barton22

I think their version is pre-Bournonville isn't it? I have a dvd recording of them dancing it (Aurelie Dupont and Mathieu Ganio) but have never got around to watching it. There's a Laura Capelle/FT review from what was probably the last time they staged it, back in 2013.

I think that the ROH probably stages mailings of the magazine depending on the recipients' "booking from" dates. The date on which you receive it likely relates to the booking deadline for your friend/patron member level. There is such a wide spread of booking dates that I'm sure it makes sense to stagger the mailings. There are very substantial chunks of the Bolshoi Taming of the Shrew on YouTube. If you search "bolshoi taming of the shrew" they will come up. There is a 33 minute video of a performance posted by "fiordililia n", for example. There was also 30 minutes or so of footage of the company rehearsing the piece with Maillot himself on World Ballet Day 2014 and the video of that is still up on YouTube (just make sure you get the 2014 one and not last year's) - starting at around 3 hours and 6 minutes in; that is on the Bolshoi's own YouTube channel.

I am not sure whether she would be that worried, but I think KOH may have clarified that this plan could relate to calendar year 2020 rather than a whole season; so it could be the last six or seven months of the 2019/20 season and the first four months of the 2020/21 season and so avoid issues with what some might feel would be a very unbalanced season. I haven't looked back at records of what KOH actually said, but if it is the case that this would be limited to works created while he has been AD I am not sure Alice should be on your list.

Modern; generally not particularly elaborate costumes. There are quite a few videos of her work on YouTube. A piece she created for a ballet company is Emergence and Pacific Northwest Ballet's channel has an excerpt from that. There are several examples of her work with NDT and Kidd Pivot, including The You Show, an excerpt of which was performed at Sadler's Wells last year or the year before. Also Polaris, the large group piece she created for the Thomas Ades programme at Sadler's Wells last season and then took to the Lincoln Center (the Lincoln Center's channel as an excerpt from that).

I don't think he has used Nyx before. He has been talking about this for a while, though. He used another Salonen work (Foreign Bodies) for Yantra, the piece he created on Stuttgart Ballet in 2010.

I am not sure I'm convinced that women get a particularly raw deal compared to men when it comes to the number and quality of roles for them in ballet. I can't think of another work in the RB rep that is devoted to male dancers (even if there is one, the balance still seems to be more than fair between the sexes) and this could be really interesting. I think there is definitely an issue with a lack of use of women choreographers and it would be good to see that corrected over time. Based on a New York Times article back in November, it sounds like we have Crystal Pite creating something for the company in the near future (something I am very excited about as I love her work), but that's not much given the resources the company devotes to a small clique of exclusively male choreographers.

For those interested in this but unable to see at the cinema, there is also a dvd/blu ray of this concert that is available for pre-order on Amazon with a release date of February 26th. (Bizarrely, my pre-order of the blu ray placed in October was delivered to me at the end of November, but they seem to have taken it off the market and scheduled a new release date for the end of Feb; perhaps they rethought the timing when they decided to have a run of this in cinemas.)

I find it hard to see anything other than Chroma and Infra surviving (and I really feel they deserve to survive). I have always felt they were in a different league to his later pieces, and it is also telling that these are the only pieces (of which I am aware) to have been taken on by other companies of the highest calibre (the Bolshoi has Chroma and the Mariinsky Infra). I know others have a different view, but for me everything after Infra has been pretty uninteresting and some have just been painfully boring (especially Tetractys). I think perhaps the first and last segments of Woolf Works deserve to survive but they are saddled with the ludicrous central segment.

It could be that it could have been better handled, but it may be that KOH didn't want to put more pressure on this young pair by creating an even bigger publicity splash than there would already be dancing their first public performance of these demanding principal roles. We have seen where putting too much pressure on very young dancers has got the company in the past.

I agree, and he is arguably the best all rounder among the male principals. He dances classical ballets beautifully and is very good in the more contemporary repertoire and regularly chosen by McGregor and Wheeldon to dance their new works. Looking at the list of principals I don't see another male principal dancer who can match him when you consider the whole spectrum of the company's repertoire.

I am not sure whether this has been mentioned elsewhere, but another recent (October) DVD release is of Le Tricentenaire de l'Ecole francaise de Danse on the Editions Montparnasse label. I bought it on Amazon France but it seems to be available through third party sellers on Amazon UK. It is region free and has an English subtitles option. It is interesting, although not quite as amazing as I hoped it would be. There is a little bit of documentary content and some performances by the school (with some principal roles taken by company dancers such as Mathieu Ganio and Ludmila Pagliero).

I agree it is disappointingly bland and could easily have been so much better. I got a dvd copy from the US a while ago. I'd say it is worth watching but just don't expect too much!

I am pretty sure I read somewhere that he planned to include Acosta's Don Q in what he would count as 21st century for this purpose. He may well do the same with the new Swan Lake. I think that wherever I read that, I also read that he felt he had been misunderstood on his plans and that potentially the "whole year" of these works could be a calendar year and so span two seasons. I may not be recalling correctly what I read, though.

I'm glad it wasn't just me last night - I too found the whole performance left me cold. Muntagirov's dancing was beautiful, but that was about the only real positive. Maybe they will become more compelling with another performance or two but I'm not sure I see that happening. I was also disappointed by Zucchetti and Hay as Mercutio and Benvolio - I was expecting so much more from these two dancers in these roles (although with them I suspect things will get better will successive performances).

I believe so, although I wasn't there myself.

I agree. All the casts are going to be good in different ways. I have now seen the Ball/Naghdi cast twice (general rehearsal and schools matinee today) and they are very promising. Better today having got their first performance in front of an audience out of the way at the general last Friday. I have been more engaged by them than other casts I remember. I heard very good things about Hayward in Saturday's matinee. Cuthbertson will be great. Unless you have specific likes and dislikes you can't go far wrong with any cast. Crisp does tend to adore McRae whatever he does and I find him quite extreme and erratic in his views, so I am not that surprised that he gushed over the opening night performance. Hard to say whether his enthusiasm for it will translate into one's own.

If you are choosing between Cuthbertson and Nunez for acting I would go with Cuthbertson. Nunez is great technically but always leaves me cold in dramatic roles. For me, Cuthbertson is the one for this role. You might also want to consider Hayward and, as MAB says, Osipova. Tickets for Osipova will be the hardest to obtain, though.

My sense is that if you are considering a handful of performances a year then it isn't necessary to be a Friend of the ROH to be able to obtain decent seats for most performances, even if you need to plan around just a couple of visits to London. If you want performances in which Osipova features or are focused on a popular seating area it might get more difficult, but even then I am sure there are some seats left for public booking and returns regularly pop up on the website and you just need to invest a little time in checking for them. I would be surprised if there is real difficulty getting seats for Elizabeth in public booking. I suppose the fact that Acosta is performing and is heading into retirement from the company may drive sales up (I am not sure he is THAT much of a draw, though); but I'm still not convinced you'll have trouble, especially if you book soon after public booking opens.

I am pretty sure that Pite will end up working with the Royal Ballet before long. I agree with you on the quality of her work; it is so rare nowadays for choreographers to come up with something original and not just look like they are channeling McGregor.

I have found what I call seat squatters more of an issue at the Coli than anywhere else. On a number of occasions I have arrived at the last minute and found people in my seats who were clearly not there by mistake and seemed pretty annoyed at being caught out and turfed out at the last minute and having to run to where they knew they were supposed to be sitting. Really hasn't happened to me in other theatres.

Agreed that this one piece was not terribly successful, but I think his good material is so much better than the new work the Royal has put on recently.

Thanks, Bruce. Looking forward to seeing the new ballet and the Shostakovich triptych. I missed that when it was first shown and someone close to ABT had suggested to me a while back that they might not stage all three pieces together again. Very pleased that turned out to be wrong, as it sounds like it is very good indeed.

I agree with aileen that there is no need to bring in men from outside the company to dance Rupert's few scheduled performances this coming season. Especially dancers who are not yet at principal rank in their own companies. I think that, among other things, that could be terrible for morale in the Royal. The first couple of Romeos are a problem as they are soon and there is not much time to prepare someone who doesn't know the role in the Royal's production. They are also opening night of the season and a cinema relay and it would send an unfortunate message to broadcast one of the company's key works with an outsider in the lead male role and thereby imply that the company lacks depth in its male ranks. I think it has to be one of the other male principals and it has to be the same man for both opening night and the relay so he has had a stage performance to work out any kinks before the broadcast performance. For the other ballets in which Pennefather was cast, there is ample time to prepare one or more non-principal men from the Royal to take those shows. They have already given several Nutcracker princes to non-principals and could give those same men some more or give another non-principal man a chance. (Nut prince also seems an odd role to have a guest in as it is such a short role - it seemed so odd that they used Cory Stearns in this role last time he was here.) I was anticipating that Ball might get a Nutcracker prince or two before the casting came out and it is a role he would do well in. Zucchetti only seems to have one performance and another wouldn't do any harm and would allow him to get to grips with the role a bit better than the one make or break show. Hirano, Campbell, and Hristov would probably appreciate the chance to dance another performance. Pennefather's single Albrecht could be another good opportunity for a non-principal (and there is loads of time to prepare for it) or could surely easily picked up by another of the existing principal men. I suppose some this will depend on how willing Lamb is to dance with less experienced men.

I agree that to give the Ball/Naghdi pairing another performance would be an excellent idea. I think they have a schools matinee ahead of their October 3rd general public performance, so they do at least have a full performance ahead of their public debut.

I know what you mean, but I thought Jones was always compelling dramatically even though she had her off days technically. We have different views on RP and it has been interesting to read your thoughts on him.