MAB

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.

11 hours ago, Emeralds said:

Then I read that in real life she was terrified of looking old or growing old, so she would go for lots of anti ageing or beauty treatments,

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.

25 minutes ago, Tango Dancer said:

I also went to a concert at the Wigmore Hall on Tuesday and everyone there was very well behaved and attentive.  

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.

8 hours ago, FionaE said:

Arts and literature should be free to entertain, but also to be thought provoking and to challenge the status quo.  

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.

8 hours ago, Sabine0308 said:

I'm curious to see how you now deal here with "we have double standards" (ref: Prisca Zeisel vs. ROB dancers).

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.

2 hours ago, FionaE said:

Most contracts do not specify that a dancer is obliged to have permission from their AD for whatever they do in their time off and holidays.

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....'

2 hours ago, FionaE said:

It’s high time the artists had more say over their short dancing careers than being dictated by company management.  Opera singers do.

They are mainly freelancers or on short contracts.   

2 hours ago, Sabine0308 said:

Wow, are all Russians war criminals??

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.

5 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

And are those dancers who remain in Russia allowed to speak against the invasion? Some did in the early days but I'm not aware that any have persisted.

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.

23 hours ago, Sabine0308 said:

I am appalled that they didn't have the class to thank her for her years with Bayerisches Staatsballett and to wish her all the best for the future. It's a bit "low".

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.

I saw the Don Q pas de deux danced by Baryshnikov and Markarova at Sadlers Wells in the mid 70's.

Maximova as Tatiana was sublime, but a Dane and a Frenchman were for me the best Onegins, Kenneth Greve and Manuel Legris.

Definitive will be subjective.  Reading others choices I've both shuddered and laughed at some of the names put forward.  Certain  dancers though can leave an indelible stamp, Has anyone danced Diamonds better than Peter Martins for example?  If they have, I've not seen them, though I've seen more cubic zirconas than I can shake a stick at.

Age does affect appreciation as I prefer the faster tempi of the past. Style too, there was a time audiences weren't subjected to dropped crotch jetes or six o'clock extentions, but someone must like such things I suppose.

This is evoking fond memories of the last Bournonville festival and seeing so many things for the first time.  I adored Folk Tale.  Has it ever been performed in Britain?

Fisrt it was Glyndebourne, now Sadlers Wells.

https://news.sky.com/story/romeo-and-juliet-ballet-performance-interrupted-by-climate-change-protesters-12951963

Well Lin,  you'll no doubt remember the size and enthusiasm of audiences back in the 60's.  No social media to lure them in back then.  I suspect no one cares what the current crop of dancers are doing apart from those that are already fans,

I only use facebook to keep track of the relatives abroad, but I have a few dancer friends too, mostly retired.  Clearly that is what makes the wretched algorithm thingys send me the male dancers in homo erotic poses (just two dancers so far thank goodness) I've seen no product placements though.

I expect the poor lambs are short of cash, but being of an age where sex only means gender to me, perhaps I'm not the most receptive audience for that kind of thing.

I stopped watching him sfter the infamous interview with Helen Mirren.

It is all too easy to defame the dead - they can't sue.

If your bookshelves aren't already groaning under the weight of the sizeable number of books about him already out there, here are two more.

Published over a year ago Memories of Rudolf Nureyev by Nancy Sifton somehow slipped under my radar.

https://nureyev.org/2417849/

This one is due for publication next month.

https://www.bookguild.co.uk/bookshop/book/576/rudolf-nureyev-as-i-remember-him-GAIN/