Quintus

I've just booked this at Sadler's Wells as a Parisian friend will be over. Her first ballet, and Fille would not be my first choice as it is so atypical and can be too broad for my taste (ironically exactly this Fille-as-intro situation has happened to me before). Is the BRB usually a good production?

I went tonight and pretty much agree with Mummykool above. After the opening promise of The Leaves Are Fading, I then thought the Perez piece was over extended and rather pointless, and I loathed the 'numbers' music. The second half of the programme was altogether better and Valse Triste was the highlight of the evening.

Enrico Nawrath produced some stunning images with the Staatsballett Berlin dancers. He released a book called Metamorphoses, and also a couple of fine-art quality calendars. None of them are cheap however...

By sheer luck last weekend we googled what was on in Stratford and found that two Company Wayne McGregor dancers were performing a pdd from Autobiography at the Vote 100 event nearby. We watched them perform it twice - for free :D. I also discovered how difficult it is to take coherent photos of WMcG choreography...

I think like John that it's a male bullfinch. We get a few chaffinches but this was the first bullfinch we've had in the garden. He was laying on the mat just inside the glass door with his legs in the air, and just twenty feet or so from our sleeping cat, so it was his lucky day! Said cat is not in my good books as he killed a stoat a few days ago; a beautiful creature and one that was keeping the rabbits down.

This chap flew into our window and is currently recovering in a dark box, I'm hoping there's no damage other than a headache.. He's 'got up' and is sitting on his feet now, so fingers crossed. Update: after a half hour rest, he flew off looking perfectly healthy. Glad my son got to him before the cat.

I'm not a football fan; probably helps if your family is into it when you are young, which mine was not. I tried watching the last England game - there was a big outdoor screen near our place in London with a huge and, er, lively crowd. Must say the game itself left me completely cold, but the atmosphere was great and very infectious. So, "sealions on the shirt" or whatever, and good luck!

Must have been around 1.30, when we ducked out of our seats to go and look for an alternative match. At least the hill wasn't as packed as it can be though. We're just going to pitch up on Monday evening and see what's available - there should be some recycled seats from early leavers with any luck.

Here's Safarova winning a lengthy match point battle with Radwanska - along with one of the hundreds of flying ants that swarmed the court!

Wimbledon was absolutely heaving yesterday, with some routes through the courts choked solid - perhaps they are selling more ground passes than usual. We had Court 2 seats, which for future reference is quite a nice, intimate court, but we dipped in and out as we found some better matches in the unreserved courts. Thinking of going back next week one evening - after a certain time in the late afternoon I understand they sell cheap ground passes and returns, and there should still be a decent amount of doubles matches going on in the minor courts in the evening. Haven't done the research yet into how it works - anyone ever done this? btw, some Day 3 pics up on the Instagram link I posted above.

We haven't seen any so far - just the pair of them appearing morning and evening. Fingers crossed for The Partridge Family revival though!

Garcia is my favourite but I'll settle for Giorgi! She's a photographer's dream as she doesn't grimace when hitting like most of them do. There are some pictures from the event on my Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/hrothgarfleuri/

We had an excellent three days at Birmingham. The qualifiers included some big names who are coming back up the rankings from injury - Genie Bouchard, Kateryna Bondarenko, Kristyna Pliskova, Camila Giorgi and the obligatory handful of 'plucky Brits'. The first day of the main draw we saw Kiki Mladenovic, Naomi Osaka, Oceane Dodin, Karolina Pliskova and many more. Saw Muguruza practising. We now have a collection of selfies with various of them, those with the Pliskovas being the most amusing as they are over a foot taller than my wife! Dodin and Mladenovic were both very pleasant and polite. Giorgi was my favourite of the bunch to watch - an amazing athlete who plays with such speed and ferocity.

I'm debating whether to go to one of the open air Big Screen showings tonight at Trafalgar Sq or Canary Wharf - does anyone know from past experience how busy they get? I'd like to see it but I'm not really up for arriving an hour in advance to get a place..

It's here: https://www.facebook.com/EnglishNationalBallet/videos/vl.388096708341817/10155907638741028/?type=1

Great atmosphere in the Coli tonight, as ever for this event - good to hear dancers in the audience screaming support for their colleagues. All dancers were excellent, it seemed to me, and McCormick was a real barnstormer. Of the others, I particularly liked both Francesca Velicu's performances. I had to laugh though at the beginning - I'm pretty sure that the judges were expecting to be seated at the front centre of the dress circle as usual - but those seats had been sold. There was lots of scurrying around by ushers and ENB staff before the judges appeared and were parked a couple of rows back over on the right-hand section.

I wonder if RG has a lot of corporate seat allocations which don't then get used? Just sitting down to watch Sharapova v Muguruza on TV, which to me is a dream match, and so far in their warm-up there are great swathes of empty seats.

Not quite. Our exchange student lassie had a spare ticket, so my wife went to RG while I wandered the Orsay museum. She enjoyed it very much but did say it doesn't have the same atmosphere or facilities as Wimbledon. Good idea though, making it the hub of a break in Paris..

I've currently got a Garcia match to watch at last, so I'm happy! Looks like we'll have Sharapova v Serena in the next round, they'll have to show that...

Wishing we'd gone to Roland Garros, as the ITV4 coverage is missing most of the interesting matches (and seems very heavily mens match dominated). Specifically, no coverage at all of my favourite Garcia despite her high seeding. Looking forward to Birmingham in a couple of weeks, and a day at Wimbledon shortly after..

A pair of these partridges have taken to making evening forays on our lawn. Quite shy but rather charming in the way they potter around together.

I think there are any number of keen photographers, including me, who would like such an opportunity, but for plenty of good reasons it looks quite hard, so I've never bothered actively pursuing it. The professional companies are very strict in how their images get used - at the top level Gene Schiavone has written about how on a given shoot he will take up to a thousand images, of which only a handful get approved for release by the company and the rest sit on his hard drive forever. The images need not just to be of the right technical quality but also show dancers in perfect technique and support the brand, via style guidelines etc, that the company is looking to portray. If you can get formally associated with a magazine or some approved dance association, then you can join the click-fest with a dozen or so others on stage rehearsal nights (for us 'friends' in the circle, ENB working stage rehearsal sessions are accompanied by a constant machine gun battery of clicks from them below in the stalls), but the route into that is unclear to me. I imagine dance schools will happily pay to contract in a pro to do publicity shots, but will be very loathe to have amateurs snapping away. Putting it bluntly, dancers are often in revealing clothes and positions and schools' main priority will rightly be to block any possibility of exploitation rather than to save money. I used to think companies were missing a fund-raising trick as they could charge good fees for amateur photographer sessions, but I suspect they think the hassle involved in controlling the images taken and distributed outweighs that benefit.

Guests are advised to ensure their blow-up cushions are well-bunged, or risk making an appearance in the Audience Behaviour thread ;)

For French speakers, no paywall: http://mobile.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2018/04/16/soupcons-de-harcelement-a-l-opera-de-paris_5286259_3246.html?xtref=&utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter There’s also a claim in there that around 25% of dancers either suffered or witnessed sexual harassment.

Assuming the reference is to 'harcèlement moral', this is 'psychological harassment' (degradation of working environment, abuse, career obstruction etc) and is actually defined as a crime under French law carrying a large fine or even to 2 years prison.