Norman Reynolds

After the opening night performance of Sleeping Beauty at the Norwich Theatre Royal recently Matthew Bourne gave a Q and A session which was live streamed. This is available on YouTube (38 minutes):- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3WWEi1DxTU

If you have £10.22 spending money left over after Christmas there is a live streaming on the internet from the Wiener Staatsoper on Sunday December 27th from 19.30 to 21.45 (18.30 to 20.45 UK time) of Frederick Ashton's 'La Fille Mal Gardee' performed by the Vienna State Ballet. If the timing is inconvenient you can select another time within the following 72 hours, but probably best to book before the live starting time. http://www.staatsoperlive.com/en/live/273/la-fille-mal-gardee-2015-12-27/#tab_0

And another TV interview with Sylvie Guillem from BBC at Edinburgh Festivals by Deborah Bull on August 8th, 56 minutes available for a further 26 days. Search for Guillem on iPlayer.

Tattoos are becoming quite fashionable nowadays and even the British Army has recently relaxed its regulations:- http://www.army.mod.uk/news/26584.aspx Whether Sergei's would pass all the tests I do not know. The trouble is that they are more or less permanent and the more popular tattoos become the sooner they will become unfashionable.

The first item in today's Dance Links is a Financial Times review by Laura Cappelle of Bavarian State Ballet's production of 'Paquita'. This is a reconstruction of the 'lost' Petipa by Alexei Ratmansky with Doug Fullington. There will be a free live-streaming of this on Sunday January 11th at 5.00pm (UK time), as previously and helpfully advised by Bruce Wall above. It would be interesting to compare this with Pierre Lacotte's 2001 reconstruction which is available on a Paris Opera Ballet DVD.

At the end of last night's live streaming from Vienna of 'Mayerling' all the flowers went to Gregor Hatala who had danced Kronprinz Rudolf . This was in fact a special occasion, being his farewell performance 25 years after joining the Wiener Staatsballett. There were a good dozen bouquets, thrown from the stalls and presented on stage and numerous curtain calls. 'Mayerling' has been reintroduced into the Vienna repertoire after an interval of four years by Ballet Director Manuel Legris, and was staged by Grant Coyle.

The first of these three live ballet transmissions is Kenneth Macmillan's 'Mayerling' next Sunday at 18.30. A single ticket costs £11.01. I have watched some of the opera transmissions without any real technical problems in the UK.

There is a thread which includes some discussion of this film. I can't make the link work so will describe how to find it:- In the Performances Seen Forum go to page 7 (as at today, it may change), the Topic is headed 'BBC Ballet on TV Season March 2014', which is about nine from the bottom of the page. The thread was started 2nd March 2014 and last posted on 30 March 2014. On another thread I made a brief comment on the other film, the Darcy Bussell programme 'A Ballerina's Life' It is about 30 minutes long. I found it quite an interesting film, very relaxed and natural. "She sits in front of the camera and talks about her life at the top, tears at ballet school, forgetting the steps and becoming youngest ever principal at RB. The microphone is suspended above her head so she is unable to wave it about. The chat is interspersed with stills and short film clips."

The Ballerina Heroines was shown on 1st March this year. I think the other one was on Red Button, possibly around the same time.

http://www.sadlerswells.com/about-us/people/associate-artists/ This page on the Sadlers Wells website and its sub-pages give more information about Associate Artists, Associate Companies, Resident Companies, New Wave Associates and Ambassadors.

National Ballet of Canada is now available on YouTube:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxNgdCwLHy0

The Royal Ballet World Ballet Day Repeat streaming is on here:-

These seem to work from here, for me at least, but to get the Australian one in full screen it is best to click on the words 'World Ballet Day - The Australian Ballet' in the top left hand corner of the pictured screen. This will take you to the UTube page where you can open it properly and go to full screen.

I agree, Alison. There seems to be a mix-up with SFB RB and NBC as they all come up as San Francisco. I think that they may appear later, so says NCB at least. These seem to work when I paste the URLs into the address bar:- San Francisco Ballet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT7xGVTO_JM The Australian Ballet The Bolshoi Ballet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddf3pLzNSzA If you have enough bandwidth it is possible to increase the definition with the cogwheel in the bottom right hand corner up towards HD. Australia only starts after a five minute leader.

I lost my picture altogether after about six hours, but by turning the modem/router off and on and doing the same to the computer I have recovered a perfectly acceptable picture.

Namron Yarrum was the first black dancer to be employed by a British contemporary dance company. http://www.rambertschool.org.uk/2012/01/namron/

Congratulations to the recipients of honours for achievement in Ballet and Dance:- (E & OE) Order of the British Empire Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) Michael Duncan CLARK Founder, Michael Clark Company. For services to Dance. (London) Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) Namron YARRUM For services to Dance. (London) Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) Ms Rosemary BUTCHER Choreographer. For services to Contemporary Dance. (London) Ms Marion FRIEND Director, Junior Department, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. For services to Music Education. (London) Medallist of the Order of the British Empire (BEM) Ms Kathleen BURDON Founder, Kathleen Burdon School of Ballet. Mrs Baird For services to Dance. (South Shields, Tyne and Wear) Peter Michael JONES Club Secretary, Avon Amateur Dancers Club. For services to Dance. (Brislington, Bristol) Zoe, Mrs POOLE Founder, Zoe Poole School of Dance. For ZOE BRISCOE services to Dance. (Market Drayton, Shropshire)

Further to the above, I have now discovered that the BBC Website does have some pages about the Red Button and here:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/tags/Red_button You can see a summary of broadcasts for the coming week.

It's not easy to find out what's on there. Probably the best way is to go to the Guide page on your TV or Recorder, scroll down to Channel 301 and then scroll across through the week's programmes. This will only give you a brief title, so then press 'i' or 'Info' which will give a little more detail of the highlighted programme. Also glance at 302 and 303 which might be used occasionally. These broadcasts are mainly related to sports, music and state occasions, so if you follow a particular sport for example you get to know whether it is worth while looking there. There might be a short reference on the BBC website page, for example on the Formula 1 page it says that today's BBC2 Qualifying Highlights programme is being repeated tomorrow at 12.00 on the Red Button 301 channel. I find these useful if I miss a broadcast, and sometimes there are broadcasts which are only shown there or which are in a 'Raw' version. For instance sometimes broadcasts like Trooping The Colour or State Opening Of Parliament may be shown raw, without the commentary and without the interviews so that Foreign broadcasters can add their own. It's a bit like seeing behind the scene and you see additional footage. Last weekend there was footage from F1 showing just the pit lane action plus lots of statistics and related info. For 'A Ballerina's Life' I only knew about it when they said go to channel 301 (or Red Button) for this extra programme at the very end of the Heroes broadcast. I don't know whether there was an accompanying webpage on this occasion. The repeats I saw when I was scrolling through as above. It seems this material was recorded when they were preparing the season of ballet, but they must have decided not to wrap it all up, so just put on 301 as an extra. Perhaps if there is another ballet season it would be worth checking for something similar.

I thought that was strange too, Margaret, but I think it just means 'Red Button'.

While setting my recorder for the Boat Race and Formula 1 this coming weekend I noticed that the Darcy Bussell programme 'A Ballerina's Life' is being repeated again on Freeview Channel 301 (BBC RB 301) on Friday 4th April from 20.55 to 04.00. This programme is the one which first appeared immediately after her 'Ballerina Heroes' programme, without much advance notice. It is about 30 minutes long, so suitable for those who missed it before and for insomniacs as it will probably be repeated on a loop throughout the night. She sits in front of the camera and talks about her life at the top, tears at ballet school, forgetting the steps and becoming youngest ever principal at RB. The microphone is suspended above her head so she is unable to wave it about. The chat is interspersed with stills and short film clips.

It was nice to see Sergei Filin being interviewed during the second interval. Speaking in Russian,(if I followed the translation correctly) he mostly spoke about the production, the newly designed sets and costumes and the dancers. He thanked the Balanchine Trust and hoped that there would be further Balanchine ballets in the Bolshoi repertoire in the future.

The following PiictureHouse cinemas should be showing 'Jewels', but not sure what dates and times. In The Following Cinemas Clapham Picturehouse - London Gate Picturehouse - London Greenwich Picturehouse - London Hackney Picturehouse - London Ritzy Picturehouse - London Stratford East Picturehouse - London Belmont Picturehouse - Aberdeen The Little Theatre Cinema - Bath Duke's At Komedia - Brighton Abbeygate Picturehouse - Bury St Edmunds Arts Picturehouse - Cambridge Cameo Picturehouse - Edinburgh Exeter Picturehouse - Exeter Regal Picturehouse - Henley-on-Thames Picturehouse at FACT - Liverpool Cinema City - Norwich Phoenix Picturehouse - Oxford Harbour Lights Picturehouse - Southampton Stratford-upon-Avon Picturehouse - Stratford-upon-Avon City Screen Picturehouse - York

Don't know how you manage that, Ian, you must have a special pass. In general, if you register free with the FT you can read a limited number of 'Articles' per month, I believe it is about 5. After that you have to wait until the next month. To read unlimited Articles you have to subscribe, the lowest level costs about £5.19 per week.

In the days when photographs were published on the website for most of the dancers, they were not shown for the very youngest. There seemed to be an age limit of perhaps 18 years, or possibly a bit less. I guess that this was to protect the youngest dancers from inappropriate approaches (for example stalking) and give them a period of time to adapt to adult life working in a ballet company coming straight from school. This may not be the case for other companies, but the Royal Ballet is in a special position being so well-known and operating in the global metropolis of London where anything can happen. One only has to think of the Bolshoi situation to see the sense in this. I don't think it is in any way insulting to the dancers, even though it is frustrating for audience members wishing to identify newcomers.