David

The Roman goddess Diana, usually equated with the Greek Goddess Artemis, daughter of Jupiter and twin sister of Apollo was well connected and like most women of my acquaintance excelled in multi-tasking, included amongst all the other roles ascribed above, that of fertility goddess helping women conceive and give birth to children on the one hand while proclaiming herself a fierce supporter of chastity and virginity on the other. She was the archetype of the competent, free-spirited, independent and often contradictory female and not to be messed with!!!! We mere males would be well-advised to steer clear of this particular debate.

I've just gone through and changed the font colour of all the posts announcing cast changes to "dark orange" Very helpful. Thank you.

I am sure that Mr O'Hare consults widely not just across the Company but also with his individual dancers before taking these decisions. May I say I share the general delight that some of our favourite dancers have been promoted in the latest round and look forward to seeing them in leading roles in the forthcoming season. However I venture to strike a discordant note. One of the major factors in the rise of the RB as one of the two or three greatest ballet companies in the world is the fact that it has acted as a magnet to some of the finest dancers the world has to offer. Not all of them have been brought in at the lower ranks and grown within the Company and I dare to suggest that the Company would have the poorer without them. They have played a major role in setting the bar to which the Company’s own dancers must aspire and importantly have made their own contributions to the evolution of what we now see as the Company’s House style. My only point is that I hope the apparent policy to focus on home grown talent will not close the door completely to the infusion at senior level of outstanding talent from outside. There is a balance to be struck. The consensus seems to be that in the past the recruitment policy has been at the expense of internal promotions. Okay! Fair enough! But we are all fiercely loyal to our own, sometimes too much so if the anti-Osipova feeling expressed here and elsewhere is anything to go by and I for one do not wish to see the pendulum swing entirely the other way! Inward-looking organisations tend to shrink! I am hoping that the Company will not close its doors entirely to some of the incredible top-ranking dancers who might aspire to join its ranks. I believe it needs to infuse new blood at all levels if it is to maintain its place on the world stage! And I fear it is a brutal fact that our home-grown dancers need to compete against the best that the world has to offer! As I say, it's a matter of finding the right balance and I'm sure the powers that be within the Company are mindful of this. I shall now retire to a corner and like Alice wait for an entire pack of cards to rise in fury and engulf me! Edited to correct my grammar!

I agree. This kind of speculation about her physical condition is distasteful!

I'm completely lost!!!

My memory is that Rhapsody/Two Pigeons is scheduled for release in Sept 2016? And that talks about a Frankenstein release were still on-going - I'm assuming that we'll probably see that round about December. Unless someone knows better?

It’s difficult, isn’t it! And yet I can think of several more Filles I would like to have on my shelves! But we are extraordinarily fortunate. Opus Arte is the ROH's own arts production and distribution company and they have done us proud over the past 15 or so years, not only in the range they have made available but also in the technical and artistic quality they have built up – IMHO knocking their competitors into a cocked hat. I avidly grab whatever is on offer. My 46 ballet blu-rays include 21 Opus Arte Royal Ballet disks, compared to the Bolshoi (7), Mariinski (4) and Paris (3) disks offered by other recording companies. I have complained in the past about Opus Arte’s PR and communication skills but they certainly deliver the goods. I was pleased to see that they released the ENB Corsaire with Cojocaru and Muntagirov but as far as I can see that was an exception. For their Cinderella, the BRB turned to KULTUR, while Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty was released by Deutsche Gramophon. I don’t begin to understand the ins and outs of commercial recording companies but there is a major need for a recording outlet for all UK arts companies, including inter alia the ENB, BRB and Northern Ballet companies. It was a commissioning and recording role that the BBC filled in the past and their present regime (with the brilliant Jan Younghusband) is doing much to restore it. But it’s all funds driven. Northern Ballet’s 1984 won major awards and was broadcast by the BBC but will we see it on blu-ray? More and more UK arts companies are filming and relaying live to cinemas across the Globe. And there seems to be a reaching out between the various arts organisations. The scope for coordinating the filming, broadcasting, recording and circulation of our superb theatre in all its forms has never been greater. Meanwhile "Toi Toi Toi" to Opus Arte, the BBC and everyone else responsible for putting these marvelous performances out on our shelves. Long may they prosper. PS I forgot to mention that the RSC/BBC have issued the recent "Shakespeare Live: From the RSC" on DVD with some of our finest, including a superb performance of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene by two of our favourite younger RB dancers - who have just and rightly been promoted!!!

Hear! Hear!

Yes - me too. I was looking forward to seeing her in the next season and will miss her. A fine dancer and a lovely presence on the stage. And like cavycapers I am just grateful that we have a permanent record of her Cinderella. I wish the BRB could find ways to record more of their work. What there is is scanty but much treasured but there have been so many of their productions and dancers, both past and recent, that deserve a place on our shelves. Far more so that some!

Thank you. That really is good news!

Sorry - just scrolling back and noticed this for the first time - can I ask if Lillian Hochhauser specified the Mariinsky Ballet as opposed to the Mariinsky Opera please? I'm quite happy to see either but, though I seem to remember that Gergiev has taken the Opera Company to other parts of the UK in recent years, it seems quite a while since he brought it to the Metropolis.

Nice One!

There is the much broader point here, though I find it difficult to express, that the Arts in all their forms are inter-related. Obviously an individual work, be it a ballet, an opera, a novel, a painting or whatever, must stand or fall on its own merits but serious works demand our time and effort, and our appreciation is hugely enhanced as one learns about their place in the wider context. The Frankenstein Myth is a good example. Behind Scarlett's work lie the remarkable circumstances in which the original novel came to be written, its place not only in the Romantic Movement looking back to the past but also as marking the beginning of the new Science Fiction genre, its reflection of the scientific advances at the time, its influences in film history, particularly in the 40s and now, its philosophical obsession with the nature of life and death, the novel’s sub-title with all the classical associations that conjures up, and, most of all its writer herself and her place in the political and feminist movements of the day. Programme notes can’t begin to cover the breadth of this context but the more one learns about these things, the greater the understanding and the pleasure. I have great respect for what Scarlett has attempted. I think his Frankenstein reveals the depth of his study and his understanding of this huge context and its complex inter-relationships across the Arts. I agree it may need some tweaking (so do many of the best works) but there is no doubt in my mind that with his team he has created a work that should find its place as a valued part of the Frankenstein Parthenon. And like Danny Boyle’s production at the National a few years back or Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, both of which in their widely differing ways drew upon the same deep well, it is more than the sum of its parts: it opens up a new and valuable perspective of the Frankenstein Myth with all its literary, cultural, philosophical and scientific associations. Without wishing to become embroiled in comparisons about individual works, I would suggest that many other offerings are less ambitious and will endure only if they “give delight and hurt not”! They don’t belong to this wider world. But Scarlett’s Frankenstein is part of a major thread across the breadth of the Arts that is as relevant and as active today as it has been for nearly 200yrs, nevermore so than in the here and now when the cloning of human life has become a realistic scientific possibility. I think Scarlett has that wider perspective and understanding of context. His Frankenstein is hugely ambitious, remarkable in so young a man. We should value and cherish him.

You really have to hand it to the guy. Nearly a hundred posts and no-one's even seen the work! I guess that by today's PR standards where presentation is all, that makes a it major success already!

Ditto - but never when I'm watching for example the works of Christopher Wheeldon or Liam Scarlett or David Bintley or Matthew Bourne!

Mr McGregor does seem to provoke widely differing reactions but the real test in the long run is, or should be, the box office. It will be interesting to see the demand both for the all-McGregor Programme in the Autumn Season with only five performances, committing some of the Company’s best dancers and at incredibly low prices; and for the revival of Woolf Works in the Winter Season with ten performances, prices and detailed casting as yet unknown but again with Alessandra Ferri and Mara Galeazzi, whose very names should sell tickets. The Company is clearly very committed to him and their investment over the past ten years has been considerable, not only in financial terms but also in opportunity costs - rehearsal time, etc. FLOSS has written insightfully elsewhere (Royal Ballet season 2016/17, Post 281) about the challenges posed by the next Season and as I write has just contributed another post to this thread with which I totally identify.The next few months will either vindicate the Company's faith or should give them pause.

I very much stand to be corrected on this one but my understanding was that, in comparison to other choreographers one could name, MacMillan, Wheeldon and Scarlett in their different ways, all worked/work collaboratively with their dancers albeit to different degrees? I remember for example that when Wheeldon went to the Bolshoi to choreograph Hamlet, the dancers there expected to be told what to do and were completely lost when he tried to engage them in the creative process; as I remember he had enlist the help of the Ballet Boyz privately who luckily were along to film a documentary about the event. The difference with Wayne Macgregor, judging by what I've seen and heard, seems to be the degree to which it is the dancers themselves who suggest/create the choreography and he then decides what he likes. I can understand that this approach might create problems for other dancers in alternative and future casts who have not been involved in the process but I guess the only real question is whether his approach will lead to works which will endure?

Good for them! I so agree with this sentiment. Traditions and repertoires that have take generations to build up can so easily fall by the wayside with the preoccupation for new works and styles, most of which will not survive beyond the initial or second year.

Now this is just insulting, at best showing-off, at worst an arrogant attempt to demonstrate some kind of intellectual superiority. Dressing up his work with such verbal obfustication serves no useful purpose and certainly will not blind his audience to any deficiencies. Dance has its own language; when successful it needs no explanation. We can ignore all this silliness and evaluate his work in its own right. But there are serious underlying issues that should not be ignored and that have been mentioned several times on this forum: (1) What are the implications of the Company’s obvious intention to extend its traditional focus into contemporary dance? Where does the future balance lie? Is the Company’s name becoming a misnomer? (2) What are the implications of this changing focus for the bodies and careers particularly of the younger dancers who will be under enormous pressure to put themselves forward? I would like to see discussion on these points. The physio facilities at the RB are said to be amongst the finest in the world but how is the effect of changes in the repertoire being monitored. Injury levels seem high – have they increased? At what level are they occurring? is there a process of automatic review when injuries occur or are they just accepted as part of the job? There are worrying similarities between the two sides of the House. On the Opera Side we have been subjected to a range of Regietheater productions that many see as expensive failures. On the Dance front there has been a drive for new choreographers. In both cases a free hand seems to have been given with no apparent attempt to moderate or guide. The saving grace has been the remarkable singers, musicians and dancers. In the Royal Opera only its reputation is at risk. In the Royal Ballet, it is the dancers themselves that are affected and I for one would like assurance that the effects of some of the currrent new directions are being properly monitored and assessed.

Or maybe the verb to sprint or race?

Now that's just showing off !!!! Or are you a Valyrian?

And there was me thinking it was some kind of obstetric rupture! I’m afraid I gave up long ago trying to make sense of Mr McGregor’s lengthy expositions & titles and relate them to his choreography but, Hey - artists must find their inspiration where they may and who can or should gainsay them. “What’s in a name” as someone or other once said. “The play’s the thing!”

I agree. Please shut it down.

I’m sorry to take issue with so distinguished a member of the Forum Moya but really - you can’t defend the indefensible. One has only to listen to the words of Vlad Alexandrescu and Tiberiu Soare themselves and their associates (and heavens knows we’ve heard enough of them), to read between the lines and get a pretty clear understanding of the situation. No-one is suggesting that JK or indeed AC are perfect. Leaders in the Arts world are seldom easy-to-live with. But they offered the ONB a unique opportunity. That opportunity has been blown. JK and AC are international players, respected world-wide. Their status is assured and wherever they go they will be welcomed. As for the 52 dancers you quote, they are having to live and work within what clearly is now a poisoned environment. There is political involvement, disastrous in any arts organization, reputations are at risk, and it must be very difficult for them. But if they really think they and their Company are better off without the JK/AC input, few outslde would agree with them.

Are you thinking of MacMillan's Invitation this Summer?