Jane S

51 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

You'll sometimes see these marked in German and Austrian houses as Hörerplätze (listening seats).

I vaguely remember that when I first started going to Covent Garden (late 1950s) the two upper slips nearest to the stage had a little stand in front of them with a small light so that though people couldn't see the stage they could follow a score.

11 minutes ago, Ondine said:

Naming no names I was told many years ago by a teacher at the Royal Ballet School who is has long departed to the great studio in the sky that Monica Mason would never be given Aurora though she was Lilac Fairy (a role she said herself she didn't think partcularly suited her) and of course she was Carabosse as her physique was wrong for Aurora, broad in the back etc.

 

 

Though she did actually do Aurora a couple of times

10 minutes ago, Fonty said:

 

I agree and was going to mention it but you got in first!  I thought this part was lovely, and would really like to see it again.

 

 

Hot competition, I'd guess, for Mukhamedov's role - so far as I remember he spent the entire act sitting on a bench at the side of the stage watching the others work!

No designer listed for Les Rendezvous, so maybe they've ditched the polka dots?

1 hour ago, Tango Dancer said:

 

 I always felt she kept something back rather than giving herself into the  dance

Exactly - and then In that last Song of the Earth she finally did it and we saw what she might have been - and maybe she did, too.

Now that most of the casts have gone on, could I ask about the various Jesters?

My reading of the role has always been that he's an important element of Act 2 - the outlet for Ashton's melancholy streak, providing a slightly cynical touch amongst all the sweetness and jollity. Alexander Grant, who created the role, once said "My Jester is sad because he is losing his Prince; happy because his Prince has found happiness; and sad because he will never find a Cinderella of his own".*  I didn't see even a hint of that in the cinema showing - could you say how the Jesters you've seen would describe their feelings?

* or something close to that - I read it recently but can't remember where

10 hours ago, alison said:

 

From that Danceviewtimes article: I'm pretty sure I saw Tim Matiakis doing Napoleon as well.

Yes, he did Sister/Jester/Suitor all in the same run.

The previous lecture in this series, by composer Michael Berkeley, is still online if you want to get some idea of the occasion, and the full text of the first one, by Nicholas Hytner, is on the Ashton Foundation website.

Thank you - 'paco' (a frequent visitor to the ROH) was tremendously impressed, asking what other theatre in the world would do something like this.

Paco,  on the French site dansomanie, reports that last night's performance featured a tribute from KO'H to the theatre's 'chef machiniste'  - I'm not sure how 'machiniste' translates - could someone help, please?

12 minutes ago, Ondine said:

Well there we are. Spring is buds being sprung. Definitive. And Hilda Gaunt, stalwart of wartime touring.

 

Re Cyril Beaumont, that must be the set with the ship I posted above from 1948. It is certainly in the open air and there are stylised trees and yes the men are wearing hats but not Somes as the prince.  So, the new production reverts back to the original, though with no vessel in view bearing a fruit cargo!  Further archival delving required I think.

 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/sadlers-wells-ballet-in-cinderella-1948--439734351128957312/

 

 

No, I believe the ship is the final bit of Act 3 - rather than walking off up a stairway to the stars, Cinderella and the Prince sail away to some happy foreign shore, waved off by the stars etc. 'Darkness descends and the final curtain falls.' Though presumably it's only a honeymoon?

7 hours ago, alison said:

 

Am I right in thinking it's supposed to reflect bursting buds?

Quote from Nadia Nerina (in Clement Crisp's enormous book about her):

"I remember Hilda Gaunt playing the music of the Spring Fairy and when she finished, Ashton said 'Well, what does it sound like, your Fairy Spring?'  I said, 'Bursting of buds', and Ashton announced, 'Right, that's what we'll do', and that is how the solo started, and why the little jumps and the hand movements are as they are."

And while we're playing in the archives, I was interested to notice that Act 2 in the original 1948 production was also in a garden - a sort of pleasure garden (like the Vauxhall Gardens were perhaps) - but C.W.Beaumont, reviewing the first night, said he could only be sure it was a garden because you could see some trees and all the courtiers etc were wearing hats. Though not the Prince.

Lendorf has more or less abandoned his dancing career after struggling against an injury for several years.

The RDB has just announced next season's programme:

Cinderella (Christopher Wheeldon)

La Bayadère (Hubbe's production)

The Dante Project (Wayne McGregor

Swan Lake

Nutcracker (Balanchine)

Raymonda

Scotch Symphony (Balanchine) + La Sylphide

Serenade + Sibelius 4th Symphony (Jorma Elo, new work for the company's men) + Etudes

Programme of new works by company members

Hubbe has also promoted Mayo Arii, Eukaner Sagues and Tara Schaufuss to  Soloist. and 5 aspirants (Apprentices) are being taken into the company.

Alban Lendorf 21 Royal Danish Ballet

No, you didn't imagine it - the Ashton sister and the Dancing Master do it, don't they?

Oompah trot: I think it was a deliberate reference - mentioned in several accounts.

I saw the cinema showing and after what I'd read here about the lighting effects etc I felt we were only getting a very diminished idea of what was happening - also some things which seemed quite bizarre on the screen - the pumpkin bit especially - I have to assume worked better in the theatre.

Enjoyed it otherwise but I'd describe the dancing as excellent but not wonderful - I do both like and admire Nunez but my benchmark here is Sibley who dances Ashton as if it were the most wonderful thing in the world.

Liked Acri but I think the sisters are way over the top these days, and I hate, hate the whole Napoleon and Wellington bit.

Maybe the filming missed it but I didn't see any sign of character in the Jester - brilliant technically, and very musical, I thought, but he seemed to have no relationship at all with the Prince - could just have been hired in for the evening from some jester agency. A fault of the staging, not the dancer - maybe someone like James Hay will restore some of the nuances.

There were enough people there for us not  feel lonely but still a disappointing turn out - but I heard someone saying to one of the staff as we left "It should have been  packed out!" - so maybe people will spread the word before Sleeping Beauty.

With deep regret I pass on the news that Alexandra died in her sleep yesterday. She had been in failing health for a long time and had been moved to a nursing facility a few weeks ago.

Alexandra will probably be best known in this community for her work in founding the website BalletAlert, closely modelled on Bruce Marriottt's ballet.co but based in the USA and focused mainly on the ballet scene over there. She handed over the management to a younger team years ago but it still runs and her own contributions can still be read there.

She lived in Washington, and wrote dance criticism for the Washington Post for many years. She  taught ballet history at the Kirov Academy there  - I remember her joy when she had a partricularly receptive class or a pupil who 'got' Fonteyn, and she would keep me up to date about ex-pupils heading for Europe so that I knew, for instance, to keep a lookout for a boy called Mathias Dingman. She also  founded the magazine Dance Vew, and ran it single-handed for around 20 years till the cost and the effort involved got too much for her.

She was a passionate and knowledgeable follower of the Royal Danish Ballet  she wrote a long biography of Henning Kronstam  but above all she cared deeply about Bournonville and his legacy - she was highly critical of how his work was being cared for - or not - in the 1990s and wrote a series of scathing articles for Dance Now under the heading 'Bournonville in Hell'!

I owe Alexandra a great deal - she gave me my first opportunity to write, giving me a London Letter spot in Dance View with a completely free hand to cover whatever I liked. We only actually  met once, appropriately enough in Copenhagen at the Bournonville Week in 2000, but for years she would phone me on Sunday afternoons every few weeks and we would spend an hour or so putting the ballet world to rights. I learned so much from her.

One of her closest friends is hoping to organise a memorial service for her.

A long article about her here

Reviving Les Sylphides wouldn't be that biig a deal, surely? They last did it in 2009 I think - Choe was one of the soloists - and even if the set has fallen to pieces it's not exactly a lavish production.

Some confusion with La Slyphide here perhaps?

The Silence of Birds has already been seen in Copenhagen, and the RDB site describes it:

The Silence of Birds is about going through a tragedy, about loss and oppression and the nuances of man, who carries both good and evil within him. The work originated from the Royal Ballet's new development project "Koreorama", which focuses on choreographic talent development. The ambition is to train a diverse group of young choreographers. As the first result, the work The Silence of Birds is presented by Eukene Sagues, who is also a corps dancer at the Royal Ballet. The choreography differs by not being the traditional language of steps that we otherwise know from the world of ballet.

(Google translated, and possibly the same as on the programme Bluebird reproduces above)

Did anyone see this, please?

39 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

That's Serenade twice Jane!  Fine by me....!

Yes, I know - not a mistake - I wouldn't mind a whole triple bill of Serenade!

Oh please, couldn't we have more just dancing? I get really tired of all these long stories and elaborate costumes.

Serenade

Symphony in C

Agon

4 Temperaments

Symphonic Variations

Scenes de Ballet

Monotones

Shades from Bayadere

Chroma

Asphodel Meadows

Les Noces

Rite of Spring

Song of the Earth

Serenade

Raymonda Act 3

Rhapsody

.

.

2 hours ago, PeterS said:

i was recently gifted some ROH programmes. Among them:

 

Cinderella 20 March 1954

Cinderella: Margot Fonteyn

The Prince: Michael Somes

Stepsisters: Frederick Ashton, Peter Clegg

 

Cinderella: 14 December 1972

Cinderella: Merle Park

The Prince: Donald Macleary

Stepsisters: Frederick Ashton, Robert Helpmann

 

Cinderella: Kirov Ballet at ROH 09 September 1966

Cinderella: Irina Kolpakova

The Prince: Yuri Soloviev

Ugly Sisters: Natalia Makarova Kalerya Fedicheva

 

does anyone on the forum have any memories of these performances? 

 

 

I just missed the 12/72 performance- was there the night before and the matinee 2 days later - Ashton/Helpmann both times.

(Totally off topic:

I checked the programme for that month in D&D and you could have seen:

5 casts in Cinderella

3 casts in Fille

3 casts in Swan Lake

3 Giselles,with either Symphonic Variations or Afternoon of a Faun

1 triple bill: Firebird/Faun/Raymonda Act3.

That is if you had any money left over after the month before, when you could have seen more Filles and Swan Lakes (2 with Fonteyn), Job, Bayadere Act 3, Dances at a Gathering, and a gala incuding Makarova in Les Sylphides  and the Don Q pd2, and Fonteyn in Birthday Offering.

Back to topic...)