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Pas de Quatre

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  1. Pas de Quatre
    With you 100% on that Fonty.
  2. Pas de Quatre
    Yes that is the one. If you go to Google Images there are masses of photos of her, including that, but I couldn't separate it out to make a link. Another very old one I love was taken on a boat in the med. She and Robert Helpmann (if I remember correctly) are doing a barre on deck holding onto the railing. They look tanned and happy, a great picture.
  3. Pas de Quatre
    Funny how all the best photos are low arabesques or attitudes! Not a gymnastic split from anyone. One of my favourites of Fonteyn is where she is simply pointing behind, framed in a stone arch outdoors. Will try to find it tomorrow.
  4. Pas de Quatre
    That is the trouble with filming live performances. What looks atmospheric live on stage can become very gloomy on film or tv. Normal filming or tv transmission uses very bright lights.
  5. Pas de Quatre
    You have to remember that the Russian theatres where Petipa was choreographing ballets had much, much larger stages than those in UK. The groupings of dancers dressed the stage but still left plenty of room to dance. Here they would just get in the way.
  6. Pas de Quatre
    I think this is a case where it would be worth mentioning her illness at the audition. Or perhaps you could send a short letter beforehand. She shouldn't worry that the scabs might still show, nobody would mind, but if you explain that she has had time off I am sure they will take it into account.
  7. Pas de Quatre
    I saw RB's Sleeping Beauty too and had mixed reactions. Although Cuthbertson has some lovely lines and a light jump I felt she was miscast. There were serious wobbles/strain in both the Rose Adagio and the Grand Pas de Deux in the last act. She also fell off her triple pirouettes a couple of times and had a few stumbles. I simply don't think she has the strength for this role. The role of the Prince is a thankless one, lots of wandering about looking noble and very little dancing. Polunin perhaps wasn't mature enough to project the whole time, but his dancing was excellent and in many ways he reminded me of a young Nureyev. His partnering was also attentive and first class. The Lilac fairy was danced radiantly by Claire Calvert - you could really believe in her magic! Hopefully she will be given more roles in future.
  8. Pas de Quatre
    It may be splitting hairs, but I understand talent and potential to mean exactly the same thing. A talented student has the potential to achieve more!
  9. Pas de Quatre
    What you may have already noticed is that you see some of the same dancers at preliminary auditions for different schools. Those offered finals won't necessarily be exactly the same people for each school, but in general I would expect those 50 you are talking about Jazzpaws to have been offered finals at several schools.
  10. Pas de Quatre
    Just a quick reminder, audition panels are not looking for perfection - it doesn't exist in ballet anyway. At this level they are still looking for potential, to see if a dancer has the attributes to benefit from that particular schoo'ls training, Of course a certain level of technique is needed, but it is more about what can be learnt in the future than what has already been learnt.
  11. Pas de Quatre
    I can remember feeling very short-changed the first time that I saw Giselle at ROH without a one act ballet before it. I still don't understand the policy, Giselle is relatively short, so it is the perfect opportunity to present short pieces, either from the established repertory or new choreography!
  12. Pas de Quatre
    Margot Fonteyn was indeed a wonderful dancer, I was just old enough to see her dance live, both with Nureyev and with others. Unfortunately I think she was exploited by all around her from a young age, if what Meredith Daneman wrote in her biography of Fonteyn, published in 2004 is true, and there is no reason to doubt her accuracy. (This is not a book for children, in some areas there is almost too much information.)
  13. Pas de Quatre
    A memorable partnership at ENB a few years ago was Thomas Edur and Agnes Oakes.
  14. Pas de Quatre
    DD and two other pupils attended for several years when it was at Dulwich, i.e. they liked it so much they went back year after year. I haven't had any pupils attend recently, but I imagine it will be just as good. As usual Andrew Ward has assembled a first class faculty. Definitely recommend it!
  15. Pas de Quatre
    Dance Forward. It used to be a residential course, but they now do 3 days non-residential which can be booked individually . Have a look on their website, if I remember correctly two are ballet and the other is for different disciplines.
  16. Pas de Quatre
    It's the ballon - that moment of suspension in the air!
  17. Pas de Quatre
    I love Balanchine work, but not always as danced by UK companies. Some individual dancers are wonderful, but often not the whole cast. Haven't seen this production of Jewels so I can't make specific comments.
  18. Pas de Quatre
    Yulpany, do you need a high profile or a low profile shoe? Another brand you might consider are Suffolk shoes.
  19. Pas de Quatre
    Yes, that is what we often do, have someone act as a partner and then step away.
  20. Pas de Quatre
    This is a pose from "Agon", one of Balanchine's masterpieces. In fact although the girl's foot in her hand in high attitude looks quite spectacular, it is relatively easy as the back knee is bent. You don't even have to be able to do the splits! Any vocationally minded student should be able to do this from mid-teens. If you want to see photos of the pose, go to Google Images and search Agon.
  21. Pas de Quatre
    Merry Christmas to one and all!
  22. Pas de Quatre
    Do you want to discuss individual ballets on this thread or start new ones for each? I have just watched the Mariinsky Nutcracker which was gorgeous. Gergiev was conducting and the orchestra played incredibly well. There were interesting shots of him and the musicians during the Overture and the linking musical passages. The dancing of course was superb, as was the whole production. Masha (Clara) is a child and in a transformation at the beginning of the second act becomes "Masha the Princess", likewise her Nutcracker, a child in the first act becomes an adult Prince in the second act. My only reservation was the choreography for the Grand Pas de Deux, which also incorporated four cavaliers and felt a bit like the Rose Adagio at times. So many good things, but one section I shall remember is the Pas de Trois to the Mirlitons' music performed by three young students. The two girls were slender leggy adolescents and danced ravishingly, but the young man was really outstanding. It is difficult to say how old he was, possibly twelve or thirteen, and he wasn't as tall as the girls even before they stood on pointe. But he partnered with assurance and the audience burst into applause during his short solo moment.
  23. Pas de Quatre
    No, this Peter and the Wolf is a "stop time" puppet story.
  24. Pas de Quatre
    It is going to be fun trying to record/see all the different offerings on Christmas day - no one has mentioned Downton Abbey yet which starts before the end of DQ.
  25. Pas de Quatre
    Really I didn't see anything untoward in this film The class part looked fairly standard and I thought the hornpipe a very good choice to show feeling for dance and presentation, particularly the finishing pose pretending to look through a telescope. The medical/physio assessment appeared to be taking place in private. When measuring the legs they were checking for any difference in length and the spine was then also checked for scoliosis as well as flexibility. The angle of both inward and outward rotation of the legs/hips was measured too. All of these tests are to ensure that the body is suitable for training. Even then injuries do occur, but they would be worse or more frequent if there were an underlying weakness.
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