Jane S

Interesting also that Deirdre Chapman is in the cast!

Anna Is Effie's aunt, I believe - Effie's mother and she were sisters. And in the Danish version - and I thought in Kobborg's too - Effie definitely looks to Anna for help in making up her mind. And doesn't get any - Anna just turns away. (so maybe she knows what's happened? maybe it happened before, with James's father?)

Alison, maybe what you are thinking of in the Kobborg version is the end of the dancing section in Act 2, where James supports the Sylphide in an arabesque - you can't actually see they're touching but you know they must be. Schaufuss has her pose with one of the other sylphs, whilst James looks at her adoringly from a distance - I liked that.

I love this ballet and used to like this production when ENB did it but these days I greatly prefer the Danish version.

I thought the first act was a bit flat - felt more like a preview than a big first night - but the second act was much better and the audience warmed up too so that there was plenty of enthusiastic applause for the curtain calls. I'd guess it will come over more strongly in the rest of the week.

I hope by tomorrow they'll have changed their minds about not allowing you a cast sheet unless you buy the £10 programme book - not a welcoming start to the evening.

Dredged from the old ballet.co.uk archives, a  review by Lynette which explains why the Talisman pd2 didn't make it when the RB first announced it.

An unexpected insight from this morning's Times, in the section where people add their own memories to the paper's formal obituaries:

"...he [Harvey McGregor] and the distinguished ballet critic, Clement Crisp, were the Ugly Sisters in my production of Cinderella, the Oxford University Drama Society pantomime of that year."

Helpmann style or Ashton, I wonder?

Lots of pictures here

And more about it here

No use to me there.

There's also a podcast , Alison, if that's any help. 26 days left to listen.

Jonathan Agnew's lunchtime guest on TMS today is to be the RB's Alexander Campbell. Apparently the commentators have already been speaking admiringly about the strength and toughness of ballet dancers!

FLOSS, I'd have thought that a revival of Persephone would cost so much that it would be ruled out even before consideration of whether the choreography could be retrieved - it lasted nearly an hour, had a huge corps de ballet, elaborate sets, and needs a chorus and a tenor and I should think a lot of rehearsal on the musical side - and then of course a ballerina who has a beautiful speaking voice and can declaim in French. For myself I'd much sooner they revived Illuminations.

Today's Sunday Times has a long interview with Osipova (by Sarah Crompton) in the Culture section.

I've always rather regretted Monica Mason's decision to cancel Le Parc (Preljocaj) when she took over from Ross Stretton, and I'd still like to see it in the RB's repertoire some day - but probably not right now, when I'd find it hard to choose a suitable cast. (Rojo would have been wonderful.)

I recall reading a lengthy interview that an eminent ballet critic gave to Jane Simpson in which not surprisingly he discussed the state of the Royal Ballet.This was in 2001.He talked about the three bases on which the company had been established. 1)The classics in honourable productions. 2)The works of the home choreographers Ashton, MacMillan and Cranko. 3) A sense of history. Here he was talking about the works of Fokine,Nijinska,Massine and Balanchine theirs were works that people ought to see and know about. He said that the company should be full of dancers who know the stylistic difference between Petipa, Nijinska,Balanchine, Massine and Fokine and have these works in their bodies just as a pianist will know his Bach and Beethoven.

 

 

FLOSS, I think the interview you are remembering is the very long piece Ismene Brown wrote about Clement Crisp. For anyone who hasn't seen it before, it's at

http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_01/dec01/ismene_b_int_clement_c.htm

Sad to read of the death of the wonderful dancer Dudley Williams - his performance in I Wanna Be Ready in Alvin Ailey's Revelations was one of the greatest things I've seen on the dance stage - ageless grace and eloquence.

I should have said that Ashton mounted a one act version which I suppose is what is on the DVD of Somes and Fonteyn dancing excerpts from the Tchaikovsky ballets. It was really act 2 which of course means that it must have appeared in mixed bills from time to time before the 1968 production. The ROH website is silent as to the number of performances that it received.

The extract on the Fonteyn/Somes DVD is actually from a one-off TV special, with 'revised choreography' by Peter Wright - not an RB production. I thought Ashton's one-act version was made for the touring company? - and I don't think they ever danced it at Covent Garden.

They didn't use to do anything particular for Christmas - maybe some Cinderellas or Sleeping Beauty or Fille, but the programming was much more varied in those days - you could see three or four different bills in a month and they didn't do long blocks of anything . The Nureyev Nutcracker was actually premiered at the end of February and had more performances at the beginning of the next season but it wasn't shown in December at all that year. And after that it only reappeared for a handful of performances at a time, mixed in with other things even over Christmas.

I think it's the theatre's problem. rather than ours - the pick-up queue has been getting longer for some time and I certainly don't want to have to arrive half an hour early to stand in a queue. Surely it's about time they introduced a print-at-home option?

But the online version is signed 'Louise Levene'....

Yes - I was hoping for a repeat of the new Kermessen in Bruges. But they have had to cut their programming down so much in the last 2 or 3 years that there's hardly room for two Bournonville programmes. Maybe Gudrun Bojesen will ask for something of his in her farewell programme (though she's just as likely to want to play her saxophone or dance flamenco or something equally off the wall).

The problem for me is the way that everything I really want to see is after Christmas - it looks a really thin start to the season.

By the way this is the fourth production of Don Quixote they have tried  in this same (very pretty) decor - Grigorovitch - Nureyev - Alonso - Hubbe. Hope they get it right this time - for myself I don't think they need a Don Q any more than the RB does. (Though I just saw that Bournonville made one - a 3 act ballet called 'Don Quixote at Camacho's Wedding' in 1837, only a few months after La Sylphide )

Ferri was born in May 1963 - she came to the RBS when she was 15 and then won a Prix de Lausanne in 1980. She was taken into the company in December 1980 so was 17 at the time.

The Times has a long interview with Alessandra Ferri today (in T2, written by Debra Craine).

Next year's programme has just been announced:

Short Time Together

Short Time Together (Leon/Lightfoot)

New work (Idan Sharabi)

The Death that Best Preserves (Natalia Horecna)

Sept 25 – Nov 14 2015

DANS2GO

Swan Lake – the white act

New work (Tilman O'Donnell)

Oct 22 – Dec 1 2015

Nutcracker (Balanchine)

Dec 4 – 22 2015

La Sylphide

Theme and Variations

Jan 6 – Feb 27 2016

Romeo and Juliet (Neumeier)

Mar 4 – Apr 14 2016

Don Quixote ( new production by Hubbe)

Apr 30 – May 25 2016

Come Fly Away (Twyla Tharp)

May 21 – Jun 2 2016

Rystet spejl (Shaken Mirror)

New piece by Kim Brandstrup

May 28 Jun 4 2016

Also:

Fabelmageren – a ballet for children

Hubberiet – several evenings on different topics presented by Hubb

Horisonten – a theatre/dance/opera/etc piece with Gudrun Bojesen and Sorella Englund among many others

A farewell performance for Gudrun Bojesen, sometime in April

______________________________

The RB only did a tiny number of performances of it, one of them  a royal gala - blink and you missed it. I did.

Kathrine Sorley Walker, by far the most senior London dance critic still writing, died in her sleep last week.

The Telegraph has a long obituary, giving a lot of detail about her professional life - many people probably don't know that as well as her dance writing she also edited the letters of Raymond Chandler - and also revealing her age, which until now has been a very well kept secret. She had begun to look very frail recently and I'm lost in admiration for someone who in her mid-nineties would still turn out to see most of the mainstream first nights, and then walk away on her own into the dark and rain to catch a bus or a tube home. 

I've been reading Kathrine's criticism and her books for as long as I can remember, but didn't actually meet her until about 14 years ago, when I found myself sitting next to her at Covent Garden and rather hesitantly introduced myself: she was much less formidable than I'd expected - and astonished that anyone would recognise her - and since then she has always been personally friendly and professionally kind to me. Talking to her was a stimulating experience - I'd say she didn't suffer fools at all, let alone gladly - but she had a dry wit, a vast amount of knowledge, and some delightfully unexpected soft spots too. A remarkable woman.