alison

I was especially looking forward to the rumoured Little Humpbacked Horse

You don't have to post a photo of yourself, of course. It could equally well be the cat or the dog, or a ballet photo, or ...

I think they just help you to narrow down searches, Ian. Plus they may give a casual viewer more idea of what a thread is about which they might otherwise pass over.

A shame, but it's nice to see the two newcomers get a second performance.

Radio 3 has a series of "Music for the Theatre" in its 2 pm afternoon slot this week. It includes today, at 2 pm, Walton's "The Wise Virgins" and tomorrow, probably some way in, Lambert's "Horoscope".

I have to say, I was very disappointed in the filming of this transmission: I know it was a first attempt, but there are plenty of ballet DVDs out there which would give a good idea of how it can be done. The cameras zoomed in so close that we suffered an awful lot of chopped off tops of heads (never mind anyone with arms above their heads), and even worse, lost a load of feet. Quite a few of the Snowflakes were visible only from the knees up (yet we had a glorious view of the set), and at one point where Drosselmeyer was doing something quite important the camera zoomed in so far on to Marie that we barely saw what it was! I must admit that I hadn't previously realised quite to what an extent the Balanchine Nutcracker was the School's end-of-year production - don't think I've ever seen so many children in a production before - but I didn't really find it any less cheesy than the film with Macaulay Culkin in it, which did surprise me. I was a bit surprised they didn't have Sara Mearns as Sugarplum - I was expecting that as she was the first-night cast - but I did very much like Ashley Bouder as Dewdrop. Disappointed that Vue, unlike Odeon and Picturehouse, couldn't stretch to a cast sheet - it would have been nice to have been able to put more names to faces I'm not very familiar with.

Glad someone bumped this - I'd forgotten about this over Christmas. I saw it at a not-so-local Odeon (my local wasn't showing it) and there was a high turnout. The production with the new costume designs looked stunning. Agree that not all of the dancing was as good as it could be, though. I still find that, even from the back of the cinema, I have difficulty taking in the whole length of a dancer's body when they're perhaps 10-15 feet high. I still enjoyed it rather more than the Bolshoi's production, though, with the possible exception of a certain American dancer.

So that's why I couldn't find anything in English on it a while back. What a shame. I thought I saw some reference the other day to Peter Schaufuss having got the Coliseum for April - but surely can't be for all of it, anyway.

I like Perpetuum Mobile very much - don't suppose there's any chance of a mixed bill making its way down south ...

Thanks, Jane. I try to avoid iPlayer where possible because I'm on limited monthly downloads, but I'll try and find another way round it. BTW, I don't know whether there's a glitch in the software, but your post count is still showing up as 1, despite the fact that you're also showing up as having posted in the "future of the site" forum as well.

Wow, a ballet overdose. Sadly, I have to be somewhere else getting rid of an as yet uncollected Christmas present on Sunday morning - does anyone happen to know when the repeats are? I've rather lost track of the Radio 4 schedules recently.

Because I wasn't sure at the time from the phrasing whether it was just Pennefather who was injured and they'd replaced the pairing for convenience as a result - Cuthbertson hadn't mentioned any injury at the time on her Twitter account (she has since). Welcome (back), Lee.

Quite a coup indeed. They seem to have been getting quite a few of those recently - at the expense of terrestrial viewers, I wonder? Certainly I've spotted some Royal Ballet recordings which haven't made it onto the BBC yet.

I've just checked the ROH website for the casting tomorrow night, and found that Lauren Cuthbertson and Rupert Pennefather (both supposedly injured on Thursday) have been replaced as Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince (or whatever he's called here) by Marianela Nunez and Nehemiah Kish in tomorrow night's early show.

Finances are obviously important, but so are contributions in other respects such as time, too, including actually posting (lurkers please take note )

I've done this totally by trial and error, as I couldn't find any relevant information in the Help files, but: When you start a topic, under the box for "Topic title" there is a "Topic tags" box. Having looked in vain for an appropriate list of tags, as I've found on the one site I've bothered with them for, I've realised that the system here seems to be that you make them up as you go along. Presumably as we get more familiar with the workings of the site, they'll start to make more sense and we'll find some way of actually selecting threads with tags that interest us, but the tags seem to be basically keywords, so you could put in things like production name, dancer name, venue, company and so on. If anyone knows more about the workings of tags than I do (hardly difficult!), perhaps you could share your knowledge with the rest of us

Well, I managed, but then my experience of R&J earlier in the year may have helped: instead of going for the central block (with the seats all in columns one immediately behind another), I went for one of the side blocks, so that at least my view should have been diagonally between people's heads. I was lucky enough to get an aisle seat, too, which would have helped, except for the fact that, it being unraked, one little girl ahead of me was unable to see and kept leaning out into the aisle, and this had knock-on effects on the people behind her. But yes, I think if you'd been too close to the front you could have had problems, certainly with the conductor, and possibly with the larger instruments, too. The lack of a rake is an obvious problem, and you can of course rectify that by sitting much further back, although the presence of the camera rostrum means that many of the stepped seats behind it had to be removed from sale. (BTW, I love your signature - I think it probably applies to me, too!)

I'm not sure: I expect you know that the ENB version is supposed to be derived from the DNB one? (OTOH, from the TV coverage last year I'd guess that he's changed a lot).

Manchester seems to have been added to the list of Odeons since I last wrote. Unfortunately, it seems to be 12.45, so I won't be able to make it.

You're right, DQF - New Year's Eve, 7 pm on BBC4.

Actually, it occurred to me last night, with all these Nutcrackers around: we know that Festival Ballet started their tradition of Nutcrackers back around 1950 (and has continued it just about every year since), but I suddenly realised I didn't know when the Royal Ballet succumbed. I don't remember hearing of any productions of theirs prior to Nureyev's, although I guess there must have been?

The Royal Ballet's performances of Sir Peter Wright's production of The Nutcracker are about to resume, so I thought I'd start a thread for discussing them. Unfortunately, we no longer appear to have a tree structure for splitting into different performances, so I guess we'll have to play it by ear and see what works best. Anyway, here's a link back to DaveM's photos taken at the dress rehearsal: http://www.ballet.co...racker_roh_1211 Unfortunately, I can't yet see how to insert one here in time-honoured fashion - I get an error message saying that I can't use that extension here, or something.

I've started a thread in What's Happening for discussion of the actual performances: http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/25-brb-nutcracker-at-the-o2/ It also occurred to me that we'd lost the link to the casting in the move, so here it is again: http://brb.org.uk/masque/index.htm?act=WhatsOn&urn=22737&tsk=fullcast We've also lost details of any ticket offers, but here's one I remember: http://www.travelzoo.com/uk/local-deals/London/Entertainment/9532

It's late, so I won't say much, but I did want to congratulate BRB's technical team on managing to transfer their production of Nutcracker to the barn O2 so well. It looked very good. I haven't seen it for over a decade, so I'll leave it to Janet and others with more recent experience to say if anything has changed. Some practicalities: with a late start and I suspect a longer interval than intended, it finished at just after 10 pm. The orchestra non-pit is in front of the stage, so nobody will be very close, and I think some people might have the harps in their line of sight quite badly.

A reminder that DNB's Nutcracker production will be showing in a few cinemas around the country on 30th December. I've only found details on the Odeon site so far, which only confirms Wimbledon and Covent Garden: http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/odeon-plus-information/m13687/Nutcracker_The_Mouse_King_Live_From_The_Dutch_National_Ballet/ No idea if anyone else is showing it.