Two Pigeons

I seem to be the first person to raise this issue but I am very disappointed by a significant change to the performances at the Birmingham Hippodrome for this year.

Pre Covid I bought 2 front stalls seats for Don Q for June last year.  When lockdown cut in refunds were offered, although I understand it was quite onerous to actually achieve this.  We were sent the usual plea to leave the money with the Hippodrome as a gesture of support until plans were clearer.

About a couple of months ago I exchanged them for 2 tickets for Nutcracker this coming November.  I wanted them for 2 family members, 1 of whom has never been to live ballet.  I did this in the belief that they would have the experience of the full, glorious, production.

Yesterday I received an e-mail saying that what us being presented this year is actually the cut down Royal Albert Hall version, complete with virtual Simon Callow.  To this extent the first 4 rows of the front stalls are being reinstated.

To this effect the only options are 1) move further forward or 2) lump it.

The sweetener is that the production is being refurbished for the 2022 season.  No indication of any refunds being available.

I very much hope my family members will enjoy what us being presented but I have to say that I feel rather cheated by it all.

I see Fiona Allen is leaving the Hippodrome for Opera Australia.   I hope this isn't due to embarrassment!

Good!  She is an excellent presenter and I really wish she did all the coverage of the Proms.  She doesn't grate.

2 hours ago, Pas de Quatre said:

Antoinette Sibley - rehearsal

 

I found this on Youtube, her pirouettes and fish dives are fast too!

Thank you so much for this link.  I Have never seen this extract before.

2 hours ago, Sim said:

Oh no...please, no...

Interesting that no plans have been announced for the BRB audiences to be inflicted with this work.  Maybe Don Q is/was enough for the time being.

1 hour ago, KyleCheng said:

i quite agree with the apprehension expressed by Rina and many others...

On the other hand there is the effect of "survival bias", the phenomenon that things that survived a certain selection process are very different to those that did not. The classical repertory we so love today is really the creme de la creme, whereas the contemporary works have yet to be held against the harsh selection process of time.

Perhaps ultimately it depends on how confident we are in our collective (aesthetic) consciousness. I for one am inclined to believe that, if great pieces such as Bach, Handel, and Mozart were able to survive the many social changes and historical turbulence to remained canonical to this day, our dearly held classical and neoclassical ballets will similarly outlive us for centuries. 

I do so hope you are right Kyle - if I may call you that.

4 hours ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

LinMM, the one really worth watching of those two was an old one of the French Opera Ballet, which is danced exquisitely and looks as though it is straight out of a Perrault fairy tale.  Search for Dupont and Legris.  (Of course, the still-beautiful Aurelie Dupont is now the Director of POB.)

I do so agree.  The designs could be by Poussin or Watteau

15 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

I loved Christopher Gable/Michael Pink's reimagined Swan Lake for Northern.  I absolutely adore David Nixon's re-imagined Swan Lake for Northern.

 

I love Akram Khan's Giselle.

 

I've been very lucky to see a number of Northern Ballet performances danced to commissioned scores - Philip Feeney's Dracula, his 2 versions of Cinderella and his utterly fabulous score for Streetcar to name but 3.  The late Paul Reade's scores for Hobson's choice and Far from the Madding Crowd are absolutely spot on.  Carl Davies' score for Cyrano is utterly magnificent.

For all that you are completely right Janet, I cannot imagine Hobson's Choice, Far From the Madding Crowd or Cyrano ever being commissioned today.  They would all be regarded as being too dated.

I do feel that Paul Reade's most untimely death robbed the music and ballet world of a huge talent.  For my money David Bintley never found a successful replacement.

That's right, they do.  Aurora does a reverse pirouette and then leans back into Florimund's outstretched arm.

Fair point Capybara

P.s.  remember, the two most scary expressions in ballet - 

1) an imaginative/modern new interpretation 

2) a specially commissioned score

Dystopian though this seems I am confident there will still be a Royal Ballet in 10 years time, though i do share concerns about the balance between Classical and Contemporary really shifting.  I very much feel that the clock is ticking under the Ashton repertoire and i can see it being crowded out.

Were i to worry about the future of a company it would be BRB.  i cannot see that continuing without full hearted support from the City Council.  As the demographic changes i feel that a full sized classical ballet - and orchestra - is on notice.

21 hours ago, MJW said:

Regarding the comments about Voices of Spring  you may find the Masterclass with Merle Park and Wayne Eagling organised by the Frederick Ashton Foundation quite interesting - link below

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo1A73hPC8U

Thank you so much.  I REALLY enjoyed watching this.

P.s.  I had completely forgotten Domingo was the conductor.  Shame on me!

4 hours ago, Rina said:

 

I share Jeannette’s concerns. It may help to consider the context from which the pdd was taken – a new production of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. Films of the premiere in 1977, and performances in 1982, and 1990 are available on youtube. Park and Eagling dance the pdd in the first two, Durante and Cassidy in the third.

 

It was a tradition to interpolate some divertissements into Act 2, which is set in an elegant, light-filled (please note!) ballroom at Prince Orlofsky’s palace. As the Act proceeds there are songs about kissing, laughing and champagne, people losing their inhibitions, and much swaying to music in waltz time. In the first two films, the divertissements begin with Ashton’s explosion polka, two minutes of mayhem which are reminiscent of Facade with a hint of a 1930’s show number. I particularly love the "slippy" steps. It begins at 1.39.31 of the 1982 film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dka-_N6KaG0

 

In between the polka and the pdd in 1977, Daniel Barenboim played a Chopin ballade, and Isaac Stern the final movement of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto. Chopin, Mendelssohn, Ashton. Yes! In 1990, the performance was the vehicle for Dame Joan Sutherland’s farewell, and the entertainment came from her, Pavarotti, and Marilyn Horne. Yes! In 1982, they had two songs from Hinge and Bracket and a rendering of “She” by Charles Aznavour. Yes – actually I think the best of all because they fitted the feeling of the operetta. In all three cases, by the time it came for Voices of Spring, the whole place had been warmed up, with waves of happiness buoying up the dancers as they entered to applause from the guests on stage.

 

Watching the streaming from the ROH, I felt that the dancers looked very lonely out there. Out on a limb, with no context of fellow feeling from the four preceding works. All of them were performed in semi-darkness, and even Voices of Spring was given a dark background. (Couldn't they back project an image from Vienna like the Schonbrun Palace or a peach or rose colour?) The other works gave no sense of build up to the Ashton, which in the opera is the climax of the divertissements, leading directly into the whole company dancing a waltz. It didn’t have a chance. I feel a bit sick about it because to me it shows a want of feeling, a lack of sensitivity to the RB’s founder choreographer. Or a deliberate slighting? 

 

At the end of the 1977 film, we can glimpse Ashton in the line up standing next to Kiri Te Kanawa. “It was nothing, just a piece of froth,” we might imagine him saying to her, secretly pleased to have stolen the show with it.

I was lucky enough to be at the live recording in 1982 and there was a further 'cabaret item' which didn't make it to the recording.  Paul Tortelier played (as I remember it) some Bach with his wife and another member of his family.

Relating to the original costume for the Male dancer, an alternative cast was the delightful Ravenna Tucker with Julian Hosking.  He wore the dreaded Male toga which was just too camp for words.  I can see why Wayne Eagling refused point blank to wear it.

No one has ever matched Merle Park and Wayne Eagling in Voices of Spring.  Ever!  Technique may have improved but where was elan of the original pairing?

In addition to Jan's suggestion I would recommend and aisle seats on either side block in the stalls.  As I remember it the rows end with seats 12, (e.g. H12) or 37.

The view from the circle is excellent but I personally am not too good with the lack of leg room.

Best wishes and I really hope you enjoy your visit.

P.s.  far too much Ore Orduba.

May I add my appreciation for the contribution from New Adventures.  I found it genuinely amusing.  In fact, it is likely to be the only item I wish to view for a second time.

1 hour ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

A point about opera vs ballet: in a way it's almost more important for great works of ballet to be regularly performed in a timescale that allows for authentic interpretation to be handed down, generation to generation.  Although there are, of course, fashions in operatic interpretation, it is my understanding that performances can be more easily retrieved from the printed page than is possible for ballet.  I am familiar with musical scores but my remarks are based on having seen and not fully understood ballet notation, which always looks somewhat vague to me.  So maybe I am wrong.

If I am correct, the case for proper preservation and production of historically important ballets (including of course those of Ashton and Tudor) is even more important.  And who is more responsible for this than the RB?  (Thank goodness for Sarasota Ballet.)

cf the Royal Danish Ballet's cherishing of Bournonville.

I am not an authority on this but it has been my clear impression that for the past few years the Royal Danish Ballet has rather turned it's back on the Bournonville style and repertoire.  It is mildly terrifying how quickly such a specialised dance school and be devalued, adulterated and then eventually lost.  

This threat is a real object lesson for those who wish to preserve the Ashton style.

By my reckoning we need DVDs of Month in the Country, Les Rendezvous, Facade and, maybe updates of Les Patineurs and/or Scenes de Ballet.  Then there are the really rare gems like A Wedding Bouquet, the Walk to the Paradise Garden etc, etc, etc......

It would be great if there was the clear will to make recordings of these works available to balletomanes every where.

Oh yes, and an authentic recording of Cinderella.  I think Francesca Hayward could be very busy.  Surely she will get a crack at Ondine, preferably with William Bracewell.

6 minutes ago, MaddieRose said:

As a younger and new ballet goer I'd love to see more Ashton. Symphonic Variations is one of my absolute favourites ballets, but even just reading these posts there's a few that I haven't heard of. I've looked through programs from the late 30s to mid 50s and found Ashton works I had no idea existed as well. It seems such a shame that these works are being, perhaps not truly forgotten, but not programmed as much. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ashton was the founding choreographer. It shouldn't come down to them to do anniversary programmes or All-Ashton bills every now and then, I think these works should be programmed regularly so the audience can see them and the dancers can dance them. While I'm all for new works, forgetting your heritage is, as a history student, the exact sort of thing I wish companies wouldn't do. 

Hear, hear!

I have re-read this thread a number of times and I feel that pretty much every posting, one way or another, alludes to the Ashton being undervalued to the extent that its long term future is very precarious.  From what I have seen and read the future health of the Ashton style is even more precarious.  Marguerite and Armand will always find ballerinas longing to dance it but not as Ashton intended.  It is far more likely to be some hybrid of the general Russian/European style, lacking most or all of the Ashton subtleties.

There is one person who really tried to preserve both Ashton's works and his style and that was David Bintley at BRB.  I was very impressed with his reconstruction of Dante Sonata, which I had never seen before, and his determination to involve as many members of the original cast as were available at the time.  Here was someone who had real affection and total respect for Ashton and his style, ably assisted by Marion Tait and others.

That link has been broken but I am very grateful that I was able to watch so much of it all.  As Floss says, Carlos Acosta has been hired to offer a different direction for the company.  Admirable though that is, especially in the current commercial climate, I can only regret the passing of the old guard.

Please may I add my voice to those posters who are praising wonderful music.  To me the three most worrying words in ballet are 'specially commissioned score'.  

My main concern about the description 'relevant' is when a work lapses into preaching.  My main interest is BRB but I regret that very little of the expressed plans for that company make me want to rush back to watching those wonderful dancers.

5 hours ago, seymour said:

I think it is long overdue that Mr Henry Danton be properly recognised for his contribution to ballet and a lifetime of achievements and influence both here and abroad. Any suggestions how one goes about starting the process to nominate him please?

Excellent suggestion!

I share Jan's enthusiasm for Swansong and its continued relevance for the world of today.  However, I cannot see it getting full justice in a theatre the size of the Hippodrome.  I am sure ENB did perform it there a couple of decades ago but I can see its power being severely diminished in such a large space.

Time to mention the much missed mid-scale tour?

Much as I admire Mr Acosta's determination to provide high quality ballet for a distinctive company I think many of the responses to this post indicate he has a very uphill struggle.