A frog

It seems the POB policy might be changing, the casting for La Bayadere this Christmas was announced before booking for individual tickets opened.

It was Raven Girl, and gave a potentially interesting bit of information, the ballet has indeed been reworked with the Raven Prince now appearing throughout the ballet rather than coming from nowhere in the last scene.

An interesting piece of information gleaned from their Twitter this morning, it seems some SCS tickets are kept aside for friends booking day. I hadn't realised the friends' allocation was released in batches (which would sort of defeat the purpose of being a higher-tiered friend) and wonder if the person manning the account didn't mix up the date with the general booking one.

I did take issue with receiving a leaflet from the ROH suggesting I leave them something in my will, it was my first communication from them after I joined as a friend, and they knew I was under 30 as I had joined as an Insider. It was fairly effective in making me feel they mostly viewed friends as cash cows, and made me think they could probably save some money of they reviewed some of their processes. They also recently sent me a brochure saying that as they'd noticed I very often book a specific seat, maybe I'd like to name it. The reason I often book that seat is that it costs 15 or less depending on the performance, that could have been a clue that I might not have GBP 1,500.00 to spend on a tiny plaque affixed to it.

I've let my membership lapse a couple of booking periods ago, I'm still able to get tickets to everything I'm interested in seeing, and I'm not compromising on what seats (or standing tickets) they are, if anything I feel I always got "better" tickets on general public booking. For performances in the Linbury, as with the rest of the house, they keep a percentage of seats for public booking (fairly good ones too), as long as you're on the website at 9.00 am on the 21 October you'll be fine. Also bear in mind that if you join as a "basic" friend, the odds are that all the better seats will have been bought by higher-tiered friends, and if Acosta proves to be that much of a draw, the Friends allocation could be sold out before Friends booking opens. For the Linbury they also tend to put the first couple of rows on sale at a later date (assuming they are put on sale and not removed).

Must have come as quite a surprise, their Twitter feed shows they were promoting him as the first night Romeo just a few days ago.

Not that you mention it, POB have also started charging different prices depending on the day of the week, though it's been combined with an all around increase in the prices, so I doubt the Mon-Wed performances ended cheaper than they used to be as a result

Do other ballet companies charge comparatively cheaper for mixed bills (to the same extent)? I'm only otherwise familiar with POB who almost charge the same price for all performances regardless of what is performed (the difference was certainly not by a factor of 1 to 2). Have the winter magazines been sent? Unless they show a change back, I assume the RB decided to increase the prices so all their performances end in similar brackets.

It's all the more disappointing that they're now hiring a guest for her former partner, I suppose another question is when will Iana Salenko formally be hired as a company member? ETA: not that I don't enjoy seeing her dance.

I'd agree that it was overall a bit light and subdued compared to other treatments (I've only seen the Ashton in its last run, and wasn't impressed), but I really liked how sweet it was (in particular the fate of the step-sister). I hesitated to compare it to Alice, it's not quite as whiz-bang-woosh, and while more dance focused works better as a spectacle than for the individual moments of dancing.

There doesn't seem to be a thread yet, and I can't imagine I was the only one there. I was curious to see Wheeldon's version, and even more to see the Golding/Tsygankova pairing again after their amazing Don Q earlier this year. I'm not as knowledgeable as other posters here, and a mildly distressing day leading to an occasional lack of focus means that I'll only be able to give rather superficial comments. It overall made for a very good evening, I've never seen a Cinderella that I loved, and it didn't really change that, but I'm considering going again so that's at least something (tkts has half-price tickets for today, let's hope other performances as well). It might seem silly to call this a "realistic" Cinderella as there are still fates and spirits (and this is still Cinderella), but outside of the transformation sequence and a few exotic and fantastical characters, you felt it was above all the story of a boy and a girl, both were introduced in parallel which unless my memories betray me isn't the case in the Ashton or Ratmansky versions (the only other two I have seen). Even the mistreatment Cinderella suffers isn't cartoonishly cruel nor is her father presented as completely lost. As to the dancing, I liked the performances a lot (if the RB persists in having guests, I'm more than ok with them asking Tsygankova to come back), the funny parts were happily not too over the top, but while I was entertained throughout, there isn't really a portion of the ballet that truly wowed me, though that might be due to the circumstances and might change on a second viewing.

I don't know if his race was at the time news (wasn't into ballet at the time), but he is definitely an inspiration. In the documentary First Position, Joan Sebastian Zamora (now with ENB) speaks of him as an example to follow, and one of the reasons why he hopes to join the RBS. I can't imagine he is the only one.

I understand the cost of productions to be that for all that were on stage, opera and ballet, revival and new, that makes the increase half that of income.

Would you mind expanding on what the disappointments were?

I assume that with the triple bills lately selling out quite often they reckoned they could get away with it (and I hope for them they will), and after all similar companies charge the same for full evening length works and triple bill (POB certainly does for instance). Anyway, it certainly makes me more relaxed about having let my membership lapse, I can't imagine I'll book much next year.

Is 25 Nutcrackers that much more than usual? They usually start the run at the very beginning of December and have performances until mid-January.

I can confirm he did. It was particularly ironic as projections on the curtain before the performance actually starts advertises the possibility of eating and the price of drinks.

I have no doubt that's the reason why it wasn't louder. I never go anywhere without earplusgs these days (came in very handy when going to see Savion Glover, I wouldn't have expected to need them for a tap dancing show), and I believe Sadler's Well were handing them out in previous occasions. I suppose that the ROH would have been rather against the idea, and that in any case having an orchestra instead of only recorded music made it simply impossible.

I'd make the English language equivalents Joyce or Woolf, or Henry James if one was to see Proust as the end of the novel rather than the beginning of modernism. I have a hard time imagining a British author as vulgar as Celine, and an even harder time imagining a British politician admitting to liking him. And yes, I'd love to see the reaction to a politician going on about how much they love Joyce.

And the opera will go ahead.

I assume that any seat from the phone/in person allocation that hasn't found a taker is then put online (as happens with the day tickets), it should logically be when there is no longer anyone in the queue (either phone or in person) but I have no idea how to assess when that would be (usually about 10.30 for the day allocations). I wish I'd thought about it yesterday as it is probably why a few Watson/Whelan tickets appeared after 10.

Depends on what you mean by independently, the director is apparently married to the NYCB director of media projects, who is listed as a producer for the film. So even if the NYCB wasn't officially and formally involved, they still had a hand in the movie behind the scenes. I actually don't necessarily disagree with that assessment, but it's better than nothing and not everyone can go to the ballet, let alone see NYCB.

I hope you enjoy it MAB, I went twice on its first run and found it one of his better works (and very reassuring shortly after Live Fire Exercise which I hadn't liked very much), the company was really well suited to his style and I almost felt that he dared more than he normally does with the RB. I saw The Minotaur on the revival, and it indeed makes for a perfect counter-example (all the more so that the revival was sold out as well), but it was pushed by ecstatic reviews, and it's pretty much the exception (I believe the Anna Nicole revival was far from successful (once was enough for me)), Miss Fortune was a disaster on all levels, we'll have to see if they revive Written On Skin (I hope they do as I couldn't attend then due to illness). I have no idea what it takes for a French/Paris audience to boo (I don't think I've ever been to a first night of anything there), but Nicolas Joel (head of the opera from 2009 to 2014) was very much disliked and cut his term short, a criticism that came up a lot was that he was far too traditional. Not having grown up here and not having children, I'm not qualified to comment on education, but based on the British people I know it is tempting to see roots there. To try and steer this back on topic, some thoughts about Untouchable, I thought it was all a bit meh. I haven't seen much by Schechter but I've liked what little it was. This felt a bit repetitive and bit too long, and far more damaging, it was all a bit "small" when all about it should have been overwhelming (music included which while louder than normal ballet music wasn't loud enough). I'm however perfectly comfortable with this type of work being performed by the RB, the comments up-thread about the lack of principals reminded me of a scene on Wiseman's La Danse where Brigitte Lefevre tells Emmanuel Gat that he can have etoiles in his piece but he needs to give them something to dance that justifies casting them. I found it refreshing to have a work with the company front and centre, shame it wasn't a better one.

There was a couple of months ago a movie about the creation of a Justin Peck ballet called Ballet 422. I was struck by the following in an interview of the director: The Dissolve: How did you come to the decision about how much of the actual performance we would see? Lipes: We all agreed the film was about work and working, and not necessarily the celebration of the completed version of that work. I think there’s another factor, in that ballet on a stage is meant to be seen in a theater, and shooting ballet on a stage, especially when it’s an actual live performance, where you can put the camera is limited, and it’s not entertaining and it’s not good and it’s boring. We all knew that if we forced [the performance] in, it wouldn’t be very engaging, but you also don’t want to feel like you’re robbing the audience of that moment. That was one of the hardest things about editing, the question of how much you actually put in so the audience doesn’t feel robbed. And then how much is too much that it’s just boring. So we did a few test screenings, and got a lot of reactions from people, and I feel like we found a good balance of feeling like you were there, but not forcing the viewer to watch this creation in a less than ideal way. Full link is http://thedissolve.com/news/4708-jody-lee-lipes-talks-about-artists-at-work-in-his-/ Depending on who is meant by "We", it could be that NYCB are on principle against filming works.

Thank you Angela, that is the post I was thinking about. Fonty, opera (and classical music) audiences in London seem to me just as conservative if not more. Not so much in their refusal to embrace contemporary works, but also in how unpopular anything a little off the beaten track ends up being. I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but the two examples that come to mind are the performance of Die Tote Stadt in Covent Garden a few years ago, it was the first time the work was shown in London I believe, tickets were comparatively cheap, and yet they had to be discounted and I sadly don't expect the opera to be shown again any day soon given how poorly attended it was. And in case anyone wonders how modern it is, it's where the rather famous recital encore staple "Marietta's Lied" comes from. My other example which I found rather telling was a visit by the Vienna Philharmonic a few years ago, the programme was Brahms, a Brahms quartet orchestrated by Schoenberg and some early Schoenberg (from his post-Romantic days), it wasn't sold out, which is more than surprising for one of their concerts, the only explanation I could think of was that the idea of listening to even 25 minutes of Schoenberg was that much of a deterrent, even though in this specific case there was nothing atonal about it. MAB, McGregor might be the house choreographer, but he still only has a new piece per season, with occasionally one revival as well; and while the run wasn't amazingly successful (though it was quite a few performances and the auditorium is bigger), POB commissioned him for a full-evening length work before the RB did. I don't really know why that is, but I would think class or rather perceptions of have to play a role, as well as how culture is viewed by society in general (my favourite point of comparison between the UK and France is that here politicians however improbably will try to make as many references as possible to popular culture, in France Sarkozy was shamed for his apparent disdain of the classics and anything cultural, to the point that he course corrected a few years into his presidency and then started mentioning Proust or Celine as often as he could (it must have taken him a while to read them as he pretty much repeatedly only mentioned four books over a couple of years)).