Irmgard

John, ENB previously had designs by Yolanda Sonnabend for 'Rite'. The new costumes have tightly curled wigs and I totally agree that one sees the ballet with new eyes - personally I felt I could see the choreography much more clearly than previously and for me it gave a greater poignancy to the fate of the Chosen One as you could actually see a face for a change! Beryl, I think I can help with the Train Bleu solo - it is very short but very acrobatic interspersed with the dancer strutting around like a sailor or one of the 'beach boy's in "Le Biches" - deceptively difficult! I saw Nathan Young rehearse it last week. It isn't really the sort of solo one would normally put by itself in a programme but I think it is meant as a tribute to Dolin, the company's founder.

Irmgard is my real name - it is not an anonymous username and I am very happy to give my surname as well if necessary. Apologies if I have inadvertently broken your policy rules. As regards my professional connection to ENB, please be assured that any work I did on "Giselle" was in an honorary capacity. I was only paid by the company in a freelance capacity to give pre-performance talks on "Giselle".

Aileen, I'm glad you noticed that Wayne doesn't insist on all new choreography being his - I actually made that point in my letter to John Talbot last year (fortunate to have an AD "who is not intent on flooding the repertoire with his own productions")! Hence he doesn't have the monster ego of some former directors of the company! I agree that the new costumes for 'Rite' allow us to see the humanity of the dancers and actually clarify a lot of the choreography - the section where they lie on the floor while the Chosen One dances through them looks particularly stunning with the bare limbs against the black costumes.

I am glad to see that the letter in the Dancing Times, as OTT as it is, has provoked discussion about the sacking of Wayne Eagling. I can confirm that the board tried to sack him last summer but, when the dancers and ballet staff heard what was about to happen, they confronted John Talbot en masse and the Board had to back down. I myself sent John a letter (signed) in support of Wayne and his response ended “please rest assured that neither I nor the Board would take any action that we were not convinced was in the long term interest of English National Ballet. As you will now be aware, Wayne continues as our Artistic Director.” I was therefore shocked by the announcement in February that Wayne was leaving. This time, he was sacked and gagged (presumably told he would lose his severance package if he talked) before the company had any inkling of it and therefore the ballet staff and dancers had no chance to protest although I know the ballet staff have since then written letters in support of him and have tried unsuccessfully to organise meetings with the board. The unseemly haste of the closing date for applications (ten days after the announcement) seems to suggest that the board had no intention of letting Wayne remain in post and were negotiating with his successor before he had even been given his notice. I should at this point state that I am the custodian of Mary Skeaping’s “Giselle” and had the privilege of spending most of the 2009/2010 season with the company so I can talk of my personal experience of working with Wayne and seeing how he directs the company. From that experience, I have been impressed by the continued improvement in artistic and technical excellence of the dancers at all levels in the company and I think that was showcased in the recent performances of “Rite of Spring”. Indeed, two former members of the Royal Ballet were at the Saturday matinee and both agreed that the Royal Ballet never danced it with the commitment shown by ENB. I have also been impressed by Wayne’s promotion of talent at all levels within the company (multiple casts of all solo roles in “Giselle”), including taking the risk of giving Albrecht to Vadim Mutagirov in his first three months with the company, straight out of the Royal Ballet School. It was also Wayne’s inspired decision to partner him with Daria Klimentova when his original partner was injured and we all know what an exciting partnership that has become. During the “Giselle” tour, Wayne would often be called back to London for administrative/budget meetings taking him away from the rehearsal room where he excels, especially in coaching partnering work. For me, I was very grateful for his total support in restoring the dramatic element, especially in Act I of “Giselle”, something Mary Skeaping was insistent upon although she did not always get it. Wayne also realised that a whole season of “Giselle” was not challenging enough for the men in the company, even though they have much more to do than in any other production. He therefore created “Men Y Men” to showcase their talent at all levels. I must have seen at least 60 rehearsals and performances of this work and it never failed to mesmerise me and showed a level of excellence in male dancing unequalled in the company’s history. As with “Resolution”, the creative process was slow and painful but that is how Wayne works and the dancers have come to accept it, knowing that the finished product will be worth it. I note Aileen’s comment about the monstrous ego shown in the Agony & Ecstasy programme but one has to remember that a year’s filming was edited to provide ‘interesting’ television and that we saw only a tiny bit of ’Nutcracker’ rehearsals which had been going on for several months. (Rehearsals of “Giselle” were filmed but not used as nothing controversial ever happened in them.) Here we saw Wayne at his absolute worst and, by theatre standards, it was actually pretty tame. In his defence, he was frustrated at the whole Nutcracker saga. It had originally been scheduled for 2009 but the Board got cold feet at the thought of spending money (on a ballet guaranteed to have sell-out performances at the Coliseum!) and the project was ditched in favour of another run of the Hampson production. In 2010, he was given the go-ahead but not at the budget required to reproduce his Dutch National Ballet production so a lot of it had to be reworked and redesigned. It seems rather shameful to me that the Dutch were willing to spend more money on a sure-fire hit than the ENB board. As it was, he managed to come up with a admirable production, even if it was finished at the 11th hour. What people outside the company are perhaps not aware of is how amenable Wayne is to letting dancers at all levels in the company guest all over the world. This keeps morale high and enhances the reputation of ENB, something of which I had personal experience when “Giselle” was staged for me in Japan by the extremely talented Yuri Uchiumi with Fabian Reimair guesting as Albrecht at extremely short notice (replacing an injured Japanese dancer) which meant rejigging the ENB casting for that week. In fact, I would describe Wayne as a very affable person, easy to talk to (witness the fact that members of the audience feel able to have a chat with him in the intervals), and there is no question of any type of impropriety, such as bullying, on his part. He has had a few run-ins with dancers but which Artistic Director has not? It is to his credit that very few dancers have left the company in the last seven years through disgruntlement. He has galvanised the company repertoire with classics such as “Manon” and the Roland Petit programme but I feel he has been let down by the poor marketing of these ballets, especially outside London. In my perfect world, an Artistic Director should be allowed to do what he does best, i.e. create wonderful performances, with the support of a knowledgeable Board and a very strong administrator/general manager to deal with the day to day running of the company and funding. With all these points in his favour, I wonder what the Board actually wants in an Artistic Director. I do feel that the timing of his sacking showed a total insensitivity on the part of the Board towards artistic matters: the company was in the middle of rehearsing six major works for the Coliseum season including two completely new pieces, one of which is by Wayne himself. It is to their credit that Wayne, the ballet staff and all the dancers have risen above this kick in the teeth and have given magnificent performances with more to come. In my perfect world, an Artistic Director should be allowed to do what he does best, i.e. create wonderful performances, with the support of a knowledgeable Board and a very strong administrator/general manager to deal with the day to day running of the company and funding. I fully intend to write a similar signed letter to newspapers and magazines but I expect it will have to be severely curtailed if I want any chance of it being published. I am therefore grateful to this forum for the chance to offer my thoughts in full and I will be interested in the response of other members.

This is slightly veering off the topic of ENB, but I don’t believe a work can be reconstructed unless a major part of the choreography has been preserved in written form (notation or detailed dance terminology), on film or by memory. If you are talking about Millicent Hodson, I had this discussion with her in 1981 when I was Librarian at the Benesh Institute and responsible for protecting choreographic copyright. She was working on her version of ‘Sacre’ and wanted to assign the copyright to Nijinsky. As not even Marie Rambert could remember one step of Nijinsky’s choreography, I told her this was not really appropriate and that what she had created was her interpretation of what it MIGHT have looked like. She capitulated on the copyright but still refers to her works as reconstructions. I was also privileged to be assistant to Mary Skeaping who created beautiful ballets in the baroque style for Ballet For All and the Royal Swedish Ballet. Since only a handful of variations from baroque ballets (as opposed to ballroom dances) are preserved in Feuillet’s notation, she had to create most of the choreography herself and never referred to these works as reconstructions. As she said “who am I to imagine I can read the mind of the original choreographer”! I understand Millicent had access to a music score of “Jeux” with annotations by Nijinsky, amongst others. If these annotations were anything like Mary’s in her music scores of the Tchaikovsky ballets, I know it would be impossible to reconstruct even a solo from them! I have been able to reconstruct a couple of solos from her very detailed descriptions written in dance terminology but even this requires a bit of guesswork.

It's impossible to reconstruct "Jeux" as all that remains of Nijinsky 's version is a few photographs. Wayne has therefore used the very brief snatches choreographed by MacMillan for the 1979 film "Nijinsky - a true story" and enlarged upon these and enlarged the cast. He has also come up with a new scenario based on the choreographer and his muses. But never fear, the iconic moment with the tennis ball remains! I haven't had a preview but the dancers involved say it is beautiful and therefore will be a fitting swansong for Wayne's time with ENB.

Vadim is dancing in every performance of Programme Two but the best bet is the Saturday matinee when he is dancing in Apollo and Suite en Blanc. Dress rehearsal of Programme One last night was sensational. Firebird is stunning and the new costumes for Rite of Spring finally let the dancers look like humans instead of creatures. If you want to see the company at the top of its game with fabulous music, this is a must-see.

Having been lucky enough to see a full call of Programme One on Saturday, I can tell you that the new Firebird is definitely an ensemble piece and energetic throughout. Ksenia does have the lead role but she is a very strong dancer and will easily get through all the shows. Laurretta Summerscales also has a substantial role and there are great solos for several other dancers. Poor Esteban has broken a bone in his foot, hence the recasting of David Dawson's Faune. I think it was probably more time-efficient to rehearse a dancer where Raphael is (Holland?) and then come over for the performances than rehearse a new ENB dancer in Esteban's role. Actually, between Firebird and Rite, all the other men in the company are fully occupied! Rite is looking incredible with Erina Takahashi amazing as the Chosen One and Tamarin Stott making her debut in the role which will be sensational so any performance of this programme will be worth seeing. Vadim Muntagirov is not in Programme One but will be dancing in Apollo and Suite en Blanc - at present he doesn't know which performances he will be doing but hopefully that will be posted on the ENB website soon. Hope this information helps sell some more seats for the shows.