alison

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "contemporary ballet" - some of those places suggested sound more like contemporary dance to me.  Welcome to the forum, BTW, davy jones.

My reaction on the first night was: have they replaced Vadim without announcing it? Who was second cast?!

25 minutes ago, LinMM said:

 

Talking of vertigo I just don’t know how anybody stands up in the slips area of the Amphi as you are exposed to the whole auditorium space up there 😳.
Definitely should be free to stand …or even paid danger money!! 
 

I tried it once, for Don Quixote back in the Stretton era. Never again! I had to leave after 5 to 10 minutes ☹️

52 minutes ago, Paco said:

That's the issue with today's POB productions of Nureyev ballets: During the last 15 years Bastille lights have been converted into LED (first generation of LED), providing that kind of icy feeling which has nothing to do with the original production of those ballets in the 90s (moreover it was at Garnier, not at Bastille where most of the time the sets are somehow lost in this very wide stage).

Interesting you should say that: at the Royal Opera broadcast of Madama Butterfly last month, there was a whole piece on how the stage lighting at the ROH is being changed - I can't off-hand remember whether the change to LEDs was mentioned there or elsewhere, though.  It may well be online on YouTube somewhere now, I suppose.

6 hours ago, Fonty said:

 

You can certainly say that again, @alison  I couldn't see Picturehouses mentioned at all when I did a search for London.  The only choices I got were the Curzon Mayfair on Sunday, or the Everyman Hampstead or Barnet on Monday.  Were none of the Odeon cinemas screening it at all?

Oh, they certainly were, although my local-est Odeon seems to have given up doing Encore showings.  Possibly it will deign to do one for something as popular as Swan Lake, though.

That's a point.  I have a friend who almost drools at the very mention of Petroc - perhaps I should try to persuade her to come along to these cinema relays.  Might even make a convert!

Clapham and East Dulwich Picturehouses Monday daytime, for a start ...  It's so difficult to tell from the horrible new webpage, though.

5 hours ago, Linnzi5 said:

@alison The sounds issues happened three times and were maybe 10 seconds each time? I wouldn't say they were really bad at my cinema but they certainly were a bit distracting. They were distortions and the music sounded scratchy and incomplete, which it clearly was.

Ah, in that case I think we got a rather worse version than you?  I'd say 2 x about 1 minute, or at least long enough for me to put up with it, then start considering whether I should get up and go and find someone to report it.  And then it stopped, so I didn't.

1 hour ago, Lynette H said:

Sorry to report a complete failure of the cinema relay in south London last night. They just couldn't get it to work. Many apologies from the Odeon staff and a refund processed straight away. A pity. My only chance to see Hayward missed. 

I'm really sorry to hear that, Lynette.  Can you make an Encore performance (down my way, perhaps?).  They aren't normally all on the following Sunday.

4 hours ago, Blossom said:

The loose tall seats are incredible value

Sometimes they can be: at others they most certainly aren't.  I've had some really poor experiences from them (and when I saw Swan Lake from one the other day it was rather worse than I would have expected) as well as some good ones.  It's just so hit and miss where the seats are in relation to the people in front of you.

Which version of Acosta's Don Q?  I think BRB's is generally better.  Haven't seen the Nureyev since the RB did it in 2001, so it's difficult to comment.

4 hours ago, bridiem said:

But in general, given that cinema audiences will at best have only received a cast list for the programme, I thought that there was too much in the way of admiration (even though deserved) and too little in the way of actual information. 

Yes, I arrived late, and also got back late after the first interval, so missed some of the talking, but thought some more explanation could have been given about the plot - such as it is - of Different Drummer, just to put it into context.  After all, you can't really expect your audience to have read the play - or even seen the opera - especially in this day and age.  Did I miss something?  Or does the company seem to be as reluctant to talk about it as it does in its printed programmes?

Good luck, Sophoife.  Of course, different company, different venue, different country - it might be different.

I can

There have of course been dancers guesting from other companies apart from the RB.

1 hour ago, Roberta said:

Young people in particular are bowled over by the work's conviction and dramatic power.

That's been my impression during this run, too, to judge by the vocal voices at the end of the work.

2 hours ago, theorist said:

I think Maddison Pritchard replaced Chisato Katsura in Danses Concertantes tonight.

According to the credits at the end, yes.  I was quite surprised to find that Matthew Ball was allegedly dancing in Requiem (even Darcey Bussell seemed to think so) and James Hay in Different Drummer - neither turned out to be the case. 

I thought Danses Concertantes very well filmed - just a shame about the audio in a couple of places, which I hope was merely a broadcast problem rather than a recording one (from what Petroc Trelawney said, it sounds as though it was a nationwide issue).  I'm afraid that, unlike Linnzi, it was a big deal for me: sounded like a saw being drawn across rusty wires for a couple of minutes .  I hope it was less bad in other cinemas.

Very much appreciated the opportunity to see Different Drummer at close quarters, and being able to read Sambé and Hayward rather better than from the front amphitheatre.  From there, I had also liked Ball more than Bracewell in Requiem, but again, having seen him in close-up I can see just why people were so enthusiastic about Bracewell in this - the camera seemed almost to be lingering on him, to great effect.  Gorgeous.  Experienced cinema-broadcast goers probably won't be surprised to hear that Requiem as a whole was rather more crepuscular than usual, but I didn't feel that detracted from it at all.

I can understand why the ROH decided to restrict the broadcast to UK only for this one: my cinema was noticeably the least full I've seen it for RB broadcasts for some considerable time.  I'm still wondering about the cast selection for Danses Concertantes, though: is Muntagirov absent this week, or something?  It did seem rather odd to pick the noticeably more junior case for the cinema relay.  And I missed Joseph Sissens in sludgey green: I really liked him in this.

1 hour ago, Emeralds said:

In the UK system, Royal Ballet and English National Ballet are probably equivalent size wise to the Paris Opera. In the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet, first soloists do have to dance corps de ballet roles ie being part of the ensemble of wilis (not Zulme or Moyna but the rows of wilis), the Shades going down the ramp in La Bayadere, the rows of Dryads in Don Quixote.

I can't speak for ENB, but in the case of the RB I thought it was more that First Soloists might be asked to do corps work, but it would generally only be something of a last resort, in an emergency.  I don't think you'd expect to see them doing it night after night.

Cinema cast sheet seemingly a bit of a work of fiction tonight ☹️

But why would you offer multibuy discounts if you're only bringing one production?  Most of their target audience won't be interested in going to see it more than once, I should think.

But he appears to be doing very nicely where he is, anyway

Keeping you busy today, Jan!

What a shame, although I had been expecting it.  Never mind, I'm sure Lamb will be great - and we assume there's one recording of that cast safely in the bag anyway.

Some impressive names there ...

Is this the one BRB used to do until it was replaced by the Bintley version?  I only ever saw it the once, at Sadler's Wells, way back.

I suspect that, at this stage in her career, the chances of seeing her in a lead role are very low.  Plus of course she's now on maternity "leave" anyway, so won't be dancing for some time. 

Zurich is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, so I'd think that logically German would be the language to go for, even if it's only a few words.  There's absolutely no point in trying for Swiss German, which apparently varies greatly across the country (Roger Federer's Basel dialect is pretty impenetrable).  And I gather the public perception of Swiss people being bilingual, or even trilingual, isn't very accurate - it's certainly not a given that a native German speaker will also speak good French, or vice versa.