A frog

For Alina and any other potential star guest, I'm not sure how gruelling a tour would be, if they do one performance in the regions every other week at best, they can perfectly make it a day trip. It would certainly be less tiring than their current guesting engagements. It also makes no sense for the company to have them along for the whole tour and pay for their expenses outside of the days they are performing.

Thank you Meunier for the info about Esteban Hernandez. I remember being blown away by his Corsaire pdd two years ago and thought then he was then sure to join the RB sooner or later. Without reigniting debates about dancers' prospects depending on the company they start their career in (Marcelino Sambe after all seems off to a good and very deserved start), it makes sense he would choose to be closer to his family.

I only know the Corsaire pdd that gets trotted out at galas, but if that's in any way representative of the work, I could definitely see Ivan Vasiliev in it. Or Sergei Polunin, and Tamara did say she was trying to have him guest. Regarding his appearance at Alina's gala however, he didn't actually dance with her, but they did partner each other in the past.

Moving to ENB may allow her to guest more while still taking part in the tours in the UK. ENB only performs so many different works per year, I assume it will then make it easier for her to combine ENB (including tours) with her other engagements if she only has a limited number of parts to learn and rehearse

Promming is standing, but if you go to the gallery, the space is so big that that yo would be able to sit on the floor. I don't know that tickets are with any ticket agents, you should however be able to find some on viagogo and the likes, the prices don't seem ridiculously inflated either. Should you plan to prom, I would advise you get there early, the film music one is usually one of the most popular ones. As linMM points out, there are always returns, it might be worth checking now and then,

Tickets are available on the day at the TKTS booth on Leicester Square.

Thank you Bruce.

Thank you for the update Bruce. I'm not on Twitter, but when checking the link that was supplied at the beginning of the thread, the ROH was then saying they would be supplying an explanation (maybe even press release?) after the weekend, did they say anything apart from the concerns about commercial exploitations and concerns about the representations mentioned in the later comments?

Nutnaree Pipithsuksant is currently a soloist with Ballet San Jose. Josephine Pra seems to be reorienting to a business career and no longer be dancing.

It might have changed, but a few years ago, top singers for opera were paid about £15.000 per performance. But I'm not sure it's a good point of comparison, the ballet staff is much bigger than the opera. And except for the occasional flop, opera seems to sell out much more consistently than ballet (last season being a bit of an exception in this respect to be fair), and a sold out opera performance brings in about twice as much money as a ballet one. According to the RB history by Zoe Anderson, the RB at some point was effectively subsidising the opera company at Covent Garden, but I don't think it is still true (from much vaguer memories I can't substantiate).

The Friends programme indeed sometimes feel a bit of a rip-off if you only look look at it from a cost/benefit point of view; at least the youngster version is a bit cheaper, and I got a few free drinks out of it. My most unpleasant surprise was when comparing the packages, non-friends get a champagne and programme voucher thrown in for free, I also found the seats available in packages as an ordinary friend slightly worse than what I can get on public booking. When I book packages, I still only do so with public booking. As has been pointed out already, it's impossible to get tickets to insight events on friends booking days, I find it hard to believe that it's a deliberate policy for them to exclude almost everyone from their educational events, but if anyone can come up with a reasonable alternative explanation as to why the Ballet Evolved series was in the Clore instead of the Linbury for the last two instalments, I'll take it (the Linbury wasn't used on those nights). To go back on topic, opera booking this morning was pretty terrible, the website gave me an error message as I was going to process payment, I received the "order placed" email but no confirmation, I've emailed them and they are trying to save my order (we'll see if they can), but it doesn't bode well for public booking next month. I'm probably in the minority, but I never had that many issues when booking with the old website.

My understanding is that there is just one friends allocation, the tickets for which are all released when booking for premium 1 friends opens (if not for patrons). A few tickets are kept aside for public booking but that's it (20-25% for main house performances, I believe a little less than that for Clore events, there are definitely a few though).

Not really anything to complain about. As mentioned, the Osipova/Acosta R&J was the biggest draw (Nunez/Acosta Don Q was not far behind), as becomes more and more usual, for very high demand performances, one might be better off booking on public booking than ordinary friends if you are looking for specific areas (or any seat for insight events). I also miss the time when you could initially only buy six tickets per production, it seems it was then much easier to get stalls circle standing tickets. I found only one (there are still a few available for Nutcracker), which is close to an all-time low. If there are any supporting friends on these boards, are there some SCS still available when booking opens?

Has there been confirmation they would no longer be dancing the autumn performances? The specification that they would dance on the tour seems to indicate so, but the announcement leaves the door clearly open for guest work, and they are still showing as performing in Don Q, R&J and Nutcracker although that might just be an oversight. Alina's webiste also looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, did the performance page at one point feature anything past July?

It will be 21 November, indeed on sale on the 9 July http://www.roh.org.uk/productions/romeo-and-juliet-by-kenneth-macmillan

Impressions after a second viewing. I wondered during the pas de deux between the postman and the adult raven if they had paid attention to the comments about the lighting as it seemed pretty bright then, the scene with the ravens was quite dark though, but didn't seem to be very interesting, quite a few measures where they were pretty much just walking back and forth. I was sitting in the amphitheatre then (row , and apart from that scene with the ravens, it didn't seem much harder to see than from the stalls, but it was pretty dark, I suppose I just don't mind it that much. Overall I liked it a lot more this time, some parts still don't really work, but once you reset your expectations to a rather slow moving piece of visual theatre (as Wayne McGregor defines the work rather than a narrative ballet in the programme (just the visual theatre part)), it makes for a much better evening. Comprehension and enjoyment are still too much dependant on previous knowledge of the story, and it still seems that the dancing and the music are relating to the book rather than to each other. As some posters wrote, what you expect from the work probably has a lot to do with how much you end up enjoying it (and I did expect an awful lot before the first night). But again, Symphony in C proved a lot more enjoyable and the highlight of the evening. On a side note, does anyone know how much in advance the cast sheets are printed? I don't recall the official announcement that Alina Cojocaru wouldn't be dancing, and yet they knew early enough to have her replaced on the cast sheets, only to have to insert an errata slip in the end. It almost looks like they were hiding her injury in order to sell more tickets (which would be understandable but a little dishonest).

To be fair, I understood the article to mean she preferred rehearsals to performances in general, it wasn't specific to Raven Girl.

If the problem is unauthorised use of photographs, can't they threaten or use legal action in the cases where it applies? They had done it with the Intermezzo blog a few years ago, so they clearly not afraid to do it. Or did the ensuing outcry causing them to backtrack with a press release to publicly apologise led them to think a blanket ban would be a smarter solution? It also smacks a little of contempt to the audience, I don't get why they need over 24 hours after the decision is made public to justify it.

I must say I agree with the opinions expressed so far. I was really underwhelmed by Raven Girl, the final pas de deux stands out, I also quite liked the family scenes in the beginning, but it indeed felt very long, with a lot pf padding in between. I was sitting in the stalls so visibility wasn't that much of an issue, but it still wasn't great; I have a seat in the amphi next week so will be able to compare (even if I am very tempted to just arrive for Symphony in C). To me, one of the main issues that hasn't been brought up yet was the music. Maybe I'm wrong and influenced by the knowledge that the composer mostly works with film; but it left like it was accompanying the action when it should have been driving it. It sounded like a very gorgeous but for the most part not really distinguishable blanket of sound that only helped to accentuate how little was happening. I'm guessing they were going for eerie and unsettling, but that's not how it came across. I'm also a bit disappointed that you would apparently need to read the book to fully understand the story (or watch the video where the author outlines it). I didn't really expect all the nuances to fully come across on the stage, but they could at least have been included in the synopsis in the programme. As things are, as gorgeous as the final pdd is, it arrives out of nowhere, with the prince not having been introduced in any manner. It would seem that Wayne McGregor didn't do himself any favours by telling Audrey NIffeneger not to worry about it being danceable. A lot of it felt like the dancing was a series of little vignettes that were not necessarily very well connected. This is all coming off a lot more negative than I thought it would go or how I felt last night. This is all the more disappointing that I would love to see a McGregor triple bill (seeing Chroma was my entry point to ballet, the triple bill DVD is the only ballet one I've bought), and it's not like he cannot deal with long form either, his Anatomie de la Sensation for POB was great (especially then coming right after the rather disappointing Live Fire Exercise). It seems like he was constrained by the conscious exercise of explicitly telling a story which ironically made a work less moving and expressive than some of his so-called abstract ones. This is all coming off a lot more negative than I thought it would go or how I felt last night. And then Symphony in C, which is really how it should be done, more than ever the unity between dance and music was apparent, with every note and phrase triggering something on stage, every dancer doing an amazing job (as they did in Raven Girl to be fair), and the corps more unified than I remember pretty much ever seeing it.

This is of course a broad generalisation, and reading what you write here about your dd it really doesn't seem to concern her; but when I see that some only train once or a few times a week, I hope they are not the ones whose parents are complaining their spots are being taken by foreigners.

Spannerandponny: No I'm sorry, I wasn't being very clear, I also realise this might be provocative but this is not my intent, what I mean is that a career as a ballet dancer is very fulfilling for those who make it, but from a material point of view, it is one option among others (and not necessarilly the best one), which might be less true for foreign dancers.

Isn't another problem when looking at the global competition? It might be very reductive, but children not from South America or Eastern Europe will have the extra motivation that a job as a ballet dancer might materially be far preferable to much of what they could expect, that certainly was the case for Sergei Polunin and one of the reasons why he was sent to the UK. I understand that UK children also dream of becoming ballet dancers and I only wish them to find jobs in their chosen profession, ideally close to their home; but from a cynical perspective, I wonder if some of them wouldn't end up better off with another career, and it might be easier for them than for foreign students. I don't know enough about ballet education in the UK, but from what I read, compared to the professional demands, it seems to be considered more like an extracurricular activity than actual professional training.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/may/15/royal-ballet-british-dancers The Guardian steps in, (predictably) disagreeing with Ms Brind.

You have to feel bad for the Royal Ballet, the right-wing papers are writing articles to bemoan that there aren't enough British dancers, the left-wing papers are writing articles to complain that there isn't enough diversity (which I suppose does mean British, just probably not the same kind of people Bryony Brind has in mind), in the end they just want to have the best dancers possible and are doing a rather good job at it. Could anyone around here who has been watching the RB for a long time give their opinion on whether something had been lost in Ashton performances? My two sources would be articles from Alistair Macaulay and Clement Crisp, I definitely recall the former stating La Fille for instance was definitely no longer performed how he remembered it from early performances, but it seemed to have more to do with the heritage and transmission being in his opinion not necessarily well managed, he was for instance worried about the consequences of the death of Alexander Grant. I was initially going to write that Clement Crisp doesn't seem to write about the performances having lost something, but I'm not so sure anymore, he is definitely very effusive in his praise of Marianela Nunez in this repertoire.

I don't know with certainty, but I'm pretty sure that when the Royal Ballet tours there is an embassy stop or party or reception scheduled, and I doubt the dancers attend those in trainers. Pride in being British and wishing for dancers to represent the country is one thing, complaining that British ballet companies employ foreign dancers is another.