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That matinee has always been there whenever I have looked so far ....including today...as noted in diary the two matinees with Hayward and Corrales and Naghdi and Ball a few days ago. 

However after my experiences with other performances iin the Winter Season  seemingly disappearing and reappearing and with different casts etc depending when you looked it doesn't surprise me at all at the moment!!

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Does anyone know the timings for the acts of Romeo and Juliet please? With the very high prices - the highest I've seen for Amphi sides B-E, aside from the Swan Lake Anomaly - and the embarrassment of casting riches, I'm wondering how viable standing will be.

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15 hours ago, Richard LH said:

Yes and now the calendar for 7th June matinee is not listed as R&J but The Firebird etc. triple bill. Is this all starting to make some sense at last?

Yes! 

 

LNER have recently doubled the train prices suddenly - it's now easily £60 each way to London even when booked twelve weeks ahead - the day the tickets go on-sale. I can no longer whizz down for matinees so wanted to combine with San Francisco Ballet and ENB's Cinderella and this one was part of my plan! The triple bill will do just as nicely.   

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18 hours ago, Richard LH said:

 Hmm... I know Corrales can perform  explosive jumps and turns,  but I wonder if as yet, at 22, he has as much depth and artistry  in the  acting department as Campbell (who of course  is no slouch on the technical side either !)

 

Did you see Corrales in Jeune Homme et la Mort or in the traditional Giselle, Richard? If you did, you have your answer :) His Romeo will be very different but I, for one, can't wait.

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3 hours ago, capybara said:

 

Did you see Corrales in Jeune Homme et la Mort or in the traditional Giselle, Richard? If you did, you have your answer :) His Romeo will be very different but I, for one, can't wait.

No, I haven't seen him at all, apart from in the current Mayerling, and in a few short You Tube videos, but I am happy to rely on your judgement 🙂

I am sorry not to see Hayward/Campbell but will be happy to go for Hayward/Corrales - or indeed Hayward /Whoever !

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1 hour ago, Richard LH said:

No, I haven't seen him at all, apart from in the current Mayerling, and in a few short You Tube videos, but I am happy to rely on your judgement 🙂

I am sorry not to see Hayward/Campbell but will be happy to go for Hayward/Corrales - or indeed Hayward /Whoever !

 

Cesar Corrales acquired his acting chops slightly before his rise through the ballet ranks - he was a Billy Elliot in Chicago in 2010/11

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On 23/10/2018 at 21:06, Richard LH said:

Yes it is strange a soloist gets 5 lead outings whilst the principal Campbell gets none. I suppose he could be down as potential super-sub again but waiting for an injury is rather a sad way to get into this role at the RB. And as Jan says, it's not as if he didn't have experience as Romeo at BRB.

 

I can only speculate, but Campbell has been given such an appalling roster of roles (or lack thereof) over the past year or so, and it doesn't seem fair that he has only danced some of the lead roles because of injury. It seems he is being relegated to the 'trusty sidekick/slightly comic villain' role all too often. I wouldn't be surprised if he started looking at other top ballet companies, which would be a dreadful loss. :(

 

I am also planning to book for the 1st June R&J matinee but am anticipating a terrifying bloodbath! 

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Kevin has said on a number of occasions that he can't promote everyone with talent  but that he hopes to keep the company happy by giving his dancers opportunities and interesting repertory to dance which I have taken to mean that he does not intend to restrict leading roles to the company's senior dancers, This interpretation is supported by the casting decisions which have been made since he became director.The company is awash with talent and in particular it has a lot of young men who show real artistic promise. So far Kevin has managed to strike a good balance between giving established Principal dancer's their due as far as the number of performances they are given is concerned while giving young talent the opportunity to gain experience of performing leading roles and furthering their development as artists. Ensuring that young talented dancers get opportunities to dance major rules early in their careers before the thought of dancing a specific role becomes even more daunting than the technical demands that the role itself presents is always going to be a challenge in a company like the RB and was the reason that de Valois founded the old touring company.

 

We need to remember that there are always practical factors to be taken into account when making casting decisions and they include suitability for a role based on stage personality, physical and technical shape, the dancer's height and the height of potential partners bearing in mind that being on point adds several inches to a female dancer's height.Sometimes, as here, impending  and foreseeable retirement may be a significant factor in making casting decisions. As matters stand the company  will soon have to replace three tall and therefore very useful and adaptable Romeos. Bonelli, Soares and Watson are all likely to retire in the not too distant future .However much they may be admired by sections of the audience age is catching up with both Watson who is forty two and Bonelli who must be fortyish while in Soares' case it is his increasingly variable technique  which has ruled him out of a number of roles including Romeo. Something which he appears to have acknowledged in a filmed interview in which he said that he would be concentrating on dramatic roles in the future. The point here is that while Romeo may appear to be an acting role in many dancer's performances it was created by MacMillan in classical choreographer mode and  it requires a clean and solid technique to do it justice. The minute a dancer's technique begins to slip it shows in performance. Looking at the range of dancers cast in this revival it seems to me that Kevin has set out to replace adaptable and useful dancers with dancers who he thinks are likely to be equally adaptable and useful to the company in the future. Now while Campbell is a fine dancer with a winning stage personality he is never going to be as useful as someone as tall as Clarke or Ball and at this revival Kevin is making provision for the future. 

 

So what of the Romeos who are new to the house this season? Both Clarke and Corrales are new to the role. Clarke is steadily acquiring roles and working his way up through the ranks of the company and to put it bluntly with his height he does not need special arrangements made for him. As far as Corrales is concerned it is almost certain that what attracted him to the RB was the wide range of roles it could offer him. Kevin is now in the process of giving Corrales the opportunities he joined the company to secure. Bracewell's performances of Romeo will be a house debut rather than a debut in role and I imagine the  same is true of Hallberg as well. It seems to me that in giving both Ball and Clarke performances of Romeo with two different Juliets Kevin intends  to increase their usefulness to the company. Unlike Campbell, Clarke and Ball don't need to have special casting arrangements made to accommodate their performances as Romeo. Of course it may simply be that knowing that Campbell has already danced the role of Romeo management has decided that this revival should be used to add a few more dancers who have experience of dancing the role of Romeo to the company's roster.

 

Management may not have disclosed who is to dance Mercutio but that does not make it a secondary role. Mercutio was created for David Blair and it requires a dancer with good clean technique and a strong quirky stage personality to provide a suitable witty contrast to the dancer playing Romeo.There are three leading roles in Romeo and Juliet not two. Mercutio is the third. In the ballet the audience needs to see a real contrast between the character of the love smitten Romeo and that of the witty and cynical Mercutio. A difference which has often  been eliminated in the anyone can do anything system of casting which seems to prevail at present. This approach leads to a bland uniformity of performance style rather than one with real spice and contrast. Benvolio is the secondary role in the trio of men who roam the streets of Verona and again it was specifically designed for promising dancers on the way up through the ranks . For years Mercutio was treated as the preserve of Principal dancers and the occasional exceptionally talented First Soloist who was an outstanding Ashton stylist such as Cervera. During MacMillan's time Mercutio was danced by the likes of Coleman, Wall, Jeffries and Dowell so it would scarcely be an insult to Campbell if he were to be cast in the role. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by FLOSS
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I acknowledge all you say above, FLOSS, but I still think the casting smacks of 'anyone but Campbell'. I just don't think it's right or necessary. And I agree that Mercutio is an important/principal role; but if it's really considered so significant, why is the casting for that role not announced in advance too?

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3 hours ago, FLOSS said:

There are three leading roles in Romeo and Juliet not two. Mercutio is the third. In the ballet the audience needs to see a real contrast between the character of the love smitten Romeo and that of the witty and cynical Mercutio.

 

For example, look no further than the Zeffirelli film. John McEnery was a far more memorable Mercutio than Leonard Whiting was a Romeo, however pretty LW was. Oh and Bruce Robinson was extreeeeemly pretty as Benvolio, and Michael York rather prettier than at other times as Tybalt. But for me the memorable person was Mercutio. The most un-pretty of the lot! 🤣

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I don't think it would be so disappointing if Campbell had been given his fair share of roles last time, but he was not chosen (at least originally) for Albrecht, Des Grieux, or Siegfried, and when he did step in to dance lead roles because of injury he knocked them out of the park. Mercutio is an important role in R&J but it is not the title role, it does not carry the same prestige as Romeo, and once again we are missing out on the magical Campbell/Hayward partnership. Campbell is a fairly young and new principal compared to Watson, Soares etc and to see him so lacking in opportunities compared to dancers like Reece Clarke (who is tremendous, but only at soloist level) is quite frustrating. 

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7 hours ago, FLOSS said:

while Campbell is a fine dancer with a winning stage personality he is never going to be as useful as someone as tall as Clarke or Ball

Ouch!

Floss, a thoughtful insight,  but I can't agree that height trumps a winning stage personality in terms of "usefulness". 

Furthermore I am not so sure height is playing  an important  factor in these casting decisions in any event, when you have   McRae, Sambe and Corrales taking up 7 of the slots, but not even one slot for Campbell. 

 

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38 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

 

Ouch!

Floss, a thoughtful insight,  but I can't agree that height trumps a winning stage personality in terms of "usefulness". 

Furthermore I am not so sure height is playing  an important  factor in these casting decisions in any event, when you have   McRae, Sambe and Corrales taking up 7 of the slots, but not even one slot for Campbell. 

 

 

Surely there is (seemingly) an element of favouritism when it comes down to casting dancers. Ball also gets 6 performances ( now that Bonelli isn't dancing Romeo with Cuthbertson Ball gets those 3 extra performances besides his 3 performances with Naghdi). Surely one or two of Ball's performances could have been given to other deserving male dancers. 

 

In the end it is the choreographer who casts his friends/favourite dancers in a ballet. McGregor always works with his same cast (Watson, Cuthbertson, Lamb, Hamilton, ...), so does Scarlett (Morera, Hinkis, Dyer,..) as well as Wheeldon (Cuthbertson, Stix-Brunell, .), surely an AD also has his own favourites.

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Just to wade in here and put the other point of view  ...... to me Campbell is a very good dancer with a clean technique; he is excellent in a certain type of role e.g Colas but I just don't see him as a Prince or a Romantic Hero so from my perspective KoH's casting decisions make sense. I think in years gone by casting decisions were based much more on suitability for a role rather than all the principals getting to dance everything, perhaps suitability is making a comeback if we consider there is a larger pool of talented dancers at the RB.  Now I will duck down behind the parapet ..... 

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Arguably, the character of Romeo is not a Romantic Hero- he is a very young man caught up in an unholy mess. I admire McRae's Romeo and he is not very tall, and I thought Campbell was a very fine and expressive Romeo in a former life. I don't think height on its own is a reason for casting Romeo. . It might be for the Prince in Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty perhaps.

Perhaps.

I always tend to the view that the AD knows rather more than I do about the situation, but do share a feeling of slight concern about Campbell.

 

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I suppose as well as trying to keep all his talented dancers happy, KOH is on a bit of a hiding to nothing trying to keep audiences happy too!  I think he has done an excellent job of giving people opportunities and roles but, just occasionally, I go into 'furrowed brow' mode and think his generosity might be spread just slightly more widely - Ball with 6 Romeos and Campbell none, and Bennett Gartside with Winter's Tale are a couple of examples of this for me. But I appreciate casting decisions must be a total nightmare  - I also have no idea about any economic aspects of rehearsal times with multiple casts etc, let alone the logistical, but when there are long runs (as in the ballets mentioned above) surely it can't be beyond the whit of man!

 

Will nevertheless be going bankrupt in the R&J run - despite being heartily sick of its regularity!!

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38 minutes ago, annamk said:

Just to wade in here and put the other point of view  ...... to me Campbell is a very good dancer with a clean technique; he is excellent in a certain type of role e.g Colas but I just don't see him as a Prince or a Romantic Hero so from my perspective KoH's casting decisions make sense. I think in years gone by casting decisions were based much more on suitability for a role rather than all the principals getting to dance everything, perhaps suitability is making a comeback if we consider there is a larger pool of talented dancers at the RB.  Now I will duck down behind the parapet ..... 

 

I do think that KO'H has a view on suitability and I am sure that he engages in discussion with his Principals about various options. Moreover, there are always "other issues", such as a dancer seeking to accept guest assignments abroad, which come into play in casting and about which we know little, if nothing (unfortunately :) ).

 

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47 minutes ago, Xandra Newman said:

 

Surely there is (seemingly) an element of favouritism when it comes down to casting dancers. Ball also gets 6 performances ( now that Bonelli isn't dancing Romeo with Cuthbertson Ball gets those 3 extra performances besides his 3 performances with Naghdi). Surely one or two of Ball's performances could have been given to other deserving male dancers. 

 

In the end it is the choreographer who casts his friends/favourite dancers in a ballet. McGregor always works with his same cast (Watson, Cuthbertson, Lamb, Hamilton, ...), so does Scarlett (Morera, Hinkis, Dyer,..) as well as Wheeldon (Cuthbertson, Stix-Brunell, .), surely an AD also has his own favourites.

 

I’m not sure Ball has been cast with Cuthbertson and Naghdi because he’s KOH’s “favourite”.  His partnership with Cuthbertson in M&A was by all accounts wonderful and her previously chemistry-filled partnership with Bonelli isn’t being reprised in R&J, so casting her with Ball makes sense.

 

Add to that the justified pleas of all here for Naghdi and Ball to repeat their electrifying partnership in R&J and the casting seems perfectly logical. 

 

Yes, KOH could have put Cuthbertson and Clarke together again but he does seem to like to test up and coming dancers with a variety of partners.

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30 minutes ago, penelopesimpson said:

Is Campbell not going to be away for some period of time soon or did I dream it?

 

He is dancing soon the Nutcracker Prince with the Australian Ballet...in exchange with Kevin Jackson, who is coming to London.

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3 hours ago, penelopesimpson said:

Is Campbell not going to be away for some period of time soon or did I dream it?

 

2 hours ago, Esmeralda said:

 

He is dancing soon the Nutcracker Prince with the Australian Ballet...in exchange with Kevin Jackson, who is coming to London.

 

Almost. You guys are getting Jackson as SPF Cavalier (Australian Ballet has Sir Peter Wright's older Nutcracker, the one without Drosselmeyer's nephew, basically all Jackson has to learn is the grand pas).

 

We on the other hand are getting Campbell for at least two weeks if not longer, he will dance the Prince in Ratmansky's Cinderella, a whole ballet to learn and one moreover in which he will be partnering the original eponymous heroine in her final season before retirement, meaning Leanne Stojmenov is hanging up her pointe shoes in December. He won't dance more than four, maybe five performances though: there are 23 performances in all.

 

This by the way is when I get actually angry at TAB for not putting up casting a month or so in advance, in terms of Sydney, December, expensive! And last-minute Sydney, December, extremely expensive - as in travel and accommodation alone about the same as a return economy flight to London.

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Of course everyone is entitled to their view of whether or not a role carries prestige but I think that you might at least concede that when MacMillan created his Romeo and Juliet he chose specific dancers on whom to create the ballet's leading characters  because he wanted his Romeo, Juliet and Mercutio to be as individual as he could make them seeing them as theatrical characters rather than merely so many opportunities to dance. In this he was greatly influenced by a recent production of the play in which realism rather than the play's poetry had been central to the actors' performances. I am afraid I tend to judge the importance of a role by how central it is to the over all theatrical effectiveness of a play,opera or ballet not on whether the character in question is mentioned in the work's title. Is it being suggested that because De Grieux is not mentioned in the title of the ballet that he is a secondary character in Manon  or because only Lise is mentioned in the title of Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardee that Colas is a minor character ? Just because Mercutio gets killed off at the end of the second act does not make him a minor character and the history of the role and the names of the dancers who played him during MacMillan's lifetime supports my assessment of the significance of the role. To my mind what can make him a secondary character in performance is tone deaf casting and minor issues such as casting dancers with strong stage personalities who can't actually dance the steps and resort to edited versions of them. Equal opportunities casting by which I mean casting against emploi may be wonderful for an individual dancer's fans but it has a deleterious effect on the theatrical impact of a ballet which was created by a choreographer who had decided to use emploi as a means of delineating the different personalities of the main characters who appear in his ballet. In this context Romeo as originally conceived is much closer to a demi- character dancer who can perform noble roles  than a truly aristocratic noble dancer but Mercutio is definitely a demi-character dancer playing a well defined character. 

 

The original cast, or rather the dancers who MacMillan had intended should be the first cast included the company's greatest male technician of the time, David Blair the first Colas, as Mercutio and Christopher Gable a strong actor dancer with great stage presence, as Romeo. Mercutio's choreography was created for a demi-character dancer that is someone who can make the text he dances speak rather than someone who executes his choreography in beautiful classroom fashion but in doing so fails to fully realise  the character who is supposedly portraying.   Mercutio if danced as MacMillan created him is a fascinating character, quirky, witty, cynical. quick thinking and fleet of foot all of which is expressed in his choreography. In Mercutio's ballroom solo MacMillan seems to be embracing Ashton style classicism up to and including the markedly off centre turn which  seems to be lifted from the Brian Shaw's solo in Symphonic Variations. A bit of choreographic borrowing which completely sums up the character when the dancer cast as Mercutio deigns to do it or perhaps it is more accurate to say is able to do it.

 

Having recently watched the entire South Bank show about the creation of MacMillan's Mayerling it is clear that the emphasis in its performance has shifted quite considerable over the years. A ballet in which MacMillan freed the action from the conventions of nineteenth century ballet construction by completely eliminating the divertissement and  ensuring that all the choreography carries the narrative forward seems to have been reversed by current performance practice. The inter-action between the Hungarian Officers and Mitzi Caspar in the tavern scene looks suspiciously like a divertissement as it is now treated more as an opportunity for technical display than choreography which has much connection with the narrative or characterisation. I suspect that MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet like his Mayerling has been subjected to a considerable amount of classicising over the years . The filmed sections of Mayerling with the original cast, suggest that a great deal of the work's originality and quirkiness has been lost over the years as what were once expressive movements have been transformed by the move to the display of classical perfection which tends to iron out the quirkiness in the choreography and removes, or at least plays down, quite a bit of the detailed natural body language which at one time was clearly part of the choreography. Imposing class room rules on choreography which was intended primarily as an expressive work transforms it into a more obviously classical ballet than is creator intended it to be and destroys its emotional impact. But there is more to it than that. Even after seven years as director when MacMillan created Mayerling he was still making his ballet on dancers steeped in Ashton's classicism. They all had exceptionally expressive upper bodies because they were Ashton dancers and they had been taught how to use knew how to use their eyes to convey their thoughts or had learned to do so.

 

I suspect that as an even older ballet  Romeo and Juliet has undergone even more transformation than Mayerling has simply because more than fifty years of performance tradition now overlays the original intention of the choreographer plus whatever "improvements" Lady M has decided to impose on it. It seems to me that far too many dancers performing Juliet have either never heard MacMillan's view that in performing Juliet a dancer should never be afraid of making ugly shapes or perhaps its simply that dancers can't break themselves of the habit of making beautiful shapes. How many Juliet's convey her revulsion at finding herself in the crypt? They raise their arms and gaze around and it is just so much stylised dutifully learned empty movement. I accept that the bodies which used to be in the crypt were removed from it years ago, presumably at Lady M's behest, so that today Juliet recoils at nothing rather than a dead body on a bier, but even so a great deal of detail has been rendered bland, beautiful and mechanical. Looking at the tomb scene from the perspective of performances of Romeo how many of them actually manage to make the audience feel Romeo's bleak despair at finding what he supposes to be Juliet's corpse or his inability to abandon her dead body because he can't accept her death? Again what once looked appallingly raw in performance is now at the beautifully expressive end of the spectrum.  

 

Just a comment about Campbell being cast as the  idol It sounds to me as if the company is expecting to issue a new DVD of La Bayadere which suggests that the three Shades who dance solos in the Kingdom of the Shades in the streamed performance are likely to be equally distinguished. 

Edited by FLOSS
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“Just a comment about Campbell being cast as the  idol It sounds to me as if the company is expecting to issue a new DVD of La Bayadere which suggests that the three Shades who dance solos in the Kingdom of the Shades in the streamed performance are likely to be equally distinguished.”

 

Choe, Naghdi and Takada it seems if today’s General is any indication ....

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3 hours ago, MrsBBB said:

Campbell is Bronze Idol in the first cast of La Bayadère (dress rehearsal currently underway which is being filmed). I’ve never seen a Principal in that role before :(

 

Kumakawa?  Or was that before he was promoted?

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