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Lindsay

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  1. Lindsay
    haha cross-posting. I was half right - nothing can make him like McGregor. Clearly not a Woolf fan old Clement - quelle surprise...
  2. Lindsay
    I saw it from the Grand Tier and thought that worked well. You might not get full lighting effects from front of stalls - but I might be mistaken and you would get a more detailed look at the costumes. My betting is that Clement will hate this - he detests modernism and anything that smacks of intellectualism rather than pure "emotion" and "refinement". He may also lament that brilliant performances by Ed, Natalia and Steven got lost in the special effects.
  3. Lindsay
    Sorry Alison - I realised that was misleading after I typed it. I meant to say in the 20 years I have been going to the ROH; it was an egotistic measure....
  4. Lindsay
    Well! I'm pretty neutral on McGregor generally and find him a bit samey but this was quite different. The first intelligent, "grown-up" work I've seen commissioned at the ROH in my 20 years of on-and-off attending. It helps that I love Virginia Woolf's work but, even for those who don't know it, this captures the spirit of her modernism in conveying IDEAS rather than narrative. So don't get hung up on plot or on names of characters and dancers - that is to miss the point. Edward Watson conveying the agony of a suicidal man doesn't need a back story. Neither does a punk, gender bending middle sequence or a lesbian kiss or a suicidal woman playing with children. Just be open minded and go with it. But if you want to read a couple of chapters of the Waves for atmosphere and an idea of what Woolf was about, all her stuff can be found online for free. And if you are a determined McGregor hater there is loads of it for you to criticise. Something for everyone
  5. Lindsay
    Really interesting thoughts A frog. I agree with you that class has much to do with it. My husband, now a musician, is from a lower middle class family and was mercilessly mocked and bullied by his own parents (!?!) for borrowing Wagner and Stockhausen scores and recordings and videos of foreign films from the local library when he was 10 or 11. They couldn't believe he was really interested in them so assumed that he was "showing off" and needed "putting in his place". Now that he has a successful career as a soloist, they justify it by saying they were "worried he wouldn't fit in" and that people would think he was "odd". Of course he is odd, but I think that in other cultures those unusual interests in a child would be seen as something to support rather than suppress. Middle class cultural inhibitions are a strange thing. My own family, while more working class than his, are Irish, and have a much more accepting attitude to culture. My grandfather who left school at 13 and worked as a builder his whole life could recite whole Shakespeare plays by heart and do the Times crossword in his lunch hour. Maybe this resistance to culture is an English rather than a British phenomenon?
  6. Lindsay
    I would say that the UK (and the US to an even greater degree because of the almost total absence of public funding) are more conservative in their approach to contemporary classical music and to opera than European countries. For example, Germany benefits from federal support for the arts, which means that even medium-sized provincial cities have their symphony, their opera house and their ballet company. At generously subsidised prices, audiences are far more willing to support their local arts organisations, become subscribers and try new work and there is not the same "social mystique" around attendance at opera, ballet or concerts. I don't wish to reopen the debate about how we all wear jeans to the ROH now but I do get frustrated by the British social fear of appearing "arty-farty" and the sneering disdain for "intellectuals", which CC's attitude typifies. I have encountered music students at several higher education institutions in London and, without exception, the overseas students attend far more performances and listen to more music than their British counterparts. I find it astonishing that even when deals like ROH Student Standby (or similar schemes run by all the major classical music venues) are pointed out to them by their lecturers, in relation to an opera or symphony that forms part of their course of study, most UK students will still not attend, even when they are studying to be musicians. It is embarrassing when the best written work often comes from students who do not have English as their first language but have a far wider range of cultural experiences and references and are more prepared to read "difficult" books and articles and engage with critical debate. MAB makes a very good point about Russia though - audiences there are the most hidebound of all, in relation to classical music as well as ballet.
  7. Lindsay
    Thanks for the counting Dave - much appreciated! Are you counting all new pieces commissioned by the RB from those composers ever or with a date cut-off? (I'm assuming you've gone back at least to 2012 since you mention the Titian bill) Wheeldon is a slightly odd case since the company performs some of his works which were commissioned elsewhere (wasn't Polyphonia originated for NYCB? I can't remember who commissioned DGV but I have a vague feeling it was POB). I think if those works are included, particularly since the full-lengths get far more performances, Wheeldon is actually much more heavily used in terms of stage-time than McGregor.
  8. Lindsay
    I would like to think not Fonty, but I very much dislike his use of the term "Eurotrash". Just in response to Fonty's edit, Eurotrash may be specific, but I think it has undeniably negative connotations. Definitely a touch of the UKIPs about it.
  9. Lindsay
    Crisp himself admitted (nay, celebrated) his own prejudices in an old piece in the FT saying that "Bleakest commentaries are inspired by performances that offer attitudinising rather than steps, by stagings born of publicity rather than fact, and the modish vapidities of Tanztheater, known to me and to my readers as Eurotrash. (In reviewing performance, I write as to friends who accept my prejudices and enthusiasms.)" To dismiss the work of, Pina Bausch for example, as "modish vapidities" to me smacks of someone unwilling to engage with complex or challenging ideas and prefers to take safe refuge in sweeping and comfortable (and frankly xenophobic) generalities. He has already made up his mind before entering the theatre. For example, did anyone think that he might have a single good thing to say about the Schechter or that he would criticise Song? On Kylian, Crisp said: "My heart sang when I learned that a foreign choreographer was so offended by what I have written about his ballets that he refuses to bring his tedious offerings to this country. I had not laboured in vain. And to quote Lichtenberg again: “Such works are mirrors; when an ape looks into them, no apostle looks out.” I hope, ultimately, I am on the side of the apostles." So he has personally saved us all from having to make our own minds up about what we might think about nasty "foreign" art. How heroic of him. If he were writing in some unread specialist journal he might be safely ignored but, as I think it was Wayne McGregor said in an interview somewhere, the FT readers are potential funders of the art form (increasingly so as public funding withers) and if all they see is a negative and risk-averse attitude to new works then we will be stuck in same-old same-old, and become a conservative backwater.
  10. Lindsay
    One purportedly radical choreographer does not a ground-breaking company make. I think both Wheeldon and Scarlett (and Marriott to a lesser degree) are very conservative and they have probably had as much, if not more, stage-time as McGregor over the past few seasons. If anyone wants to do a calculation I'd be very interested. Five performances of a half hour Schechter ballet in the middle of a seemingly endless run of Swan Lakes hardly seems to make a dent. Revenues must of course be raised but the triple bill sold out fairly quickly so i think they could have programmed more.
  11. Lindsay
    No problem Capybara. I'm not involved in the dance world personally but have lots of experience of the classical music world, where dynamics are similar and there is also a great degree of overlap between the two in relation to institutional structures and some individuals. However, of course there are many on this board who will disagree with the analysis in my post above and they are of course free to do so. Robust debate is good! But it is much better when it comes from a place of curiosity and thoughtful logic rather than kneejerk defensive reactions..
  12. Lindsay
    I have access to CLement Crisps's review but never read them as you know in advance exactly what he is going to say. He has always been unashamedly partisan (see his championing of Macmillan who was a close friend) and incredibly conservative and he cannot resist a bitchy soundbite. In my view it is incredibly unhealthy for the London dance scene that he has been considered a "doyen" for so long. Thankfully these days there are several more open minded critics "in the circuit". It's not that I think critics should not write bad reviews - of course hey should in professional terms - and my tastes coincide with CC on many things (the brilliance of ed Watson being one) but he is maliciously small-minded and predictable and has had too much influence for too long.
  13. Lindsay
    I've taken to buying cinema giftcards as Christmas presents for people I know go to screenings. My in-laws live near a Vue and they have a card you can load up with any amount you like. They send us a little update every time they see something and so far this year they have seen stuff from the ROH, the Met, Bolshoi, NT and the Old Vic. As they are not very mobile and live in a small town, this is great. I think the screenings are a brilliant innovation - of course the music is not quite the same as hearing it live but it's a very good second best
  14. Lindsay
    As I recall in the ENB programme the Scarlett was as you would expect purely balletic, Maliphant moved the language further along the spectrum towards a contemporary language and Khan's piece was more firmly rooted in his own tradition which, as Bruce said, made the evening an interesting progression (if you ignore the rather random firebird which popped up in the middle). I think Khan's language is as distant from "traditional" ballet as Schechter's but maybe the contrasts seemed less stark in Dust, because the music/pace was less "challenging" than Untouchable and the pas de deux with Rojo also indicated a coming together of her roots with Khan's (indeed the very form of a pas de deux will have been a point of reference for ballet watchers). The corps work in that ballet was it seems to me based on some of the same ideas as Untouchable - a faceless tribe buffeted by conflict (although Schechter's tribe were perhaps a more postmodern gang, doing a rather better job of standing up for themselves than Khan's historically rooted victims)
  15. Lindsay
    We are going to see this Julie. Weill's music is really accessible (not trying to be patronising here but if you are unused to 'modern' opera it's a great place to start. And it's very humorous in a dark, satirical way. Quite relevant to today really as it's about an uber-capitalist society where not having any money is a capital crime. I haven't seen this production yet so don't know what it's like (I deliberately don't read reviews in advance) but if you've ever seen a Brecht play you should have some idea of what to expect. Hope we all enjoy it! I do think the screenings are great value for money and am getting to enjoy opera with popcorn..
  16. Lindsay
    I do not see why longevity is relevant Nina G but since you bring it up I was posting on the old forum (under another name) from the period before Ross Stretton was appointed. I rarely post nowadays because most of the interesting people who used to post informed criticism seem to have left and any attempt to discuss dance in a wider social or historical context is met by horrified cries of "politics" (led by you last week on the Swan Lake thread if I recall correctly) or snappy, superior responses which sends many new posters packing. It is however great that the Doing Dance area is thriving as a valuable resource for many under the new regime and informative threads such as that on dance in Germany and Austria are extremely welcome.
  17. Lindsay
    If you had said please or prefaced your question with a neutral phrase such as "that's interesting" then the tone of your post would have been entirely different. As would your subsequent post if you had omitted the sarcastic "dear".
  18. Lindsay
    The Arts Council funding list is public Nina and the ROH receives the largest single grant (I think £25m in the last round - the list is on the Arts Council website). I know of many small arts organisations which went under following the last round of cuts who would consider that disproportionate. I also think that was a reasonable (if debatable) statement for Sunrise to make without you jumping down his/her throat. If you felt the need to ask for clarification you could have done so politely.
  19. Lindsay
    Thank you for the clarification Alison. I must have looked at that thread while it was locked and had not noticed that it had been re-opened. Without denigrating the skills of RB dancers, I would respectfully disagree that any of them would be capable of adapting to Schechter's style. The very best contemporary dancers have had years of training in their art and I would no more expect ballet dancers to pick up contemporary dance quickly any more than I would expect contemporary dancers to churn out a brilliant Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty with only a few weeks work. It is not the case that ballet is the technical pinnacle of the artform with everything else beneath it. These are separate (although related) skills and those ballet dancers who have had very little contemporary work incorporated into their training (more likely amongst older dancers or those trained in Eastern Europe where curriculums tend to be more rigidly classical) may find it extremely difficult to adapt - the language is simply not in their bodies.
  20. Lindsay
    I do agree that it is hard to draw fixed lines, Fonty. I tend to think of it in terms of a spectrum. Choreographers like Wheeldon or Scarlett, or even early-Forsythe, who use a "twisted" version of the traditional language of classical ballet, (e.g. on pointe and pulled-up with the odd flexed hand or foot, off-balance turn etc) are closer to the "neo-classical" end of that spectrum, and those like Schechter and McGregor who begin with the language of contemporary dance (e.g. grounded rather than pulled up, often turned-in, focus on contractions, gestures and dynamics of movement) as closer to the "contemporary" end. Of course that is a massive over-simplification, as there are endless different foundations for contemporary dance (and Schechter and McGregor are in many ways a very unlikely pairing!) but I just wanted to make the point that in the same way as Petipa/Macmillan/Nijinsky/Ashton/Balanchine are different, so are those choreographers who often get lumped together as "new/modern/contemporary" work.
  21. Lindsay
    I have so far only seen a rehearsal of the Schechter piece Aileen and usually don't comment until I have seen a full performance. If you look back at my profile you will see that I have done so in relation to several pieces in the past. The reason I am not a more frequent poster here is because of these defensive and often ad hominem comments from the RB "fans" which inevitably stifle any useful debate and the clutching of handbags at the notion of anything (horror!) "political", as if art existed in a void of its own. See the closing down of a thread only last week when a poster made the mildest of political comments which he followed up by apologising for profoundly. But if you would like a preliminary comment (subject to caveat that this is based on a rehearsal only), my first impressions of this Schechter were that the dancers had done a remarkable job of taking on his heavy, grounded, and at times powerfully sharp movement style and that he continues to show a better mastery than any other choreographer (that I am aware of) of the grouping and arrangements of a large cast of dancers. However, I felt that the "volume", not just of the music but also the general "thrust" and "attack" of the piece, had been considerably toned down by comparison with works like Sun and Political Mother and therefore for me the impact was lessened. It may be that some of the power was dissipated in a space as large as the ROH or that Schechter had reached some kind of "compromise" between his own aesthetics and those of the RB. Either way, I still found it a very interesting collaboration, the first thing I have seen by the RB for some time that made me think the creator had at least engaged with social issues, and I sincerely hope that Kevin O'Hare will commission more work from him in future.
  22. Lindsay
    I absolutely agree ToThePointe. I thought there was an energy there, as there was with Carbon Life a few years ago, which was very refreshing. For me it wasn't Schechter's best work but it was (hopefully) a first step in building this kind of collaboration with a wider range of contemporary composers and I applaud Kevin O'Hare's efforts in that regard. My own visits to see the RB have become much more infrequent in the last decade from a sense of the repertoire and performance becoming ossified and "museum-like" and I really welcome any developments such as this which make attempt to look outward and relate the work of the RB to the society in which they operate (and from whence comes their public funding). I find it very dispiriting that so many people are preoccupied with seeing and comparing minutiae of every single cast in every single performance of a run, so that discussion becomes a soap opera about casting, with cliques of fans arguing about their favourites. To my mind it is much healthier to see a broad range of London's cultural offerings (many of them far cheaper than a ROB ticket) and then one will have a context from which to evaluate what is on offer. Edited: to say of course not just "London" - as a London resident it's most convenient for me, hence the shorthand, but I have also seen some great work recently (dance, music, theatre and art) in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool.
  23. Lindsay
    Song of a Wayfarer was made in 1971 and Bejart (at least from that period) was fairly neo-classical so I don't think it's really in the same category as a McGregor work. Although Bejart's work is "pretty", in my humble opinion, it is extremely conservative and lacks the kind of invention or innovation shown by other contemporary choreographers. I know offence is easily taken on here so this comment comes with the usual caveats that opinions vary, and McGregor is far from being the only thing on the contemporary scene (although I can see why the ROH faithful might be under that impression). However, I think it's key to any kind of sensible discussion that we don't lump everything that isn't the Nutcracker or Swan Lake into some kind of "contemporary" basket.
  24. Lindsay
    I think the point is that the Board at that time were not so much personally anti-Macmillan as generally anti-ballet with the opera company and its audiences being given priority in all decision making. Hence the concern (both on "principle" and for fear of negative audience and critical reactions) that great music should not be trivialised by something as lightweight and fluffy as ballet.
  25. Lindsay
    I saw the rehearsal last night. Not really fair to comment on that as it was a working rehearsal but I think you are in for a great evening
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