Sophoife

Alumnae please @Emeralds. She is after all an alumna, not an alumnus. #NitPickersNotSoAnonymous 😉

I haven't read The Sun, online or in paper form, since 1989. And I'm not from Liverpool. #JFT97 indeed.

I notice from the link @Balletdoodah posted that both Australian Ballet School and Canada's National Ballet School are looking for new artistic directors, as well as the Royal Ballet School. That's three very plum posts with the potential to affect the next 20 or 30 years of professional ballet dancers, depending on the eventual duration of tenure. Won't it be interesting to see who gets the jobs!

I've seen it on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Johan Kobborg's accounts specifically. I hope good news comes soon.

Not exactly "new" music, but I'm always surprised when the POB La Sylphide doesn't use the Løvenskiold score. I understand why, it's just odd to hear the Schneitzhöffer, as I'm used to the other.

Not to my knowledge. I was never given nor did I take anything to eat or drink in the auditorium between 1969 and 1990. Chocolates possibly: certainly a dislike for people who rustle chocolate wrappers in the theatre is mentioned in a number of books written in the 1950s and 1960s. The same books mention cups of coffee in the Crush Bar 🤭 and @DelphiumBlue will know to which books I refer 😘

Snow scene always makes me cry too. At the end of 2022 AusBallet presented a gala of various snippets, "unstaged and with no scenery". The closing piece was the Snow scene (ours has a Snow Fairy and four escorts/winds, it's the Peter Wright Birmingham production) and they pulled out all the stops with the proper backdrop and falling snow. I'd taken a friend and we clasped hands and held our breath, and at the end turned to each other, tears still shining on our faces, and said, "Merry Christmas!" 😍

So did I.

Congratulations to Giacomo Rovero! Maxim Zenin danced Siegfried as a corps de ballet member in late 2023 and has been promoted to soloist (skipping coryphée) at AusBallet. Misha Barkidjija danced the same role as a coryphée and has been promoted to soloist. Yuumi Yamada danced Odette-Odile, Titania and Kitri as a soloist and has been promoted to senior artist.

Miranda the mermaid. Mrs Banks the suffragette. That glorious husky voice.

Which one? 🤣 With 19 pages from which to choose...

The internal and external entry competitions are held at the very end of June or in early July each year. Further information will be made available closer to the time. https://www.operadeparis.fr/artistes/concours-et-auditions/ballet https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/artists/contests-and-auditions/ballet

@trog you'll have to do what I do: travel to Melbourne or to Sydney. You're in Adelaide, right? I'm in Albury where we had regional tour last year therefore won't get anything this.

Luke was a soloist with AusBallet before he left for Houston and then SFB. It's no great surprise, as he's heading for 40, it's entirely possible he was "not wanted on voyage" under a new AD (happened to at least one principal at AusBallet after the change from McAllister to Hallberg) and also Dani's job. He danced with Morphoses in 2010, at the end of which year he and Dani (then a principal) left Australia. She went to NDT, he to Houston.

That exit lift! AusBallet always used the biggest hunkiest bloke they had - before he retired (very early) it was nearly always John Paul Idaszak, who in someone's vulgar term was (comparatively, I mean he's a ballet dancer!) "built like a brick outhouse". I shall be interested next December to see if the revamps BRB has made to their Nutcracker carry over to AusBallet. Happily I've found my recording from whenever it was, with Benedicte Bemet as Clara, and it's so fun because virtually all the cadets including Clara's dancing partner are now principals, but so sad as so many of those in solo roles have retired.

Yes they will. Not yet announced but that's because negotiations are in train.

I'd really rather not, thank you. In my personal opinion: He was by far the least of the three Pucks, he is too short for Sharni Spencer with whom he is always paired, giving him so many performances is taking opportunities away from up-and-coming company dancers, and unlike David Hallberg when he was actually named guest principal he is somewhat past his best. Not to mention, @FionaM, I feel you're being somewhat pre-emptive as despite his frequent appearances with the company in the last two years, all that's ever provided on the company website casting information is an old B&W "headshot" with a Bolle-esque undressed torso, no biography or CV listed or linked. He is no longer employed at ABT or Berlin so I guess he has to do something to pay the bills but I do wish it wasn't here! I have never met the man and I understand he's quite nice, but if we can afford to pay for guest dancers there are plenty ahead of him on my personal wishlist!

@marycecilia when I publish my long-delayed report on the very short Ashton bill, I do hope your thoughts will accompany mine!

@marycecilia please chime in on any AusBallet matters - it's great to have more of us here!

Lisa Bolte, former principal at AusBallet, did the piqué manège regularly after un-retiring because something something something so she couldn't do the fouettés. I've seen her do it in both Swan Lake and Don Quixote full length, and in the Corsaire pdd in a gala. And nobody watching had a problem with it because she did it well.

It was fun, @Lizbie1! Afterwards I said, "ooh Adam nice change! Never seen the brisés live before!" To which he replied "Old knees! I asked Maina if I could do the brisés instead as I've always wanted to be Baryshnikov!" Cue laughter from all around given he's nearly a foot taller. He then said she'd been happy for him to do them and had slightly rearranged the corps of Wilis to give him enough room.

Nobody plays The Wombles here in Oz because they don't know them. At my parents' house, we always play Wombling Merry Christmas and my dad's favourite, Hall of the Mountain Womble ("Get that orchestra off my mountain!") because we know and like them, having lived in England for the first half of the 1970s.

I find your comment disappointing. The dancer concerned, a principal artist of ten years' standing, asked the person in whose production he was dancing if he could make a change to accommodate his physical abilities at the time, asked it with humour ("always wanted to be Baryshnikov"), and was granted permission. For Baryshnikov context, he is 5'6". Adam Bull is 6'4" with curly blond hair.

Uplifting ballet: Jiří Kylián's Sinfonietta which I saw in Denver this year.

Exactly. I bolded the bit most relevant to my butterfly brain btw. Giselle, AusBallet, Adam Bull as Albrecht didn't even think about entrechats, he just said to Miss Gielgud (whose production it is and who was here coaching), "My knees won't do them, I've always wanted to be Baryshnikov, can I do the brisés volés instead?" He did the brisés and it was so fun from the audience seeing a different take.