Jane S
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Posts posted by Jane S
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1 hour ago, Dawnstar said:
@Jane SNo, he did plenty of performances in that role in the last run. I saw him as Lord Capulet 3 times out of the 5 performances I saw.
Thanks, Dawnstar - it's ages since I last saw R&J and I've obviously missed some good things!
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And Gartside as Lord Capulet - is that new?
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Well, for older people - like me - I think a good idea would be a 10p-in-the-slot printer in the foyer - a nice familiar technology we could all manage and no wastage.
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The RDB opens a run of John Neumeier's Romeo and Juliet tomorrow, with some interesting new casting.
Ida Praetorius is the opening night Juliet (no surprise there) with Ryan Tomash as Romeo (his debut, I think). Andreas Kaas - another Neumeier favourite - also does Romeo, this time with soloist Wilma Giglio, also making her debut, and - the real surprise for me - the third Juliet is corps de ballet dancer Eukene Sagues, dancing with Liam Redhead. Also, I'd like to be there on one of the nights when Jon Axel Fransson is Mercutio and Tobias Praetorius is Benvolio.
Amy Watson gives her farewell performance with the company on October 16th, as Lady Capulet.
And - and I don't know whether to be sad or glad about this - in two of the casts Lord Capulet will be played by Alban Lendorf.
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This, probably?
"Ballet dancers Natalia Osipova alongside Isaac Hernandez as they perform a routine during a photo call ahead of the world premiere of a contemporary dance production of Carmen at The Exchange, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, in Edinburgh. The new production of the classic opera by Didy Veldman is presented by Bird and Carrot Productions in association with The Pleasance."
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/uk-world/2622296/news-in-pictures-september-27th-2021/
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How I would love to see Francesca Hayward dance it!
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It was a passing comment in an article I read yesterday, and has since been removed.
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On 02/09/2021 at 13:47, Angela said:
A new principal ballerina will come from the Royal Danish Ballet: Ida Praetorius moves to Hamburg in January 2022. She has worked in Denmark with Neumeier in the past.
Word from Denmark is that she's just doing a year in Hamburg. Neumeier has always liked her and cast her in his ballets so maybe she's just going for his last year.
(And of course Copenhagen and Hamburg are only about as far apart as London and Leeds so she's not going to be losing touch!)
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Before August slips away, I'm reminded that it was in August 1996 that Bruce Marriott's ballet.co - the forerunner of this site - made its first appearance. 25 years!
The internet was a very different place then, thinly populated in general and with almost nothing about ballet. ballet.co was originally a single-thread page, dominated in its early days - so far as I remember - by discussion of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, with particular focus on Adam Cooper (anyone who was there will remember the Cooperettes, and the sheep joke) - but it rapidly expanded and added a magazine to the discussion pages.
It was huge fun but hard work even for contributors, let alone for Bruce - for instance there were no dance photographs online so to illustrate an article you had to find your own hardcopy - uncredited to satisfy Bruce's rules - and scan it in, in my case using a hand-scanner to start with. But we were really pioneering - I can actually remember thinking that if anyone was going to tell the online world who Margot Fonteyn was, it might as well be me!
So thank you, Bruce - ballet.co changed my life.
And of course thank you also to those who run this site, in a far more complex and more competitive environment.
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Whilst looking for something else, I just came across Katherine's contribution to a thread called 'How did you come to be a ballet watcher' and thought it would be good to add it here:
I like to brag that I went to ballet school with the great ballerina Evelyn Hart.
Admittedly, the only thing we had in common was the bench in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School's changing room.
But I am thankful to the RWB and convinced it can be proud of us both (ok, maybe prouder of Evelyn than of me), for ballet transforms all of its students, professional and recreational, famous and anonymous,
I am grateful to the RWB for more besides. A subscription was my annual birthday present starting at age nine, and its eclectic mixed-bill repertoire launched my education as a serious balletomane (I also devoured ballet books).
For instance, at age 12 I was moved to tears by John Neumeier's Nutcracker. Mind you, I was crying because there were no snowflakes in it, like the ones I had seen at my first live ballet performance, London Festival Ballet's version in 1965. Before that I have a memory of seeing The Dream on the BBC at about age 5.
I soon came to appreciate that Neumeier's gifts more than make up for such unconventional and (it seemed to me) unforgivable snowlessness. The National Ballet of Canada came through on tour with the big story ballets, and eventually I moved to Toronto. My big revelation was seeing Robert Tewsley in 1992, who embodied ideals of ballet I didn't even know I had. When he left for Stuttgart and subsequently other companies, I started travelling to see his performances wherever they were, and this exposed me to a much wider repertoire (and also, unbeknownst to me, trained me for my current occupation as a ballet holiday organizer).
As a child, I longed to do ballet, but at the ripe age of 13, I was convinced that I had missed the boat for starting classes, which for some reason I believed had to begin at age six. Seven was already over the hill.
Apprehensive at the prospect of a beginner class filled with six-year-olds, a friend and I arrived nonetheless at an "I'll do it if you do" pact, and off we set to the RWB's then unglamorous studios in a former furniture store above a drugstore.
Lo! The class was filled with... other 13-year-olds.
I remember how my first teacher insisted we finish our exercises with our heads properly poised and our arms and hands curved just so: "You never know. The audience might be watching you. Maybe that's the only time they'll be watching you!"
It must be said that no ballet audience has ever had the misfortune of having to watch me do anything.
“Your arms in pirouettes are like the flaps on the wings of a jumbo jet,” he used to say. “Let them drop and you will crash.” I probably looked more like a jumbo jet than I wished to acknowledge.
Many other teachers – and ballet pianists – have inspired me since then. Did Louis XIV ever think that a young girl on the frozen prairie would have something to thank him for? I thank the Sun King, but above all I thank the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School for allowing an unlikely swan – plump, bespectacled, uncoordinated, too old – to start ballet classes.
Forty years later, I'm still all of those things, yet I still squeeze myself into tights and leotard (for a laugh on special occasions a tutu and tiara) four or five days a week and head off to make like a ballerina.
Forty years from now, I hope I'll still be doing ballet.
And when I finish, I will poise my head and curve my arms and hands just so.
The audience might be watching.
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WARNING: Trying to synchronise those two videos so that the two ballerinas dive simultaneously can waste you a serious amount of time.
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1 hour ago, Two Pigeons said:
I
Relating to the original costume for the Male dancer, an alternative cast was the delightful Ravenna Tucker with Julian Hosking.
There's a Tucker/Eagling performance - a gala in the US, not with the RB - on YouTube.
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At least Sambe doesn't have to wear the original costume! - very Spring Waters. I vaguely remember the first night being broadcast and in the second interval there was a certain amount of joshing between Eagling and Robert Tear on the subject... but Cassidy wears it with pride and looks great - and how nice to see him again!
I haven't seen anyone credited with coaching Sambe and O'Sullivan - it's a pity no-one taught Sambe how to do that last lift and make it look easy.
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If you watch one of the earlier performances after looking at this one, the very first thing you notice is how much faster it used to be! Dancing it so (relatively) slowly is bound to change the character of it.
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4 hours ago, Sim said:
Even worse! I guess they should have sorted that out in advance...but I don't know what the agreements and deals are. Seems a shame that because of music copyright the piece is not able to be shown.
Jann Parry's interview with Ek on Dancetabs says that woman with water won't be filmed because the Royal Swedish Ballet (by whom it was commissioned) has retained the media rights.
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There's a description of the role and a job spec on the ROH site
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A bit more detail about the Ek piece here
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On 07/02/2021 at 03:15, Ivy Lin said:
They're adding a performance of Vienna Waltzes:
JUNE 3-17
As a finale to the 2021 digital season, NYCB will stream a complete performance of Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes. Created in 1977 and set to waltzes by Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár, and Richard Strauss, this work of grand scale featuring more than 50 dancers is only performed by New York City Ballet.
Last day today!
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18 minutes ago, Darlex said:
Can anyone enlighten me - who or what is the 'Woman with Water'?
There's a piece of that name by Mats Ek - could be that?
**** simultaneous post
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There were cast changes from quite early on but I don't think there was ever a performance with no-one from the first cast. From the listings in the RB 50 Years book, this is how many the first cast danced (1970 - 1976):
Sibley 40
Seymour 38
Mason 39
Jenner 45
Connor 51
Nureyev 33
Dowell 53
Wall 56
Coleman 59
J Kelly 15
Others who were in the cast:
Marguerite Porter
Alfreda Thorogood
Lesely Collier
Jennifer Penney
Merle Park
Georgina Parkinson
Natalia Makarova
Carl Myers
David Ashmole
Donald Macleary (who I think was meant to be in the first cast but was injured/ill)
Wayne Eagling
Julian Hosking
Wayne Sleep
Ross McGibbon
A few of these came close to the originals but I don't remember anyone actually improving on the 7 main members of the first cast. But I only saw it 20 times. (And an extra one at Snape Maltings)
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Brendan Keaney, chief executive of Dance East, gets an OBE.
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Please could we have some explanation of your new system? - bit of a surprise to wake up to find I'm a Newbie.
(Apologies if I've missed an anouncement and also for posting this in the wrong place originally.)
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Please could we have some explanation of your new system? - bit of a surprise to lsign in and find I'm a Newbie!
(apologies if I've missed an announcement)
World Ballet Day 2021 - discussion
in Performances seen & general discussions
Posted
The Times online today has a big photo of the RB's Aud Jensen dancers - all easily recognisable, maybe someone could name them which might help to pick them out in class? (The one in the middle is Darcy Bussell.)