Jane S

From today the Rome Opera is streaming its ballet company in Le Parc, with Eleonora Abbagnato and Stephane Bullion in the leading roles .

Looks like an archive film from 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0G60cdmSoU

May I recommend Matthew Bourne's 1993 film, Late Flowering Lust?  It's a bit sad in the end but the dancing is terrific.

Queen Margrethe of Denmark celebrates her 80th birthday today - a gala planned for earlier in the week had of course to be cancelled, so instead the theatre had added to its streaming list a performance of the ballet that would have been shown, most appropriately, at the gala -  Balanchine's Ballo della Regina. Holly Dorger and Jonathan Chmelensky have the leading roles.

The ballet was staged by Merrill Ashley and Stacey Caddell. The film is an internal archive recording and all the parcticipants  have given permission for it to be streamed during the theatre's shutdown.

There are no time restrictions mentioned anywhere that I can see.

The RDB has just added Neumeier's Romeo and Juliet (with Ida Praetorius and Andreas Kaas) to its streaming list.

Also they have a piece for children called De Glemte Børn (The Forgotten Children), danced by the Royal Danish Ballet School. Choreography by Gregory Dean.

An RDB bonus - you can see the entire programme book for each performance - click on Læs Programmet. It's in Danish but there are lots of good pictures.

I like this, from Jonathan Chmelensky's Instagram . (read the caption)

I would ignore 1 - 16 and under 17  I would put 'I like ballet.'

The RDB has just added its performance of Wheeldon's Alice to its list of performances online

Who else remembers him best in A Tale of Two Cities? In 1957?

Bournonville's choreography was long gone by the time Kirsten Ralov made her version - his original version was not popular (too much dancing and not enough story?) and was gradually dropped till only a few minutes remained. Harald Lander, and later Hans Brenaa, worked on it before Kirsten Ralov, and the version shown at the 2005 Festival was by Dinna Bjørn. The current choreography is by Hubbe and Silja Schandorff - I once asked Hubbe about it (on the record) and he said they were just trying to tell the story - 'just steps' - though I actually quite like it and it reminded me in places of Ondine, though Hubbe said he'd never seen that. 

Also they've changed Act 3 several times since this version was new, for the better in some cases but not always.

Given the developing situation with the COVID-19 virus, the Royal Opera House is currently closed

(home page of ROH site now)

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.

On 04/11/2019 at 18:28, Jane S said:

 

 

Anyway. I liked Shine On a lot, despite my own very strong preference for a tenor voice in this music (no disrespect at all to the soprano. Katherine McIndoe). I did wish though that Alston had found rather  more depth in the Nocturne ('Now through night's caressing grip') - for me it's one of the most beautiful pieces Britten ever wrote and I was hoping for a stronger response.

 

 

 

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.

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.

3 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

 

All the corps dancing that isn't Petipa, is now Scarlett's - or so I believe! (happy to be proved wrong)

Petipa/Ivanov perhaps?

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?

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)

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.

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'.

40 minutes ago, RuthE said:

 

That said, one thing that bothers me is the lack of "seconds" at the duel...

YES! - and no surgeon, either. And did Onegin shoot to kill, or was he just a bad shot?

If this name means something to you, you may enjoy this

(via NY critic Terry Teachout)

Caution - extreme earworm alert

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.

7 hours ago, stucha said:

 

It looked a bit like that but it was meant to be a grassy mound which opens up and subsumes her.

I think it's a design issue which needs to be sorted out to make it clearer.

 

 

 

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.

That was me!

... and so were several of the other grumbles on those pages.

10 minutes ago, Xandra Newman said:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jan/19/marianela-nunez-interview-royal-ballet-onegin-swan-lake

 

Paragraph 5 - interview with Nunez she states she danced Tatiana for the first time in 2015.

She's forgotten - see this thread:

https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/2746-royal-ballet-onegin-winter-2013/