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newballetfan

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Everything posted by newballetfan

  1. Congrats to all promotees! A shame Anna Rose O'Sullivan didn't get one this year but as many people have said, difficult decisions with so many talented dancers. Am I right that Amelia Palmiero is the only Aud Jebsen apprentice not taken on? My heart always bleeds for them when that happens even though I've no doubt they all know there is no guarantee. I hope she has somewhere good to go to.
  2. Awesome for the upper school grads! The apprentice scheme seems to be a thing that more and more companies are doing. I'm sure there are good reasons but it seems hard on those involved- of course it's fantastic to be taken on in any guise but I can imagine that if it were me I'd feel a little like asking what my peers with full contracts have that I don't. But then I also work in an industry full of temporary contracts and I am jaded by it! I wonder what Johanne Monfret will do next.
  3. LOL Taxi!! What gets me is that these continued debates are supposedly happening for people who are 'undecided'. This campaign has been going on for a year. Who could possibly still be undecided? Have they been walking around with their ears and eyes shut? I'm a historian, albeit not of modern history. The university departments I work in are horrified at the possibility that he might win.
  4. Oh sorry I didn't catch that it had already been posted in another thread!
  5. RB graduate Joseph Aumeer has posted on his Instagram that he has accepted a contract with POB for next season. (I hope this is ok to share here - Instagram is public)
  6. Wow I'm sad to see Josie Frick and Naomi Bottomer leaving - they only just joined! Anyone know what they're doing next?
  7. Oh absolutely - I'm sorry, I didn't at all mean to speculate about the students themselves. If anything I'm trying to speculate about the why the school states that it's 100% employment when it isn't yet. Why not wait until the end of the audition season and THEN put that up on the website?
  8. On their website the Royal Ballet School are claiming a 100% employment rate for their 2016 graduates. But that isn't the case; if you compare the names of those in the third year and those who have contracts, there's one who doesn't yet, so how can they possibly claim 100% employment? I don't mean AT ALL to pick at the individual in question or indeed the school with this comment, because there are tons of reasons why that might be - they might have decided to stop dancing, or been prevented from auditioning due to injury, or simply still be on the audition circuit, I've no idea. I just find the way that they appear to be manipulating statistics here annoying, and to be honest, isn't it also misleading? Those stats work as a form of advertising for the school, after all.
  9. This is all so exciting! Really glad O'Hare is making good his promises to foster talent within the ranks. I saw Hirano as the witch in Hansel and Gretel a while ago and I will never forget it, he was utterly creepy and I couldn't take my eyes off him, so I'm happy he's now a principal! I'm also really glad for Tierney Heap as I saw her Carmen and thought she was fabulous. Anna Rose O'Sullivan is also a favourite so yay all round!
  10. Unfortunately TV goes in waves of presenters - whoever is popular now is wanted for EVERYTHING. It works the same for history programmes (I've done research for them!). In the same way you find Lucy Worsley presenting absolutely everything under the sun whether or not she has any real expertise on the subject at hand (that ridiculous BBC4 thing she did on horses, for instance). I suppose at least Darcey does know what she is talking about when it comes to dance, although I agree that I don't think she's a very good presenter. I saw a biographical programme about her once and she was interviewed, and she was so much better and so much more natural that way than she is when she interviews other people.
  11. Would just like to echo others in saying how incredibly informative your posts are, FLOSS. I am not a dancer and know nothing about ballet except that I enjoy watching it. However, as an academic I know expertise when I see it and that's why I come to this forum, to learn. I so wish I could go and see this, to boost those ticket sales, but the prices remain too high for me even in the Amphitheatre.
  12. I went to the Saturday evening performance to see Tierney too - I love seeing the 'up and coming' young dancers! I thought she was great. I was up in the amphitheatre and didn't need binoculars to get the detail. I know nothing about ballet and would love to see an alternative cast for comparison, but on the other hand that would mean seeing Carmen again and for me the money would be better spent on something else. I agree with many of the comments here - it was unwieldy and a bit of a bizarre mish mash of stuff. I also think they need to differentiate the costumes between the two male characters in a more striking way, because from the back of the opera house they were hard to distinguish. I also felt the story was thoroughly unclear. I'm not familiar with the original story of Carmen but I have recently seen Matthew Bourne's Car Man. I have difficulty believing that the two were based on the same story frankly. No idea what the narrative actually was in Acosta's choreography, and the bit with the bull? Eh?! I laughed in a couple of places where I don't think I was supposed to - notably near the beginning where the whole boiling of them are on stage, a man walks across in a suit with a briefcase and gets shot dead, at which point the whole lot of them disappear noisily. It felt like a supremely clumsy and therefore comic way to clear the stage! Unfortunately I had it fixed in my head that the performance started at 7.30 and so I missed Viscera. However, Faun was my favourite of the whole evening. It was absolutely magical and Olivia Cowley and Matthew Ball were beautiful. So subtle and clever. The Tchaikovsky is what it is, it was impressive and glitzy but felt rather meaningless by comparison. Why is Carmen being treated as a sort of Acosta swansong when he is dancing in Elizabeth in the Linbury in January? Is it his final thing on the main stage?
  13. Nabbed some quite expensive tickets for Elizabeth, my partner's treat as I'm broke! SO excited - we are both historians of this period so it was a must for us. We're also seeing the mixed bill with Carmen in it at the end of this month, which I know wasn't part of the Winter season booking but I only just booked them so it feels as though they count. Luckily I wanted to see Tierney Heap rather than the first cast because I really like to watch the 'up and coming' dancers, and for that I also get Muntagirov! Acosta is pretty much sold out.
  14. I was there for Saturday's evening performance and LOVED it!!! Sechs Tanze was my favourite too, absolutely hilarious. Also really enjoyed the Scarlett piece for the White Lodgers - would love to know who the principle couple were in this as it wasn't given on the casting sheet. Rush fell a bit flat for me but I don't think it was the fault of the dancers. It just seemed rather disjointed. The future definitely looks bright.
  15. Also means she presumably hired the lovely Nancy Osbaldeston among others but won't be there when they actually start dancing with the company. I don't know anything about how these things work but when an artistic director leaves unexpectedly with this kind of timing does that impact the immediate future of those new dancers?
  16. I've just booked for one of the Royal Ballet School's Linbury performances but wasn't sure which day to plump for. Am I right that the programme is different each night of that week? Is there any way to know what you're going to see? I went for the Saturday evening in the end (not many tickets left full stop!) but it would be good to know whether that'll be upper or lower school, or which year groups, or anything really. Sadly have missed the boat for the ROH performance on the Sunday this year, unless there are returns nearer the time.
  17. Dawid's decision to leave to be a Principal elsewhere makes perfect sense to me, as has been said, some people prefer that to being a smaller fish in a bigger pond. The comparison with Polunin also seems bizarre. But I'm also a bit with Angela on this. The article is stating that dancers called in union bosses last week; surely that's a pretty big deal? Doesn't that indicate a fairly serious problem within the RB? I thought the comment above was interesting and possibly on the money about how RB used to be one of the very few companies dancers were desperate to get INTO, not get out of as seems to be the case lately. I'm hearing a lot of 'oh it's fine, it's fine', but is it really?
  18. I'm trying to book Hansel and Gretel tickets but failing to understand the Linbury's seating!! The labelling isn't very clear and I don't know which bit is which. When I click on 'Lower Gallery and Arena' it seems to be telling me that there are seats behind the stage, which can't be right. On their picture I can't see where the upper gallery IS, never mind what you'd be able to see from it. I'm tempted to take a couple of the middling priced seats in the 'rear arena' but then it warns me that the view might be obstructed by the stage set at certain times. How on earth would the stage set interfere with the back of the theatre?! Confused, can anyone help? Locked to avoid confusion as an answer has been given to a near-identical post in News.
  19. Really want to go to this! Am trying to book tickets on the opera house website but I'm confused as to the different areas of the Linbury. When I click on Lower Gallery and Arena and it shows me which seats are available, I can't work out what I'm looking at as there seem to be seats BEHIND the stage which can't be right. I'm wondering if they've flipped the theatre round in their pic and are showing the two standing gallery sides with the stage in the middle but I'm not sure that's right either. Their labelling isn't as clear as it is for the main opera house stage......I have no idea which bit is which! Can anyone help?
  20. Actually I felt this a bit with David Dawson's new Human Seasons, the girls seemed to spend a LOT of time just being pulled about by the boys. 'Manipulated' is a good word for it. Wasn't a fan.
  21. I went to see this last night and thought it was fantastic! LOVED Chroma and the Rite of Spring, and thought Claudia Dean's debut was brilliant. I did think, though, that because The Chosen One's costume is a lighter colour than the others and more or less blends into the scenery, that some of the detail of movement was lost. Not so keen on Human Seasons, I agree with criticisms here - there was a lot of seemingly pointless running around in the gloom, the costumes added nothing, and while the dancing was beautiful, it didn't seem to have much point or really build to anything. However, last night did crystallise something for me. I'm just not sure I enjoy watching dance on the ROH main stage. You just can't ever get close enough to the stage to see faces, and it really, really bugs me when I can't tell who is dancing because they all look alike to me from a distance. As a non-dance person it's also important to me to be able to see facial expressions in order to better understand what the dance is about - I suspect my lack of any dance knowledge means I struggle to interpret movement alone. From a distance it's hard to discern the level of effort put in, and the amount of detail. For me it's a bit like going to a big concert where you watch the screened video rather than the performer themselves on the stage; you get more from a DVD than from seeing it live and that's disappointing. My favourite thing I've seen since I started going to watch ballet a year and a bit ago is still Berne Ballet's 'Witchunt' in the Linbury. So much up close!!
  22. Ian I was literally just thinking about Berne Ballet's 'Witchhunt' which came to the Linbury Theatre last year, and also Ballet Black's last year programme in the same venue. Neither relied heavily on sets or elaborate costumes and I was completely absorbed by them, particularly by Witchhunt. By contrast I often find that the elaborate sets and costumes of the RB in the Opera House create a sense of distance, maybe the more so because I know nothing about ballet. Of course this could also be because I prefer the more intimate Linbury and am usually too far away from the stage in the Opera House to appreciate the nuances of the dancing without the sets and costumes getting in the way (so to speak).
  23. I love Rumer Godden's books and it's brilliant they're bringing them back into print. My favourite of her ballet novels, though, was always 'Pippa Passes'. This isn't suitable for children, it's quite dark, but incredibly evocative. I read it as a teenager and have been trying to find the same edition ever since!
  24. As a non-dance person, but one who reads this forum and other related things regularly, something that pops up repeatedly is an apparent lack of communication/understanding between the vocational schools and ballet companies. In some cases, even between secondary level vocational schools and post-16 schools, and from there again to companies. I'm sure this isn't always the case, but it seems to be a consistent niggle that the schools might not be training the kind of dancers the companies want - even those which act as feeder-schools. Monica Mason's comments (sorry for not quoting correctly) about wanting flashier 'foreign' dancers ring massive alarm bells - if that's what companies want, why on earth aren't they telling their schools this, so they can train the students in this way?! Do the schools just close their ears?!
  25. I saw Beatrix do Alice too, fairly recently and thought she was brilliant! Isn't it interesting how even knowing nothing about dance and not understanding WHY a certain dancer really catches my eye, it often tends to be the same ones that knowledgable dance people like too! Suggests it really can be a universal thing. Thank you capybara for those dates, I shall investigate
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