jm365

I too loved Limelight at the time it first came out. Could I just put in a word for the equally marvellous Buster Keaton, who has a cameo moment in the film. He was also a 'beautiful mover' in his own earlier silent films - The General, Steamboat Bill jnr, for example - and, for me, far funnier and less sentimental than Chaplin!

I agree that Melissa Hamilton made a most promsing debut, but I and the two people on each side of me in the Amphi all thought that she deserved a better des Grieux than Mattthew Golding. We all thought he was unbelievably wooden as an actor, and certainly could not see any rapport between them. I thought also that Gartside was a better Lescaut, and Calvert a better Mistress than I had seen last Thursday- but oh for Muntagirov as Hamilton's partner!

Like ao many others, I read the Links every day, snd am full of wonder at the thoroughness of the Moderators. I love the quirky oddments you come up with at the end - what I alswys think of as the 'Skateboarding Ducks' section. I would miss the coverage greatly. I am subscribed to Arts Desk too, but not to any of the newspapers.

Oh, Alison, how much I agree with your statements about the first act of MND - almost total tedium, I thought. I disliked almost everything about it - the heavy-handed humour, the twee fairies, the ghastly costumes. The ballet was just slightly redeemed by the second act - but the bareness of the set, the lack of any sense of celebration of the three weddings .... In comparison with the Ashton version, such a lack of a proper structure. It was interesting to see it once - but never, never, never again.

Going back to an earlier post - Sylvie Guillem definitely did start as a gymnast. I think Varna was one of the earliest international competitions - in Bulgaria - it used to have a great kudos attached to winning. Colin Nears made a film about it for the BBC many years ago. It was still going a couple of years ago, but I have been told that the ethos is now very different - and possibly corrupt. Many of the great Russian dancers got their early chances via the Moscow Ballet Competition in Soviet times. Mukhamedov did - and I believe Nureyev may also have entered, but I'm not sure and haven't got his biography to hand.

interesting presentation - no attempt to fill in the - quite long - intermissions with pre-filmed items. Maybe we should try it here? Would do away with inane presenters (who shall be nameless!) Le Riche is truly magnificent as le Jeune Homme. This is turning into balletco.forum on twitter!!!!

Have now got full screen - am really looking forward to the rest of the programme! The Mac is a revelation for picture quality.

Everything going fine on my Mac - but I can't get it full screen, unfortunately!

If you want to go back a bit - Ballerina, a book about Nadia Nerina, has good photos. Also some of the books (in French) about the Maurice Bejart's company have great photos of the dancers at work in rehearsal. These books will probably be very expensive and are likely only to be available via Abebooks or some such site - I bought them twenty or thirty years ago in Belgium and France and still treasure them.

I also was able to view it without any problem, using Firefox.

Oh yes - I remember the time when it was possible to smoke in all the West End theatres. In the same era, you could have tea on a tray served to you in your seat during matinees - always a great treat for me as a child with my mother.

Watford Palace Theatre show the various live transmissions very successfully, apart from regular - if fairly well spaced - very short dropouts of sound. They charge £15 per ticket plus a booking fee of £1.50. Like Alison above, my experience of RB Giselle and Bolshoi Lost Illusions and Marco Spada bears out the view that there is a bigger audience for RB productions. I wonder why, since A Winter's Tale is just as much an unknown quantity to most of the people there as the two Bolshoi ballets. I found the sound level for Winter's Tale was uncomfortably loud - something that was not apparent in my other three visits. I wonder if this was a matter of the volume as transmitted, rather than the 'fault' of the theatre projection equipment. I also found Darcey embarrassing as presenter, especially when compared with Katya Novikova at the Bolshoi. Surely the audience is not influenced in its decision to attend just because she might be presenting it? In any country?

Another suggestion for a presenter - David Bintley. He has the perspective of a dancer, a choreographer and a director. He knows his dance history and has a most pleasant onscreen personality.

Aileen - I had EXACTLY the same reaction to the performance as you did., down to loathing Vestris!! Luckily I didn't have anyone around me talking or rustling - but someone seemed so fed up with the length of the first interval that they left before Jeune Homme - which seemed a perfect example of cutting your nose off etc. Some of the things Vasiliev did were extraordinary, and I do admire him. I came out of his 'Don Q' absolutely fizzing with pleasure. And yet he - for me - is lacking in 'magic'. I was lucky enough to see the 'first' Vasilev at his height, and Nureyev from his second performance at Covent Garden, and I was trying to work out why they had that elusive something. Was it just that I was more naive and had seen so much less back then? That is partly why I think live performance is so wonderful - the contact that comes across the footlights with the artist on stage - and it's not only the leading dancer that can have it. Sorry - second para is a bit incoherent - I'm finding it difficult to express what I mean!

Tiny quibble about the Good Swan Bad Swan. I thought it was very bad manners of the director not to credit the various Siegfrieds online in the course of the programme. OK, they were on the final. credits, but if you didn't know already, you wouldn't know that Matthew Golding did most of the dancing, with just one rehearsal where Muntagirov was suddenly there instead. Otherwise I thought it was most interesting.

I wish somebody would seize the opportunity to make a longer programme with the wonderful dancers who appeared in Dancing in the Blitz before it's too late. There's obviously nothing at all wrong with their memories and they are such great characters. I loved the documentary film with the survivors of the Ballets Russes - surely there could be another film like that about the early days of the company that would become the Royal Ballet.

I have a feeling that R & J was actually filmed in the Opera House, but in a closed session with several cameras filming at the same time. Was it a Paul Czinner production?

Sorry - should also have said that it is such a shame that Seymour and Gable were not filmed in the whole of R & J. At that time, of course, it was much less easy to film or record a whole ballet. There was also no question of recording during a normal performance - the whole thing had to be re-lit for television and then recorded in front of an invited audience, partly I think because the cameras then were so much more bulky and took up so much space - several seats behind each one in many rows had to be left empty becasue of the restricted view.

I saw the first night of R & J with Fonteyn and Nureyev, and then the 'real first night' with Seymour and Gable. The latter were absolutely fantastic - Seymour sitting motionless on the bed is something I will never forget. I have loved many other interpretations of the ballet, but I don't think Seymour will ever be equalled.

I was lucky enough to see Seymour and Gable in almost everything they did as a partnership - and you are right, they were wonderful together.

I don't think Mukhamedov ever danced with Makarova in a 'partnership', if you know what I mean. He also danced with Assylmuratova in Bayadere when he was with the Royal Ballet, but also not a 'partnership' in the same sense as there was with Durante. He has said how much he loved dancing with Lesley Collier too.

Yes, Aileen, it was!! And though I loved the ENB performance on Thursday, I still think the Kirov version which I saw quite a few years ago now, with assylmuratova as Medora, remains the gold standard.

Nadia Nerina's first regular partner was Alexis Rassine - I never saw this partnership as it was 'before my time' as a regular ballet goer. She often danced with David Blair - they created 'Fille' together. She had hopes of making a partnership with Erik Bruhn, but the arrival of Nureyev meant he was never invited to become a guest member of the Royal Ballet. I was lucky enough to see Fonteyn/Nureyev, Dowell/Sibley, Seymour/Gable and many of the other great 1960s partnerships. I also saw Maximova and Vasiliev. Although today some people do seem to dance together quite frequently - e.g. McRae/Marquez - they don't seem to be 'partnerships' in the sense of some of the earlier pairings - don't quite see why.

Meunier, like you I have been very surprised that there has not been more reaction from balletcoers about Mark Morris. I have been to both evenings, and have absolutely loved everything about both performances. I'm not usually much enthused by non-classical dance, but Morris really stands out for me as a great creative artist, who makes apparently simple steps and movements into wonderful works. In a funny way, they are very repetitive, but yet totally different in each ballet. (Sorry - this is getting very incoherent - no wonder I virtually never try to review what I have seen!!) I have just been to the Chroma triple bill - and I wish Wayne Macgregor would take lessons.

I would always prefer to be higher up rather than in the stalls because you get a better view of the patterns of the choreography. Nowadays for financial reasons I always sit in the Upper Amphi, with a good pair of binoculars, and find this pretty acceptable. I have over many years of ballet going sat in virtually all positions - and done a certain amount of standing! - and I've found that the only totally unacceptable seats are in the slips or in some of the boxes too far round the curve. I have sat in stalls seats right up against the 'wall' of the stalls circle and found the view OK, as long as you are fairly far back. I should think row K would be fine. I hope you and your friend have a great time.