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jim

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Everything posted by jim

  1. I'm a very amateur fan, but I really enjoyed this afternoon. Not quite as good as McRae/Obraztsova, but I thought Melissa Hamilton made a charming Juliet and Nicol Edmonds as Paris was wonderful.
  2. Thanks, Lin! Just about to go to bed but will definitely check that out when I get a chance.
  3. Just got back, and wow! I thought Steven McRae was an excellent Romeo and loved his dances with Tristan Dyer as Benvolio and Alexander Campbell as Mercutio - particularly the three of them with Kristen McNally as the Nurse, incredibly funny. Deirdre Chapman, Camille Bracher and Olivia Cowley were stunning as the three harlots - full of life and superb dancers. Swordfights were wonderful, act 2 absolutely flew by (I know it's a short act at just over half an hour, but I was so entranced I couldn't believe it when it was time for the interval!) As for Evgenia Obraztsova - words fail me. Completely exquisite, and her and Steven were brilliant together. I feel incredibly lucky to have seen her!
  4. Just a heads-up for anyone planning to see it in Sadler's Wells this week - The Rite of Spring, performed by the Rambert School, is on at 6:15 pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, free to ticket holders for that evening. Typically, Tuesday is the only night I have free!
  5. Getting back onto the topic of the thread, La Corsaire looks amazing and definitely planning on seeing it when it's on in London!
  6. I was surprised by the number of children on Wednesday - I'm in my early 30s and seemed to be one of the younger people in the 2nd circle, very different to the previous 2 ballets I'd been to at SW. What was really lovely was to hear how enthusiastic many of them were in the intervals.
  7. Saw the matinee yesterday. As mentioned last time I posted, I'm a very new ballet fan, so apologies in advance if there's any glaring errors here - especially when it comes to technical terms! This was the first full-length ballet I've seen, having previously taken in a few mixed programmes, and to be honest, for the first ten minutes or so I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it. Things picked up for me with the fairies dancing - I was thrilled to see Karla Doorbar again after loving her as the Flea on Wednesday night, and she didn't disappoint, being wonderfully expressive. (I wish her solo had been longer, though!) The other standout of the six fairies for me was Maureya Lebowitz as The Fairy of Temperament, who was brilliant, especially her pirouettes. Things really picked up, though, with the entrance of the wonderfully malevolent Marion Tait as Carabosse. The lighting was great, and Tait and her 6 attendants were superb - really projecting an aura of evil. I also enjoyed the charming garland dance in act I, and thought that Elisha Willis was a captivating Aurora, grabbing the audience's attention from her first steps. I loved her Rose Adagio, the wonderful conclusion to her first solo, and thought her final solo of the act - going from childish delight at her 'new toy' the spindle, to pricking her finger, starting to recover, and eventually collapsing - was stunning. Act II was perhaps less to my tastes - I found Jamie Bond hard to connect to at this point (although he grew on me, and I really enjoyed his grand pas de deux with Willis near the end of the ballet), but act III had some wonderful dancing. Having said that, I thought it was on the long side - but the pas de quatre was beautiful (especially as it gave me another chance to see the brilliant Karla Doorbar, while Miki Mizutani, Lachlan Monaghan and Lewis Turner were all really good in it as well), and Laura-Jane Gibson and Valentin Olovyannikov as Red Riding Hood and the Wolf were my favourite of the pas de deux. (Apart, of course, from Elisha and Jamie to close.) Overall I definitely enjoyed it and will be going to see more classical ballet in the future - Birmingham Royal Ballet are certainly a company I'd love to see again.
  8. Hi all, I'm a really new ballet fan, with little experience of watching performances - Rambert a few years ago, Cedar Lake and the Yorkshire Summer School Gala a couple of weekends back, and various bits and pieces in amateur dance shows I've seen over the years - so apologies if anything I say below is dumb. (And please, point it out!) I wasn't planning on going to see this one, but after reading Janet's review above, seeing Brandon Lawrence at the Summer School gala, and realising there was 20% off when I got tickets to this and Sleeping Beauty at the same time, I persuaded myself that it would be silly not to - and I'm really glad I did. For me, e - mc2 was the least to my tastes, although I enjoyed it more as it went on. The opening with so many pairs wonderfully in time was really enjoyable, and The Manhattan Project was very well danced by Samara Downs and stood out as something different. Celeritas2 was very good, particularly Miki Mizutani and Max Maslen as the leads. Tombeaux, with Jasper Conran's striking costume designs - I thought the blue/black tutus were gorgeous - was more to my liking overall, with the standout being Nao Sakuma's dance with Yasuo Atsuji, Brandon Lawrence, Tom Rogers and Benjamin Soerel. As for Still Life at the Penguin Cafe - wow! Easily worth the price of admission alone. I thought it started brilliantly and got better and better, at least until The Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas. (Not to say anything after that wasn't brilliant, it was just that Karla Doorbar's Flea and the five morris dancers with her were so sensational nothing else could quite match them for me!) Having said that, Mathias Dingman's flamboyant Monkey came very close. As Janet says in her first post, the final scene, with the Auk outside the auk, is really emotional. Earlier on in the ballet, I loved the wonderful Great Auks sequence, Maureya Lebowitz made a delightful Ram, and James Barton's hoedown as the Texas Kangaroo Rat was superb. I also thought the costumes for this were simply breathtaking, and the music was utterly gorgeous.
  9. I saw this the other week as well - I was in the seats which do have a restricted view of the top of the stage, and don't think I missed all that much - but it's such a good show that if I saw it again I'd probably pay the extra for the better view. In addition to the bits Alison mentions above - all of which were fab, particularly the trampolining - the skipping segment is utterly stunning. Well worth seeing if there's any tickets available for the last few nights!
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