MAB

Not gruesome at all.

As I've not seen all the dancers named I don't feel qualified to vote, however of those I'm familiar with Guillaume Diop gave the finest performance I saw in the past year in songs of a Wayfarer. Not a showy role, it was his expressiveness and sensitivity that made such a deep impression.

Just one dancer or are there male and female categories?

I once watched a Maryinsky rehearsal in Baden Baden. The Medora was so perfect I actually felt shaken, even the orchestra applauded her. Sadly the lady in question couldn't replicate that perfection in performance.

Wagner was somehing I had to grow into, but I fell in with a gang of hardcore Wagnerites at ROH. So smitten am I now I trail around Europe after my favourite helden tenor.

They didn't appear to have enough dancers for Sylphides. However according to the programme they do have a dancer called David Wall (!?)

Hansel and Gretal? I loved the fairytale characters living in the woods. Sadly the ROH has some truly awful opera productions so do ask about them here before you book. The Cav and Pag is quite good.

Perhaps someone should start a favourites thread. Definive means to me getting so near to perfecyion in one particular role that you've never seen that role bettered. After giving it a great deal of thought I was only able to name three damcers that gave such benchmark performances that I very much doubt they will be bettered in my lifetime. The fact is with most of the great ballet roles you will see far more than one interpretation in your ballet going lifetime that will knock your socks off, it that wasn't the case there would be little point in keeping going.

L'elisir d'amore is currently playing, It is real laugh out loud stuff and has Bryn Terfel in it. Also it is an excellent production. Might be a very good place to start.

Indeed, she was also the world's first gym bunny and in an age before mass media she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. In Bavaria, Austria and Hungary she enjoys almost a cult following to this day. As for Juliet, it used to be theatrical lore that you had to be forty to portray Juliet. RDB has a staggering number of older character dancers to call upon, their performances of Onegin are peopled with the genuinely old. No wonder Onegin was so contemptuous of the Larin family's provincial ball with all those elderly neighbours. For once you understood why that city sophisticate couldn' stand them.

If we are looking over our shoulders, I would like to see more ballets of any stripe. Not sure if my aging memory is at fault but as the years roll by it seems the number of ballets performed each year diminishes. Fille fans should consider getting together, hiring a coach and popping over to Paris, they dance it extremely well and seem to really enjoy it.

I've never known the Wigmore Hall audiences to be otherwise.

After mulling this over for some time Margot Fonteyn as Aurora Deanne Bersma as Myrtha Georgina Parkinson as Fairy Godmother

First of all mo one is persecuting anyone, merely pointing out the moral ambiguities of appearing with artists of a company actively supporting the Ukrainian war. No one would disagree but the fact remains that the arts in Ruaaia have always been used for propaganda purposes and with the current regime are used to showcase rabid nationalism in their theatres. Artists in Russia have historically been persecuted, imprisoned and, in the Stalin era, executed. As far as sanctions go, I am among those believing they should be far more severe and I also believe the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs should be unfrozen and given to those sufferring in Ukraine. By the way M&S no longer operates in Russia. If they did I personally would boycot them.

Ms Zeisel chose to dance in a part of Russian occupied Ukraine thereby giving credence to the invaders. On the face of it Cyprus doesn't pose the same problems, but for me a quick google serch set alarm bells ringing. Freedom Holdings, with a Russian born CEO doesn't look squeaky clean as the US financial investifators Hindenburg Research appear to have have discovered. . Freedom Holding Corp. was accused of “brazen sanctions evasion,” along with openly flouting anti-money laundering Come to your own conclusions.

I don't see it as a political debate but as a moral one. The Bolshoi has been super active in its support for the war against Ukraine to the extent of fundraising to buy armaments. Some of you will no doubt have seen the picture of the missile inscribed with the message 'from the Bolshoi'. I am very uncomfortable about dancers from a British company being allowed to take part in this. The more so as the ROH, and indeed ACE are so overly politically correct in other matters.

Drive in? At least one avid balletomane I know has been forced to send his car to be scrapped.

I imagine dancers are required to be available in their spare time to cover for the indisposition of colleagues, There are differences between standard contracts and those negotiated by the stars of this world. It is usual to have under the name of a guest/gala artist 'appears by kind permission of....' They are mainly freelancers or on short contracts.

No, but they would appear to condone the war crimes the UN has rightly accused their regime of.

I don't see any kind of 'witch hunt' I only see posters genuinely saddened that a practitioner of the art they love has seen fit to dance for a regime of war criminals.

I know a dancer who has been speaking out against Putin on social media for years. On the day the war began he was demonstrating in the streets of St Petersburg and posted footage of the demonstration. He continued posting but has now left Russia for good. Had he remained his future would have been prison or conscription. I should add his ambition was to go into opposition politics in his home city, but of course that route now leads inevitably to prison and/or death as Alexei Navalny has learnt to his cost.

Surely it's even lower for a European dancer to even consider dancing in Sevastopol. I'm deeply shocked.

There seems to be almost a glut of Rheingolds in London at the moment as I've seen three in less than a year. This newest one I found vastly inferior in concept compared with the ENO production I saw in March. I've just read the reviews and they were positive. My Wagnerian friends however were divided on its merits. For my own part I found the sight of an emaciated naked octogenarian disquieting and in its own way exploitative. The production looked expensive and you have to wonder why, during a time of austerity, the ROH saw fit to ditch the very good Ring it already has.

The matinee cancellation was down to indisposition. A word of caution, the cast lists in the programme were all wrong. Actual casts were on a sheet of A4 pinned to the wall. Surely in these circumstances cast sheets should be available. I's unfair to both the audience and the dancers not to provide accurate information.

Does the theatre have air con? I'm doing the double today.