alison

Hello, Margaret. We no longer appear to have any email setting as such on this forum: what happens is that if someone sends you a PM you should get a copy of that to your inbox as well (not sure whether that's an automatic setting, or something you have to set up), although you won't be able to reply to it from there, but only from the forum. I think this way is less complicated: with the old system, some people might respond by email and others by PM, and this way you can at least be certain who replied first. I suppose if email communication is easier then you will need to exchange email addresses in the PMs.

I'll send you a test PM and you can see what happens.

With regard to your current email address, I don't think it would have been possible to sign up to the forum without one, so unless you've changed it in the last few weeks you should be fine.

Interesting you should mention that. I was reading a *very* back issue of Dancing Times the other day, where the esteemed Maria Fay was asked for a second opinion on what appeared to be a dancer with marvellous potential, who had been turned down for a prestigious ballet school, I think it was. In a nutshell, her response was that the dancer was indeed physically ideal, but was severely let down by her response to music, or lack of it, and possibly other artistic considerations. So you do need to be prepared to hear things you might not want to ...

For information, the Acceptable Use Policy is at http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/417-the-balletcoforum-acceptable-use-policy/ . Section 3 is particularly relevant. Perhaps to make it crystal clear we should have "full name"

Edit: it has been brought to my attention that the original link appeared to lead to a page which wasn't visible to the general public. I hope I have corrected this, but if it is still not visible, please let us know.

They did have a perfectly good "alternative alternative" version, though, John

To me, Brits in general are not comfortable with the idea of working/training abroad and one of the reasons is language. We see London and other cities full of foreign students doing all sorts of jobs during the summer holidays just to brush up their language skills but this is not the case on the continent with British students.

Just caught up with this thread. You're probably quite right about the language issue (actually, I think even I would balk at having to move to Russia and get to grips with the Cyrillic alphabet for dance training - were I young and good enough!), but if you turn that round another way, English having become the lingua franca internationally, I imagine a lot of dancers from other countries *are* moving in the opposite direction and coming to the UK, either because they are native speakers and so there's no language barrier, or because it's the foreign language they've learned at school and they're comfortable in it, and don't need to start learning another one. That's not always the case, of course, and we hear of numerous dancers of the "couldn't speak a word of English when I arrived in the UK" type, but I imagine it must be a fairly important factor in where to study.

Thanks, Beryl.

John, you are one of the few people on the site that actually uses his real name. There is a lot of very critical comment on this forum and yet I have never seen anyone asked to give his/her real name. Do you ask members who have a close personal connection with schools and companies to declare it?

Aileen, I don't actually remember you being on the old Ballet.co site (or perhaps you are one of the posters who've taken the opportunity of the new forum to change their name?), but if you'd looked in the "About Us" section you'd have seen, pinned to the top of the forum, details of the old Highly Critical Postings policy, or whatever it was called, dated, I'd guess, from early this century. The rule was that if you were making a highly critical posting/allegation etc. you sign it with your full name, rather than use an anonymous username. I think the people who supplied "proper" reviews tended to do the same. I can't remember the event that caused this policy to be adopted, but it was certainly uncomfortable enough to make changes necessary.

As for ENB comments, or lack of them, we can't *make* people post . I haven't seen the programme myself, so can't comment.

^{I've clicked the little arrow and up comes a box saying "What's on your mind?" with another box undeneath it saying "Update". I'm clearly doing something wrong!}

Oops, looks as though you've also accidentally hovered over the "subscript" or "superscript" button and turned it on, too . I've done it several times myself.

This sounds fascinating, Irmgard. If you have any reminiscences you feel able to share (perhaps in another thread), I'm sure there are people here who'd be interested.

Surely someone else has seen this by now? What did you think?

Ah. I haven't tried that. I've closed down the browser and relaunched and that didn't make any difference. Your post is showing here as 10.49 pm.

Edit: Ah. There's a little thing known as a Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. :blush:

(That's in the top right-hand corner, the drop-down menu next to your username). I've now set my settings to detect the change automatically, so we'll see what timestamp this post has. Nope. Didn't work. John, what have you got yours set to? I've tried GMT + automatically detect DST, and GMT and I'm in DST. Neither seem to be working.

Lauren's rapid rise, if my memory serves me right, was rather pure "luck" in the sense that several other dancers who were down to dance that role were injured. Sure, she got the opportunity and grab it but if that hadn't happened I wonder how long it would have taken Lauren to get out. We can only guess.

You must be thinking of someone else, assuming you're talking about her Juliet. We'd heard that it was happening I'd guess the best part of 6 months ahead of the scheduled performances, and indeed Monica Mason gave both Lauren and Ed a "try-out" in the roles during an insight day in the Linbury sometime before that, so the announcement wasn't unexpected.

Yee-ouch. I quite agree with Graham Watt's references on the site to the "OTT comments", and even to much of the tone in places, but think I would support the general gist. As for remaining anonymous, well, presumably Dancing Times still requires details signatories to letters before it will publish them (remember the days when it, and/or Dance and Dancers, used to print people's full addresses as well as their name?!), but I suppose it might have been impracticable to print all the names, and you can't really pick some and not others. After all, when you don't have your own publication to express your views in, the "trade press" is probably the best place to do it.

Hello, MAB: good to see another "blast from the past". Oddly enough, only a few days ago I was driving through the area where you (used to?) live, and thought "we haven't heard from MAB in ages", and now here you are.

It won't be: both the Times and Sunday Times are hidden behind a paywall, so thanks for the quote.

I can't mention any dancers except one by name as I am not familiar enough with the Company to recognise them from their baby pictures in the programme (I personally find these very irritating if you want to try and identify dancers).

Me too!

the cinema experience was complete as the cameras closed in on shot to allow us to see the real tears shed by Lauren Cutbertson as Juliet made the decision to take the potion! That I am sure would have been missed by many in the theatre.

Well, I missed it in the cinema . As for which screens the performance is on, I'd guess that may vary according to the expected numbers, and perceived popularity of the ballet: it was a larger screen than previously in both the cinemas nearest to me, but the cinemas have to commit to choosing a screen so early for advance booking that I expect they'll play it safe and go for larger screens.

Correct me if I am wrong but for the past decade or so we only have Lauren,Rupert and Ed - as former RBS (White Lodgers) trained dancers- who have made it past Soloist level. It took them ages.

And Darcey and Jonny - or did you mean ones who've passed Soloist in the last decade (in which case that would barely include Ed)? What about Helen Crawford and Bennet Gartside? I don't have their biogs to hand, but I didn't get the impression that they'd come in from elsewhere. And of course I think Ricardo Cervera and Laura Morera came right the way up through White Lodge, although technically of course they're Spanish . Lauren's rise didn't take ages: she was dancing Juliet after, what, 2 or 3 years in the company? And Rupert's was certainly delayed by injuries - he was originally scheduled to be dancing Lensky in 2001. As for dancers who joined the company in the mid to late 90s, which includes Ed, I still maintain that by and large their careers were effectively set back by a year or two due to the Company being out of the ROH and being reliant on the usual warhorses, which didn't tend to give corps dancers much opportunity for upward movement.

Well, not totally impossible , since it has already been "reconstructed" once - albeit with a lot of questions as to how much could possibly be authentic - but thanks for the clarification, Irmgard. It sounds intriguing.

Just arrived in the post this morning. And went to press last month ...

Well, every dancer I've spoken to has told me they love doing it.

I must say, (in my limited experience so far this run) they've all been dancing it as though they were having a whale of a time.

Ballo della regina / La Sylphide May 21 - Jun 15

 

Ballo della regina

Nuñez, Polunin (May 21, 24, 26; June 12)

Cuthbertson, Bonelli (May 22, 26m; June 7, 15)

 

Birthday Offering / A Month in the Country / Les Noces June 30 - July 9

 

A Month in the Country

Yanowsky, Pennefather (June 30; July 4, 7)

Cojocaru*, Polunin* (July 3, 6)

I see from the period 4 booklet that Kish replaces Polunin in Ballo, and Bonelli replaces him in Month. There's still a TBC for La Sylphide (and, as far as I know, Fille)

I'm confused: I've just looked at the casting for programme 2 on the website, only to find six dancers listed for Jeux. I thought this was billed as a reconstruction, not as a completely new work?

Talking of Tybalt, I'd meant to say that that appeared to be an extremely good catch of the sword by Bennet Gartside when Mercutio tossed it to him during Act II (especially considering some of the less than successful tosses I've seen in the run!).

I shall be really disappointed if all we get is, say, 15 minutes of an hour plus' class, and if the equivalent applies to all the other events as well.