Melody

Does anyone have any definitive information about the date of the premiere of Pas de Quatre in 1845? Several reliable sources are saying it was 12 July, but Wikipedia says that was the date when Queen Victoria was in the audience and it was the third of four performances, which would put the premiere at least two days earlier.

Where on earth are they going to get the money to do this? I thought they were barely making ends meet as it is.

Couple of important anniversaries around now. Alexandra Danilova died in New York on 13 July 1997, aged 93. Marius Petipa died in the Crimea on 14 July 1910, aged 92. Apparently ballet does good things for the life span!

Al Jazeera America is one of the least awful news sources on TV these days. Also BBC World News America, although that seems to be going a bit more tabloid unfortunately.

I'm seeing Fathom Events (which has shown the Royal Ballet movies for the last couple of years) advertising the Bolshoi for December and January. I assume that means they won't be showing the Royal Ballet, then, since it seems to be one or the other in the USA. Wonder if anywhere else will pick up the Royal Ballet or if the USA will be the only part of the world where we don't get to see it (as happened with the Winter's Tale).

Well, it didn't in this case unless I was spelling his name wrong or something when I did the search. It didn't show that he'd been in any of the productions. http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/SearchResults.aspx?person=Nehemiah%20Kish&searchtype=workprodperf&genre=Ballet&title=Onegin Then again, a search on just Onegin doesn't show anything in 2012, which is obviously incorrect. Searching on Nehemiah Kish's name between 2011 and 2013 doesn't show any productions of Onegin; it looks as though the 2012 run didn't get into the database.

Maybe he was filling in for someone and the database shows the original cast even if there was a substitution.

I just checked the ROH archive and Kish doesn't show as ever having been cast in Onegin.

And Yanowsky gets two whole outings. Let's hope she doesn't die from overwork. It does appear from those lists that Yuhui Choe is yesterday's news. Pity, because she has a lovely stage presence and seems to do well in the repertoire. Apparently someone on high has decided that she's found her niche as a very useful supporting cast member.

Loved this article by Luke Jennings in the Guardian, which is a primer on being "profound" in contemporary choreography. He's having a dig at Nederlands Dans Theater in the process, and I have no idea how justified his derision is, but I must say I've often thought the same when faced with what's generally known as "cutting-edge" dance. Or art or music for that matter. When I'm left thinking, "have I just not understood what they're trying to do, or are they having a joke at my expense?" it comforts me to know I'm not the only one. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/06/nederlands-dans-theater-review-lets-get-profound?CMP=twt_gu

I really liked her bio of Lydia Lopokova, and her Oxford Dictionary of Dance is a very useful resource. She seems to be pretty knowledgeable.

I wonder if ENB will be waving a Principal contract in her direction now Daria Klimentova is no longer with them.

And why Ralph Lauren in the first place? Do they not have designers in Britain or something?

We're expecting a category 1 hurricane just offshore from here on 4 July. Nice.

I think it's more realistic to try and manage it rather than stop it. One of the best ways to deal with bullying is for the victim to not be affected by it, because then it stops being a useful tactic. So in some ways, helping the victim (without blaming the victim) may be more effective than punishing the bully. Some bullies act by gathering a support group round them and going after individuals without a similar support group. I know in larger schools there may be ways to break up the bully's clique, but in a small vocational school that might not be possible. At least the victim can be encouraged to also make some friends who look out for each other.

I've read about studies showing that while some bullies in school are just nasty manipulative little so-and-so's, others are actually society's future leaders starting to develop their leadership skills. They're just being rather crude and unsubtle about it because they haven't learned the skills yet. Which is all very well, but the victims are still victims. I know groups of individuals do tend to shake down into hierarchies and cliques and whatnot, but teachers ought to be aware of the different types of bullying and be ready to do something about it, especially in cases where it's deliberate and cruel even if not overt. Sometimes it's much easier to blame the victim (she's far too sensitive, she needs to learn how to handle aggressive people or she'll never succeed as an adult, etc), especially when the bully's parents are cut from the same cloth and are nightmares to deal with. It's particularly difficult in a setting like a vocational ballet school because the kids are away from home, the whole environment is intensely competitive already, and the focus is much narrower than in a regular school so people's vulnerabilities are more exposed. But for the same reasons, the staff should be particularly aware of the possibility that it's going on. There may be a problem in cases like one mentioned above, where the bully isn't one of the less talented kids acting out her jealousy of the more talented ones, but is actually one of the most talented students. Then there must be a temptation on the part of the teachers to overlook the problem because they don't want to lose their little star. But still, there have to be things that well trained staff can do to put a stop to it or at least minimize the effects.

And Giselle, the role created by Grisi, premiered on 28 June 1841, her 22nd birthday.

I'd take it with a pinch of salt that no-one else has complained. That's an idiotic time of day - erm, night - to be watering, and they must be disturbing a lot of people's sleep (assuming you live in a residential neighbourhood). I mean, I'm glad they're not watering in the heat of the day or during rush hour, but there has to be a time that's less antisocial than that. Plus if they're having to pay overtime for people to come out in the middle of the night, that's a bill that the taxpayers are footing too, which is adding insult to injury.

I know there's a feeling that university places are going preferentially to students from countries where they have to pay full fees, so I suppose it's not surprising that there'd be a similar feeling about vocational schools. But I think if a vocational school is routinely giving preference at the Upper School level to kids from other countries, for whatever reason, that school is risking questions being asked about why its lower school isn't producing students good enough for its own upper school; hopefully that would act as some sort of balance against the temptation to go out and offer too many upper school places to students doing well at international competitions, at the expense of the home-grown ones. I think, though, these days there seems to be more of a problem with a proliferation of courses that claim to give the sort of teaching that professional dancers will need but don't, partly because the government seems to be pointing to those courses and claiming that ballet students should be doing that if their families can't afford the cost of the specialist schools. Then the problem is that too many people are getting insufficiently trained.

And another great ballet teacher has an anniversary - Agrippina Vaganova was born in St Petersburg on 26 June 1879.

Can't edit the above post, but the latest video in the Royal Opera House Ballet Evolved series is about Cecchetti.

A very great figure in the world of ballet was born today - on 21 June 1850, Enrico Cecchetti was born in a dressing room at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome.

This seems to be a problem that crops up quite a lot - a class that's supposed to be for beginners but tends to be the same people going time and again and again until it's more like a social group, and they resent outsiders. A teacher who tells a pupil in public, however obliquely, that he should give up and go away is a teacher who isn't worth respecting.

English is derived from a lot of different sources. I assume the two meanings have different roots but ended up sounding the same through a process of convergent evolution or something. Must be so much fun trying to teach English to people from other countries who expect it to make sense.

Going back to the OP, I think there's less danger of training too many dancers, at least ballet dancers, than actors. Dancing is unusual in requiring so many years of intensive training, whereas some talent and some training will get you quite a lot further in acting - just for example, Helena Bonham Carter has reached the top of the profession with very little to no formal training, and that wouldn't be possible for a dancer. The sheer time and expense of training ballet dancers to the standard needed for a professional career will weed out an awful lot of candidates. It's much easier for someone to call himself an actor after a few drama courses at school and college and a bit of experience in amateur dramatics, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. So the article about all these thousands of actors making practically no money might be a bit misleading. I wonder how those numbers would look if they just took members of Equity. Another problem with some performing-arts disciplines - but again not ballet - is that some of these new courses and diplomas from non-specialist institutions are making dubious claims about preparing students for professional careers. People will just have to be careful about researching what they get into as some of these places proliferate. I think classically trained dancers and musicians are probably fairly well insulated from these sorts of problems, though.