Wulff

Main stage matinee Saturday 12 July at 12 noon. Linbury performances from Wednesday 2 July to Saturday 5 July

I recommend row M for best legroom and view. Row L is to be avoided - less legroom there than other rows. The reason for this is to do with the mechanics of the moveable seating system which places the seats in this row slightly further forward,

I noticed that Mica Bradbury's name appeared in the cast for Rite of Spring last Saturday. I know that she is/was a student at the RB Upper School and a finalist in last years YBDY competition. Does this mean that she has been given a company contract or is still a student?

When Solomon Golding graduated in 2012 he was listed as going to Hong Kong Ballet but has returned to join the RB at the start of the current 2013/14 season. He does not seem to have been listed as joining the company in any of the ROH news releases although he appears in the list of company artist.

And, what's more, she had never danced the MacMillan version before, but learnt it from scratch on coming to London. All her previous Juliets have been in the Lavrovsky version.

The sequence of double tours/pirouettes at the conclusion of the Act III variation for Basilio used to be performed by the great Vladimir Vasiliev. More recently I remember seeing Inaki Urlezaga perform them in a diverts programme when he was still with the RB. I guess that this sequence is an established option for the male dancer with the necessary technique and stamina.

No worse than Ivan Vasiliev. In fact, if I recall rightly, the latter holds the lift longer and in arabesque on half point too!

For me "Emeralds" was the highlight of the evening danced with great musicality despite the orchestra's rather coarse treatment of the Fauré score. "Rubies", which so often provides a pitfall for non-American companies seemed to me to be danced without the sense of fun and pizazz which this piece needs to succeed. "Diamonds" suits the company well, but I found that Smirnova despite some exquisite dancing totally lacked that chemistry or rapport with her partner which would have lifted her performance onto a higher plane. Throughout the pdd she remained an "ice queen", hardly looking at her partner, and it wasn't until the finale that she managed to smile at all and by that time it was too late. I think I am right in recalling that it was Balanchine who said that when you put a man and a woman together on stage there is always some kind of "story", but I was hard put to find any last night and found myself thinking of how much Alina and Marianela and their respective partners managed to find in the same pdd.

The heat in the ROH is nothing like as bad as it used to be before the refurbishment, and the air cooling system works pretty well provided it is left unobstructed. Unfortunately most people don't seem to realise that the air system grilles are under their seats and only too often block them with coats and other paraphernalia; then they complain they are too hot and the fanning starts.

Indeed he is. For more info check out his website, www.xanderparish.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter

I think it is worth recalling that Alina's appearances with the RB have not been very frequent over the last couple of years, and that she has withdrawn from a number of her scheduled performances. Of course injury is a totally understandable factor, but that being said I reckon that in recent years she has appeared more often with other companies, overseas galas etc than she has at the ROH. Let's see how it works out with ENB.

Well, Aaron Smyth won the men's Silver, but still no complete list of winners available. Incidentally, Melissa Hamilton and Dawid Trzensimiech both won Bronze the year before last. The Varna competition starts tomorrow. I don't know whether there are any RB or ENB entrants.

Judging by the way members of the public are treating it I don't think that the ROH's herb garden is going to last very long. People are sitting on the edge of the boxes and depositing cups and glasses among the plants. And we are supposed to be a nation of garden lovers!

Great news. Lauretta's star is certainly in the ascendant. But is there any news about other winners in this competition? The only "news" on their website refers to the first 2011 competition, and there is nothing about Lauretta or anyone else.. I wonder why these competitions are so slow to publish their results. The Prix de Lausanne is just as bad.

Is there any detailed information regarding the casting for these upcoming programmes at the Coliseum? From Xander Parishes website it seems that he will be appearing in "Spectre de la Rose" and "Chopiniana". Also from a remark dropped in one of his recent interviews it seems that Tsiskiradze will also be making an appearance of some sort. But where are all the other dancers coming from?

Not good news, I fear. According to an article in today's "Times" Sergei has now lost 95% of his vision and the prolonged treatment at the specialised clinic in Germany has failed to halt the deterioration. A spokeswoman for the Bolshoi, Katerina Novikova said that he was now blind in his right eye and had very little vision in his left. According to the Bolshoi he is determined to return to work as a matter of pride "at least for a while" He still participates in the daily decisions, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to work out how he would fully resume his former responsibilities unless his sight improves.

Can't seem to manage to post under the above quote

I have seldom found the the ballet sequences in ROH opera productions to have had much merit. In fact most of them IMHO are usually just about adequate and a number pretty dire. For me the ballet of debauched nuns in Robert le Diable, such a success in its original production, was here little more than a few zombies tottering around an overcrowded set which gave little room for dance, and the ballets in the recent production of Les Troyens were far and away its worst feature. And as for those barefoot tutu-clad "ballerinas" in Faust..... Kobborg may not be a particularly original choreographer, but he has shown himself to be at least competent, which is more than can be said for some of those who have been let loose on the ROH operatic stage.

I'm not altogether surprised that Herheim and Kobborg have parted company. Herheim is very much the current favourite practitioner of "Regietheater", in which the director's "concept" is the overriding element in the production ahead of plot, period and libretto. He has directed a Parsifal in which the eponymous hero appears in a sailor suit and shoots a swan in the form of a small boy also in a sailor suit. If you search online you will find several pages about his ideas concerning the significance of Parsifal including many that probably never entered Wagner's head. There was also a Salome in which Hitler and Mussolini made an appearance and a Rosenkavalier which started with an attempted gang-rape of the Marschallin. His recent highly praised production of Eugene Onegin featured part of the action taking place in a glass box and various flash-back devices, one of which involved Onegin writing Tatiana's letter. The dances in that production choreographed by Andre de Jong were performed by a variety of Russian characters from across the centuries. I would imagine therefore that he is not a particular fan of "old fashioned" classical dance and that we shall be seeing something much more "Central European" in style. I guess that once again we will be getting one of those opera productions which no doubt the critics will find intellectually stimulating and challenging, but which will be greeted with a round of booing for the production team from certain sections of the audience. Come to think of it there exists a ready-made choreography for this music in the shape of Kenneth MacMillan's ballet "The Four Seasons" that could be re-costumed and inserted if all else failed.

I think you missed out Michael Nunn, Alison. And also there's Belinda Hatley who I think would have made it to principal had she not been held back by injuries. And while we are on to the subject of foreign dancers in the RB let us not forget that many have been Prix de Lausanne winners and have chosen the RBS rather than one of the several other schools offering places.

This whole question of what constitutes British or English is, I reckon, a minefield best to be avoided. Is it simply a matter of where an individual or his/her parents were born (or naturalized), or does ethnicity play a part? As others have said, it is really a matter of training and performance style and technique, and those have changed over the years as they have done in all other branches of the performing arts. Listen to old recordings of orchestras and singers, for example, and the difference becomes immediately apparent. I recall that when I first saw the Bolshoi and RDB chainés were often performed by women on demi-pointe rather than full pointe, and in the RB it was rare to see a male dancer execute an arabesque at more than 45 degrees, and as for women performing more than triple supported pirouettes, this practice was considered un-English.

Things have not changed as much as some would have us think. In 1956, often considered a "golden age " for the RB, the line-up of ballerinas for Ashton's "Birthday Offering" was as follows: Fonteyn - English father but Brazilian/Irish mother. Nerina - South African. Fifield - Australian. Jackson - New Zealander. Beriosova - Lithuanian. Elvin - Russian. Grey - English. And come to that, de Valois herself was Irish.

Some years ago - 2005 to be precise - an article on this subject appeared in Dance Europe magazine, giving pay rates for dancers not only in UK but around the world. Here are the rates as they were then for ENB, RB and Rambert respectively. Obviously, these rates will have had to be adjusted upwards to allow for inflation and cost-of-living increases in the intervening period, but they may serve as a guideline to current rates of dancers' earnings. All figures are weekly rates in GBP. ENB Principal 624 First Soloist 536 Soloist 477 First Artist 422 Artist Year 8 396 7 392 6 388 5 385 4 367 3 349 2 336 1 311 Stage Manager 604 RB Principal Negotiable First Soloist 792 First Artist 558 Corps Year 5 506 4 487 3 467 1 446 Rambert Grade 3 460 2 442 1 409 Senior apprentice 316 Apprentice 284 At the time of the article's publication most of the Rambert dancers were on grade 3 salaries. Also there were bonuses for long service. £500 for 5 years, £700 after 7 years and £900 after 9 years.