James

1 hour ago, alison said:

I'm pretty certain that a Russian touring ballet company I saw touring to the Fairfield Halls had a half-black, half-white tutu for Odile.

You are right, Alison. It was Moscow City Ballet. 

2 minutes ago, Mary said:

Well I would book for this rehearsal cast again..

So would I!

1 hour ago, CHazell2 said:

I don't think that this debate is very helpful or constructive. Can we all agree to disagree and enjoy the ballets as they are. They are not supposed to be a reflection of real life and speaking personally, I don't like people who are seeking out reasons to be insulted when there was no offence intended. 

 

La Bayadere is of its time and whilst it is not my favourite of ballets, I can see its importance in the classical canon, but I don't believe that we should rewrite history in any shape or form. I am a trained historian and one of the things that I was taught is never to project your personal values and opinions onto the past, but instead look through the people who were there.

 

I think that the problem is too many people think that the past was just like today but it wasn't and we shouldn't erase anything that we find 'problematic' because that wouldn't be a true reflection of how things really were.  Let's not sanitise or bowdlerise the past

 

I think that the ballets should stay as they are. Far better to let sleeping dogs lie

 

 

 

Of course we shouldn’t sanitise or bowdlerise the past, but we shouldn’t misrepresent it either, which is precisely what La Bayadere is doing in its current form.

i would recommend this article to anyone who wonders what is perceived as unacceptable in that ballet.

https://pointemagazine.com/la-bayadere-orientalist-stereotypes/

11 minutes ago, OnePigeon said:

They’ll still be performing the Nutcracker, but obviously want to retire this version for whatever reasons.  I personally didn’t mind it, but it seems to be unpopular in some quarters, so it will be interesting to see which version they choose to perform.  I too wonder about the Semperoper’s or if there was a preferred ENB version from Aaron Watkin’s time as a dancer?  Time will tell.  I’m sure to Joe Public having a Christmas treat at the ballet it’s not a huge deal, as long as it’s not some crazy new version.  

The Semperoper’s production was by Aaron Watkins, wasn’t it?

5 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

Gosh, that's a bit of a baptism of fire for Braendsrod as the Prince, cavaliering 2 different SPFs in 48 hours. I wonder if he was chosen to cover tonight because he danced with Magri in The Cellist?

As a matter of interest, Mayara Magri and Lukas BB danced the Nutcracker pdd at Gary Avis’s Gala in Ipswich back in September 2016.  Here’s the comment I posted at the time:-

“The Nutcracker – Act II Grand pas de deux

Dancers: Mayara Magri, Lukas Bjorneboe Braendsrod. (Danced quite regally, which is probably how it should be done. The Sugar Plum solo was very good – with recognisable gargouillades – though the presto ending was cut. Lukas shows a lot of promise, tall and elegant with good elevation. The final leap into the fish dive was nicely timed.)”

1 hour ago, Jane S said:

 

If I'm looking at the photo you mean, a LENS search identifies it as David Pickering and Iohna Loots, taken by John Ross for ballet.co. So presumably the Makarova Production?

I think that when the Messel production was revived in 2006 Peter Farmer created new costumes for some of the characters, including the wolf and, notably the Lilac Fairy. After a few years the Farmer costumes were replaced with ones that more closely replicated the original Messel designs, including that of the wolf. 

11 hours ago, alison said:

A random thought which passed through my mind tonight: if it's a French/Russian etc. production, is it the French/Russian etc. Prince which does the major part of the partnering in the Rose Adage, or do they use the English one, or what?  (Assuming the nationalities stay roughly the same, of course.)

When I looked at my old programmes I was surprised to see that in the revival of the “Messel” production in 2006, the first prince (the one who does most of the partnering) was called the French Prince -  but by 2011 he had become the English Prince. The French Prince was then relegated to second place, and the second prince in 2006, named as the Spanish Prince, has disappeared. Curiously, according to C W Beaumont’s very detailed account of the 1946 production, the nationalities of the four princes are said to be English, Italian, Indian and Polish.
Incidentally, Beaumont’s book, which I acquired recently, contains 40 full page photographs of the 1946 production    and its cast by Edward Mandinian, intended to provide “a permanent record and souvenir of the elaborately staged revival of The Sleeping Beauty”. I wish I could share some of these photographic gems.

3 hours ago, emmarose said:

 

I was wondering this myself from the cast sheets and photos, to have Cinderella dressed in rags and serving the all while they all go off to balls makes it even crueller in a way.

I think the absence of a stepmother from Ashton’s Cinderella may be partly explained by the fact that, despite her inclusion in the original Russian scenario, 1948 British audiences would not have expected to see one. Most theatregoers’ experience of Cinderella on stage would have come from either, at one end of the theatrical scale, the Rossini opera La Cenerentola or, at the other, the traditional British pantomime version of the story, neither of which features a wicked stepmother. This was two years before Walt Disney released his animated version in which the cruel stepmother was a prominent character.

The progenitor of the traditional British pantomime version (which Ashton claimed never to have seen) was the 1860 “fairy burlesque extravaganza, Cinderella or The Lover, The Lackey and The Little Glass Slipper” by H. J. Byron, which borrowed heavily from the Rossini opera, including the names of the step-sisters and the business of the Prince and his valet Dandini swapping roles. Byron, incidentally, also introduced the role of Cinderella’s father’s page, Buttons.

In no way do I endorse the terminology, but in a 2010 programme article on Fille, David Vaughan, author of Frederick Ashton and his Ballets, refers to Alain as “half-witted”.

23 minutes ago, Fonty said:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't a lot of this choreography by Ashton?  Which Dowell decided to scrap when he made the unbelievable decision to "go back to the original" for greater "authenticity".  Hence the RB got lumbered with the Makarova one? A production so awful IMO that it put me off the SB for years.   

I think you may be confusing this with Swan Lake. The production which preceded Dowell’s “back to the original” Petipa/Ivanov version, had much Ashton in it: Act IV, the Act I waltz,  and, in Act III, the pas de quatre and Neapolitan Dance. The last of these was eventually re-instated by Dowell.

IIRC the short-lived Makarova Sleeping Beauty (which premiered in 2003) was commissioned in 2002 by the late Ross Stretton during his brief tenure as Director.

My old friend John Raven, who died a year ago, was full of ballet anecdotes. He told me once of his meeting Beryl Grey.

John, a dancer, teacher and actor, and a tall and very strong man, taught double work and pas de deux at the Bush-Davies school for 25 years from 1964. When Beryl Grey, who was always short of tall partners, saw him at work she exclaimed, “Where were you when I was dancing?”. After a moment she added, “Never mind, we shall dance in heaven.”

I do hope they are.

On BBC4 at 20.10 on Christmas Eve, The Classical Collection looks back on seven decades of seasonal classical music on the Beeb, and includes Nureyev dancing in The Nutcracker.

6 hours ago, The Sitter In said:

Oliver Symons.  Used to do Widow Simone etc.

I always enjoy his appearance in The Nutcracker- along with those of the housekeeper and the maiden aunts, all  of whom are played by more mature performers. For many years one of the aunts was portrayed by Diane Holland, famously the faded ballroom champion Yvonne in TV’s Hi Di Hi. I think it’s a shame the Royal Ballet don’t cast older dancers in the roles of the Grandfather and Grandmother. Young dancers look so unconvincing however good the make-up - this was particularly noticeable in the cinema screening. 

1 hour ago, alison said:

 

Not only that, but since she appears to him in a vision begging him to come to her rescue, and the only way the spell can be broken (we presume) is with a kiss, what else is he supposed to do?  I mean, we have to assume they sort of "know" each other from the interaction in the vision scene.

The lawyer in me has always justified it thus: Aurora is incapacitated, likewise her next of kin, her parents. The Lilac Fairy, as her godmother, is effectively in loco parentis, and the preceding mime (at any rate in the Royal Ballet’s production) shows that she gives her tacit consent to the kiss.

Sebastian

Stills from the International Ballet production are here:-

https://www.rohcollections.org.uk/record.aspx?searchtype=collection&ref=110002584&page=17&img=110002584_8302&collection=Frank Sharman Photographic Collection&row=2&tit=

James

I think the house curtains should stay as they are, as a fitting memorial. 

5 minutes ago, LianneEva said:

 

I like to think of them as a 'vision' almost. Perhaps not literal entities, but part of Von Rothbart's magic. A flock of malevolent black swans that provide a direct juxtaposition to Act II - these are not the gentle swans that emphasise the idealised love between Siegfried and Odette, but a mockery of that; of beauty warped. The deceit personified. 

Personally I love a bit of drama, so I have quite a soft spot for them...😉

I love the way they flood onto the stage. It’s a superb piece of theatre. 

26 minutes ago, Beryl H said:

I love the last paragraph above, I'm going to watch my 1960 RB DVD tonight as I think Benno is still helping out Siegfried in the pdd, also one of the things I love about the new Liam Scarlett production is the ending of the pdd where she falls back and stays there, much more poetic.

The Royal Ballet touring company were still dancing the version that included Benno in the Act 2 pas de deux when I saw them in 1965. I was quite young, but distinctly remember thinking his presence rather odd, as I had previously seen Festival Ballet’s version of Act 2 (by Bourmeister) which didn’t feature Benno at all.

The 1963 production at Covent Garden by Robert Helpmann, with Ashton’s choreography had also cut Benno.

The participation of Benno derives from the Stepanov notation of the Petipa/Ivanov Swan Lake brought out of Russia by Sergeyev. It has been suggested (I think Fonty mentioned this) that Pavel Gerdt, the Siegfried, was getting on in years and needed some help with the partnering. The only problem with this is that the notation still gives all the lifting to Siegfried- he lifts Odette several times - and Benno only does the catching when Odette swoons backwards. Apparently, Gerdt was also dancing Solor some time after Swan Lake, partnering alone and doing a lot more lifting, so he couldn’t have been that past it! I think there were more likely to have been dramatic reasons for Benno’s presence.

9 hours ago, alison said:

It's now advertised as Yoshida, Putrov, Cuthbertson and Watson.  Watson was one of the four men: Cuthbertson was in the corps  

 

I'm trying to remember who the four men were: Ed Watson, Martin Harvey, Joshua Tuifua and ... it wasn't Ricardo Cervera, was it?  They were very good, anyway.

The fourth man was Yohei Sasaki.

1 hour ago, Rina said:

 

He discusses this in his autobiography Wrights & Wrongs: My Life in Dance. In his production in Stuttgart he left it to the audience to decide but in subsequent productions for the RB he came down firmly on the side of the suicide theory. He was not pleased with Sylvie Guillem who took a different view!

 

 

I believe that Sir Peter was mystified by ballerinas who refused to stab themselves as Giselle, but were quite happy to do so as Juliet.

3 hours ago, alison said:

 

Well, one of Moyna and Zulme was originally a bayadere - I can't remember what the other one was - so they may even have come from different countries!

According to the original scenario, Zulme was a bayadere, Moyna was an odalisque, so definitely from different countries.

3 hours ago, LinMM said:

I think I’ve got it I think I’ve got it! 
Thanks all! What do I know about Giselle only seen it X ty times and still don’t know the sequence of events 😱 

Yes but that’s it Sim ....thanks for lovely Alina extract ....the wafty lift does come later and the bl**** Bolshoi one comes earlier!! I can understand that when the ballerina is completely straight in the air it gives it more of an other worldly quality. 

I still like the wafty one though when it’s performed with great sensitivity. I rather like how Naghdi performed in the rehearsal Clip with a little delay on the glissade going into it. 
James how did you get so many clips of that precise extract together like that and interesting to see the variations in the lift over time. 
Have a lovely time all those seeing Hayward  and Campbell tomorrow they completely blew me away in 2018. 
 

It’s not my compilation, LinMM - I just found it on YouTube. 🙂

Perhaps this will help on the issue of the horizontal lifts and variants.

19 hours ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

I've always thought 'Raymonda' is visually sumptuous with a bit of a silly story.  I gather the story has been 'improved' but worry this is at the expense of gorgeous costumes.  Somehow a nurse's outfit just doesn't have the glamour.  I wonder if bed pans and kidney bowls will feature?

Bearing in mind the Crimean War is the background for this re-working, the ideal setting for the last act would be one of the victory balls that Queen Victoria hosted in June 1856 in the newly finished ballroom at Buckingham Palace. You couldn’t get more sumptuous than that.

35 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

Yes - but I think not rejected by Ratmansky when he made his quasi-authentic version. So presumably he considered them in keeping with the whole.

I believe that Ratmansky has had second thoughts and removed them from more recent performances.

They were introduced by Pierre Vladimiroff, who danced the Prince in the Diaghilev production in 1921, clearly with the intention of adding a “flashy effect” to the pdd. One of the Auroras refused to perform what she called an “acrobatic feat”.