trog

I'm seeing it in Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton.

If you want to dig around, these are the pairings that I know of for Grand PDD on youtube Alicia Amatriain and Jason Reilly (2 versions) Elisa Carrillo Cabrera and Igor Kolb Uliana Lopatkina and Marat Shemiunov Julia Kramer and Robert Tewsley Alicia Amatriain and Roberto Bolle Elisa Badenes and Roberto Bolle Lauren Cuthbertson and Alexander Jones If you don't like Le Grand Pas de Deux, there is always "The Mistake Waltz" from The Concert by Jerome Robbins

As do Julia Kramer and Robert Tewsley. I think there are six different pairings to be found on tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iS4Yj_84Co

We do calf raises at the barre in one ballet class I do - 8 in first, 8 on the left leg, with the right leg cou de pied, 8 on the right and repeat. It's an absolute killer! I do this in the gym too, three times a week. It hurts less if you really pull up in the knees and squeeze your bottom. Don't lean on the barre to much either; it is much easier if you stay vertical.

If you are in the circle for Swan Lake (and other big ballets), you can see all the pretty patterns the corps make, which you won't see if you are in the stalls. If you're watching R&J from the circle, the stage looks really empty for most of the ballet. The worse case for this was ENB R&J In The Round, which I saw in the Adelaide Entertainment Centre (basically an aeroplane hanger). I was in the front row and for most of the ballet, the two dancers looked to be about 4 miles away. Reminds me of when I saw David Bowie in a stadium gig. More the Small White Speck than the Thin White Duke. They said it was David Bowie, but it could have been anybody. If you are in the front row of the stalls of a theatre (my preferred spot), you can watch the orchestra if the ballet is a bit dull. You can sometimes hear the dancers grunting too, which shows they are human after all.

I've seen R&J danced to Berlioz score, which I think is superior to the more familiar Prokofiev score. There is so many great ballet scores, it is hard to pick a favourite but The Firebird is oneo of mine.

It appears that if you aren't logged in, you don't count as a view. I don't login unless I have something to post, which isn't that often. I still check the site daily though.

There isn't much on as far as I can see. Hippodrome has Calendar Girls The Musical and Ceri Dupree in The Ladies I Love The Alex has Thriller Live The Crescent has Spamalot The Rep has Captain Corelli's Mandolin The Old Joint Stock has Riot Act

At the sixth form college where I work, the dance students study Christopher Bruce (specifically Ghost Dances), Alvin Ailey, Sidi Larbi, Jasmin Vardimon, "Still Life At The Penguin Cafe" and Akram Khan (mostly his Kathak) - quite a range of styles. The bit in the article that worries me most is "Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality will see significant growth, and will become increasingly relevant within the arts." Does the audience really need to interact with a performance using their phones? Phones in a theatre are already a scourge and I can see this only getting worse. There was a virtual reality performance at the Birmingham International Dance Festival last year. In it, you had a head set and you were in the middle of some animated movement. I found it very underwhelming. If you turned to see behind you, quickly you became dizzy, owing to the lack of something real to focus on. I also found the animations quite poor. Of course, this will improve. I know that Imperial College use virtual reality very successfully in their medicine course. Students can view a procedure from several different angles, which helps with their studies. They do this mostly once the procedure has been completed, watching it as a recording, although they do live stream the procedure to their students.

The shoes in Riverdance, Burn The Floor and other shows have microphones attached. The Rockettes too. Maybe you could consider that? There is a special tap shoe microphones available, but I suspect they will be expensive.

You can view the press release about this event in Birmingham here https://mailchi.mp/dancexchange/bbc-dancepassion-at-dx-5-april?e=6fc76aa788

Here's a radical idea - don't spot! Ice skaters don't; they turn too fast. I have no idea as to why they don't get dizzy. Maybe they do and just shake it off. I'm the worlds worst spotter. I've tried not spotting and it doesn't help me but spotting doesn't help either.

I think the relevant line in the article is "He believes more male dancers would use pointe shoes in their regular practice if they could actually get them in their size." I guess I'm lucky (or maybe unlucky) - I've got quite small feet so when I was learning pointe, obtaining shoes wasn't a problem.

If the program was recorded to the DVD as 4:3, it will play as 4:3. Twiddling the TV results in squashed people. There are loads of video editing software programs available for PC and Mac, with which you can change the format from 4:3 to 16:9. You would have to rip the DVD, change the aspect ratio and burn a new DVD. I don't know what the effect of changing the aspect ratio would be; I just leave my DVDs as they were recorded. I get annoyed when TV stations don't broadcast programs in the correct aspect ratio. The BBC regularly transmits Dad's Army in 16:9, resulting in squashed people. The program was made in 4:3 and that is how it should be transmitted. Fortunately my DVD box set is in the correct ratio. Quick plug for Talking Pictures TV. Great old programs, always transmitted in the correct ratio, no credit squeezing, no talking over the end credits, very small DOG and and no IPPs. True TV are terrible - their attempt to squeeze and talk over the end credits, often results in them squeezing the last 30 seconds of the program. As a trade off, you get uninterrupted end credits.

This happens if a website can't access the necessary style sheets, which are used to handle the layout. Some times style sheets are hosted on a different machine to the website or google style sheets are used. If the style sheet isn't returned in a reasonable time, your browser display the site without formatting. A refresh should fix it. At work, our website regularly displays "Waiting for fast.fonts.net..." which I think is funny - often it can take a couple of minutes to comeback with the so called fast font.

Ballet Black are performing in Birmingham 23rd & 24th May with a double bill. https://www.dancexchange.org.uk/events/ballet-black/

Maybe it's upgraded or cleaned itself? I sometimes experience an interesting problem with Chrome in my Linux machine. Generally all it well but sometimes, I will go onto the Birmingham news paper sites, click on a story and a completely random site will also open. This random site is usually trying to sell me medicines to improve my performance (ahem!). I've tracked it down as a result of browsing some fitness forums in the US. The only cure is to delete the Chrome config directory and restart Chrome. Of course, this means I loose all my bookmarks, etc. So I have a clean copy of the config which I can copy back. Being Linux it's pretty easy to do this and you could probably to the same on Windows. I was going to suggest this before, but finding the configs on M$ operating systems is difficult. Anyway, I am pleased that it has magically fixed itself.

OT (but relevant I think in light of some comments above) Don’t trust Daily Mail website, Microsoft browser warns users Naturally the Daily Mail aren't happy saying “We have only very recently become aware of the NewsGuard startup and are in discussions with them to have this egregiously erroneous classification resolved as soon as possible.” I think they must have gotten the dictionary down from the shelf to write that. Here's what people have been saying about it. https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2019/01/23/microsoft-classified-daily-mail-fake-news-people-love/ (Language warning) I like the comment "Apparently, it is graded as 1 out of 5, the same as the Kremlin's site. Pretty unfair on the Kremlin if you ask me. "

Hi Ian Have a look in Settings > Advanced Settings > Privacy > Content Settings > Zoom Levels Here the magnification is set for a specific site. If the forum is in there, delete it. I can't find any method to add urls in there. There are a few setup in mine, but I don't know how they are entered (or why) ATB Trog

The announcement was even on the BBC news teletext (or whatever it is called in new money) last night. I don't think there has every been a ballet item on the general news section before.

Here is a sample of her being a ballerina https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x7NIdTyi38

Start now and you'll have a great converstation piece for Christmas 😃 https://www.instructables.com/id/Building-a-Life-Size-Nutcracker-that-Can-Crack-Coc/

Arnold Schwarzenegger mentions in his Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (still a valuable resource 35 years after publication) stretch overload is an important part of strength training. Arnold was a master at getting the most muscle-building potential from every set, and that often included stretch overload. The way he trained calves is a prime example. If you see photos of when he first arrived in the USA, his calves were lagging behind most of his other muscle groups. He points this out in his encyclopedia. Arnold was using a few hundred pounds on a variety of calf raises, but when he trained with Reg Parks, who was known to train very heavy, he was shocked to see his mentor load 1,000 pounds on the calf machine and continue to grind out movement until he could barely budge the massive load. Reg’s calves also just happened to be quite huge. Arnold began to apply his observations immediately and was soon using 1,000 pounds on his calf raises. The key here, however, is that he wouldn’t stop a set just because he could no longer get all the way to the top. When he couldn’t do anymore full reps, he would simply force the weight up as high as he could, usually just above the stretch point, and continue with partials until the muscles could no longer fire. So if you want faster mass gains, (which dancers don't) try blasting out power partials near the bottom of certain exercises, like close to the bottom of a bench press or calf raise, at the end of a set. That’s where you can overload the target muscle right at its point of maximum force generation. Stretch overload without huge weights will build strength but not huge size. I find working through the full range of motion of a joint very beneficial on my visits to the gym. This helps with my ballet too.

30 secs with google https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Sela-Cough-Extra-Strong-Sweets-100g/1337577789 - about £5 for 100gms eek! https://www.monmoreconfectionery.co.uk/brands-manufacturers/sela-cough - about £20 for 3kgs, which should see you through winter!

I've heard American dancers refer to ballet shoes as "pumps".