Fonty

Is that really the main aim? I thought it was a competition where dancers from various countries pitted themselves against each other, and that they won money to be spent on the next term's school fees. Obviously, if someone from a relatively minor school won, I would have thought they would be offered a place at one of the top schools, but I thought that was one of the side effects, not the main point of the competition. Darcey Bussell came third in one of the Prix competitions, didn't she? And she was already at the RBS, so it wasn't for the offer of a place.

Home made cake. Any home made cake, but I am particularly fond of home made Christmas cake. Which is quite a good thing really, given the time of year.

I HATE self service checkouts. Our local Tesco has replaced masses of checkouts with these, and I object strongly. They are ok, I suppose, if you only have a small basket, but they are much slower if people have huge trolleys. It is just a cost cutting exercise for the supermarkets. They will be expecting us to stack the shelves next.

From a personal point of view, I don't really like watching live ballet on television or at the cinema. I just don't think any live theatre comes across well when shown in that way. I feel the same way about opera, where the close ups make you feel as though you are disappearing down the singer's throat, or the occasional live theatre snippet, where the actors seem to be pulling faces and shouting. If a ballet is to be filmed, it needs to be a performance designed specifically for the cinema, with the acting style and possibly the staging altered so that it looks at its best. I know why they don't do it, of course - too expensive! I remember when the RB touring company used to come to my home town, which is about 15 miles from central London, and put on full length productions of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and so on. This was in the days when we still had the huge cinemas converted from the original music halls. When these were changed into multi screen cinemas, I assume the ability to stage live productions of this size was lost.

I did hesitate, because I suppose it would be 6 funerals, but then I thought as Juliet has already had her funeral, she probably wouldn't get another one. I suppose I have got to think of a question now, have I? (dashes off to look up obscure fact about ballet no one has ever heard of.....)

Got to be Romeo and Juliet, hasn't it?

I decided to go on Youtube and have a look at some of the Chroma clips, because I just could not remember if i had seen it (I haven't). Having watched both fast and slow pieces, I can now see both sides of the argument. I can see why this was greeted with such enthusiasm, and why it has continued to be so popular. It is as striking as MacMillan's Rite of Spring must have seemed when first performed. However, it does demand extreme flexibility from its dancers, and such high and extended leg positions, particularly to the side, together with the bathing suit costumes, inevitably exposes the crotch area. The girls always seem to be facing the audience as well, while the men appear to have their backs to the audience a bit more. It would not be so obvious if the girls were wearing the nightdress style costumes of R & J or Manon. But then, that style of dress would not go at all with the type of music. It seems to me that the choreography is great for this one ballet. However, I hate the idea that every new ballet in the future is based on this hyper-extended, pulled apart, arched backed, stick-your-bum-out-and-undulate type of movement. Just think if every ballet MacMillan choreographed after R of S had been similar in style.

I have been driving my other half mad since yesterday. I just cannot stop singing this now! Ter rum ter rum ter rum ter rum etc etc etc

I would like to put in Room 101 people who dig up their front gardens and cover them entirely in concrete. This is what the new owners of the house over the road have done. It had a beautiful garden, and they haven't even left a tiny strip at the side for a couple of small plants. I HATE IT!!

Well, from a personal point of view, I would be very happy never to see any male ballet dancer perform in white or pale tights ever again. So unflattering, IMO, and it does give the impression that the gentleman's rear end is being thrust in your face!

Well, the subject of nudity in this thread seems to be consistent with the idea of "pushing the bounderies", and that concept seems to be at the forefront of all new works, it appears to me. We've had quite a few discussions recently about modern choreography. I can't pass comment on the specific ballets mentioned in Luke Jenning's article, as I haven't seen the latest triple bill. Not sure if I have seen Chroma or not, there is nothing in the photos to distinguish it from several other new works. But audience reaction seems to be enthusiastic, and the dancers appear to love it. So the unfavourable opinion of someone such as myself is destined to be thrown into the ROH administrative waste paper bin, marked, "Rantings of a Middle Aged, Middle Class, Middle Englander". Can't have those sorts of people hogging the seats in the Stalls, can we?

Well now, here is an interesting thread! I tend to get a bit puzzled when people say that objection to nudity is a British thing, or a generation thing. Sorry, I do not agree. It is true we don't tend to strip off as regularly and easily as, say, the Germans appear to but frankly I consider that to be a good thing. (The memory of a naked German Oompah band is one that still manages to reduce me to tears of laughter). On the other hand I am perfectly comfortable on a nudist beach and always have been, and I am no teenager. Also, I have no problems at all with people stripping off in drama if it adds something to the overall theatrical experience. I remember seeing The Elephant Man many years ago, where the lead character appears on stage naked right at the start of the play. As a description is given of his pysical deformities he gradually twists and distorts his body accordingly. It was a remarkable piece of theatre, and a stunning performance by the lead male. However, I have no idea why on earth a choreographer would think it necessary to make a dancer perform in the nude. Surely the whole point of dancing, any dancing, is controlled movement. Have anatomical bits moving in an uncontrolled fashion is as distracting as seeing a piece of torn constume fluttering. However beautiful the dancers are, your eye is drawn to the things that are not moving in time to the music.

I agree with you about Darcey and the dramatic MacMillan parts, and I found it strange that she was always cast in the roles. Not sure who else was around at the time, was there a shortage of Principal females at the time?

My company has just spent some time having new signs printed for the various offices, telling you who or what is behind the closed door. The door to the room where all the official paper, pens, desk diaries and so on are kept now has a large, smart new sign saying: Stationary Cupboard. Whew, well there's a relief. Nothing worse than roaming cupboards!

What form does the stage fright take? Personally, the only way I have ever been able to deal with the shakes and fear is to practise in front of a watching audience as much as possible, and gradually get used to doing it. But it doesn't sound as though that is working in her case? Could she possibly get something from the doctor to calm her down before she has to sing?

That was a bargain, Alison. Who did you see? And I assume you were right up in the Gods for that price? I usually book my tickets in advance, and have always accepted I will have to pay a booking fee. But to have to pay one for turning up at the box office in person? I have never come across that anywhere else, never. And when I go again, I will tell them I have brought my own chair, portable heater, and Shewee and therefore will not be using any of the "facilities", so please remove the £7.

I get sparrowhawks in my garden, and have seen a female attack and kill a wood pigeon twice in the last year. The first time the carnage took place about 3 feet from where I was sitting in my office, taking part in an on-line conference call, and people kept asking me what all the noise was. I've also had the smaller male perched on my washing line. They are very handsome birds, and I try to console myself by saying what pests wood pigeons are.

I put this originally on the Le Corsaire casting thread, but I think this is a more appropriate place. I can't delete my original post, maybe the mods can? I went to the O2 in person to buy a ticket from the box office, and they had a notice stuck to the window saying all tickets purchased at the box office were subject to a booking fee! I think it was £3.50, although I might be wrong. And there was also another £7 odd slapped on for "facilities use" or some such phrase. I was wondering what "facilities" they meant. Toilets perhaps? Seats? Air you breathe? So, that means that all tickets were actually £10 more than the advertised price.

Fonteyn22 originally posted something here which she's since copied to the "Room 101" thread http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/1969-room-101/page-14, which is more appropriate, so I've deleted her posting here.

Now that is definitely an age thing! Remind me, how many retirement tours have Status Quo had? Don't get me wrong, I like my rock music with the volume turned up, it would be wrong to listen to it any other way. But it does seem to be the case now that in many situations the sound is loud and distorted, or just inappropriately loud. Do I really need to be blasted out of my seat by an advert at the cinema telling me how wonderful a certain brand of drink is? And if I go to the ballet and find myself having to stick my fingers in my ears because I am finding the sound painful, then something is very wrong somewhere, IMO.

At work, they installed a covered walkway between our old building and a new one, which had glass sides. After about a week, they kept finding stunned birds on the ground. Apparently it is very common for birds to fly straight into glass structures, so now there are pictures of the outline of a bird of prey at regular intervals, to deter the smaller birds. I read somewhere that you should never install mirrors in your garden as birds fly straight at them thinking they are attacking another bird. We get the dreaded ring necked parakeets screeching and squawking on our seed feeder at dawn. So noisy, and they eat everything.

You don't think it might be :whispersquietly: an age thing? I am of the generation where I need peace and quiet in order to think. My nieces and nephews do their homework to the accompaniment of loud music, and say they cannot concentrate without it. What appears to be a wall of suffocating sound to me, is probably perfectly normal volume to them.

I hate it when the Christmas decorations go up in towns in October. And by the time I get to the third week in December, I really do not want to see any more wholesome familys sitting grinning as they open their presents. However, I have to say it does amuse me when stores start to decorate their windows, and start to put tinsel around very inappropriate things such as vacuum cleaners or tins of household paint. With the suggestion that a battery charger would make a nice stocking filler.

And there was me thinking it was that NHS dentists at the time were paid by the filling, and therefore by filling every tooth they made much more money. I would like to send to the hottest hell possible my childhood dentist. Because he knew our milk teeth would fall out eventually, he filled and filled and filled....the drill would be whirring before you had crossed the room and settled yourself down in the dentist's chair. If he wasn't doing it for the money, he must just have enjoyed inflicting pain.

Aileen, we have been to lots of triple bills at the ROH, plus ones from ENB and BRB, so it would be difficult to single out any particular ballet. However, he is like many other people I have introduced to ballet over the years. Every single one of them has said that they prefer ballets with a story to them, rather than just pure dance. They like to see the dancers acting as well as dancing.