Scheherezade

12 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

For me at least  I thought this fine Company seemed to 'come home' - i.e., to their NOW natural milieu - for the first time this season.

Sorry Bruce, I can’t agree that the works of McGregor are the natural milieu of the RB or that the company is defined by the limited and increasingly repetitive vocabulary expressed in those works.  

24 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

McGregor has come up with a formula for narrative dance that really strikes a cord for our time.  I can now think of so many literal areas I'd love to see him address.

 

On both an emotional and an artistic level, other companies - Ballet Black being a very fine and particularly current example - have, for me, come up with a far more immediate, accessible and satisfying formula for narrative dance to strike a chord for our time.  

26 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

McGregor's language - rich in its abstracted partnering and propulsive contractions … mixed with a contemporary might that simply towers … is what NOW marks this fine Company out. 

McGregor has his own company to mark out and populate with his stylised language of abstracted partnering and propulsive contractions. To reduce the extraordinary talents of the highly trained, classical dancers currently within the RB to little more than meaningless contortions is, to me, a crime against dance.

29 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

The glory of the contemporary stealth of this stunning Company's current product is here continually propelled into our line of vision. 

To some of us, an increasingly irrelevant product and one that should at best be seen occasionally and should in no way replace what should, by definition, be the prevailing focus of a classical ballet company, namely classical ballet. 
 

Sorry once again, Bruce, and I appreciate your passionate defence of all things McGregor but we will have to differ on this one. 

14 minutes ago, JohnS said:

Apologies - it was Leo Dixon who I thought very impressive in earlier performances. It was my first time seeing Lukas B Braendsrod as Espada.

I liked Leo Dixon’s Espada too but I do always find him particularly watchable. 

3 hours ago, Ondine said:

 Off topic I know but...

 

He is gorgeous, his dance was gorgeous, so much gorgeousness in this video

 

One of the comments under.

 

His own YouTube channel. Very interesting. 

 

 

Well I think we can agree he’d have no trouble with Espada’s cape swirling. 

11 minutes ago, Linnzi5 said:

l loved his Hamlet. Next time for Rudolph. I saw an interview or read one, can't remember which, where William Bracewell said he was understudy for Rudolph. Shame he didn't get the chance to dance the character but there's hopefully next time.

I loved his Hamlet too. And I’d say there’s a good chance of a Bracewell Rudolf next time round.
 

In a totally different way, I think Corrales could make an interesting Rudolf too. 

7 minutes ago, Texan said:

Watching tonight's performance, I wondered how long we would have to wait to see William as Rodolf, with Fumi as his Mary.

His mesmerising Hamlet in the Ashton Undiscovered programme in the Linbury a couple of years back, with Francesca Hayward as a luminous Ophelia, was like a calling card for Rudolf but he wasn’t cast in the last run. Although we did have Vadim’s mind-blowing performance to make up for it. 

7 hours ago, Ondine said:

 

I saw this earlier and wondered briefly whether the RB might have moved on from its baffling aversion to its 20th century back catalogue.

No such luck. Which begs the question of why give every appearance of enthusiasm for works that it has absolutely no intention  of reviving?

6 hours ago, Ondine said:

 

Not Jephtha but a little more of the glorious countertenor voice of Cameron Shahbazi and Handel (official link):

 

 

 

Gorgeous voice! Looking forward to hearing him on Friday. 

2 hours ago, Sim said:

I wonder which supporter gets to go on tour?  

 

(I’m just being pedantic about the incorrect use of the apostrophe…always a bugbear with me!)

With me too, Sim. As is - at the risk of being controversial - the misuse of plural personal pronouns for a single individual. Like scraping a nail along a blackboard. 

2 hours ago, JohnS said:

Apologies in advance for the diversion but I read this yesterday with pleasure:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/17/hampshire-villagers-bring-streets-apostrophe-catastrophe-to-a-full-stop?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The article’s headline is correct if not the url.

I read and loved this too, JohnS. 

On 17/11/2023 at 02:07, alison said:

Don't know what I can add to what everyone else has written, really.

Ditto.

Two extremely powerful pieces in very different ways: the first through beauty and lyricism (and this despite the use of spoken word, which has never been my natural go-to medium for dance works); the second through conflict and strength.

I loved the music in both pieces, and the eloquence of the choreography, so poignantly and powerfully interpreted by this company which, for me, goes from strength to strength. 
 

Isabela Coracy, along with the rest of the company, brought the house down at the end of the evening, and deservedly so, in what was an object lesson in how to make choreography and dance relevant to the issues that touch us today. Fabulous!

Hi annamk, I have messaged you. 

I hope everyone enjoys this evening’s performance. I missed Osipova (in both senses) this run since she pulled out of the performance with Sambe that I was due to see and I can’t make tonight as I’m at Ballet Black’s Pioneers. Which I am equally looking forward to. I would have loved to have been there tonight though. 

53 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

Very pleased about Osipova being cast in the Isadora Duncan waltzes, presumably we'll also see her in London in this.

Yes, she’s the free spirit that this piece requires. 

2 hours ago, PeterS said:

 

Do you have any evidence to back these statements up? If so could you please provide it. 
 

There has been undisputed evidence set out in posts regarding ticket sales for Don Q. I don’t think it’s too great a leap of the imagination to apply the same reasoning here.

Beyond that, it’s clear that we are falling into two camps here: on the one hand the apologists for the ROH management and marketing team and the highly paid consultants whose conclusions would appear to have been unreservedly adopted, and their critics on the other. 
We are all entitled to our views, and I am more than happy that you do not accept mine without question - would that the powers that be at the ROH exhibited the same questioning spirit! - but I do find the repeated pattern of a serial, last minute ticket sale frenzy somewhat unlikely, to say the least. 

Well I’ll certainly be at a distance when I see it a week on Friday so  hoping for the best - or the best that can be hoped for with the current staging preferences. 

2 minutes ago, PeterS said:

What do you mean? 

The way this season‘s massed banks of unsold tickets disappear, again en masse, as part of the great giveaway (sorry, selective discounts). 

3 hours ago, annamk said:

 

Quite surprising given how many were unsold until relatively recently. 

Not all that surprising to us any

more, though …

13 minutes ago, Ondine said:

Also doing all that without losing the fan or the cane!

Yes, I noticed that too! Well, how could you not notice it? As a whole, I'd sum it all up as somewhat extraordinary and totally charming.

2 hours ago, Sebastian said:

Gulp:

 

 

I loved this, Sebastian: the musicality, the wit and, my goodness, those lifts and throws! Thank you so much for posting.

32 minutes ago, JohnS said:

Of the Mercedes I’ve seen so far this run, I’ve been most impressed by Itziar Mendizabal. I think she’s made more of the role and seems closer to Laura Morera than others.

I felt the same. The others seem to have been a little underpowered: too careful, too polite; lacking that element of hot-headed abandon that I would expect from a street dancer.  

4 hours ago, Sim said:

Although when they first danced DonQ in London with the Bolshoi Vasiliev did it in performance and drew gasps and huge applause. I will never forget those shows!  

I don’t think that anyone who saw those early Osipova/Vasiliev Don Qs will ever forget them.

Theirs was the first Don Q that my daughter had seen and she remains convinced that she will be eternally disappointed with all subsequent performances. 

1 hour ago, Geoff W said:

I wasn’t overly impressed by Annette Buvoli as Mercedes

Mixed reactions to the Saturday lunchtime Mercedes ...

I have felt somewhat lukewarm to each Mercedes that I have seen this time round and, re-running the comparison theme, wonder to what extent that is down to the memory of Laura Morera’s firecracker performance in previous runs. 

1 hour ago, Lizbie1 said:

...and a non-paywalled report of the same https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/09/charities-must-have-good-reason-to-reject-donations-says-head-of-england-regulator

Well said Orlando Fraser, and quite right: the best interests of the charity and its beneficiaries should prevail over the pious virtue signalling of squeamish trustees. 

1 hour ago, PeterS said:

Great value, but not a lot of leg room or seat space if you’re tall though 

Tbh, I’ve sat in a lot of places, including the ROH, that are more cramped, and the front row, of course, has masses of leg room. Obviously it helps if you’re not tall and I’m not. 

6 minutes ago, Dawnstar said:

@Scheherezade Oh yes, I've heard that those NT front stalls tickets are extremely popular.

They are fantastic. Worth a 3 hour wait and trawl? Definitely!

13 minutes ago, Dawnstar said:

@Scheherezade Were there any tickets left after 3 hours of queuing? I think the only theatre website I've had to queue for that long on was the RAH for Proms bookings some years ago.

There were. But only 1 solitary ticket that I wanted (first three rows of the stalls at £20) amongst all of the very many Nye performances and the same problem that we so frequently come across when booking at the ROH - the tickets having already disappeared in the time it takes to click on the seat and then add it to the basket. I think the general rush was to hoover up whatever was left of those particular seats for that particular show, although no such problem with the rest of the season’s offerings or, indeed, for other tickets for that show.