Amelia

I have a question about one particular date in Period 1 - the 30th of October. Unlike all other October days, which are shown in red and are available for booking, the 30th is in black and doesn’t respond to a click. On the other hand I saw this: MRF Future engagements http://www.royal.gov.uk/LatestNewsandDiary/Royaldiary/MRFFutureengagements.aspx?MRF=DE 30th October 2012. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh will attend "Our Extraordiary World - a Gala Celebration" at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ... Does anyone know about the programme for this gala and whether tickets for it will be on sale?

Sergei Polunin is listed as a Principal on the Stanislavsky Ballet website in Moscow. His first appearance there will be as Franz in "Coppelia" this month: http://www.stanmus.com/performance.html?id=80

On 25 July, at 19.30 St.Petersburg time (16.30 London time) there will be INTERNET transmission of "Don Quixote" from the Mikhailovsky Theatre with Osipova & Vasiliev: http://www.mikhailovsky.ru/afisha/shows.html?date=2012-07-25&sh=1132

Aileen wrote: " how many dancers do you need in the corps for The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker?" It depends on production. In the SB Vision Scene at Mariinsky they have 16. I think the RB has the same number. Please correct me if they have more. In Grigorovich's Nutcracker there are 24 Snowflakes. The Vision Scene in Don Q. at Mariinsky looks very crowded when performed at home: corps of 24 plus a line of Cupids (8 or more) from Vaganova Academy. You know that the most demanding are SL and Bayadere. Alison, if "all had to start back from zero on this new board", why you have 545 pasts and I have 5? Where all my hundreds have gone? Please don't laugh at me, I am not longing to compete and am asking just out of curiosity.

But why I have just 4 posts instead of hundreds I had before? Even the smileys ran away from my 4th post. Where is the most fierce smiley?

Thank you for the greeting, Alison. My coming back was delayed by my struggle with the new format. Technology is the curse of my life. I don’t even comprehend how I managed to register again. And in spite of being registered with the same name ‘Amelia’ I am listed now as a ‘Newcomer’ with just 3 posts to my credit. Makes be feel miserable. Where the smiley has gone? Dear Aileen, you wrote again: “There are plenty of good ballet dancers (both freelance and student) around.” It misses completely the point I was making. Good dancers drawn ad hoc into the swan lines will not necessarily make a good corps. Even if you line up all best female principals together, you might have the worst corps ever because every single one will stick out. One can not underestimate the importance of training and moulding rows of dancers into a single body, which can be called “corps de ballet”. Where all members are well matched physically, have the same style of movement, feel each other, and are breathing together. You can not achieve it in one month or two or three… The morale in the corps is aslo very important. Even the best corps in the world had their higher and lower times. You also wrote: “Swan Lake is only one ballet, which one would not normally expect a company to perform annually…” But they perform ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Nutcracker’, which also require the pefect classical corps. Thank God the ENB’s corps is doing well, and this must be maintained. The work with the corps must never be interrupted if we want ENB to remain a classical company.

“… bring in freelance dancers for productions requiring a large corps eg Swan Lake, Rite of Spring.” O yes, freelance dancers of all sorts might be brought in to make large corps for “Rite of Spring”! Modern, classical, contemporary, “hip hop”, “random”, etc. Not enough of those, bring Flamenco and incredible Chinese acrobats. They all will grasp and master “Rite of Spring”. One can not do it with “Swan Lake”. I don’t mean the 64-swan version performed at the arena but the stage version, which can not be thoroughly enjoyed without perfect performance by the corps. Perfection of the corps can not be achieved with temps. Don’t we know that it takes years, even decades to achieve perfect lines, uniform style and united breath of the corps? In order to remain a classical company the ENB, like any other troupe, must maintain full size corps de ballet. IMHO

quote: “It would have been better if the authors of this letter had asked for a private meeting with the board to discuss their concerns but perhaps they have tried this approach already and have not got anywhere.” Exactly, Aileen, your guess is right. The authors did ask the Board! And the private meeting was scheduled! But eventually cancelled - guess by whom? quote: “why the authors would feel the need to hide behind anonymity? “ I can only guess, spannerandpony, that the authors might be close to some members of the company and wanted to protect them.

Thank you, Linda and Michael, for bringing the thread back to its original topic and for stating with such clarity your concern about the company, which we love and care about. Thank you, Irmgard, for letting us learn more about the ENB’s situation, which worried me last year and even more in the last few weeks. The anonymity of the letter to “Dancing Times” does not worry me at all. It looks that the author knows someone in the company or close to it and obviously is keen to protect his contacts and sources by remaining anonymous. I trust the content of this letter since I also heard the rumours that the Artistic Director did not volunteer to be relieved of the job. And why should he? These two last weeks at the Coliseum showed that his company is in good shape, that new imaginative programmes are produced, and the dancers are performing them with great enthusiasm. WHY SHOULD WAYNE EAGLING GO? Why that ludicrously short amount of time - just 12 days! - were given between advert going in and closure of applications for new Artistic Director? What terms of Eagling’s departure made him silent? I am sure he has nothing to hide and can tell the world a lot about this situation. It looks to me as a forced resignation. If my assumption is wrong, I would like to hear the Chairman of the Board contradicting this. If I am right, even more I would like to hear his explanation why the successful AD is leaving the company and nobody in the company utters a word about it PUBLICLY. As a company subsidised by the state the ENB can not carry out the major changes in the leadership in total secrecy.