Coated

Does it matter? Muntagirov's talent is neither bestowed by RB nor ENB, if anything we need to thank his parents for 'creating' him, and all of his previous teachers/companies/colleagues for helping him fine-tune his awesome abilities.

And they're not kidding about the again and again (and again) either, that's exactly what is going to happen to my copy once I can get my hands on it.

All I can say is that I'm very happy for Vadim, and ecstatic that he stays in the UK.

O wow. The standing ovation was definitely deserved. I nearly gave my ticket for tonight away since I double booked with H&G, am I ever glad no one wanted it.

 

Osipova's rebirth as a Wili redefined art and beauty for me.

Well, at least the 'perilously' under-starred thread might get a new title now

*collects jaw from floor*

I think the question on whether I'd ever stagedoor answered itself yesterday when 2 Hilarions and what looked like half the corps decent into a pub where my friend and I had a quick drink after the performance. I got a wee bit flustered, pretended that I had no idea who those people were and made my friend switch the conversation to opera and the use of hammers when removing hard drives. If I get flustered at that, I don't even want to imagine what I'd do if I attempted to speak to someone at the stage door.

 

Maybe Chrischris and I need to form a support group for flustered and tongue-tied fans.

Fingers crossed for Winter's Tale, lucky me already has tickets for both casts (managed to end up with multiple performances of one of the casts initially and 'had' to buy additional tickets after they announced the casting...)

This run of Giselles is turning into a gift that just keeps giving. Cuthbertson and Bonelli were truly moving today and whilst both are beautiful dancers individually, this was a performance where the whole exceeded the sum of part(ner)s.

 

I'm getting my hammer ready to break into my piggybank for any future [insert any romantic or serious ballet] where they are cast together.

Would love to see some comment on the Nunez/Soares cast last night.

 

And who danced Myrtha, please?

Martha was danced by Tierney Heap. She was perhaps not the most elegant Myrtha I have seen, but I quite liked her. Like Claudia Dean, she came across as very statuesque with a great 1940's fierce diva expression.

 

Nunez's Giselle was a little shy and so very happy and trusting at the beginning that it was hard to watch knowing what was to come. Her dancing was as great as always but the thing that really stayed with me was her acting - she was Giselle, and her meltdown was worthy of a tragic pre-raphaelite heroine, just beautiful. Soares was a selfish but sweet Albrecht, slightly understated but dancing better than the last couple of times I've seen him. Their stage chemistry worked its way all the way to the back of stalls circle and their tender slow pd2 in Act 2 was truly beautiful. (Oops, welling up just thinking about it)

 

Francesca Hayward and Yasmine Naghdi were dancing in the Pas de Six again, and their sequence together is so incredibly in synch it's spellbinding. I could happily watch them all day long and hope they are cast again on Monday.

 

I won't start rhapsodising about the corps since I don't have enough superlatives in my vocabulary and need to go to sleep at some point so I just stick with bravissime.

I didn't know what to expect from Lamb in Giselle, but I'd be surprised in Anjuli wouldn't have gotten the required tears going for Sarah's performance. She managed to be both fragile and strong, leaning more to the utter heartbroken than raving mad at the end of ActI.

 

Would have liked to see her with Pennefather, but her partnership with McRae was a very very nice consolation. Those two really work together for me.

Whatever the reason, it was a lovely flower throw.

The Coli has 102 more seats than the ROH.

Today's matinee was pure joy and I am still on a ballet induced high. This was an incredible treat for a Monday afternoon.

I think Matthew Bourne works best for people who have not seen the actual ballet - it's somewhere between musical and ballet, possibly providing a link towards ballet for those who enjoy the dancing in musicals. And without previous familiarity you won't experience the jarring moments when instead of seeing a Bluebird strutting its stuff, all you get is vampires in a night club wedding scene.

 

The dancing in Bourne's always feels secondary to the staging, and the only piece of dancing I really liked when watching it on TV was the park bench rose adagio. I did like his SB when I saw it at Sadler's Wells but didn't feel an urge to see it again after watching the recording. Having recently seen His Swan Lake, I feel quite tired of the choppy arms, forced-looking hand movements and most of all the annoyingly tacky night club scenes.

 

I tend to think of Bourne productions as "[insert ballet name] the Musical" - takes away the expectations and allows me to watch them as a nice little romp with the occasional piece of brilliance like the topiary in Edward Scissorhands. But then maybe not everyone is as fond of moving topiary as I am.

 

... It's a shame as I thought that the Vision Scene in particular lost much of its magic in the transmission. Alternatively, perhaps there was a problem with my parents in law's television! ....

Same for me, so unless your parents-in-law and I have the same faulty TV, the glorious flowers were all but lost in the shadows. I thought DonQ held up quite well on the screen, though there were some things that were amazing when I saw the same cast live that I barely noticed on screen, eg Espada's solo in the first Act.

Ta! That clears up the whole lot in one go. It's bad enough that I mix up Dyer and Zucchetti on occasion, glad that I haven't developed another confuddlement involving Mendizabal

They've got a date set for Watford :-)

 

Nooooooooo, it's only one day, and I definitely can't make that one. The more I hear about it, the better it sounds.

Perhaps it's time that the fierce volunteer ushers at the Globe and the enemies of photography working at the Coliseum start giving master classes to other ushers on how to prevent audience mis-behaviour. It's one of my favourite things at the Coli to watch their ushers sweep in and shine torches at offenders.

I thought Tierney Heap replaced Itziar Mendizabal for the matinee performance on Sat 21? They announced a last minute replacement for Yuhui Choe, but there was a printed cast change for Mendizabal. I spent some time staring at Tierney's biography picture to figure out who she was on stage and thought I figured out who she was (she did rather well, and the RB retweeted one of her tweets where she mentioned her first red run)

 

Either way, I fully agree on the comments made upstream - the performance was a real delight

I don't seem be able to access my upcoming events. It just hangs. This is on desktop and phone. Everything else seems to work fine

I couldn't see past events, and a couple of days later my upcoming events have also disappeared. I assume it's a glitch, but hope they get it fixed soon.

I'm starting to save my pennies now....

They did announce during the general friends rehearsal that some dancers would only be marking their roles since they are performing in the evening. Though that announcement doesn't seem to have reached McRae - if what he did Tuesday morning was just a little warm up and not his fully fledged performance, my head will probably explode when I see him in a 'real' performance.

I watched tuesday morning's rehearsal and had my mind blown to smithereens by McRae & Osipova in Rubies. Didn't know where to look in case I miss a millisecond of either performing.

I don't think they need to make enormously costly changes to improve the production until they can develop a new Nutcracker (the sooner the better - the ENB dancers deserve a production to match their beautiful performances)

 

Dropping parts of the Arabian dance and the random reappearances of mice, replace with padding elsewhere. In the worst of all cases, just have them skate for longer. Throw in a pdd, there is room for one in act 2. (Well, that's what I was fervently wishing for when I watched the marvellous Mr Muntagirov and Ms Cojocaru literally walking on stage and straight off again early in act 2. If I can't see them dance, don't walk them across the stage just to tease me.)

Yes, indeed, Lauren & Beatriz were excellent. Ricardo & Meaghan were ideally suited.The children from RBS helped to make a wonderful atmosphere.

 

What a great evening!

Interestingly, the one other performance that stayed with me since seeing it on the 6th was Itziar Mendizabel in the Arabian Dance - not normally a big fan of the 'ethnic' dances, but she was very slinky and good in it. Their curtain call was pretty good too, with her being carried out like a queen. Do they always do that?