SMballet

God, HOW MUCH money did they spend on this 5 minute thing???!

UGHHHHHH WHY O WHY did I not get tickets for DQ??? I just got R&J, thinking I'd pass on this. Scrambling now to see if I ca get something. Thanks all for your lovely reviews

This discussion is fascinating. I'd love to hear more from people who themselves participated in Chance to Dance. (Or, as some of you seem to be parents, who have children who did).

I'm chiming in to agree with those of you lamenting the bringing in of "guest stars". I am an unabashed fan of the RB company, and feel certain that they could have picked a Kitri and Juliet from within their ranks and I would happily have gone to see the performances, even with "unknowns". Of course I would gladly go just to see Steven McRae, who is such a fantastic dancer, with an energy which is so particular to him, and I think his dancing is just....swoooooooooooooon...perfection. Why don't RB management have confidence in their own rank and file?I know losing Alina so suddenly must have hurt, but surely it was a wonderful opportunity, just like the one which brought young Alina to the fore so many years ago, for someone else, young, talented, and just waiting in the wings to be discovered? Ugh. I dont think I'll ever understand the murky world of ballet casting.

I've another gossipy question, somewhat on the subject of "stars" v principals, arising from a throwaway line from the same article: is that true, that Zakharova was supposed to have danced Diamonds but pulled out at the last minute because of Volchkov's injury, thus leaving the role to Smirnova? What? How? She just took off back to Moscow because Volchkov was injured?? That makes no sense to me. Is it true, or are there "wheels behind wheels" ? How can that be allowed? And anyway wasn't Smirnova groomed by Filin et al for her star-making turn in Diamonds?

It's a lovely impressionistic video. But, sigh, he seems so vulnerable and lost. He says he is better now, under Zelensky's guidance, but I'm afraid the video, at least, doesn't convince me of that fact. He seems to have had such a lonely, miserable childhood. It breaks my heart, anew, what so many of these dancers have to give up, from the age of 4 - four!!!- for their art. It doesn't seem right. He's such a lovely dancer - I saw him in Coppelia and was prepared to feel disappointed but wasn't, at all - I found that I couldn't take my eyes off him when he was on stage. I hope he finds some path to peace and health and dances for many years to come. Sometimes I feel this is too cruel an art for me to enjoy, with the popcorn, as it were. I think opera, which was my first love, demands less of its performers, and at much older ages. I think the whole problem is that ballet is a young person's game, and the very young are always going to be so vulnerable. I can't quite express what I feel, but watching this video overwhelms me with feelings of sadness and loss on behalf of a skinny lonely four year old boy whom I don't even know. Thank you for posting it, Toursenlair.

Thank you! This is so useful.

Ah, yes, I guess the same day sales are only for those who are in London, and can show up at 10am at Box Office. True enough. So then I can see why this would be disheartening.

You can also clear your cache after you've read the 8 free articles/month, and will usually be able to read again. Or register under different user names and emails if you have access to that. Re:CC, I'm afraid I think he's a bit too much in love with his own use of language, and I think he's a blowhard but, yes, certainly he has a stylised and distinct writing style. Just not really what one looks for in a critic. One can tell so little about any performance from what he writes; all one can tell is what HE thought. Which is why I'm so grateful to all of you for your wonderful, detailed, and thoughtful reviews on this blog (and why i came to this blog in the first place). And CC seems SO mean and condescending in this particular review, gosh, imagine being the poor Shanghai Ballet dancers.

But I don't think that offering 20 seats only as a priority, in standing stalls and slips to students is really penalising ordinary people (who, of course, can be very poor, perhaps in some cases even poorer than students). I'd also assumed that there are special deals for pensioners. So, yes, the people in the middle get left out, but there often are very cheap tickets, and day-of show tickets, that are great deals available to everyone. I've watched performances at both Col and ROH via same-day sales, and not flourishing student card at all. So there are cheaper options for the general public too, it is just that it seems that people here were attacking a scheme to help students access cheap seats first. Which, to me, seems sad.

Thank you again Meunier for this wonderful colourful review. What a contrast to Clement Crisp's review, which was so mean and small minded. Am I the only one who finds that pompous Ancient insufferable?

Why are you older people against poor, young students getting access to cheap seats? It is only 20 seats, for god's sakes! Read the announcement, it is only 10 standing and 10 in the slips (and maybe some elsewhere). And if students don't take them then they will be left open for general public booking. I'd be very happy, once I start earning a salary, to buy better seats, and leave the cheapest of cheap for those students under 25 who love ballet and couldn't possibly afford to come otherwise. For those of you who are older: weren't you students once?

Fantastic. Thank you.

Meunier after reading your fantastic reviews I feel I'll never be able to read the antiseptic and superior-than-thou "proper critics" again. Thank you so much. I sadly couldn't be there yesterday but I feel I was, thanks to you.

I'm a student, so I'm thrilled by this! But I'm not sure how this is different from the previous students' tickets which were priced the same. Either way, yay for us!!

As I began my initial post by ruminating on the sense of joy and fun I get from watching the delightful Royal Ballet behind-the-scenes videos, and contrasting that to the rather overly-serious and joyless, straining-for-perfection quality of the Smirnova video that began this thread, I'd like to post this wonderful video (I hope I'm allowed to do so). If it doesn;t work, search for "Johan Kobborg grand jete Royal Ballet" in You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DchrOpCHWw I don't think I could make my point in any better way than suggesting you all watch this, and then the Smirnova video, for a fun compare-and-contrast in styles. And I dare anyone to suggest that Kobborg is not a fantastic, enthralling dancer who must take his art very seriously indeed. (Oh, and, my apology for generalising notwithstanding, I do think that acid attacks on Artistic Directors and other ludicrous goings-on at the Bolshoi rather prove my point, that ballet is somehow a life-and-death matter out there, and that seems wrong to me, for it is an art, and NOT life and death).

Oh no, I feel a bit responsible and ashamed for bringing this up. Though I am very grateful for Terpischore's interventions, which are far more intelligent than mine, and say exactly what I really have been thinking and not being able to articulate. The Smirnova video bothered me, for the reasons I mentioned above, but I didn't mean to detract at all from Smirnova's capabilities as a ballerina. It is more an ongoing problem I have with how young ballerinas in the Bolshoi and Mariinsky seem to treat their art, and, I think, an ongoing problem I have with how that art itself is treated by spectatators in London (as opposed to my part of the world, and Cuba, and Latin America more generally). It is my problem, I shouldn't have brought it up in this forum where I am a new, young (under 25) and inexperienced reader. Don't want to detract from the amazingly informed, and informative, discussions you all have. Oh, and I'd also like to apologise for anything I might have implied about Smirnova's character; it is just how she, and many other, Russian ballet stars seem to come across in interviews and documentaries, as really suffering for their art, torturing themselves and their bodies to strive toward perfection, and having no life outside ballet, the studio, and the stage. But there is SO much more to life than one's art, and, in fact, as has been said above, how can one understand art without first having sampled some of the delights and sufferings of real life? How, oh how, CAN anyone understand Giselle going mad, without having fallen in love and finding out that the person one loves is not true? How can one dance Swan Lake without ever having been heart broken? How can you have your heart broken when all you do is work all day? But I realise, even as I write this, that I know nothing at all about the personal lives of any of these wonderful ballerinas, and maybe, while I'm pointificating away, the lovely Olga Smirnova is nursing her heartbreak and trying to forget all about that unworthy guy while she's in London being celebrated for her talent. And maybe Zakharova has lived a hundred thousand more emotions in her life off stage than I can imagine. I should not have generalised; it was wrong of me. One last thing: ENBlover I understand what you are saying but, i can't help feeling, in my heart, that this is not what ballet is about. Have you ever watched ballet anywhere outside Europe/America? It is truly a different experience in South America, South Asia, and East Asia, and I don't think it's fair to say that the audiences there love ballet any less. The love is just expressed differently and sometimes, here in London, I miss the raucuous, warm, noisy, audiences I grew up watching ballet with.

Many thanks for the welcome, Janet, though I've been reading here for a while, just never posted anything before. And Lin, I agree, Osipova does seem to be an exception. She's delightful to watch. But, the more I think about it, the more it bothers me that these lovely, talented, beautiful Russian ballerinas seem so tortured by their art and by their constant quest for "perfection". For god's sakes' they're dancers, they're not fighting to find a cure for cancer or a solution to poverty or anything like that. They dance for a living!! Shouldn't that be something to be joyful and happy about? The video of Smirnova (which began this post, and, for me, this odd train of thought), listlessly picking over her two carrots-for-lunch-and- dinner (while her own teacher wondered if she ever finds time to eat) while talking about how she's always thinking about how to perfect herself and her moves, made me feel very queasy. Zakharova always gives off the same vibe to me. Maybe it is my problem. I just can't take ballet, or any art form, that seriously. It is an exalted art, which I love, and which I feel deserves to be celebrated and enjoyed and adored, but not worshipped. This also, if I may bring up another only tangentially related point, ties into the slight discomfort I felt when reading the fascinating "audience behavior" thread: while I agree with what all of you were saying (about it being rude to talk during the entre-act - though I actually did not know myself about this; I thought it was really an intermission -- or to bring very small children to the opera), I really dislike the reverent church-like atmosphere which prevails in the upper-houses-of-entertainment in London like the ROH. I am not British (as you can tell by my awkward writing - please forgive!) and I was raised, and first saw ballet, in a third-world country where cultural norms about audience behaviour are SO different: and this brings me back to my original point, about joy in art. The audiences I grew up watching dance in -- even the "higher" dance form of ballet (my first experience of which was unforgettable: the Bolshoi visiting my poor home town!) -- seemed so much noisier, less polite, less hushed and reverent, but also so engaged and enthusiastic, clapping all the time, whooping and cheering, etc etc, than the audiences here in London. In Cuba, where I am lucky to have watched ballet as well, being in the audience is a riot. It is just a competely different experience, and, at least for me, though I realise this is so subjective, it was so much more fun than the hushed-temples-where-pins-can-drop-and-be-heard of London. It all goes back to this idea I had, while watching Smirnova's video, about the lack of joy and celebration of life which seems to me, perhaps completely erroneously, such an important facet of dance. Sorry for having gone on for so long, and so disjointedly.

It's a beautiful film, and thank you so much for posting the link. While it doesn't show much of Olga's dancing, I'm sure she's a lovely dancer. But it really bothers me that these Russian Bolshoi/Mariinsky ballerinas seem to be so joyless, and always seem to talk about their art like it is some form of torture that they have to master. Maybe not all of them are like that, but whenever I've watched documentaries of, for example, La Zakharova, it's all about "working constantly" "never eating or sleeping" "striving for perfection" blah blah blah. You can see the tension in their necks and strained (but beautiful) faces. Perhaps I am prejudiced, or only seeing what I want to see, but when I watch the delightful Royal Ballet you tube videos (too few of them this year) it seems like the dancers there approach their art with so much more joy, and they seem to have fun while also working really hard. I especially loved watching the Behind The Scenes live streaming from the Royal Ballet last year, where you could see the dancers joking around and laughing and teasing each other. Maybe it happens the same way at the Bolshoi or Mariinsky too, I just never get a sense of that. And it seems to me to be reflected in the dancing. When watching Marienela, Carlos, Steven McRae, Ed Watson, Sergei Polunin (while he was there) etc, I don't feel I am only seeing perfect beautiful super human dancers, but that I'm really seeing dancers, who bring joy and life to their art. I'm sorry for going on for so long; I read here often but never post because I feel I know so little compared to all you regular, wiser posters. But today I feel really quite fed up with this approach to dance (and that horrible lurid film, Black Swan, really perpetuated this myth) as if it is something the ballerina has to almost torture herself and die for. It is dance. Dance is about joy and emotion. .OF COURSE ballet dancers work hard, and ballet is a really punishing and difficult art form; I get that; but I don't see why the Russian ladies have to be so martyred to their quest for perfection..