RB The Illustrated 'Farewell'/The Wind/Untouchable: November 2017

[capybara]

Just back from the General Rehearsal. Inappropriate to comment until after the opening night but anyone sitting near the stage in the Stalls Circle or Stalls needs to be warned that the wind (and smoke effects) reach those parts of the House - and the wind is cold.

[penelopesimpson]

oh dear!  Will I need smoke goggles?!

[Bruce Wall]

Oh, dear ... and with so many people being ill now already as it is.  

Edited November 3, 2017 by Bruce Wall

[ninamargaret]

And I'm right on the end of the Stalls Circle!Will have to dress for the occasion!

[zxDaveM]

8 hours ago, capybara said:

Just back from the General Rehearsal. Inappropriate to comment until after the opening night but anyone sitting near the stage in the Stalls Circle or Stalls needs to be warned that the wind (and smoke effects) reach those parts of the House - and the wind is cold.

 

on a genius level where Einstein is 10 and Paddy McGinty's goat is 1, this sounds like a -2

What's a cold wind going to do to dancers' leg muscles/joints!

[alison]

I wondered that ...

[capybara]

7 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

What's a cold wind going to do to dancers' leg muscles/joints!

 

When Edward Watson was in the thick of the sideways gale at the beginning, I thought that, for that very reason, the wind had to be warm. But then the machines turned and it was surprisingly chilly - hence my alert!

[penelopesimpson]

Roll in Friday!  I shall have a ballet newbie with me.  Better bring the opera glasses!

[ninamargaret]

4 hours ago, penelopesimpson said:

Roll in Friday!  I shall have a ballet newbie with me.  Better bring the opera glasses!

see you there - perhaps we can share a blanket of things get bad!

[penelopesimpson]

Where are you sitting or, more to the point, drinking?

[alison]

I'd be tempted to borrow one of those nice red throws they have on the amphi terrace, except that I haven't seen them this autumn

[penelopesimpson]

Alison, they were out when I saw Alice the second week of last month

[alison]

Oh, well they haven't been for the MacMillan programmes I've been to.  Good to know they haven't entirely disappeared.

[cackles]

The wind could be felt in the amphi! I was in row D and it got quite chilly.

[alison]

Thanks for the warning!  I have a feeling I may be in E for one of these, so will dress accordingly.  Still amazed that they would use something that cold for dancers - I wonder if the wind machine was malfunctioning?

[bridiem]

I loved The Illustrated 'Farewell'! Absolutely beautiful. So many dance styles in evidence: ballet, contemporary, bits of ballroom, bits of jazz, almost court dancing a few times; and some silence. it could have been a mess, but it was a delight. It made me think of Balanchine, in the sense that he is often said to make the music visible in dance; that's exactly what Tharp does here. The dancers were magnificent, especially Sarah Lamb (wonderful to see her back, and the other dancers all applauded her at the curtain calls, which was very touching), Steven McRae (leaping and bounding), Mayara Magri and Joseph Sissens (both so expressive). A work that will repay multiple viewings.

 

The Wind: contrary to all my expectations I loved this too. Magnificent designs, strange and powerful story-telling, brilliant performances from Osipova, Watson, Soares et al. Way over the top, bonkers but brilliant, it will live long in the memory.

 

Untouchable: I am a massive fan of Hofesh Shechter, but I found this, unbelievably, totally boring. Even more so than at its première when it at least had the virtue of novelty. Really, really disappointing. Nothing happens except a lot of shuffling around in muddy brown groupings to dull music (and not even loud!). I don't know what came over him when he created this because it displays nothing of his usual energy or imagination. The dancers do very well, but I don't think they suit his choreography (or vice versa) - they're too light and they carry their weight too high. I think this is a work that should now be put to bed, and sadly perhaps a collaboration that should not be tried again.

[JohnS]

I agree with much of what Bridiem says.  The Illustrated Farewell is wonderfully uplifting and I would recommend the ROH Insight which is still available.  The opening with Steven flying in from the wings with the music starting at the apex of his jump sets the standard for a magical 30 minutes.  Brilliant dancing from everyone.  I trust Koen Kessels was on stage ready for the opening night.

 

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/watch-live-royal-ballet-rehearsals-for-twyla-tharps-the-illustrated-farewell-on-25-october-2017

 

I was not as taken with The Wind but would like very much to see it again.  I just wondered if the billowing materials were too prominent and detracted from the dancing?  I'm also not greatly taken with the cowboy culture but I did very much like the major characters.  I see there's an Insight rehearsal tonight with Ed and Francesca and others which I'm sure will be well worth catching.

 

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/watch-live-royal-ballet-rehearsals-for-the-wind-on-7-november-2017

 

For the Shechter, I'd found a second performance last time more rewarding than the first performance as I quite liked some of the organic movement but I'm afraid I wasn't impressed this time - dark, dull and relentlessly oppressive.  I'd hoped the Nigel Farage dirge would have been replaced but unfortunately not.

[annamk]

I enjoyed The Illustrated Farewell. The first half of the pdd for McRae/Lamb was terrifically exciting with plenty of opportunity for them to show off their tricks. The second part had to be quieter, if nothing else to give them a chance to recover, but I felt it flagged (I had an involuntary shopping list moment) and the transition to the original piece might have worked better if other dancers had been introduced earlier. I thought the second part showed off the RB dancers very well, they looked fabulous dancing the interesting Tharp choreography - I agree that Sissens and Magri stood out although I was impressed with the other five soloists too. At times there was so much going on on stage it was sometimes difficult to know where to look. 

 

The Wind - well on the positive side the music was evocative , the staging and lighting created some memorable images but the choreography could have been made by a child. What a waste of talented dancers especially Osipova thrashing around at the end for far too long. The characters were caricatures none more so than Tom Whitehead strutting around as Wirt Roddy which brings me neatly by biggest issue - why oh why, in this day and age, do male choreographers think it's still ok to depict abuse against women on stage ? 

Edited November 7, 2017 by annamk
typo

[penelopesimpson]

... because it happens?

 

Hot anticipation for Friday and thanks to everyone for their reviews.  Would someone tell me the running order please.

Edited November 7, 2017 by penelopesimpson

[penelopesimpson]

Fabulous to see its a sellout and what a bargain for us.  I have a top price seat and it was £50.  You couldn't sit in the gods of a West End show for that (well, just about) and yet we get three ballets, a cornucopia of brilliant dancers, and orchestra and The Opera House.  ROH should shout about it more.

[JohnS]

Penelope

The running Order is The Illustrated Farewell; The Wind; Untouchable.  Each ballet is just over 30 minutes and the two intervals are each 30 minutes.

Looking forward to your review after Friday.

[Josephine]

I agree with bridiem, JohnS and annamk on The Illustrated 'Farewell'. It's uplifting and energizing, and beguiling in its choreographic invention. For me personally McRae's bravura style was a little too dominating for the flow of the work. But I look forward to a second viewing.

 

I agree with annamk on The Wind. High hopes for this were quickly dashed despite deeply committed performances. I didn't mind the 'caricatures' as it seemed that the stock type characters were all part of the intention to create the effect of a silent movie onstage. I did mind the extravagant set and effects which for me detracted from the dancing far too much (as JohnS says) and also exposed the many inadequacies in the choreography and concept. In dance terms it felt like a work still very much in progress.

 

I assume that the woman in danger scenario was derived from the silent movie source or novel. I haven't read programme notes. But I agree absolutely with annamk's last sentence. My heart sank as this scene unfolded. If Pita's main aim was to transform a silent movie into dance there is a wealth of choice and he could easily have found one with a different dramatic focus.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Josephine

[BMC]

For me this was very much a curate's egg evening and I suspect one one of those that when I look back at the cast list I will be floundering around a bit trying to recall.  Sounds as though I am going to be in the minority by not liking Illustrated Farewell. I'm afraid I had rather a lot of shopping list moments - though it was very well danced, lovely to see Sarah's return so warmly welcomed and I kept noticing Joseph Sissens and Anna Rose. Stephen McCrea of course danced fantastically but I did wonder how some of those sassier moves might look on a dancer with a different personality. Anyway, for me, just a bit disappointing but will still look forward to second viewing later this week which, as we all know, can suddenly make you see things in a different light.

 

I find myself 75% in agreement on bridiem's 'bonkers but brilliant' view of The Wind - think I would go for 'bonkers but enjoyable' although I had had quite enough of the wind by the end! It took me back to a recent discussion on this site about visuals - there was certainly some very arresting stage imagery - suspect Osipova and her bridal veil will long live in the memory, even if the rest fades quickly. There were some very strong stage presences cast in this ballet and again I will be interested to see how it fares on a second viewing and with different cast. I did enjoy the sheer novelty of it though.

 

Think I am now done with Untouchable - I've seen it three times and liked it first time round, and have had a 'diminishing returns' response for the other two viewings. Having said that, from where I was sitting it seemed to be the most enthusiastically received of the night.

 

So for me not a vintage evening but interesting nevertheless. 

 

Finally, this bit should go into audience behaviour, but we got off to a rather bad start when an unfortunate couple arrived about a minute late - very apologetically taking their seats. They had to get past three people including myself but the two men beside me swore at them (yes, the F word - totally unnecessary) and just about refused to get up. Left me bristling for some time during Sarah's and Stephen's opening number - think we have all had transport problems occasionally and arrived flustered at the theatre and to be greeted in such a hostile and unpleasant manner, to my mind, beggars belief. Did make me smile though when the late couple made a point of thanking them for their kindness in the interval.

[Sim]

I thought people weren't let in if they were late, even by a minute!  Or had they just managed to dash in as the ushers were closing the doors?  As you say, a totally unwarranted response from those two idiots.  I'd have accidentally stepped on their feet if they hadn't got up, and certainly if they'd used the f word at me!!  

[BMC]

The ushers showed them in - it was literally at 'curtain up'. Really felt for them as clearly not intended and they could have taken their seats with minimal disruption if allowed!

[alison]

3 hours ago, annamk said:

At times there was so much going on on stage it was sometimes difficult to know where to look. 

 

 

Yasmine Naghdi, Yasmine Naghdi, and ... Yasmine Naghdi?   Seriously, though, I did appreciate the second half more than the first.  But any proper evaluation of either of the new works will have to wait until I get an unencumbered view of the stage, which I'm afraid turned out not to be the case last night

[zxDaveM]

51 minutes ago, alison said:

 

Yasmine Naghdi, Yasmine Naghdi, and ... Yasmine Naghdi?   

 

that's where my binoculars were glued! :-)

 

[zxDaveM]

 

Foteini Christofilopoulou was at the Royal Ballet rehearsal at the Royal Opera House, November 2017
Here are some sample photos...

 

The Illustrated 'Farewell’: Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae

© Foteini Christofilopoulou.
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

 

The Wind: Thiago Soares, Natalia Osipova

© Foteini Christofilopoulou.
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

 

See more...
Set from DanceTabs: RB: The Illustrated 'Farewell’, The Wind, Untouchable
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

By kind permission of the Royal Opera House

 

[Rachelm]

Wow! Those photos are stunning- particularly the first one of Edward Watson in The Wind.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Rachelm

[Indigo]

(Apologies this turned out to be a rather long post – do skip if you wish!  )

 

The Illustrated 'Farewell'

Hmmm. Undecided on this & I think a second viewing is necessary for me to properly appreciate Sarah & Steven’s dancing, as well as that of the other dancers involved. I’ve also not yet watched the online Insight event, which I hope to do before I see this triple bill again later in the run. It may help develop my appreciation of the work as my first impressions were very mixed.

 

Starting with the down side:

• I too had several ‘shopping list’ moments during the performance.
• I very much agree with an audience member who said that the costumes felt wrong with the choice of music.
• With no scenery or backdrop being used, I was very conscious of the enormous size of the ROH stage. From the amphi, I was looking down on a vast expanse of grey, bare stage with only two dancers to occupy it for much of the time.
• The costumes were uninteresting (to me) & in shades of brown, so from my seat up in the amphi, their overall effect was to create about as much visual interest as looking down on a muddy puddle on a grey pavement under a streetlight.
• These factors really jarred & created a barrier to my proper enjoyment/appreciation of the actual dancers & choreography.  
• I suspect the work would be better when viewed from the Grand Tier or Stalls.

                                                                                                                                                          

On the plus side:

• I enjoyed spotting the choreographic references to different dance styles.
• Loved the music.
• The visual effect created by the split level stage near the end, really worked for me. It also elevated the dance into something that finally touched me.

 

The Wind

After the World Ballet Day rehearsal, I was really looking forward to The Wind. I don’t know the silent film or book this is based upon, but did read the programme notes beforehand which explained about ‘prairie madness’ & where Arthur Pita was coming from with this work. When Pita is quoted as saying he’d seen the film around 14 years ago & it had sparked the idea for this work, I was rather reminded of Liam Scarlett saying something similar about Frankenstein. Both created works on source material that they seem to have deeply connected with & ruminated upon for a very long time, with the pieces they created having a great deal of potential, but which for me haven’t quite got there narratively.

 

I would have liked The Wind to have been longer & to have had more time to really develop the characters & tell more of the story through dance. It felt very compressed & shorthand; it helped that I’d read the programme notes.

 

All the dancers gave such committed performances. Despite the limitations he was working with, Thiago Soares managed to create a bit more of a dimensional character, especially with his ineptitude once alone with his bride on their wedding day.

 

I was also impressed with Natalia Osipova’s performance, in the same way that I have been with her interpretations in Giselle, Anastasia & Mayerling. She really got across to me a sense of the psychological arc of Letty Mason, from the culture shock when she arrives in the town, the grinding torment of the environment & the wind, to the point at which something changes psychologically for her following her encounter with Wirt Roddy. I felt her sense of empowerment as she challenged Roddy afterwards & used the wind itself to help her achieve this shift.  

 

Ed Watson gave a lovely performance as a ghost warrior. I found myself wondering what Ryoichi Hirano would make of this role too; based on past performances I’ve seen, he can create a powerfully strong stage persona too.

 

I appreciated much about the staging. The costumes, music & sound create a terrific atmosphere, evoking the 1880s & that bleak, Texan prairie. However, I thought the set design could have done more to get across that sense of endless landscape. I would also have liked the lighting to have reflected the psychological elements better – it felt too light & bright at times for the subject matter.

 

I liked the wind turbines having a physical presence on stage, so the wind became such a tangible character too. Especially during the interior scenes, when the turbines are crowded around menacingly close outside & the character Letty cannot escape the physical & psychological torment of the wind outside, even though she is indoors. At other times, perhaps the wind turbines could have retired into the wings at strategic points.

 

The downside of all this wind generation was the sight of the dancers obviously adjusting their costumes to cope with the breeze, particularly the wedding veil. I found myself wondering whether the dancer playing Letty would end up with a headache due to the constant tugging from the long, streaming veil attached to her hair.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing the second cast & also the Insights event being live-streamed this evening.

 

Untouchable

Overall, I enjoyed seeing this again, but it’s still slightly too long & I missed dancers who were in it first time around but not the revival. I thought the sound quality seemed better last night than during the first run, with more menacing drums. Though I preferred the original, subtler ‘Nigel Farage’ chant where you wondered whether they were really saying that!  I’m not sure how keen I’ll be to stay & see this again on my next visit to the ROH for this triple bill.

[FLOSS]

I went to see this triple bill full of hope and expectation as far as the first two thirds of it were concerned. 

 

The Illustrated Farewell is a ballet in two sections one old, one new and they have not been that well glued together.The joins are there for all to see, There were a lot of talented dancers on stage but Twyla Tharp  did not rise to the challenge and use them effectively. I don't think that Tharp was particularly original in the choreography she created for McRae and Lamb. There was fast footwork for McRae and references to other forms of dance but none of it struck me as particularly interesting or theatrically effective.If the first section looked like a lot of rather aimless choreographic doodling perhaps the second half would have some substance to it.There are a significant number of talented young dancers on stage in the second section including Sissens among the men and Naghdi, O'Sullivan and Chisato among the women but while it has some sort of structure it only very intermittently gives this quality cast something to do which is worthy of their talents. Naghdi was lovely but had very little to do in a piece that struck me as pretty typical of the sort of classically styled choreography that so many choreographers churned out in the seventies and eighties.

 

I wonder how much money The Wind cost to stage? I ask because I don't think that the company has really got its money worth with Mr. Pita's new work and it certainly has not acquired a work worthy of Osipova's talents or those of the other fine performers who find themselves cast in it. Now I am pleased that Arthur Pita likes silent films and that he admired Lillian Gish's performance in The Wind  but that does not mean that its narrative was necessarily going to make an effective ballet. I do hope that no one falls so deeply in love with Gance's Napoleon that they decide to stage that masterpiece of the silent cinema as a ballet.

 

Pita handles the narrative reasonably well, but the story is pretty simple and he is assisted by colour coding the main characters of the drama in standard Western fashion. There is no room for ambiguity or surprise in this ballet.You know that Whitehead is playing the villain as soon as you see him arrive on stage and that he is going to be very, very villainous  because he is dressed in black. Soares who plays the husband has precious little to do while Osipova discovers that in this place in the middle of nowhere much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed. Osipova has a lot of suffering to do in this ballet driven to the brink of madness by the isolation and her treatment at the hands of Whitehead's villain. The problem is that the husband the villain and the wife are stock characters from the world of melodrama. They are little better than cardboard characters totally lacking in psychological substance. Their choreography tells the audience nothing about them as individual characters and when Osipova suffers she suffers by semaphore. Unfortunately I am not convinced that the second cast will fare any better.

 

I spent some time during the performances of both works thinking about what the company could have staged for the dancers cast in these works. Dances at a Gathering for the whole cast of the Tharp, 

 Four Schumann Pieces for Sissens, the quality of his movement reminds me of Dowell, with Muntagirov leading a second cast, and if you want an American dance work about Frontier life that works the company could try to acquire Graham's Appalachian Spring.

 

I have to confess that I did not stay for "Unwatchable". I sat through it when it was new and I don't feel the need to endure it again.All in all a disappointing evening at Covent Garden. I sincerely hope that no one is contemplating reviving Mr Worldly Wise believe me there are good reasons for its neglect. 

Edited November 8, 2017 by FLOSS

[capybara]

My 'like' of your post, FLOSS, is because I largely agree with you about both 'Farewell' and 'Wind'.

 

It is regrettable that both choreographers, having expressed so much admiration for the RB's dancers, then failed to exploit the wonderful array of talent at their disposal. It felt as if Twyla Tharp ran out of time to deploy her supporting team effectively and thereby left Lamb and McRae over-exposed and alone for two sections of the symphony. In the Pita, the movement given to both Osipova and Watson felt underwritten and it was all to easy to be distracted from the (in)action by the surrounding gadgetry.

 

I have stayed for Untouchable but it didn't work as well for me as on its first airing in 2015 - perhaps because the coruscating presence of Matthew Ball was missing this time.

[Nina G.]

...and why did Twyla Tharp select a Principal ballerina... only for her to end up in the sextet corps doing very little? It really  felt as if Tharp needed some quick "glue" to bond the two sections together but she did not use the selected dancers to their full potential. Lamb danced beautifully.

A mixed emotions Triple Bill for me, and yes I did miss Matthew Ball too in Untouchable.