Sophoife

Devastating for all the connections, but for the horse - well, he was doing what he clearly loved doing. He was a lovely animal, I met him both times he came down for the Cup (in Oz there's only one Cup).

Oh well. Like the name, though! If you're on the jumps, keep an eye out for Easy Game, my dad's friend Nick's horse. Dad, a lifelong follower of the Turf, on retirement started spending three months a year, with Mum, in the UK and Europe (I have a sister in Gloucestershire). My mother accepted his programme of Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown, plus Epsom and once or twice Ascot, in exchange for a month somewhere on the Continent: southwest France (several times), Italy, Greece...anyway, one year at Punchestown he fell into conversation in the bar queue and he and this fellow became friends. Fellow's name is Nick Peacock, had a decent horse by the name of Wicklow Brave, which won the Irish St Leger under Frankie Dettori in 2016, the 2015 County Hurdle and the 2017 Punchestown Champion Hurdle. Ran in the Melbourne Cup a couple of times too.

Vadream ran on Tuesday in, as @zxDaveM suggested, the King's Stand Stakes, over 5 furlongs, with the going listed as good. Finished 12th of 17, next entered to run at Newmarket in the July Cup Stakes over 6 furlongs, on 15 July. Valentino Dancer ran on Tuesday as well, at Stratford, but the race was voided as a jockey was unseated and he had to be treated. Bolshoi Ballet ran second in a late race at Ascot, also on Tuesday, over 1 mile 2 furlongs.

Not Sydney! Too expensive for me to get to! 😂 I've no idea where they'll be dancing in Melbourne, I know when they did Coppélia some years ago at the Palais, they were uncomfortable dancing on its raked stage. Also don't joke about billeting the dancers...what they often did in former times was swap with Opera Australia company members as the opera would be in Melbourne when the ballet was in Sydney. I understand that the per diem is not exactly on a par with the costs of spending up to two months at a time in Sydney, either (I don't know how unequal it is). Matthew Bradwell, one of the dancers' union reps, was very well received by the audience when he came out on Friday night to explain why the curtain was being held. Tonight was Adam Bull's final show and I'm editing the video I took of the mass appreciation at the end, I'll post it on my Instagram (same username) as a reel, I think.

Addendum re cancellation of Bodytorque piece: stage crew are indeed on 5-hour call, but orchestra call is three hours, 7-10pm. If they go over by even one minute it means they're paid for another three hours. Of course, knowing the curtain wouldn't go up until 7:45pm the orchestra call could have been changed to 7:15pm...

I'm waiting for the curtain to be held, but I've found out that the stage crews are on a flat 5 hours from 6pm and if they finish earlier they still get that pay. So using my timescale from up-thread it makes absolutely no cost difference to show the Bodytorque piece, regardless of the curtain hold - it's a punitive measure. In terms of performing regularly in cities other than Melbourne and Sydney, the travel costs domestically in Australia are much higher than they would be if, for example, we had high-speed trains. The regional tour which is The Dancers Company aka the level 8 (plus occasionally a couple of level 7s) ABS students plus a couple of up and comers from the main company, is back on this year. From past experience the marketing is appalling and the houses are rarely full. I know in Albury the upstairs is not even opened. It runs at a loss, especially when they go outside regional Victoria and New South Wales.

@Emeralds I don't think that would work. A couple of galas this year and next wouldn't raise sufficient money - it wouldn't be a charity gala, where very often goodwill on the part of venue, musicians, dancers, and the essential backstage/lighting/stage management staff mean the costs of staging the gala are minimal. Added to which the State Theatre in Melbourne will be closed to the company for approximately two years starting in 2024, so venue hire is certainly an issue. The dancers are trying to keep a provision (increases in line with CPI) that was inserted into their contracts some time ago, and they want it to remain in future contracts. So the funding needs to not rely on one-off galas. Today's dancers, like those of 42 years ago, are fighting on both their own behalf and that of future company members. Just today, the Victorian state government announced a public transport fare increase from 1 July of 8.6%, nearly 2% higher than the CPI increase in the last 12 months. Public transport fares are normally "adjusted" in January but this year the Vic govt says it delayed the increase to help ease pressure on Victorians. Today the company has 77 dancers. After Saturday night it will have 75 (bye bye Adam Bull and Chris Rodgers-Wilson). In 1980 there were 56 (counts from programmes). Slightly incoherent but hopefully comprehensible.

It's only, as you say @Ian Macmillan, the first public word a couple of weeks or so ago. It's been simmering away for quite some time, but I've not been at liberty to mention it until the dancers chose to go public. Depriving Serena Graham and her dancers of their mainstage Bodytorque Up Late opportunity seems to be a very petty retaliation by the company. After all, the double bill starts at 7:30pm and is scheduled to run 132 minutes including interval, so 9:42pm, add on 10-15 minutes (from previous Bodytorque Up Late experience), it's an 8-minute piece, so would finish between 10pm and 10:05pm. Would adding a 15-minute curtain hold, pushing that out to 10:15-10:20pm, really make that much difference to the company costs, or the backstage/lighting/music people? I'll try and find out.

Both Signes and L'Histoire de Manon off tonight, 22 June. https://twitter.com/BalletOParis/status/1671826833816297472

Australian Ballet dancers will hold the curtain for 15 minutes tomorrow night. I shall report, as I will be there. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jun/22/australian-ballet-dancers-strike-first-industrial-action-42-years?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Roxane Stojanov (cast as Lescaut's Mistress) has posted on Instagram that she is looking forward to being on stage tonight, 21 June.

Socials is where I found the info @ctas and @SheilaC. Twitter (company) and Instagram (Hugo Marchand) to be specific. For tonight, 21 June, no official announcement has been made, nor have any of the dancers scheduled to perform posted anything public. It's nearly 12:30pm now and yesterday's announcement was made before noon.

No news from my contacts about AusBallet @Emeralds but I'm going down for a couple of shows this weekend so I'll see what I can discover. @capybara, notice at noon of a strike for that night is, if like me one is travelling, bloody annoying not to mention expensive, but from experience I can say it beats being already seated in the theatre waiting for the curtain to go up (40-odd years ago, AusBallet, and I never did see that production).

Paris Opéra Ballet has announced the cancellation of tonight's première of what they call L'histoire de Manon due to a strike by artists of the ballet. It is apparently due to salary issues and the performances of 21 and 22 June are also threatened.

It has been announced that Li Cunxin, "Mao's Last Dancer", is to step down as Artistic Director of Queensland Ballet. His wife Mary (McKendry) will also retire from her roles as ballet mistress and principal répétiteur. He has a heart condition and has recently experienced complications, and she is being treated for cancer. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jun/20/li-cunxin-maos-last-dander-retires-queensland-ballet-health-concerns https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102499144

Erk. I meant Cinderella recently, not Aurora. Got mixed up with my two brief London visits!

Thank you all and @Emeralds I'll take five of those Bravas! So happy to have seen Miss Morera as Titania back in 2017, and on my recent trip as Aurora. Also in Brisbane as Paulina. Can only wish I'd seen her as Natalia Petrovna, or Tatiana, or Giselle, or... Am I correct in thinking that she and Bennet Gartside graduated RBS in the same year? How very fitting, then, that they shared her last performance as a company principal on the Covent Garden stage (please note I'm leaving it open for her to perform there again!).

There is a YouTube video of Glenda Jackson as Cleopatra with Morecambe and Wise. Absolutely brilliant from all concerned. https://youtu.be/AtHNrRk3lQM I watched Mary Queen of Scots in parts yesterday, and today I'm able to spend a couple of hours on Elizabeth R. I can live without Women in Love, I find DH Lawrence turgid to the point of [my] immobility.

We can only dream, eh @Dawnstar? £2 or less per show... It's like when I started smoking 40 years ago, we all said we'd give up when the price of a packet of 20 passed $2. Um yes well today they're $45.

Anyone who is at Laura Morera's final show, please throw in a Brava! for me! I often struggle with McGregor's choices of music, so found @candle's post really interesting and thought-provoking. I hadn't liked anything of his until I saw Mara Galeazzi, in a tent on the side of a mountain (Howman's Gap, on the road to Falls Creek), dance a solo set to Bach. Wonderful. [slightly off-topic] No news from me re AusBallet possible dancer industrial action at this time, btw.

I see it as a transliteration of Lise. Given such examples as Ruka Akri, Ferdinand Errol, and Lukas B Brentzrod, it seems logical to me.

Ruka Akri is half-Japanese so is probably used to being called that 😂 but I had a good laugh at Rural Event. I must say, it's highly intriguing that back in November Alex Campbell was down to dance Romeo, then he was replaced by Cesar Corrales, now due to Corrales' ongoing injury issues Alex is back!

I really hope, @Emeralds and @Dawnstar, that they don't feel they have to go on strike. I remember the one in the 80s - I was in the theatre that night, on Special Cultural Leave from boarding school (they hated it, but the headmistress agreed with my mother), and I've still never seen that production of Hunchback! #firstworldproblems One of the issues with going on strike is that more than 60% of the company's revenue (as quoted in the article) comes from bums on seats. Government funding (made up of federal, Victorian state, NSW state, and some from SA and Queensland state governments) totals about 22.6% of revenue in a normal year. They've lost subscribers, too, as a result of Covid - people lack confidence that a season will go ahead (the company's communication with its subscriber base was not exactly either timely or 100% honest in 2020 and 2021). I had already, as usual, booked and paid for a hotel for all my subscription nights in 2020, for example, and the company didn't want to admit the performances wouldn't go ahead (which Blind Freddy would have known given the government-imposed restrictions at the time), so every damn time it was about a week before a season was supposed to start before they cancelled it. I mean, if the government says theatres are closed until further notice, which they did, just cancel the damn seasons! They wanted me to donate all my ticket costs to the company, which at the time I could not afford to do. I was super lucky as the hotel refunded me the whole year's worth immediately, without me even having to ask (imagine my surprise the day my bank account was about $1,500 better off than I had thought 😂) but kept my bookings in the system just in case the situation changed.

It is an absolute disgrace what is happening. The dancers' pay agreement includes a clause that guarantees pay will keep pace with inflation, a guarantee that has been in place for more than 20 years, to recognise dancers’ comparatively short career span. Management is now refusing to include this clause in future agreements. The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised the cash rate 12 times in almost as many months, taking it to 4.1% on Tuesday, adversely affecting mortgages and other financial products. When Covid hit in 2020, AusBallet cut the dancers’ wages by 20% and then briefly by 50% to reflect the reduced workload. The company drew on the federal government’s JobKeeper scheme to pay workers. In 2021 the dancers returned to full pay, but agreed to a pay freeze for one year. In February this year the dancers received a 4.3% “catch-up” pay rise to meet the obligations of the CPI clause, after receiving just 2.5% in 2022 when inflation peaked at over 7%. They have been offered a pay rise of 1% this year. This is clearly not within the terms of the agreement. Private health insurance in Australia is individual and not contributed to by an employer. More than 60% of the company has cancelled private health insurance, as it is too expensive. Not every health issue a dancer has is strictly work-related. Annual premiums to "cover" hospital and extras run to about $3,200, it doesn't cover visits to a GP, specialist bills may be only partly covered whether in-rooms or inpatient... They typically work six days a week and spend about five months of the year touring. AusBallet is also not a company that typically retains dancers much past the age of 35. Those who do stay, such as Adam Bull, are rare. Unlike the Royal Ballet, they have no Character Artists, and God knows they need some!

I'm so pleased for Laura Morera, Marcelino Sambé, and all the other winners. Mr Sambé also collected his award from 2021.