alison

It was glorious last night, marvellous visibility, although I couldn't work out where Orion had disappeared off to. The Big Dipper was very noticeable. Venus and Jupiter seem to be moving apart pretty quickly now, though.

I'm afraid so, but Mendizabal was very good last night. There are a *lot* of cast changes since last year.

Woking's the nicer theatre, IMO: MK is either a smaller version of it, or of Wycombe Swan, I can't remember which. Probably the Swan, I think. OTOH, MK has a much better shopping centre ... On the third hand, if you're driving MK is a bit of a nightmare, and if you're going by train it's a long way from the station, whereas Woking is a 5-minute walk.

And look what I've just found: http://www.artsdepot.co.uk/event_details.php?sectionid=visual%20arts&eventid=1620&searchid=current Afraid it's only on for another couple of days, though.

Some very interesting things in that Kevin McKenzie interview! Thanks to John and Ian for their sterling work in finding such things out.

Thanks, Bluebird. Good to know.

Thank you, Irmgard, and welcome to another newbie! I'm hoping to get to see this bill sometime, although fitting it into the schedule is difficult.

Anyone like to make an estimate as to how much bandwidth it's going to take to watch the whole thing? Think I may need to make a visit to the library.

I keep looking at them and being reminded of the Flanders and Swann song "My Horoscope" : "Jupiter's gone into Orion, and come into conjunction with Mars Saturn is wheeling across infinite space to its pre-ordained place in the stars And I gaze at the planets in wonder At the trouble and time they spend All to warn me to be careful In dealings involving a friend." Flanders and Swann, At the Drop of Another Hat (I think)

Thanks for pointing that out, Paul. And my apologies to Janet - had I been a little more alert to BRB's schedule, I'd have known that there was no way we didn't already have a thread for the subject

Birmingham Royal Ballet brought their production - by Sir Peter Wright - of Coppelia to the London Coliseum this week. It's very handsome-looking, even if its designs do bring to mind more Giselle than the usually rather more brightly-coloured Coppelia. I'd seen it back in its inaugural year at the Royal Opera House in 1995 (when I note that one of the soldiers in Act II was played by a very young Robert Parker), and hadn't taken to the production then, and this re-viewing of it a decade-and-a-half later only served to confirm my feelings. For me, at least on this showing, it seems to be rather prosaic, and lacking in any sense of magic, marvel or mystery (perhaps it had more originally, before the ending - which I didn't like - was changed) or, for that matter, any real sense of narrative development/logic compared with the other productions which I've seen. Taking just as one example the "transformation" scene in Act II: in any other production that I've seen, you can see Swanilda's brain working, as she tries to figure out what on earth Coppelius is doing - watching him even when she's pretending to be the doll, sneaking a peak at the spell book so that she knows how to react to make it look as though the spell has worked - but here it seems to be done virtually solely by telepathy, which must be confusing to someone who isn't particularly familiar with the ballet (and it's not performed much these days, it has to be said). In most productions I've been aware of a "coming-of-age" character arc for Franz: starting as a flirtatious young man, not ready to be tied down, he undergoes a rather unpleasant experience which makes him mature, and ready to make a real commitment to his fiancee - not unlike in The Two Pigeons, shown a few days previously (which in turn is not dissimilar to Daphnis and Chloe, but that's another matter) - but here I didn't get any feeling that there had been any real change in his behaviour between the first and last acts (because the experience wasn't actually particularly bad, or there was no real threat to him?), and I thought the ballet was diminished as a result. Anyway, hopefully other people will have appreciated the production more than I did. What did you think?

No, it never sold well on tour, I gather - just like Manon when they did it recently. I'm not entirely sure what happened about it: they were down to dance it (Onegin, I mean) in about 2000, then it got replaced with Coppelia, and that was the end of that. And then Ross Stretton got it for the RB, so there was at least one thing I approved of during his directorship. I'm not entirely sure I could see the current ENB doing it now. anyway.

Well, we don't know how big a role it will be. It clearly sounds very different from the traditional version. There effectively seem to be 2 casts of most things. I'm disappointed that Berlanga appears to be injured again: I'd been hoping to see him in Faun(e). Just a reminder, casting is at http://www.ballet.org.uk/details.php?id=11, listed under the photos.

But what they actually dance is TPC No. 2, I think? Certainly, it's the costumes for it.

The latter is also on at Sadler's Wells, isn't it? For me, loads of Filles - well, most of the rest of the RB season, I'd imagine, assuming I can get tickets for it. ENB's Swan Lake if they announce the casting while there are still affordable tickets left. Am thinking I'll save my money on the Eifman ballets. Would be interested to see Artifact. Probably both ENB Coliseum bills, although the dates for the first one are a real pain. I'm rather bad at actually keeping up with what's on at the moment, so would need the Sadler's Wells programme for the rest.

And I trust we'll be keeping the rule against using the relative anonymity of a username to make highly critical postings.

I'd been wondering what those very noticeable "stars" in the night sky for the last few weeks had been - at one stage, they were sitting in a very nice alignment with the "toe" of the new moon. Now I know.

I expect the Royal Ballet would probably prefer to announce casting later, too: it's just that the silly system whereby you can be buying tickets 6 months ahead of a performance forces them (wherever possible) to announce it really early. They would have had far fewer problems trying to recast Polunin's performances if it hadn't been so, and on the rare occasion that someone is promoted to principal relatively unexpectedly this can leave them with virtually no shows for months until/unless casting can be changed.

Drat: and I'd booked for the casts I hadn't seen, so hadn't booked Marianela's performances. Too late now, I suspect.

That sounds pretty sensible. I know I only stick my head in once in a while, but on the old forum I remember I posted the odd thread and it quickly got swamped under numerous others. Edit: And I too can't understand the mentality of not exposing students to dance in some form, either - even if it's the dreaded YouTube. I remember a number of professional dancers who've said something along the lines of they only really started wanting to do ballet properly after they'd seen it in performance.

Well, Ismene Brown on today's Arts Desk says: "There have been rumours that the problem child would be back at the Royal Ballet this summer to do his La Sylphide performances - yesterday I had it confirmed from the incoming director, Kevin O’Hare, that this isn’t so." (http://www.theartsdesk.com/dance/men-motion-ii-sadlers-wells-theatre?page=0,1) Your guess is as good as mine.

And Ismene Brown has more details over at the Arts Desk: http://www.theartsdesk.com/dance/royal-ballet-2012-13-season

There was one other thing that struck me: whether it would be a good idea to encourage ticket offers to be posted in the tickets forum, and if so, whether the wording of that should be changed accordingly.

Here's the dance PDF thus far: http://www.roh.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Press_and_Media/Press_Releases/Ballet%20and%20Dance%202012%202013.pdf

Interestingly, I see that the Royal Opera is doing Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable - that's the one with the ballet of the (very naughty) nuns in it, isn't it? Shall be intrigued to see how that goes ...