Quintus

Just remembered this thread as I saw this posting on Facebook, and thought it might be an appropriate place to park it: https://www.facebook.com/job_opening/1267314556742439/?source=post_homepage_stream&__tn__=HH-R It's a job advert for a ballet teacher at a dance school in Cairo. Would make an interesting alternative to teaching English on a gap year for someone... I remember that under Morsi there was a full clampdown on ballet and opera in Egypt, so despite the country still being considerably more conservative than it used to be, it's heartening to see that ballet schools can still exist there. From a brief look at the website, they claim to teach the Vaganova style. The kids are also in normal ballet clothing, not covered up.

Went to the ROH Month of Sundays event this morning - what an excellent couple of hours entertainment, in the Hall Formerly Known As Floral, for a mere fiver! We had a great 'Reimagined Traviata' which had me glancing nervously at the glass roof, a couple of corps members' self-choreographed works, and an abbreviated class with two PDD excerpts from four School members (I think they said from this year's graduating class). One of those girls, who looked to me perhaps Korean and I think was called Angel, particularly stood out. There wasn't quite enough to time to get from event to event in different places, so I missed out on a dance duets session in the Clore, but overall it was a very uplifting morning.

I'm interested - will message you

And once I thought I saw two bars in the middle - but that was on a night with three intervals 🥂

Oh, well that's a relief - it was in that split configuration when I went and I had never seen it like that before.

I went to the ROH for the first time since the remodelling last weekend. I think the Floral Hall (as I shall continue to call it) has been utterly ruined. The former central, elliptical bar used to be an iconic focus point, and was the star of many photos taken from the balcony above. The open space created by its removal has been filled with cheap tables and chairs, and what appears to be a fake wood floor. I was going to say it looks like a High St chain cafe, but actually it's worse as those places try to zone and create an intimate atmosphere. It just looks cheap and industrial - Premier Inn rather than premier experience.

Is there a rival production about Dogs that half of ENB can run off and join?

Would love this - have PM'd you..

She Persisted was the one I was waiting for - loved both Broken Wings and Rite of Spring on previous outings, so having them on the same bill, along with a new work from Stina Quagebeur, is just fantastic. Consequently had to splash out on good seats for a change !

Took a Parisian friend to see this at Sadlers tonight and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. I've seen the ROH production a couple of times but I actually prefer this one - it has a somewhat gentler charm and while the Alain character still irritated me, it was far less than he did at the ROH. We had to run all the way from Angel and made it a minute before curtain up so I didn't even get a cast sheet! It was my friend's first ballet and she was really impressed, indeed to the point that she says she is going to go back and book one at the Opéra. Do I get Convert Points?

Not one to watch with the vicar perhaps, but I thought Fleabag was mostly very good - the fourth wall busting glances to camera were an economical way of conveying a lot, and I liked the two sisters' complex relationship. The dead friend scenes were the only part that grated a bit.

She was very good in Thirteen too, where she also had an unsettling, edgy quality despite being the victim

Has anyone else been watching? Having got hooked on this black comedy TV series, based around a psychopathic female contract killer, I was more than surprised to find that it originated from some novels by Luke Jennings, more familiar to Balletcoforum members as the dance critic of the Observer! Maybe after writing his fiftieth review of Swan Lake he felt the need to let rip with some gore... We will not speculate as to whether he has drawn upon any ballet world personalities for the central character of Villanelle.

We went to see this dance theatre production tonight at Dance East, Ipswich - an intimate venue which meant we got fourth row seats for about a third the price they'd be at Sadler's Wells, where it is playing from Monday. I'm not normally a dance theatre fan but this is excellent - this is the only production I recall where my wife came out enthusing about it for an hour or more afterwards (she's a tough audience). It covers themes of gender roles/ control, and marine ecology, set against the Medusa myth and its linguistic association with jellyfish. The ideas come thick and fast, with some really well executed 'big prop' routines involving a huge polythene sheet over the dancers and a kind of dog catcher hoop on a stick. These have the potential to go painfully wrong (the hoop) or be corny (the sheet), but are so slickly executed that they are really impressive. The choreography is very physical and athletic, and the dancers were correspondingly strong and crisp. There are some deliberately uncomfortable moments depicting abusive attitudes, but elsewhere plenty of humour, some in a quirky Bausch manner, and a tense, menacing final passage with the Gorgon. We came out buzzing, and this is a company I'll seek out in future.

I quite like the fairness of the system in place at most venues in Thailand; free or a low price for Thai citizens and a much higher price for foreigners. It both recognises that public institutions are already getting state funding from the citizens' taxes and the typical economic disparity. I'd happily see a similar system here, with foreign tourists paying for entry to our museums and UK citizens getting in free (or rather, not paying twice, as a contribution from our tax already goes to the museum via DCMS grant-in-aid).

I find quite a few museum websites now have great web galleries showing all the items they own, but are poor at saying which ones are actually out on display as opposed to 'in the collection', which often means locked in a vault somewhere, or indeed out on loan. At least ours are free, as you say. On a visit to the British Museum yesterday however, the voluntary donation process had been reengineered pretty heavily. After navigating a lengthy queue barrier into a tent for bag checks etc, I was 'triaged' by an attendant and told to go to one of a row of numbered donation points, each with an attendant standing behind it to facilitate the donation process and remove as much of the 'voluntariness' as possible! I bade them a cheery good morning and strode past. I do not take well to being coerced into donating..

Museums 'sweating the assets'. I regularly pop into the Tate for the Pre-Raphaelite room, which includes some of the nation's most popular paintings - notably Ophelia and Lady of Shalott. With absolutely minimal publicity given here, it transpires that over 40 of them, not just from the Tate (so doubtless scooping up the cream of the P-R favourites from Birmingham, Manchester and elsewhere) are off to Australia for a whole year. There, they are being toured in paying exhibitions - which is all very well for the museum coffers but leaves us back here bereft of an entire category of art for a long time. They are a major attraction here and pull in a lot of tourists, so I'd love to know how the actual business case for this pans out.

I assume ROH's dynamic pricing capability will now allow me to self-identify as a young Asian lesbian at the time of booking and get a 70% discount. My lawyer dares anyone to say I'm not one.

Must admit I've had no problems whatsoever - in FB, I just went straight to the Bolshoi page and it worked. I am watching it from an iPad mirrored onto on a biggish TV and the definition is fine. The Bolshoi seem to have made quite a slick production this year - some prerecorded material, but seamless moves from one segment to another. I could just have wished for some captions in the class and rehearsals to show who was speaking / dancing. I hope the RB segment is as smooth, as last year that was quite glitchy for me.

they won't have got this far without being tough cookies! I'm sure there's a point where you're so technically strong that you just want specific correction in any case, not US-style 'good job' all the time. I was amused earlier by the very Russian, downbeat style of the guy interviewing the kids who were auditioning for the academy - 'this will be the last cookie you ever eat', 'what will you do now, give up?'. Not a 'medals for everybody who came' culture!

It's an interesting coaching style - exclusively negative feedback! I was just reading a BBC news article about Manchester Student Union banning clapping in case it makes them anxious, and wondering how those precious little dears would react to having all their faults shouted at them in front of the whole world.....

Here's the Facebook route for watching the Bolshoi https://www.facebook.com/bolshoitheatre/videos/143192186631881/

Bolshoi streaming is also working fine from the Bolshoi Theatre Facebook page. Been great so far - current watching their live class. Hoping they will interview Eugenie Obraztsova

That should make for a quicker audience turnaround

Smart watches in the theatre are my latest bugbear - the screen lights up with a message when notifications, emails etc come in . It already seems to take people about three minutes to switch off their mobile phones when requested to do so, and when it comes to smart watches they appear to have simply thrown away the manual...