alison

Which is disgraceful, since you're allowed to "work" 16 hours a week without it affecting your entitlement to JSA. Surely this is just the same as any other unpaid internship, so possibly you shouldn't look at it just from a dance point of view? Best of luck with this. It always seems that it's those with some money behind them who are the only ones to profit from such things Is there absolutely no help given with respect to accommodation/travel costs?

I've been meaning to ask this for a while, so here goes: Am I the only one suffering from word wrap not actually wrapping, but carrying on in a straight line, presumably for ever and ever, when I'm trying to write posts? Chrome seems to be the culprit, because I'm typing this quite happily on Internet Explorer 8, and I don't think I've noticed the problem with IE11 either. It's been happening for a few weeks, and is really annoying because you can't follow what you're writing! (Oh, and Chrome is also responsible for not giving me any editing features apart from plain text, by the look of it)

(Even though, owing to the peculiarities of the site's posting facilities depending on the browser in use, I had to use two computers to do it!)

"It will also be screened live to 368 cinemas in the UK and Europe by Picturehouse." Just thought I'd highlight that bit

I assumed it was ballet. Can you fit it in on your next trip down?

Well, that's how I took it

I read an interview, I think with Stuart Cassidy, many moons ago in which he said something to the effect that if he ever did the perfect performance he might as well give up, because he'd never be able to achieve it again. And various have said that there's no point in trying to compete against others, they can only try and better their previous performances. I sometimes suspect that a dancer's assessement of his/her performance probably concentrates on execution, i.e. "I didn't land X properly/messed up Y/I did Z better the other night", while possibly not allowing for the fact that, "errors" aside, the overall impression to the audience may have been affected not one jot, or that, regardless, they took the audience e.g. on an emotional journey which elevated the performance beyond previous ones.

Hear, hear.

No, not the ballet, but I thought fans of it might also be interested to know that there's going to be a production of the original play in the West End soon, starring Martin Shaw: http://www.seetickets.com/show/hobson-s-choice/vau/4/2740/?aff=id1ETTheatreNews190416&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TuesNews_ind_190416&utm_content=http%3a%2f%2fwww.seetickets.com%2fshow%2fhobson-s-choice%2fvau%2f4%2f2740%2f%3faff%3did1ETTheatreNews190416&&

It's not uncommon for Myrthe's (and possible others'?) skirt to get caught up on the wings, any more than it is in La Sylphide. It usually unhooks itself again relatively quickly as the dancing continues, only this time it was of rather longer duration and did cause more bunching than normal. That's live performance for you. Just as Watson/Galeazzi managed to knock over a chair towards the end of the last act of Mayerling on the DVD. The way some people reacted to that, you'd think they were deducting marks for technical merit or something as a result

Ah, thanks, SBF - I never bothered to look. So it was the timing of the announcement which was odd. Actually, I've just gone and hauled out the programme. I can see a reference to the co-production on the cast sheet (which I think was for the first night), but nothing inside the "business" bit of the programme. I think the rest of the programme remains the same regardless of what ballet's on, doesn't it?

Shades of previous non-London trips by the company? And probably rather better prepared than some of his other concerts have appeared to be, I'd guess?

And even Golding, I suspect, hasn't had the ballets which are his forte to show us what he can really do.

I must admit, I always fancied having the pas de deux from Ashton's The Dream done as a sort of divertissement at mine. That music

Isn't that the case with the Skeaping production for ENB, too? I guess we shall get a reminder in the new year.

The impression we got was that it became a coproduction *after* they'd seen it, wasn't it? It was the apparent lateness of the announcement that raised eyebrows.

Seems to me he's already doing those quite happily(?) from where he is

And I seem to remember some years ago complaining about the Mayflower, Southampton selling either popcorn or very rustly sweets I don't mind them selling the things (well, I *do* popcorn, because it's nauseating), but for heaven's sake either sell them in something that doesn't rustle, or give the people buying them something to decant them into. I remember the New Victoria Theatre in Woking used to do pick + mix, which was much better, because there probably weren't any wrappers to unwrap.

I'm sorry to hear this, but not surprised. It was a real step up for him, and I trust he's benefitted from the experience overall.

Thank you all for this. A year or two back, I discovered, perhaps 6 months after the event, that the mother of one of my childhood friends, who used to be one of our neighbours, had died in some rather distressing circumstances. I wanted to send her husband a card with my memories of her - she was always such a sweetheart - but my family persuaded me that it was too late and that I would only be opening up the wounds again. I'll have another think about it.

I think the cast change was Kevin Emerton replacing someone - Erico Montes? - as the Steward.

Okay, now I'm confused. Based on my one viewing of it, I first thought Medea killed Jason and the Princess, which seemed odd to me - but the girl's silhouette looked very much like that of the princess. Shortly after, I realised that both "victims" had been on their knees, and therefore assumed that they were actually representing her children, especially once the curtains had collapsed and she gathered them up so tenderly. Any other thoughts? Wikipedia page on Kahlo is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo, BTW. I thought Broken Wings was very effective - could certainly see a correlation between this and Ochoa Lopez' A Streetcar Named Desire for Scottish Ballet, which I really enjoyed. If you separate the choreographic content from the overall production, though, I could understand that people might think somewhat differently. I suspect Fantastic Beings may have worked better seen from above than from lower down in the auditorium: I can imagine that the bottle green costumes may not have shown up too well against such a dark background. The usual what I always call "Sadler's Wells lighting" - looks stunning until you actually try to see dancers' faces and realise you can't: although, having said that, it wasn't nearly as bad as most incidents of SW lighting I've seen in the past, and I probably could have identified dancers if I'd really tried. A rather belated reminder that not everyone who reads these pages is on first-name terms with the dancers of any company: it would be nice to see people's surnames referenced now and again so that it was easier to work out who was being talked about

Oops ...

I think so, especially at Covent Garden. I remember Mara Galeazzi saying something to the effect that she might not have minded doing Odette/Odile early in her career, but that it was a young dancer's ballet. Really? I'm surprised at that. Do you just keep dancers on at soloist level indefinitely even when they're hardly being cast in dancing roles (possibly clogging up the ranks for other dancers?), or do you let them retire and lose all that stage experience? Incidentally, it's not guaranteed that a PCA *won't* do any more dancing - hasn't that been Gary Avis' rank since he rejoined the company? To be honest, I have over the years seen several candidates I thought might move into such positions, and wondered why the PCAs seemed to have skipped a generation, and there are several worthy candidates or future candidates in the company at the moment.

Me too, so I hope you're right and that whatever it was has passed. And I too thought it was extremely discourteous to the dancers at the cinema relay to cut away from their curtain calls. (Oh, and bridiem, the cinema was virtually full for the live relay - I'd guess that the unusual repeat pattern may have confused some people).