alison

Hi, balletsoccermom. How long will she be going for, is she going to be living in provided student accommodation, and will she just be needing it where she's living, or elsewhere? Another question is how old she is: if she's not old enough to enter into a contract legally, that might cause problems, I suppose.

The trouble is, not only can accounts be hacked, but your email address can also be spoofed, so it appears to come from you when it doesn't. I occasionally find emails purporting to come from my main Hotmail address, but which end up in my junk folder, so they clearly don't.

Must have been someone else I heard, then, because it was definitely above stalls level.

Didn't we have a thread on a similar subject, possibly in response to one of Luke Jennings' pieces? I can't find it now, though. I'm sure that the relative amounts of time that male and female dancers have on their hands must be a factor in all this.

It's a bad decision by management to combine food sales and ticket sales, in my opinion - or at least not to have one till which is for tickets only. My local cinema hardly ever has the ticket desk manned, it seems to me, even at what are expected to be peak times. On the other hand, I've had the opposite problem to Dave, when going to live showings, in that it's taken so long to get served with interval refreshments that I may miss the beginning of the next act!

Well, that was what I'd assumed at first, too, in which case I wouldn't have mentioned it. But I think I heard two distinct voices at different times (and from different locations), and didn't think it applied to the second voice.

I think that is a lot of what it is, and perhaps even more so now a significant number of people seem to have "home-cinema" level equipment at home and don't necessarily even go to the cinema that much nowadays. Also possibly the breaking-down of (or perhaps simply lack of perception of) boundaries between different forms of entertainment: "I go to a gig and take my beer in/go to the cinema and buy popcorn - and talk to my friends during it, so why shouldn't I do the same at the theatre?"

That begs the question of who you think are "all the best Solors", then, MAB?

Ah. Maybe it was on a Sunday, or something?

I noticed someone (or several someones?) kept shouting out throughout Bayadère on Saturday night. I couldn't work out where they were, or what they were shouting, but it was distracting, to say the least.

Oops. Never mind. I'm sure Gamzatti, as the deceitful little miss she is, would have taken pains to ensure that there were several snakes in that basket, just to make sure that Nikiya had no chance of not disturbing one of them I'd forgotten that one. Glorious. Thanks Including Gamzatti having danced Odette/Odile I notice she didn't turn up for the curtain call - I hope she was soaking in a hot bath or something by then. I also hope the company managed to fit a dress rehearsal in on the Friday afternoon - some dancers did indeed not look quite sure of their steps, or where they should be placed. Definitely agree on Rodkin - he recalled Zelensky to me, too, although I was never fortunate enough to see Woetzel in anything classical. And yes, I did notice his deft partnering - and his partners' divergence from the vertical Also agree about the musical soloists: thankfully their quality was better than that of the orchestra overall - without a decent harp, the effect of the Shades scene would be greatly diminished.

Quite. But sadly, it's not always the case While I can understand that a director needs to look to the future, and that someone who has tendered their resignation is not going to be that future, I've also noted cases of dancers not being cast in their existing roles, or being cast lower in the pecking order than their previous performances merited, sometimes to the detriment of the company's performances, or the dancers who replaced them.

I too appreciated the company's production of Bayadère a lot more than their Swan Lake. I've tried in the past to get to see it, but they performed it so rarely in the UK, and either the timing or the venue or both never worked for me. After seeing her Odette/Odile, I wasn't sure that Kolesnikova would be suited to Nikiya, but actually thought she was very good for the first two acts, although I found her perhaps a bit ... steely? ... in the Shades scene. Not that I can remember. I suppose it makes sense: her shade reminds him of his broken vow, he's overcome with remorse and, seeing the basket with the snake, decides on death by snakebite, like his beloved. Unfortunately, I think that on the first night the bag containing the snake was cleared off the stage by accident, and had to be pushed back on, which probably robbed the moment of some of its power. I wouldn't say the audience on the first night was sparse: the stalls were full, the Dress Circle pretty full, and I'd guess the Upper Circle about the same. It was only the Balcony which hadn't sold well, and I'd guess that would have been because it was put on sale so late. Agree about the slowness of the first act - well, certainly the first scene - and Denis Rodkin. I'd already seen him in Bolshoi broadcasts, but will be looking forward to seeing more of him: great jumps, elevation and presence, to name just a few things. (And yes, why is it that costumes for Solor are rarely got right? Everyone else gets bright colours, and in this production he gets pale lilac. Solor is a demanding role, and yet he always seems to be put in costumes which, colour-wise and material-wise, aren't suited to the demands of the role. I've lost count of the number of performances I've seen where e.g. his turquoise costume is discoloured in large patches due to the amount of sweat produced. This one suffered less than most in that respect) The corps in the Shades scene, albeit a little wobbly in places, looked very unified - even down to the angle of tilt of the tutu skirts - I guess they are indeed getting most of their dancers from the same school, still. It's just a shame that some subtler lighting effects couldn't have been used to give some more mystery - the light was rather cold and harsh. I was particularly pleased to note the lack of anyone blacking - or even browning - up in this production: even the fakirs were in some sort of mesh all-in-ones with "paint marks" applied on top. What did surprise me somewhat was the length: despite not having a final act, the production still managed to come in at perhaps only 10 minutes short of the Royal Ballet's version - and this without the insertion of the duet for Nikiya and the slave in Act I Scene II, or Manu in Act II, among others.

I suspect that was planned: it was what we got with Kolesnikova, too. Not only that, but apart from Odette's they were totally devoid of any "swan" features. They could have been taken from a production of "Suite en Blanc" for aught that I could tell. And the Coliseum are very good with the disabled, in my experience: when I turned up at something on crutches many moons ago they happily upgraded me to a convenient place in the stalls. Totally agree. I was really regretting that it wasn't ENB's - or even the Royal's - production. I'm not sure I'd seen her prior to this: given the company's tendency to perform out of London when they were touring regularly in the UK, I tended always to get the "second strings". I mean, I think I had to put up with Elena Glurdjidze's Giselle at a matinee in Woking once - although I didn't recognise her back then How terrible, eh?

Yes, but I didn't expect to see it being used for a late addition to a programme at the Coliseum.

A belated welcome to the forum from me too, caseybeatrice. And good luck with Japan - I hear ballet tickets are very expensive over there! I think you and Quintus are both right: the information is all over the internet once you decide to look for it, but it's a question of getting as far as *wanting* to look at it. I mean, the ROH website is a good resource now, although I'm still amazed at just how long it seems to have been for companies to really use the power of the internet to get information out there: I think it was when I was recovering from a knee op in 1998 that I was drawing up plans for how you could use websites to draw people in by linking to video and audio clips and the like. Oh my goodness: so we have to find someone who *admires* us? Gulp ... Such a shame. After all, there's not exactly any prancing about in tights in Onegin, and it's the sort of thing which can really inspire someone to get interested in ballet. Isn't it, Janet? I've found this too. It's always me having to do the donkey-work. And you have to book so far in advance at the ROH to get the cheaper seats. By the time they might think about going, I've probably already had my tix for months.

How sneaky.

I guess ENB's loss is the Joffrey's gain. Quite a culture change, I should imagine, though.

Ridiculous. It's really time this stopped. But I noticed at the end of one of the intervals in Swan Lake on Thursday that people were still queuing up to buy champagne from the "champagne bar", so guess they were allowed to take it in with them. (Call me a snob, but the thought of sipping champagne from a plastic "glass" doesn't really do it for me )

Three? That's a lot, given how demanding the role is.

Ah, that must be what it was. Thanks, Lynette.

I notice that there are tickets for both StPBT Bayadère performances available at tkts in Leicester Square - not unreasonably priced, either.

Update on the replacement casting for Rupert Pennefather: http://www.roh.org.uk/news/cast-changes-casting-announced-for-romeo-and-juliet-the-nutcracker-and-giselle

It's standard to film a previous version as backup: I can't imagine what a "different purpose" might be. And if they don't have any film of the correct partnership available they do sometimes take footage from the earlier recording to illustrate some of the pre-performance items.

Don't know why, but I was under the impression McRae wasn't available at the beginning of the season ... That still leaves some speculation as to R&J casting unanswered, then ...