of roles that you would not readily associate her with such as Pineapple Poll. Peter Wright was very lucky to have her in his company and it always seemed to me that MacMillan was a complete idiot not to take her into the Covent Garden company.The company would have had a real ballerina when it needed one at the beginning of the eighties and we would not have had Collier in quite so many ballerina roles to which she was not entirely suited.Collier never convinced me in Swan Lake. I always wondered how a very nice woman who had spluttered "But she's a soubrette", when Park was programmed to dance Swan Lake, would have reacted to the prospect of Collier's Odette/Odile.

 

 

I have to say that Collier totally convinced me in Swan Lake! The purity of her dancing made her a perfect and achingly vulnerable Odette but she still brought glitter and menace to Odile. But I do agree that Barbieri was an exceptional dancer.

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I am a bit puzzled about "momentary wobbles". I sat in 3rd row Orchestra Stalls on Opening Night, with my eyes "glued" on the dancers, and at no point did I see any wobbles in Monotones 1 (danced by Maguire/Naghdi/Dyer). Monotones 2 was not as securely danced by the males (Watson/Hristov). Jennings does not say which cast he saw. There are two casts. 

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With regard to Park's performance in Swan Lake, she held out against dancing it for years.  It would be interesting to know what pressures were brought to bear upon her to change her mind.  I also admired Collier in Swan Lake, she had a gentle innocence as Odette, I'll always consider her a terrific all-rounder.  Surely the weak link in the eighties wasn't Park or Collier but Porter?

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I am a bit puzzled about "momentary wobbles". I sat in 3rd row Orchestra Stalls on Opening Night, with my eyes "glued" on the dancers, and at no point did I see any wobbles in Monotones 1 (danced by Maguire/Naghdi/Dyer). Monotones 2 was not as securely danced by the males (Watson/Hristov). Jennings does not say which cast he saw. There are two casts. 

He was at the first night and by mentioning Nunez he must be referring to this. I totally agree with you about Monotones 1. 

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I think that when Luke Jennings refers to the company not dancing much "real ballet" in 2015 he is talking about the dance works that it has performed that do not use the vocabulary of classical ballet and works in which only a limited number of the dancers perform more than a few classical steps.Works like Untouchable,Woolf Works,Raven Girl, The Age of, Anxiety and pieces like Carmen where the work for the corps was mainly cabaret style dancing are included and he may even be referring to The Song of the Earth and Romeo and Juliet as neither provides the bulk of the company with an opportunity to dance using classical vocabulary.I have managed to forget Connectome, i did not go to the recent revival,but I don't recall that it was exactly a classically based work.

 

 

Some years ago the company danced a full length MacMillan work,I think it was Manon, followed by a mixed bill which included his ballet Concerto.Several critics expressed surprise that Concerto looked ragged because the company had, so recently, been dancing another MacMillan ballet. They seemed to have lost sight of the fact that Concerto was created to identify dancers whose technique was not up to par and that performing a work in which the dancer is not exposed and can get away with technical deficiencies by being a "good actor" does not guarantee that technique will be maintained at an appropriate level. Performance of the nineteenth century classics and much of the Ashton repertory guarantee that technical standards are maintained because they expose the dancer;a ballet like Les Rendezvous provides no shelter for a dancer with sloppy technique.

 

We need to remember that de Valois did not acquire five nineteenth century classical ballets because she wanted to create a museum company or because she thought that the three act ballet represented the highest form of choreographic creation. She acquired them to ensure that her dancers had the requisite technical skills to dance anything.I think that Mr Jennings may be suggesting that the current AD may have lost sight of this by scheduling so much non classical work and that the dancers' technique is suffering as a result.

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Just to make it clear I am not saying that all dance actors are sloppy dancers. I thought that Seymour,Conley,Tait,Benjamin,Wall and Jeffries were great dance actors but they were all scrupulous as dancers. They never short changed the audience when it came to dancing the choreography as set by the choreographer. They none of them danced untidily or gave the audience edited highlights of the choreography which is not something that can be said of every "good actor" who performs or has performed at Covent Garden. Just to make it clear the list is not intended to be exhaustive.

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He was at the first night and by mentioning Nunez he must be referring to this. I totally agree with you about Monotones 1.

 

So do I. In my brief review above, I mentioned that I thought M1 was better danced than M2. I was also within very good view and I didn't notice any wobbles either. But then, Jennings and I often don't see the same things....

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Re wobbles, having been to see the same M1,2 casts at the general the day before, I was somewhat on the look out during the first night. From where I was sitting (side amphi, so looking down and slightly at an angle) I saw wobbles. But these were of a kind which may not have been so obvious from front on, ie stalls. By the way a good example of how M2 can go (though a murky video) is on YouTube:-

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1iFPJdnFSo

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With regard to Park's performance in Swan Lake, she held out against dancing it for years.  It would be interesting to know what pressures were brought to bear upon her to change her mind.

Well she said, I believe, that it was to stop people constantly asking her why she'd never done it!

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