Sophoife

Unavailable in Australia too. Isn't it lucky I bought a 12-month VPN subscription which I have just discovered allows me to watch france.tv streams! Plus they made sure the on-screen credits say "Hannah O'Neill étoile Marc Moreau étoile"...didn't they used to say "danseur/danseuse étoile"?

Hannah started ballet in Japan, but in terms of vocational training, she was "made" at Mount Eden Ballet Academy in New Zealand before three years at ABS. After seasonal or surnuméraire contracts in 2011 and 2012, she gained a permanent quadrille position in 2013. Three months later she was promoted to coryphée at the internal competition, rising to sujet in 2014 and première danseuse in 2015 - at which competition she was classified above the lovely Léonore Baulac, who was nominated étoile in December 2016. She has won Prix de Lausanne (2009), YAGP (2010), internal POB Prix du Cercle Carpeaux for the under-24s and silver medal at Varna (2014), internal POB Prix de l'AROP (2015), and the Benois de la Danse in 2016. As you so rightly point out @SheilaC roles for her dried up under the directorship of Aurélie Dupont. For example, she danced Odette-Odile in 2015 but in 2019 got the pas de trois. Back when she was at ABS she was something really special, and those of us who saw her dance then knew her dream of Paris and it's so fabulous to see her finally reach the étoile rank. Interestingly Hannah is the third current female étoile to have joined via the external competition without having trained one day in Nanterre: Ludmila Pagliero and Sae Eun Park the other two. None of the current male étoiles followed that route.

a) Don't own one b) Sure! c) Haven't got any but hey I have nieces and nephews d) Well duh. In actual fact I was just looking up prices and exchange rates for Cinderella because I'll be in England in the last week of April (squee!!!) and 😳😳😳 it's so expensive but then again it's Ashton. So I'm going to at least one performance, and here I'd like to thank everyone on this Forum and all the discussions over the years because I was able to work out where to purchase with a decent view within my budget. Laura Morera naturally, as I won't have another opportunity to see her in a lead role. Then the week after to Paris and the Béjart programme 😍 - I decided if I could go to the US I could come home via Europe instead of San Francisco. After Paris it's Italy and the Giro d'Italia opening weekend, then Zürich to see my best school friend.

PS I can highly recommend the Garnier tour to anyone. In French or English.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean that to sound how it obviously did. From my 50+ year experience with The French and Things French, I'd always take with a pinch du sel any claims of "oh but we do include the English". For example I booked a tour of the Palais Garnier. They offer them in French, with separate tours in English. I booked the French one and on the day the lady at the ticket office tried to force me to switch to the English one as "but madame this tour is for French people! They will not speak slowly for you!" 😂 Somewhere I read that one of David Hallberg's contributing factors to his unhappiness at the POB School was the language barrier, to lower which his teachers and fellow students made very little attempt.

...it's a French school. In France. I'd expect all the classes to be in French.

I see an opportunity for a revision of the Mikado's "A More Humane Mikado" or Ko-Ko's "As Some Day It May Happen" here 😂

I was wrong! I was also right! Jonathan Lo is conducting some Melbourne performances of Don Quixote (15, 17, 18 x 2). The other performances will be conducted by Charles Barker! No Laura Day as Sancho Panza.

I've just been informed that given his commitments with the Royal Ballet over the next couple of months, Jonathan Lo will be conducting zero performances of AusBallet's Don Quixote. Since Nicolette Fraillon has retired and Simon Thew is now in Houston, one wonders who will be conducting, or is there such faith in Orchestra Victoria and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra that they'll do without? 🤣 Of course it will actually be a great opportunity for conducting Fellow Joel Bass. Or, given that AusBallet still lists Fraillon's predecessor Charles Barker on its website, maybe he's coming from ABT/Pittsburgh...

They are enrolled in Madame Fidolia's Academy of Dance and Stage Training, with the aim of earning their own livings, even from the age of twelve, on the stage, as actresses, dancers, singers, or (as with Winifred) triple threats. The only one interested in becoming a dancer is the youngest. Luckily she has the talent and the single-mindedness, plus Nana to keep her properly fed and do her hand laundry. The eldest discovers she can act and looks forward to a career as an actress, preferably on the stage, but if films offer better money, so be it. She can pay for the youngest to train in Czechoslovakia. The middle one could not be less interested in any of it despite a certain restricted ability to act. Thank goodness GUM comes home and buys a house near an airfield so she can fulfil her heart's desire and learn to fly. I bet Petrova was a ferry pilot during WWII (IIRC the book was first published in 1936). I think I first read Ballet Shoes when I was about 7 or 8, and I certainly admit to having re-read it at least annually since then.

🤣🤣 Thank you!!

Oops just noticed stupid autocorrect in earlier post: the editrix of the French book on dance (highly recommended BTW) is Laura Cappelle with no H. Thank you, @oncnpand @Sebastianbut I do prefer when possible to support a local independent bookshop because if we don't they'll disappear, and as there isn't one locally I'll support the one 757km (as the crow flies) away. Realistically it's over 1,100km because, you know, roads and, well, water 🤣 PS @Sebastianyes you made it clear you were talking about the UK. I've just added a map to make it clear which bit of Australia I'm talking about 😉

Sadly, per Marina Harss directly, it is only being published in the US at this stage. I will have to do what I did for Nouvelle Histoire de la danse en Occident edited by Laura Chappelle and Jacques d'Amboise's I Was A Dancer: order the hard copy through my local independent bookshop - oh wait, there isn't one within coo-ee of where I live😡 I shall order it through my former local independent bookshop, in Hobart, and they will send it to me. Convoluted but the Right Thing To Do.

PS I think my neighbour kindly fibbed. I know I snore.

I'm the person who on no sleep flew to Melbourne to hear Stephen Kovacevich play Beethoven. Settled down after the interval for Mahler 3 and was woken by my seat neighbour who assured me I hadn't snored, just quietly closed my eyes and slid so deeply in to sleep he'd had to wake me, after the end of the symphony and after all the applause.

I saw her dance Kitri in London in 1994!

No, Mademoiselle Non did not appear.

I'm catching up on videos of this soirée exceptionnelle which is a triple bill of Song of a Wayfarer, Vaslav and Études. Preceded by a superduper grand défilé taking a leaf out of Dupond's own book. In 1990 he invited étoiles from the previous 40-odd years to participate in the season's défilé. Someone had the very bright idea of inviting former étoiles to join this défilé, homage to a one-off. The only étoiles of this century missing were Josua Hoffalt (no idea), Kader Belarbi (hem hem), Aurélie Dupont and Jérémie Bélingard (family issues according to her public Instagram), and Benjamin Pech (opening his La Bayadère in Rome). I do not normally "approve" of audience-posted videos but the wonderful Emmanuel Thibault posted a video on Instagram of the full 10+ minutes of the anciennes étoiles being introduced and taking their bows. Dominique Khalfouni must have been on stage with her two children for the first time since they were tiny tots! I hadn't realised she too was named étoile before having reached première danseuse, 28 years before her son Mathieu Ganio achieved the same distinction.

I live in Albury which is about 330km/205 miles from Melbourne, 555km/345 miles from Sydney. 3½ hour drive to Melbourne, four hours by train. 6 hours to Sydney by road, 8 by train. Or $200 each way by plane to Sydney, $220 to Melbourne. Road timings are if I drove non-stop, which is not going to happen 😉 I would not even consider a bus due to not liking to make the driver stop every time I need to express my travel sickness. I have a Melbourne subscription to AusBallet, and for 2023 booked my hotel nights the same day as my subscription. I do sometimes travel to Sydney, and will definitely go to the Sydney-only Ashton double bill in November. I cannot afford to travel to Brisbane for Queensland Ballet, much as I would like to, although I did go up in 2017 for the Royal Ballet in Winter's Tale at which I was privileged to see the two original Leontes, Ed Watson and Bennet Gartside.

Thanks @Emeralds. Obviously living in regional Australia has its drawbacks.

I apologise to those annoyed or irritated by my off-topic meanderings. [heaving it back towards the topic] Does anyone know if there was a professional recording made of this Ballet Icons Gala?

I found an interview with the actual sub-editor who wrote the headline! Inverness Caledonian Thistle defeated the mighty Celtic 3-1. Paul Hickson of the-newspaper-they-don't-buy-in-Liverpool said (about a week later) "The headline came long before the final whistle. Caley were 2-1 up. It had looked like a straightforward evening. We expected Celtic to win, but it soon became obvious something big was happening. Celtic losing to a team nobody had heard of - or could even spell - that was the story. "The Scottish sports editor, Steve Wolstonencroft, mentioned the 60s headline used when Liverpool striker Ian Callaghan scored three goals against QPR. It went some thing like: 'Super Calli Scores a Hat Trick, QPR Atrocious.' I didn't know it. I hit back with 'Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious'." Quotes taken from a Guardian interview published on 14 February 2000.

Miss Gielgud (I'd never dare call her Maina or just Gielgud 🤣) danced as a principal with London Festival Ballet from 1973 to 1976, then as a principal with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (as BRB then was) until 1978. Source: John Larkin's biography of Miss Gielgud. @Scheherezade you've remembered accurately - it was both. We audience love it when she comes to coach AusBallet because the improvement can be seen, especially in the corps work. She owns Steps, Notes and Squeaks and seems to be the one person entrusted with staging Wayfarer plus several other Béjart pieces. She staged Wayfarer for AusBallet many years ago, on David Hallberg and Joseph Gordon of NYCB in 2019, and is the Paris stager, on Hugo Marchand and Germain Louvet (dream team), and on Audric Bezard and Mathieu Ganio (a completely different, being at a much later stage in their careers, and also life partners, dream team) for the Hommage à Patrick Dupond brief season.

POB is presenting Béjart's L'Oiseau de Feu as a tribute to the recently deceased Michaël Denard, the original Firebird in this production, not for any other reason. Interestingly they've also brought out the too-rarely-seen Songs of a Wayfarer, coached of course by Maina Gielgud, who brought so much Béjart to AusBallet during her tenure as AD, which (dragging this back on topic) has not been seen here since she left in the late 1980s. Changes of AD to first Ross Stretton then David McAllister saw a shift in the company's performance repertoire, with McAllister in particular showcasing the work of Graeme Murphy, all-but unknown outside Australia unless in the context of Sydney Dance Company. In McAllister's 20-year reign we saw Robbins as one mixed bill, Ashton twice, and Murphy every year.

A truncated version of the Alliance Française French Film Festival spends a couple of days in Albury. The last time I went, someone decided that a platter of nachos (stinky, greasy, microwaved, and stinky) was an appropriate accompaniment to a film. I complained to an usher, only to be told "We sell the nachos at our snack bar so they can bring it in if they like" 😳🙄😡🤢 They still sell them, I've checked. But you're not allowed to take in your own water. Unfortunately we have only one cinema complex in our area. As they no longer show the Royal Ballet streams and I have to drive a 7-hour round trip to my nearest ones (Canberra or Melbourne) anyway, I have chosen to spend all my cinema money in places that don't sell/allow such food, making it a weekend trip with three or four films so at least worth the effort.