Paul Arrowsmith

Actually managed to get a Clore ticket for Playground! In and out in under five minutes. Amazing!!!

And for those of you with access to the Arte TV  iplayer a recording from 2017 (with Haydee as the nurse and Madesn as the friar) is currently avialable.

1 hour ago, RuthE said:

 

From the Kenneth MacMillan website: Laiderette, 1954. "Laiderette (from the French ‘laideronette’, “little ugly one”) like Somnambulism was a workshop production for the Sadler’s Wells Choreographic Group. Its motifs of rejection and exclusion would be recurrent themes in MacMillan’s later work. Maryon Lane danced the lead role..."

And acquired by Marie Rambert for her company when de Valois did not want it for Sadler's Wells.

Circles?

You just have to look at Ashton's choreography - Sleeping Beauty waltz, Cinderella, Daphnis among more - to appreciate how magical circles can be.

A big question - and probably it has already been answered by a doctoral thesis.

But initial response would be to say that - good - design tells the viewer where to look but more fundamentally is a visual embodiment of the ballet's meaning.

Stage designs are as much victim to the vagaries of fashion as any other visual art so what once may have appeared  'right' can later appear 'wrong.' By which token, it is perfectly possible to redesign ballets successfully - and discover things in/about  them that their choreographers may not have originally imagined.  That's a part of keeping ballet alive.

I imagine there was a second cast too - but I don't recall who. Think Opus 19 was in something of an unwieldy mixed bill (again, don't recall with what. La Valse?) which may have had an impact. 

3 hours ago, Bruce Wall said:

I realise that the vast majority here probably have never (understandably) seen Opus 19/The Dreamer ... so I thought I would attach this link of a full performance by the POB:

 

 

I so wish the RB could at some point take this on. 

 

It was in the rep briefly in the 1980s with a first cast of Cynthia Harvey and Jonathan Cope. I didn't see it then - but have a possibly erroneous memory that it wasn't rhat well received.

On 1/6/2018 at 15:54, CHazell2 said:

I would kill for the chance to see the 1968 Ashton production of the Sleeping Beauty. I hope that a complete copy exists somewhere.

When the BBC archive was searched for material for the 2016 documentary about Peter Wright, The Ballet Master, only the second and third acts were found. 

 I wish you knew some of John Neumeier's full-length works in Britain. Even if I don't like his steps sometimes, he is light years ahead of Scarlett when it comes to dramaturgy and telling a story.

I agree much with much of what you say Angela, particularly in relation to use of a classical language interestingly put.

I would differ only from you when say 'light years ahead.' I think just different. 

If you delve into contemporary news reports, the audience was kept waiting outside the ROH as the workers inside had not finished preparing the foyers. There will still carpenters walking around with their tools when the audience was admitted, making adjustments to the front of house decor.

And Gloriana was a live relay on the radio too.  A modicum of pressure!

As Scarpia says in the previous act, 'Tosca, finalmente mia!'

Lucky this Cavaradossi did not get knifed too for keeping his lady waiting!!

I`m sure I saw her dance in Manchester in Romeo and Juliet. Don`t think it was with the Royal though. Could I be mistaken?

It was the Royal. June 1984 at the Palace theatre.

Yes - in Zurich, nearly 20 years ago in a double-bill with Pagliacci.

No memory of the cast or conductor - just lost of wilis interrupting proceedings in an aggressively contemporary way.

It is difficult to interpret someone else's comments about the loss of something that was unique to a company.. My feeling is that at the root of Drew's comment was not  that the Royal Ballet no longer had ballets which no one else danced but that it had ceased to be a great creative company. 

 

 

This is something that David Drew used to discuss with me often. His point about having a unique repertoire was two-fold. Having genuinely resident choreographers meant they really understood their dancers' abilities which influenced the quality of their creations. The fact that Ashton and MacMillan were creative opposites only added to the creative tension.

 

Having exclusive rights to the works that resulted meant that the RB had unique calling cards when it did its, extensive, overseas tours in those days. That does not happen now with itinerant choreographers staging their same works more widely for companies around the world, the web, co-productions and cinema broadcasts.  

 

 

 

At a talk he gave to the London Ballet Circle some months ago Sir Peter Wright indicated that he was in the process of writing his memoirs. I have been told that Beryl Grey is writing hers. They should both be worth reading.If anyone obtains solid information about either book perhaps they could post the details here.

Perhaps I can comment. Peter Wright is well advanced with his memoires (I am working with him to prepare them for publication). The book is scheduled to be published in 2016 by Oberon Books to celebrate Peter's 90th birthday.

I remember when I interviewed Christopher Wheeldon for The Dancing Times in 2012 I asked him how long a shadow Ashton's version of the ballet cast. Then Wheeldon's production was yet to be seen in Amsterdam, where it replaced Ashton's.

Although Wheeldon appreciated and understood Ashton as a choreographer he told me that he did not consider Cinderella to be top drawer Ashton, so there was no particular pressure in creating a new version. He said (see Dancing Times January 2013) he was more interested in understanding how the prince and Cinderella find themselves in the situtations in which they both find themselves

The company is on magnificent form. Carmina was a big hit with Friday's audience. A tremendous roar of approval at the end. Wonderful theatre thought my guest.

William Bracewell, Joe Caley and Tyrone Singleton were an excellent trio of seminarians, neatly characterised and danced with enormous physicality. Ex Cathedra was the impressive choir. Bintley's always inventive choreography here was seen to great advantage on the wide Coliseum stage.  

Elizabeth Street in Pimlico/ Belgravia. Small but tasteful.

There is a pub at the north end of the block in which the artsdepot finds itself on the south west corner (the bus station is on the south side). On the unfancy side, didn't sample the food.

I don't recall anything else in the vicinity. The venue had lots of foyers - and some bars.

Relevant to the differing views of Manon's character, I have again just come across a comment by Kenneth MacMillan quoted in Jann Parry's biography of him.

When he offered the role to the 19-year old Alessandra Ferri she demurred claiming she did not understand Manon's character. He told her that was exactly why he had chosen her - Manon, he said, does not understand the impact she has on men.   

From what I read in one of the recent Gillian Lynne interviews, I understand that it's not a revival, more rechoreographed from scratch.  Or am I confusing it with something else?

That is what Gillian Lynne is claiming (and there certainly are some errors of fact in her claims in the FT interview last Saturday) - but her work builds on the creative archaeology that has taken place over the past four years, sifting the memories of others who danced in the original, many photographs and designs - as well as the musical prompts that the score suggests. Lynne has made conscious changes to Helpmann's original - but the spirit of his ballet is probably more in evidence than the claims being made for it.

Its subject matter sounds timeless. What will be interesting to see is how well a different generation of dancers encompass something inherently theatrical. 

On paper Isadora had everything going for it with Gillian Freeman providing the libretto,as she had

for Mayerling, and Georgiadis as designer. It had to be good. I am sure that most people who were at

the first night of Isadora went with very high hopes but as the night progressed the work fell apart.

 

I do not think that it was the cast that was the problem It was strongly cast throughout and it did notwork with either Park or Conley in the lead role. There were people who thought that it would have

worked better if the role of Isadora had been danced by Seymour rather than Park. If the ballet had

been made on Seymour it would, of course, have been a very different work.

 

I think that it was the subject matter itself which caused the problem.Mayerling works because at its

heart it is a ballet about Rudolph's relationship with a number of women which can be expressed in

balletic terms; the scenes with the Hungarian officers, the tavern scene and the hunt work less well.

In some cases this is because the scene is there merely to provide a link in the action in others

because the material is too complex to be expressed in dance A ballet about an influential dancer must have seemed a much easier proposition by comparison.

 

However Isadora's importance and interest lay in the impact that she had on the development of dance atthe beginning of the twentieth century not in her love life. The fact that it was necessary to have a

dancing Isadora and a speaking Isadora gives some indication of the difficulties that were encountered.

 

Ashton who had actually seen her dance made no attempt to revive or reconstruct her dances instead he

sought to evoke the effect that her dancing had had on her audience. MacMillan on the other hand

provided pastiche when he put Loie Fuller on stage and did little better when it came to creating

choreography for Isadora's dance performances.

 

Perhaps MacMillan saw this ballet as an opportunity to do for the female dancer what he had done in

Mayerling for the male dancer. He had already gone a long way in extending the sort of material that

could be included in a full length ballet for a female lead when he turned his one act ballet Anastasiain to a full length work by adding two more acts.If that was his intention he failed and while he

should be given credit for the attempt I sincerely hope that no one attempts a further exhumation

of it in either full length or one act form.

A small correction, the designer for Isadora was Barry Kay.

I have a memory - possibly erroneous - of Galina Samsova dancing the title role when the RB toured Isadora to Manchester.

The Alexei Ratmansky Sleeping Beauty detailed in the listing provided by Katherine here is a new co-production with American Ballet Theatre. 

Who are they replacing? Is someone injured?

Valeri Hristov is now partnering Nunez on the 28th in place of Soares.

Apparently this performance will be a cinema broadcast there.