thewinelake

Actually, it would be interesting to open up this into a question of where do you all like to sit (if you're paying!) at ROH?

It's the final night - 5th May - McRae and Osipova - and is being live broadcasted...

I booked some seats for La Fille mal gardée (it'll be our first sighting of Osipova!) when public tickets were first made available and had a bit of a fight with the booking system which crashed on me. I eventually got some tickets, but then 2 lots arrived in the post, so I guess I'll be returning one set. I'm not sure which ones to keep! We've got Amphitheatre Left C44-C47 or B41-B44. They're all £51 except C46/C47 which are £58 - presumably because they're more central. But B is a bit closer.... Which would you keep and which would you send back?

OK, I think I understand now - I truly am somewhat shallow in my appreciation of ballet (and I'm not being sarcastic here, honest!). I can see that there is some grace is some of those clips, but I want more action. Hope I don't get banned, and maybe when I'm older I will appreciate the finer points! It's a bit like when I used to prefer Australian wine to French...

I presume it's Petipa, but all those I can find of the major houses on YouTube seem mostly similar. Yes, if it's a traditional Russian character dance, and not really ballet, then that explains it!

It's something that's bothered me for quite some time, but.... This is an absolutely stunning piece of music from Tchaikovsky, but the choreography is dull! dull! dull! Is this just me - am I missing something?

Thought I might just say that our most recent trip (Nutcracker at ENB last week) was totally dull from the point of view of audience annoyances - nothing whatsoever wrong with anyone's behaviour, decent view, etc.... Is there something wrong with me? ;-)

I'm rather fond of this one...

Did you not think she was excellent in the rest of the ballet?

Just watching this on catchup... Must say that the quality of the image is tremendous - often I find HD to be little better than upscaled SD, but the detail here is lovely. I quite like SB in general, as it offers the chance for lots of individuals to shine - some of those fairies are lovely. BUT! That Rose Adagio always spoils it for me - it's just too damn difficult! Poor old Cuthbertson looks out of her depth in the balancey bits (forget the proper term) as does virtually every recording I've seen of other ballerinas. Luckily she redeems herself in the following dances, but why do they persist? Perhaps it just me who gets so squeamish and bothered by it!!

We were also at this performance - first time I've seen this production in the flesh. Hugely enjoyed it, and would like to single out Kei Akahoshi as rather a stunning little performer. Of the production itself, I slightly struggled with the very small groups in the Act II dances, but could get used to it. The merliton girl was lovely, turning a dance that's previously seemed comical to me into a thing of loveliness... Really good value, too!

Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if some dancers have the view of Groucho Marx - and wouldn't want to audition for a company that would have them? ;-) I am getting the impression that EYB performers have a wider range of ability than LCB, and good on them for that! I know that the girl who auditioned for LCB alongside DD1 is now at the RBS. In terms of EYB in the London area, do they tend to stick to Woking/Crawley/Bromley(?) or do they ever venture North of the river?

Sorry if that came across as disparaging - it seems to me to be one's excellent and the other fantastic! ;-) Do you think they're equally difficult to get a part in?

Oops! Just seen that I'm in the wrong forum - this is the place: http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/7260-vocational-school-summer-shows/

Good luck Lemongirl - or should it be the pips? ;-) My DDs looking at EYB. A girl in DD1's class at school is doing it. Judging by the videos, the standard's not that high (eg. compared with LCB), so chances of getting in much be pretty good, but being based in (North) London, it's unusual to find them in such "out of the way places" ;-) I presume it's too late to apply now for 2014 anyway? Must hunt around for other EYB threads on the forum...

Just wondering if anyone else had been to see any of these last week? We went on Saturday evening (and enjoyed dinner at Sofra beforehand - lovely!). I thought it was mostly excellent, although it seemed to be very much the older students. Maybe one has to go to matinees to see the younger ones (my daughters were hoping to have seen one or two dancers they knew, but it wasn't to be). Really liked a modern piece, although my wife's thrown the programme out, so I'm not quite sure what it was - I think it was called Concordance? Also, some young guy called Calvin did a wonderful dying swan. Our seats weren't that great (in the Upper Gallery Right), but being so close to the stage makes a nice change from upstairs... A couple of slightly odd things: - The (prerecorded) music sounded OK, but the endings were very abrupt - and that spoiled the ambience. Rather amateurish, I thought! - I heard a few beeps that I presume were of the audience (friends and family, I guess) filming the performance. Do they not create a DVD like most ballet schools do? ;-)

It's quite possible that the fact that they've paid such a lot of money is exactly why they feel they can then behave as they like? Maybe if a crack squad of ushers armed with laser pens used them on the offending screens, that might be a start. If they fail to put the smart phone away, then in the eyes!

My DDs have tried buying shoes (just plain ones) online with very little success. It seems that every brand has a different idea of what sizes are... The most recent purchase from Dance Direct was was size 5.5 (on the basis that they normally come up about a size too big) and they sent size 9! Unsurprisingly they were WAY too big (although probably somewhat small for anyone who really did have size 9 feet). I'm going to ban the use of mail order for this in the future, particularly as returning things is time-consuming and expensive. Do others have better luck?

Thanks for the responses. Firstly, I can say with some certainty that watching the original footage from my own HD Camcorder is MILES better than the "professional" DVDs. The quality is degraded once its gone through the editing process due to re-compression. I understand that proper broadcast-grade performances can achieve much better technical quality than supposedly professional DVDs and probably Blu Ray - not quite sure how they do it, though... Then there's the experience of knowing what to point the close-up camera at - sometimes one gets bamboozled and has to cover it up by a cut to wide view! I made an official unofficial recording of our recent Nutcracker (not for resale) and did use two cameras and then edited on Final Cut Pro X (Nice piece of software), and it looks great on the computer screen, but distinctly disappointing by the time the DVD encoding has been done. Part of it was down to the camera sometimes struggling with the lighting - so there's a tendency towards burnt out soloists wearing white when spotlit. To do it properly, one would have to be very assiduous on the iris control. Also, when the stage lighting changes colour, the effect is exacerbated on video and it's quite time-consuming to correct. If anyone reading this is after a small technical tip, I would urge them to record in progressive mode if possible on the wide view, as that enables a bit of zooming in post without getting nasty interlace artefacts. Also makes it more useful for stills. Maybe next show (in 4 years time?) will be 4K ;-) Interesting point on the licensing. I suppose in this case it would have been the orchestra/record company responsible for the backing music (a shame we couldn't hire a full professional orchestra, complete with boys choir for the snowy bit!).

Nobody seems to have mentioned the regular RAD weekly summer schools? My DDs go there most years and enjoy it (DD1 is grade 7 + Intermediate. DD2 is grade 5). They have several all over the place, but ours go to London. Accommodation is available, although being London isn't cheap. Again, several levels of ability up to Advanced 2. There was a particularly talented girl in DD1's group last year, and it transpires she'd just been offered a place at RBS...

Not quite sure where to ask this, so mods - feel free to move or delete as appropriate! One of the things that is generally done when a school puts on a show (not just ballet schools, or ballet shows!) is for a DVD recording to be made available. However, in this day and age, High Definition footage is easy to create and makes for a much better experience (eg. one can make out details on the faces!). The problem comes when working out how to get the high-def versions onto the screens of interested parties afterwards. - Blu-Ray doesn't seem to be very popular, and is expensive and slow to reproduce. It does have the advantage of privacy, though. One can also charge for it without seeming unreasonable. - Internet distribution via YouTube or Vimeo is very convenient, but some people can't watch the footage on their TVs. There is also hassle with ensuring privacy (less of an issue with Vimeo than YouTube). Harder to charge for (although I suppose one could only give out password on receipt of a payment, but it seems less good value!). - Distribution on SD card, or data files on DVD, is another option that's good for privacy, but maybe suffers from ease of use and lack of TV viewability. I was interested to know what people here do?

Mmm. I presume the last one was from the London-themed encore, rather than the main story. I don't remember the silhouette of skyline in the corner in the head-removal sequence, but maybe I wasn't paying attention!

Wow - thanks for all the responses (and welcome). I never knew! Only seen a professional performance of this once, many years ago, at ROH an I have no idea if there was a choir hiding down there or not.... I wonder how Petipa and Tchaikovsky worked together on this piece - was the music done to a vague specification (eg. scenes) and then the choreography added after, or was there some to-ing and fro-ing to optimise the combination. For our version, there were a LOT of modifications. Maybe only the story and music were kept - this was a production with some very young (under 5?) dancers up to about 18 years old, so none of them were really up to the proper choreography, but the ballet teacher did her own which seemed to suit them brilliantly. In particular, the adagio from Grand Pas de Deux featured SPF + 4 "sweet fairies" seemed magical to me - but it's impossible to be even vaguely objective when you know the dancers involved. One thing's for sure, though, that Tchaikovsky and Flying Hops go together like clotted cream and scones!

Having been recently involved in a production of Nutcracker (only on the technical side) where all the music was recorded, I wondered how often, when performed to live music, they have a choir in just to do the snow ballet? I understand it's supposed to be a choir of boys rather than adults, but must be quite an expense just for the one scene, lovely though it is!

We went to this show and I must admit it was better than I was expecting. Some of the visual effects were dazzlingly clever and reminded me a bit of Wheeldon/Royal Ballet's Alice in Wonderland. Not sure those photographs are from the show itself?