Melody

A couple of years ago the Royal Ballet was showing at a chain about 10 miles from here, but not at all the cinemas in that chain if I remember right. Last year there was practically nothing in this area; now there are two or three theatres showing the Royal Ballet around DC. I thought I'd read on a thread here that the Bolshoi insisted on being shown exclusively, so that if Fathom Events (the major entity showing arts movies, including the Live from the Met series) wanted to carry the Bolshoi it couldn't carry the Royal Ballet. Fathom did drop RB a couple of years ago; pretty sure it's still carrying the Bolshoi.[eta - yep, Fathom still has the Bolshoi Ballet on its list of events] I've never been in a cinema with more than about five people for any RB performance I've seen, including popular ones like Swan Lake, so I can sort of see their point. I was a bit surprised at the manager's attitude - bemoaning the empty theatre but saying it wasn't their business to advertise to potential local viewers. Baltimore is a pretty good-size city and there's a major university there as well as dance schools in the city and suburbs. I assume the theatre just won't be carrying RB feeds in the future, if that's the way it is. At least I finally got to see Symphonic Variations in a format larger than YouTube. At this rate I'll probably have to go to New York to see the next Ashton triple bill.

It seems like such a shame that nobody is sending mailings to local dance schools. I suggested that to the cinema manager, and he said they didn't do any advertising themselves, they just depended on whatever marketing was done by the ROH and the US company distributing the programmes - which is to say nothing, as far as I can gather. I mean, you sometimes see advertising by Fathom Events and others during the time before movies when they have promotional stuff running on the screens, but that isn't really targeted to people who might be interested in dance performances.

I had to go up to Baltimore to see the Royal Ballet triple bill, which is at least better than having to drive for nearly 3 hours to Philadelphia, which for months was the nearest cinema on the ROH "find a local cinema" site. I think it cost $15 but I'm not totally certain. There were about five people in the theatre, and the manager came in beforehand to warn us that there were a couple of places where the sound cut out and that was on the film, it wasn't a cinema problem - he looked rather despairingly at the mostly empty theatre and asked how we'd found out about it - seems that it was mostly from being ROH subscribers or something. He was obviously pretty upset that there hadn't been any local advertising by the ROH or RB, so I'm not sure how much of the 2017/2018 season will be shown there.

Windsor? The Queen's speaking Estuary English now?

I mostly saw caterpillars. But the moth is quite beautiful too.

My very first ballet memory - curtain up on Les Sylphides. Also agree, since last week, on the impact of curtain up on Symphonic Variations.

One thing that worries me is that the less well known Ashton pieces seem to be pretty much the exclusive province of Sarasota Ballet. Ian Webb isn't going to be there for ever, and once he's gone, those ballets stand a good chance of being lost. If the Royal Ballet is serious about all the lovely things they say about their founder choreographer, I hope they have some contingency plans in place when that happens. Couple of quick thoughts about the triple bill. Given that the world is going through some political upheavals at the moment, although obviously nothing quite like WW2, I remember getting a feeling of happiness and peace (which has been sadly lacking over the last year or so) when the curtain went up on that iconic backdrop of Symphonic Variations, which only grew as the ballet developed. The whole ballet has a sort of healing quality. I can only imagine the effect it had when it was first performed in 1946. Also, that blonde wig in The Dream made Akane Takada look disturbingly like Ivanka Trump. Maybe, now they have so many dancers from Asia and South America, they could have a somewhat darker version that doesn't clash so badly with skin tone and eye colour. I always found those white wigs in Nutcracker Act 2 distracting on dancers like Miyako Yoshida but at least there was a point to them - this seems a bit arbitrary. They didn't make Zenaida Yanowsky wear a black wig in Marguerite and Armand simply because Margot Fonteyn had black hair. That is, unless Titania is specifically referred to as blonde in the original Shakespeare, of course, in which case we're probably stuck with it.

Finally saw the triple bill in Baltimore last night. That was intense! I was so pleased to see The Dream performed as it should have been, because the last time I saw it live it was done by San Francisco Ballet back in the 1980s, and they made such an appalling pig's breakfast of it that I've been trying to forget it ever since (having seen it done by RB back in the 1970s, that SFB debacle was all the more painful). I've only seen the complete Symphonic Variations on YouTube, which didn't really convey the full experience, but what an absolute joy that ballet is. As for Marguerite and Armand, I must say I thought Zenaida Yanowsky's send-off was more emotional, but I'm glad to have finally seen it in full. I wish they did Ashton triple bills more often. It's not that there's a lack of source material, and the dancers seem to appreciate his work. The audience most certainly does!

Lovely to see this list. I remember seeing Yasmine Naghdi dancing in the Shakespeare Live programme with Matthew Ball, and she looked every inch the principal dancer already.

I wonder why they let it get that far and then pulled it, rather than refusing to have anything to do with it from the start, or as soon thereafter as they figured out that the subject matter would be unacceptable to TPTB. Is this sort of highly public last-minute cancellation (erm, sorry, indefinite postponement) more of a punishment than a quiet removal early on? Seems an awful waste of resources.

Article in the Guardian, although the authors aren't named. This is pretty sad. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jul/09/shock-as-bolshoi-cancels-world-premiere-of-nureyev-ballet "Russia’s Bolshoi theatre has announced the cancellation of next week’s world premiere of a ballet about Russian dance legend Rudolf Nureyev, staged by an outspoken director who has been questioned in a high-profile criminal investigation. [...] "Serebrennikov has fallen out of favour with Russia’s cultural authorities in recent years and has denounced increasing censorship of the arts. Supporters of Mr Serebrennikov reportedly said his questioning was politically motivated."

Hopefully they understand that plastic gloves need to be changed each time they're handling food, or freshly washed bare hands might actually be better.

One thing I always used to look forward to in the Smuin Ballet's Christmas ballet was near the end of the first act (Classical Christmas, as opposed to the hilarious Cool Christmas of the second act, which had such visual delights as a shark wearing a Santa hat, and tap-dancing Christmas trees and a chainsaw) in the Jauchzet, Frohlocket number. Most of the cast were onstage from the beginning for the orchestral introduction, but when the singing started with that loud "Jauchzet, Frohlocket!" the ballerina was tossed from the wings, flew across half the stage (well, probably not half but it wasn't an enormous theatre) and landed in the arms of one of the men. At that point there was always a loud gasp from first-time attendees.

On FB these days that isn't necessarily the case. A lot of people (including me) have significant numbers of friends just because they're neighbours in FB games. Just about all the people I've seen recently, dying in their hospital beds, are relatives of people's I've friended (I know that isn't a word, but it's a FB word...) for games and don't know in real life. All FB users have the option of sifting their friends into categories so that personal posts and photos can be sent to just relations and close friends, but a lot of them are choosing to send them out to everyone.

Getting more than a little fed up with people on Facebook posting photos of their (usually elderly) terminally ill relatives who they've been visiting in hospital. For some reason there's quite a lot of them at the moment. OK, I understand "look at me, aren't I the angel of mercy to mum or dad or Auntie Nellie" but do they really have to include mum or dad or Auntie Nellie in the picture, lying in their hospital beds with tubes coming out of everywhere? And do we need blow-by-blow accounts of how much dad ate and how many times he visited the loo and what his blood counts were and what meds he's on? Seems like such an invasion of privacy.

Far as I can gather, British. I'm sure I can survive playing Family Farm without them.

I have a number of friends on Facebook who I added for games so I don't know them personally - so there's a large range of political and religious beliefs there. Yesterday I unfriended three of them who were gloating about this attack and saying straight out that they hoped it was the first of many because the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. This is so utterly sickening. It makes me wonder what we've come to.

I was going to ask if there are enough bins for depositing litter (and dog waste) on the footpaths, but of course if the major culprits are drivers who can't be bothered to take their litter home and dispose of it properly, all the bins in the world won't help.

It looks as though there are several other similar buildings in the immediate area. The residents of those buildings must be feeling very vulnerable at the moment.

Yes, I agree. Although I was saying what I think they might mean by Kevin O'Hare's "jobs for life" comment, I hope that isn't what he has planned. Maybe, as suggested, some of the character roles will go to current company members but others, which require the extra experience, will go to retired dancers as short-term contracts rather than as permanent company members. That might have the advantage of a larger pool of talent to draw from, which wouldn't be so much the case if there were two or three people on the permanent payroll. I have a feeling that Zenaida Yanowsky wouldn't want to be tied down to a "Principal Character Artist" contract, from comments by both her and her husband in articles I've read. So maybe the solution of engaging retired senior dancers for specific roles might be more appealing to her.

It sounds as though principals wouldn't move to character roles, but that the character roles would be performed by current company members as part of their regular repertoire as opposed to retired senior dancers doing those roles exclusively.

John, those are lovely posts. I'm so sorry for your loss. Take care.

People who make cold calls and barely speak English because they're from the Philippines or India or wherever, and expect you to believe their names really are Doug or Katie. Actually, that also goes for the same people who are on the other end of helplines when you're trying to get a problem of some sort fixed.

What awful news. So many devastated families today.

We used to get into trouble with my mother in law every year because we didn't send her a Mothers Day card till May. We kept trying to explain that they weren't available in March because Easter hadn't happened yet, but it never seemed to work; she always thought it was some sort of intentional insult until she got her card in May, and then she was pleased. But we went though this performance year after year...