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Jane S

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  1. Jane S
    Given the developing situation with the COVID-19 virus, the Royal Opera House is currently closed (home page of ROH site now)
  2. Jane S
    The Royal Danish Ballet has today cancelled all performances up to March 27th - ticket money will be refunded automatically. Earlier this week they had announced that becasue of the limit of 1000 people in any assembly, they were continuing their performance schedule but were cutting the audience by half, with the intention that no two people would sit together. How they were doing this I have no idea but it must have been a huge job and now completely wasted... The RDB were due to give their premiere of Neumeier's Mahler3rd Symphony on Saturday - there are a few performances at the very end of March and one in April so they might just get those.
  3. Jane S
    I see from Jenny Gilbert's review (Arts Desk) that by the end of the tour the Nocturne section was danced by two men rather than the man and woman who did the premiere - that was what I'd been expecting to see and by the sound of it, the new casting gave the piece a stronger emotional hit - wish I'd been able to see it.
  4. Jane S
    Dowell's was a 'back-to-Petipa/Ivanov' production so he took out Ashton's waltz and Act 4 - he wanted to keep the Neapolitan but Ashton was miffed and wouldn't let him. He (Ashton) gave all the discarded bits to ENB and you can see them in the film with Evelyn Hart and Peter Schaufuss in the leads. Dowell's production was widely admired for the authenticity of the choreography but less so for the staging (truly awful in parts) and the designs, which some people loved but others thought too fussy.
  5. Jane S
    Petipa/Ivanov perhaps?
  6. Jane S
    Maybe someone should set up a sort of 'ticket dating agency', introducing those who can't stand Dances to those who can't stand The Cellist so they could share one ticket and swap over in the interval?
  7. Jane S
    Just a couple of corrections to Litaipo's interesting post (sorry to seem picky): The first RB performances of Dances at a Gathering were paired with Ashton's Enigma (which was not quite 2 years old and still had all but one of the original cast) and didn't actually open the season - there had been several Romeo and Juliets first. Ashton's creatures of Prometheus didn't have it's company premiere till a couple of weeks later. (They also did Dances as part of a triple bill sometimes - e.g. I saw a matinee of Sylphides/Prodigal Son/Dances) So far as I knowAnthony Dowell never danced Green - he was Gold at the opening performances and David Wall did Green. Dowell sometimes did the opening solo but I don't think he wore brown. I too used to write down who did what and the allocation of the different numbers varied widely and unpredictably! A lot of different dancers appeared but I don't remember any of them being an improvement on the first cast. And I have to say I didn't think either of the two opening performances of this run were anywhere near the standard of the first cast - lovely dancing from the women but I was much less impressed by the men. But It always seems to happen that casts improve hugely during the course of a run, as they relax into their roles and let their individual personalities appear. (Lots of the casts, listed by costume colour, are on the online performance database if you have the patience to work through them)
  8. Jane S
    I don't think anyone has mentioned Luca Acri in Dances - I thought he was really good in the duet that has the cartwheel and that very low flying catch at the end. (Though if you were seeing it for the first time and sitting on the left hand side, you won't know about the catch.) My problem with the programming was that I was so knocked out by the last section of Dances that I didn't have much emotion left for The Cellist - and in fact went home at the interval on the second night. Hope to see it again sometime with a different opener.
  9. Jane S
    There's currently a link to the piece on the 'front page' of the BBC's online news, captioned 'The Cellist: it's even better than Strictly'.
  10. Jane S
    YES! - and no surgeon, either. And did Onegin shoot to kill, or was he just a bad shot?
  11. Jane S
    If this name means something to you, you may enjoy this (via NY critic Terry Teachout) Caution - extreme earworm alert
  12. Jane S
    This is only her third year in the company, so that's a very fast promotion by RDB's current standards - almost as fast as Ida Praetorius.
  13. Jane S
    Peter Wright's Giselle for the RB at Covent Garden once used the idea of Albrecht carrying Giselle to a different grave but if I remember correctly it was dropped quite quickly as nobody understood it.
  14. Jane S
    That was me! ... and so were several of the other grumbles on those pages.
  15. Jane S
    She's forgotten - see this thread: https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/2746-royal-ballet-onegin-winter-2013/
  16. Jane S
    No, the colours don't work in pairs - but in any case the dancers aren't five couples, except at the very end - there are different groupings in almost every section, and not necessarily the same ones that we saw in the first London production . I have given up trying to guess who will do what and will just wait and see! - though I do have some secret hopes... There were some real surprises in the more recent castings, such as Edward Watson in Green - quite different from his usual emploi and very charming!
  17. Jane S
    I don't see the Pigeons girl as an " intensely self centered, immature, irritating character" at all - to me she's a bright, lively teenager who's quite understandably fed up with a boyfriend who expects her to sit perfectly still all morning so he can indulge in his art (and we have absolutely no evidence that he has any out-of-the-ordinary skill as a painter) and who then runs off after a woman he's known for 5 minutes without a thought for the hurt he's causing his girlfriend. She's the injured party and he's very lucky she takes him back! Although it's always nice to see Fille I think the Ashton piece the new generation really needs/deserves to be doing is Scenes de Ballet.
  18. Jane S
    I don't see much these days so my memories - performances only - mostly come from the earlier years of the decade. Highlights: - the rise of a wonderful new generation of dancers - Alban Lendorf, Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé head my list - the golden days of older favourites - Gudrun Bojesen, Thomas Lund, Laura Morera - some unforgettable individual performances: * Polunin and Morera In Rhapsody * Alexandra lo Sardo (RDB) in the 2nd movement of Symphony in C - phrasing to die for * Lendorf in Donizetti Variations - a perfect match of dancer and role * Nunez in the Diamonds pas de deux (twice) * Nunez and Soares in the last scene of Onegin * Rojo and Polunin in Marguerite and Armand * Bennet Gartside in Firebird and Nutcracker and Enigma * Morera in Sweet Violets * Lauren Cuthberson in Serenade * Jonathan Goddard in anything - some enchanted evenings: * Scottish Ballet in Song of the Earth at Sadler's Wells * the Paul Taylor company in Paris * Thomas Lund's farewell performance * Richard Alston's beautiful Illuminations * Cathy Marston's Witch-Hunt, especially the last pas de deux - sweetest and funniest performance of the decade * Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion in The Cow Piece (the one where they sang Your Baby has gone down the Plughole) - the nights the lightning struck: * Hayward in Act 2 of Giselle * Lund in the Brown/Pink duet in Dances at a Gathering Lowlights/never again - Peter Schaufuss's Swan Lake at the Coliseum - a piece whose name I've forgotten by the usually reliable Henri Oguike, which everybody loved except me and Clement Crisp - (sorry about this) the third part of Woolf Works
  19. Jane S
    Interesting, though, that when Shearer retired from ballet she was still only 27, the age that Hayward now is!
  20. Jane S
    NOTHING would have made me watch Master and Commander - I know what Jack Aubrey looked like and it wasn't Russell Crowe!
  21. Jane S
    Muntagirov's solo: Wow, and then some...
  22. Jane S
    Yes, but he's older now and could just hit the right note in the opening solo, perhaps? But maybe they've listed them inorder of appearance so Campbell and Sambe will do Brown.
  23. Jane S
    So, you might guess in the first cast we'll see Morera in Green, and - I hope - Bonelii in Brown, Campbell in Green, Bracewell in Purple . I can't remember how they sorted the women's roles last time between Mauve and Pink and Apricot. I couldn't work out who would be who amongst the men in the second cast - Sambe in Green, maybe, Clarke in Brown?
  24. Jane S
    Muntagirov must be biting his nails - isn't it on Sunday that he's due to make his debut as Jean de Brienne?
  25. Jane S
    Thanks - I would have tried what you suggest except that when I switched on this morning it is working perfectly on the old URL which I have not changed in any way...
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