FLOSS

What about the Tales of Hoffmann recently released on DVD after restoration?

Am I the only one who thought it a bit odd that the press seemed to be out in force for the second night when Luke Schaufuss was dancing rather than for opening night?

It strikes me that neither Royal Ballet company shows as much enthusiasm for programming the works of their founder choreographer as you might expect given the quality of his ballets, Is it a feeling of ambivalence akin to that experienced,at one time, by the Danes towards their Buornonville legacy that is the root cause of the comparative neglect of Ashton's works?

Pennefather was off for a good part of last season so no, or few, opportunities to garner plaudits for him. Muntagirov certainly gave some great performances and enjoyed good reviews but I am not aware that Golding, in spite of turning up in virtually everything and being threatened in Symphonic Variations, garnered plaudits. I have nothing against him and he certainly has made me revise my opinion of Kish who is, at least, safe and dependable but it isn't just unfortunate casting decisions that leave me less than enthusiastic about Golding.

Very sorry to learn that Pennefather is leaving at the point at which management seemed to have decided to pair him with Lamb because they seemed to bring out the best in each other. Others have already mentioned Lamb and Pennefather in Manon which in my opinion ,at least, was head and shoulders above any of the pairings that the Royal Ballet showed in Moscow. The only performances that came close to it at the opera house were those given by Lamb and Muntagirov. Together in unscheduled performances of La Sylphide occasioned by Rojo's injury they gave the best performance of that ballet that I have seen by non Danish dancers. There was something in that pairing which was not obvious when the two of them danced with their scheduled partners.Lamb had the right balance between stillness and movement and had an element of malice in her performance and he gave a very interesting portrayal of James in response.Several people expressed the view that their performance had revealed why that ballet is so highly regarded and the power of the romantic ballet. An ardent Romeo with Cuthbertson as Juliet the day they were promoted to Principal status and a fine Rudolph Then there were his Baliev with Yanowsky as Natalia Petrovna, his Apollo and his princely roles. He is one of the few dancers who seems totally comfortable on stage when he was not in motion. His princes were polished and elegant rather than looking as if he was desperate to be cast as Bluebird.His partnering skills and his elegance were epitomised by his role in Diamonds showing all the polish that is missing in other more highly regarded dancers who are by nature demi character dancers rather than danseurs.Not a bad tally for someone whose career has been plagued by injury.I wish him well for the future. As for replacements much as I admire Polunin I wonder whether he is not a bit too undependable for the company to risk taking him back on a regular basis. The two dancers who I think could be the beneficiaries from his departure are Reece Clarke and Matthew Ball.Let us hope that management is true to its word about developing the company form within. It certainly should not need to recruit someone from outside the company given the wealth of talent that seems to be lurking in the lower ranks. I do not think that O'Hare will want to repeat the Parish fiasco.I wonder whether Pennefather's departure has anything to do with the prominence that Golding is being given in casting rather than anything else?

Perhaps the answer or at least an answer as far as the Coliseum is concerned is to demand to speak to the front of house manager.Praise the usher who does her job and complain about the ones that don't. Tell him to his face that things have got a whole lot worse since they have allowed audience members to take drinks into the auditorium since now you have to put up not only with mobile phones, but all the to'ing and fro'ing that appears to be connected with replenishing drinks and comfort breaks. Let them know that they are going to lose custom if they don't do something to control the behaviour in the auditorium. Strangely last week where I was sitting for La Sylphide the audience was as good as gold. But that may not have been true in all parts of the house. I know that I have decided that if I have opera performances disrupted by those who take drinks into the auditorium I shall complain in person to the front of house manager and in writing.I don't want performances disrupted by loud slurping,the click of ice cubes, almost as bad as the charm bracelets that were once so fashionable, or being doused in drink, One of these days someone is going to be doused in drink by an audience member who can't survive without a drink of some sort in their hand. It will be interesting to see what the theatre management's reaction will be then particularly if the offending liquid is red wine. If anyone does decide to take the complaint route perhaps they could let other forum members know giving details of the time and place of the performance at which the incident occurred. That would weaken the "You are the first person to complain" response which I am sure will be the first line of defense.

Isn't there a problem about the internet etc as the trigger ? If I know about ballet and am really interested in it I might undertake research about a particular ballet or performer. If I am not that interested and only see ballet as an annual theare trip what am i going to come into contact with that is going to fire my enthusiasm or curiosity ?A star performer who everyone has heard about, but otherwise? Isn't there a possibility that Nureyev was considered newsworthy,in part at least, because dance was seen as interesting and his name was already known in dance circles? What I am interested in is the entry point.What is it? I accept everything that has been said about television as a dying media but it may turn out to be just as durable as radio. I seem to recall that its days were also supposed to be numbered.Reports of its death turned out to be greatly exaggerated and it may well be the same will be true of television. We still don't seem to have got anywhere near identifying the solution as far as enabling audiences to escape from the mighty three money spinners.

Do the people running the classes tell their students about them and encourage them to go? Do they even think about them? Perhaps the reason why children going to dancing classes don't go to the cinema to see performances has got more to do with accessibility, the cost of tickets and location of the cinemas showing the ballets.Two tickets ( I am assuming the presence of a parent or an older sibling) will cost somewhere in the region of twenty five plus pounds.I don't know if the cinemas involved give reductions for children. If they are anything like the reductions given for pensioners they are far from substantial.Not everyone has a cinema showing these performances on their doorstep and then there is the question about how much publicity is given to these performances. I know that you can find out which Royal Ballet performances are being streamed and where, but you need to know that they exist. I am not sure how much publicity individual cinemas give to their streamed performances. Television on the other hand is accessible in every home and does not present the same problems of cost. I know that the BBC is embarrassed by its first Director General much as the Royal Ballet seems to be by Ashton, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the institutions concerned have ambivalent attitudes to them.So it is just as unlikely that the BBC will suddenly revert to Reith's principals of broadcasting programmes on subjects such as ballet because the audience should know about them without worrying about the size of the audience, as it is that the Royal Ballet will suddenly put Ashton's works at the centre of its programming. The interest in ballet and dance that existed during the period of the dance boom was the result of a combination of elements that can not be replicated at will.Two world class choreographers actively engaged in creating major works for their companies with many other extremely talented ones making great works that appealed to audiences. General agreement that ballet was an art that had to be taken seriously; fairly general agreement about the aesthetics of ballet, what ballet is and what it should look like and in the West at least that it is not an exhibition of dance . A large number of dancers who probably would not get into a school today let alone a major company, but who had real individuality and personalities,famous for their theatrical performances rather than mere technical facility. The continued presence of the pioneers and the pioneering spirit that had led to the foundation of companies here and in the US and the renewal of many older companies. Directors who had a very clear vision for their companies who were in touch with their audiences' tastes but because they were trusted were able to shape them to a considerable degree.Finally and by no means least the presence of people like de Valois and Rambert who were able to speak with authority and enthusiasm about the art form and great critics who not only reported on performances but made you want to see them too. Is the real answer that while Sarasota and Queensland Ballet are being led by prophet pioneers most companies are led by people who are more like civil servants in the way that they run their companies? Perhaps that is the inevitable consequence of running a large company with an extensive repertory of great works. It is after all, as Dowell pointed out when he became director of the Royal Ballet,the norm for most companies to be directed by non choreographers.Perhaps that is the problem.

Ian, I am not in a position to undertake any sort of sociological assessment of the composition of audiences for either the Royal Ballet. or ENB by class, age, education or other socioeconomic factors. In making a comparison between the audience in the Amphitheatre and that for the ENB I had in mind that these two audiences will have bought their own tickets rather than being corporately entertained also the range of ticket prices will not be not that dissimilar. From the annual report for 1959/1960 it would seem that the fact that the audience for dance outside London likes full length ballets has been a well known fact for nearly sixty years.Has anyone ever tried to find out why? It could be that the audience believes that they are getting more for their money in terms of costumes, music and dancers.Perhaps members of the audience have read Richard Buckle's quip about triple bills always including one ballet you will loathe and are merely seeking to eliminate the risk.. Perhaps it is ignorance of the ballet repertory. But why should the general public know about any ballets that they haven't heard of or seen? Why should the mothers who took their children to Giselle have taken them to La Sylphide if they had not heard of it? The advertisement did not tell you anything about the ballet except that it was set in Scotland. Isn't it strange that hardly anyone sees the necessity to sell the product. I know its not a commercial business but would not you think that someone would have identified that the problem of poor ticket sales lies in large part with the companies rather than the public? If I want to find out about opera in general or a particular opera there are books ,recordings, DVDs, broadcasts of operas on Radio 3 and regular discussions about new opera recordings on CD Review with operas featuring in Building a Library at regular intervals. There is nothing comparable for would be ballet goers.The lack of ballet based products tells you a great deal about the status of the two art forms.. Mab When I wrote about an audience with an age range of four to ninety five I was writing about the potential television audience for dance programmes not about theatre audiences. I agree that.even though ticket prices are not exorbitant when you consider the costs that have to be covered they are unaffordable for the average family.I am not sure that comparing the prices for tickets for ballet performances and sports events really takes us very far since the majority of the population would probably recognise that the former is an unnecessary luxury while the latter is a necessity. Aileen I am not sure that the RB's failure to sell out on their US Tour is evidence that the audience for classical ballet has declined.They went to cities that they haven't visited in years,their repertory was not exactly enticing.and when they were in New York they were in direct competition with ABT, I think that the repertory and the casting was a disaster waiting to happen and suggests that O'Hare doesn't really understand what his company represents to the US dance audience. Have a look at what the critics said about it and the comments on Ballet Alert and you will see what I mean.. So everything is a disaster and ballet is a doomed art form. Does anyone have any suggestions for solutions?

It struck me that I have said nothing about individual companies. Both Sarasota Ballet and Queensland Ballet seem to have created audiences that trust their respective director's artistic vision and taste. Queensland's artistic director has increased his subscription income base from one thousand plus to seven thousand plus and his audience trust him sufficiently to buy tickets for programmes of works which the audience does not necessarily know.Iain Webb at Sarasota has, by his programming decisions and excellent coaching, established a national identity and perhaps an international one for his company as a company that performs Ashton's works extremely well.I don't know about his ticket sales but it strikes me that Kobborg is programming some interesting things in Romania.I think that it is clear that all three directors have a clear artistic vision and know where they want to take their companies.They also have good taste as far as choice of repertory is concerned and the ability to identify works that will develop their dancers and entertain their audiences. Programming is important but it is only part of the story.Whether a company is relatively new or an old established one there are elements that are essential to creating and maintaining audience loyalty and most of it comes from the top.It seems to me that a company must not lose sight of the need to take account of its audience's tastes and expectations and its need to develop them. Arguably ENB has recently provided two examples of how not to do it. Neither Manon nor Le Corsaire sold well out of town. But the changes in BRB's touring pattern suggests that ENB is not the only company to suffer from some form of audience resistance/indifference.It would be interesting to know what it is that has happened to the dance audience outside London. Is it competition from other types of entertainment? Is the problem that trips to the ballet are associated with grandparent's birthday and Christmas treats so that classical ballet is seen as old fashioned and therefore unappealing to a young audience? Is the popularity of the "mighty three" attributable to the cost of tickets and the audience's certainty that they will have a good evening in the theatre and get their money's worth if they book for them? Is it the fact that as a result of the lack of media attention to ballet as an art form that it does not have the element of excitement that other forms of entertainment do? Is it simply that ballet and dance are not in the air in the way that it was in the 1970's and that it is seen as the preserve of the older audience?. Is it lack of media attention and in particular the BBC's failure to give dance anywhere near the level of coverage that it did in the past? As Wayne Eagling made it very clear that the ENB's national tours lost money and that the Coliseum season was essential to the company staying solvent I wonder whether anyone has ever tried to find out what makes the audience outside London tick? Of course the problem is that you need to survey the non attenders but there are ways of doing this.It would be interesting to know whether there are any fundamental differences between ENB's London audiences and those elsewhere, and what differences, if any, there are between the Covent Garden Amphitheatre audience and the ENB audience. A company needs a clear identity.It can not afford to try to be all things to all people as it will be in danger of disappointing everyone.Larger companies have a duty to their audiences to show them the best of the past,the best of the present and to create conditions in which the choreographers of the future can develop.Perhaps the problem is that companies like ENB have painted themselves into a corner as far as their touring repertory is concerned as however exciting its new productions may be to a London audience it will be seen as a waste of resources if they can not attract audiences outside London.Is the problem perhaps short termism and the dominance of the bean counters? Serious and regular media.coverage will help ballet as a whole but perhaps the real problem lies inside the individual companies where the accountants seem to have far more power in relation to things artistic than is good for them or the art form. I sometimes wonder how far the founders of the three oldest companies in the country would have got if they had been subjected to the same level of scrutiny that directors are subjected to today. But perhaps the truth is that they were more in touch with the tastes and interests of their audiences than some of today's directors are .De Valois was certainly a practical woman of the theatre as was Markova and Rambert clearly had the ability to identify people who would be able to make works that would intrigue and entertain audiences.Just a thought, is part of the problem that some directors are too concerned with making serious artistic statements to notice that they have lost touch with a significant part of their audiences? I look forward to reading other people's view on the cause of the malaise and its cure.

It sounds dire. I wonder if any of the people involved in this drama will work again as dancers or want to do so?

I'm not sure that any of us really know what the size of the television audience for dance programmes is. After all the potential audience covers a wider demographic than the opera going audience from children who go to dancing classes and their families to those who actually go to to see performances. It could easily be from four or five to ninety five. I recognise at once that the real weakness of this potential audience is not really its limited size but the fact that it is probably seen as a predominantly female audience and therefore having less right to expect the BBC to allocate resources to its interests. And then there is the problem that while elite sporting activities are acceptable any other elitist activity is not and all arts are elitist and therefore unacceptable. The point as far as I am concerned is that the BBC spends a great deal of time and money entertaining the public and precious little time educating it.When it comes to the arts it seems to me that it makes a pretty poor showing.It has four main television channels and yet its arts output is nowhere as extensive as it was in the 1960's and 1970's when it only had two channels.The difference is that at that time there seemed to be a lot of people at the BBC who thought that the general public had a right to know about opera, ballet,serious drama and major foreign films and that they had a duty to make these arts available. The same sort of ethos that led to the establishment of the Open University.Now it seems to be more concerned with superficial entertainment and celebrity than with producing and broadcasting serious arts programmes on a regular basis. The problem is that the BBC seems to approach arts programmes as if they all have high production values requiring expensive excursions abroad so that the person fronting the programme can be filmed standing in the actual theatre in which the first performance took place or require a celebrity as intermediary so that the audience will feel comfortable with the art form.A prime example of this latter approach was the ghastly series about opera that the BBC made with Harry Enfield. Documentaries do not need expensive foreign location shots, although they must be great fun for those involved, nor do they need talentless overpaid celebrities. All they need is people who are or have been practitioners who are good communicators and people who are skilled programme makers.Some of the best programmes that the BBC produced at that time were a series of masterclasses given by Alicia Markova. Three people in a dance studio working on a sections of a ballet.The programme on Les Sylphides was riveting television and it was so simple and compared with much of the output not at all expensive.An example of the sort of thing that I have in mind is the sort of education programme that Pacific North West Ballet produces for its audiences. I am afraid that I am rather cynical about the BBC's claims that it can't issue recordings because of copyright issues. That was the BBC's standard response to requests that it should issue records of some of the great performances of classical music that were in its archives.But then everything changed when other companies began to issue recordings from their archives suddenly the BBC issued its BBC Legends series.Not every recording issued on that label was over fifty years old or made by someone who was dead.It does not explain how the Sibley,Dowell Cinderella from 1968/9 came to be issued on VHS,sold on,and then issued on DVD both in this country and in the US.Something that has happened to several other BBC ballet recordings. I tend to think that "copyright issues" are trotted out to fob off the public much as claims about the impact of The Freedom of Information Act are.A perfect response for someone who does not want to lift a finger since unless the enquirer has specialist knowledge they are in no position to challenge the answer.

We have all, at one time or another,noted the public's failure to buy tickets for works with which they are unfamiliar.Often the ballets in question are far from obscure.It is noticeable that the Hochauser's exercise considerable care over the ballets which the Bolshoi and Mariinsky bring to London. As I said in another post you can't blame the public for only buying tickets for ballets that everyone performs.The public is entitled to assume, until the contrary is proved, that if Swan Lake,Romeo and Juliet and Nutcracker are the only ballets that everyone performs that they are the only ones worth seeing. Companies with headquarters in London seem to assume that if a work has been reviewed in the national press that all they have to do is to tell the public outside London when and where the work in question is being performed.At least that is how it seems from the booking/publicity material that I receive.Marketing departments seem to be incapable of doing what their title suggests they do. They seem to be very good at identifying ballets that have failed to sell the required percentage of tickets but incapable of actually selling tickets.I don't think that anything that I have read in a glossy brochure from Covent Garden, apart from casting details,has ever persuaded me to buy tickets for a performance there and its not much different as far as ENB is concerned. Now it is alright if you know something about the major choreographers and the up and coming ones,the repertory and the back catalogue but if you don't the publicity material does not tell you why you should buy a ticket.In 2005 if I recall correctly the brochure issued by Covent Garden said far more about The Lesson than it did about La Sylphide.Is there any company that gets publicity right? If they do what form does it take? Do the smaller companies manage things better by developing and maintaining brand loyalty and trust so that the audience comes to performances because it trusts the company's choice of repertory? Is the problem with the Royal Ballet that the exciting pioneering phase occurred so long ago that no one thinks that it has to work on outreach and keeping the public aware of the brand and the product? But however good the companies get at selling the product there needs to be a public for them. The Royal Ballet should do more to get out into the country. If touring is too costly then perhaps they should go back to sending younger dancers out to deliver programmes akin to Dance Bites and Ballet for All.The BBC has a major role to play in all this. It should be doing more to educate the public about ballet,dance and the arts in general.It does a great deal to entertain but precious little to educate.There are a whole pile of recordings that should be lurking in the archives somewhere, unless of course the tapes have been wiped.In the context of the debate about its future could it be shamed into making them available and making dance programmes a regular part of its out put including a Christmas ballet? Here is a small sample of what should be in the BBC archives Sleeping Beauty from 1978 with Park and Wall in the lead(de Valois' production, part of her eightieth birthday celebrations); part of the Sibley Dowell Sleeping Beauty from the late sixties;recordings from 1979(Ashton's seventy fifth birthday)of A Month in the Country and Les Rendezvous;Massine's Mam'zelle Angot(part of the Queen Mother's eightieth birthday celebrations 1980);Markova masterclasses from Dance Month with Barbieri and Ashmole;Fonteyn's Magic of the Dance (1979)and John Drummond's two part documentary for Omnibus about Diaghilev using interviews with his dancers.All the superlatives(an early documentary about Dowell);the Tribute to Ashton could all do with being shown again.A standard monthly dance slot on BBC 4 is not too much to ask.I am sure that there must be as many people engaged in dance in this country as there are in darts or snooker. As far as new programmes are concerned Sibley,Seymour,Mason,Dowell,Benjamin and Peter Wright are all obvious subjects for documentaries. I agree that Deborah Bull would be ideal as the presenter rather than Darcey Bussell. I shall be interested to find out if anyone posting on this site has come across companies that manage to get it right as far as education and audience building are concerned. I think that the evenings in the Clore fail to do any more than preach to the converted as the tickets are so hard to come by. What is needed is not events for people who can get tickets for the Clore but programmes that are accessible to students who go to ballet classes and ordinary members of the public who don't know much about dance but might be interested if the information was made available.

I believe that the reason that the production was not that well received in Denmark was not just the fact that it replaced one that people admired but also its mood and tone were considered ill judged in a number of ways.It was questions of taste and style and the impact they had on the narrative rather than the text that was of concern.The designer had moved James from the relatively modest home of a prosperous farmer to something akin to a baronial hall.It was described by some as "a Russian style production with an overlay of Bournonville".One of the dancers said in interview that the new version (Schaufuss' production) was difficult because the other version had been brilliant."It had left a bit up to the imagination of the spectator which established a sense of trust between the company and its public. The new version does not really go any deeper. It just makes black and white as plain as day, what the conflicts are.I think there is a certain lack of finesse in it". In the press it was described as "a Sylphide in a party dress, beautiful but without character" Kobborg's production for the Royal Ballet is essentially the one that was set by Hans Brenaa and revived by Kronstam and Weinreich that appeared on DVD. The only obvious addition in the Royal Ballet's version is the strange idea that Madge was once a Sylph. I shall refer to the Kobborg/RDB as the traditional version.As between this traditional version which most of us have seen and the Schaufuss' production the main changes seem to be as follows:- The overture for the Schaufuss production includes references to the Scottish dances performed in the first act including "Coming through the Rye"which are not part of the traditional version. In Act 1 1) James' first solo which uses music that was previously cut.He now asserts or perhaps tries to convince himself that he loves Effie before he dances to the restored music.It seems to be part of the fashion of adding solos to nineteenth century ballets to give male dancers more to do rather than adding to the narrative.This is clearly one of the cuts that Schaufuss referred to when he spoke of restoring some of the cuts. It may be the section that he said was cut after Bournonville stopped dancing but the cut could have been made because on reflection he thought that mime was more effective. On both RDB and Ballet Rambert DVDs James asserts his love for Effie but it is clear from the way that he looks at the chair that he is fascinated by the Sylph.He does not dance. 2)During the communal dancing the addition of a pas de quatre for the four girls which becomes a pas de huit including four men.The music for these dances does not appear in the traditional version.The music for this section does not sound as if it has much connection with the rest of the score at this point in the ballet. 3)In the traditional version all the dancing takes place in full light and there is no pas de trois or pas de l'ombre for Effie,James and the Sylph. Schaufuss' pas de l'ombre seems to have originated in changes made to the Paris production in 1839. In the traditional version the Sylph appears at the top of the stairs. 4)In the traditional version only Gurn leaves the house to search for James the other two men search for him in the house. Act 2 The Witches. In the traditional version Madge's colleagues do not arrive on broomsticks and the scene is not played completely for laughs, The section where the witches sew the scarf does not appear in the traditional version but it looks like it could be authentic. In the traditional version they lie on their stomachs and blow at the fire. The Sylphs entertain James. The dances and stage business in Schaufuss' production do not seem to deviate from the traditional version until the final tableau.Here Schaufuss shows us James kneeling before the Sylph who uses her fellow sylphs to support her in an arabesque while in the traditional version the dances with the sylphs ends with James standing behind the Sylph supporting her in an arabesque.The traditional version makes nonsense of the narrative as the plot depends on the fact that James cannot hold the Sylph. He has no need of Madge's scarf if he can touch her.Here the Schaufuss production looks more authentic than the traditional version.It also provides us with a pattern.James kneels to the Sylph in adoration;James is forced to kneel to Madge to obtain the magic scarf and the Sylph has to kneel to James before she can have the scarf. Scaufuss' production only manages to fly the dead Sylph.I am prepared to accept that this decision may have been made for practical reasons as his production was created to be toured. But that does not explain why Schaufuss decided to deprive the sylph of her cortege of sylphs who accompany her body on foot.The traditional version has a group of sylphs accompanying their dead sister as she is wafted aloft as well as a courtege of sylphs following her on foot.The von Rosen production has the sylphs reacting by turning away from the Sylph as she addresses James for the last time,adopting mourning poses rather than simply standing and staring as they do in both the Schaufuss and traditional version. None of these differences sound significant but in fact they make quite a difference in performance.So here are a couple of even smaller differences.Both the von Rosen production and traditional version include a very clear section of mime in which Effie's mother,Anna, tells her to get ready for her wedding using exactly the same mime for a veil that we see in Fille. In the final scene of von Rosen's production not only does Anna have the standard stage business but Effie clearly looks to her mother for assistance when Gurn proposes to her. A section that is clearly absent from both the traditional and Schaufuss versions. I don't pretend to be a Bournonville expert but his style is essentially the early nineteenth century French school without the Italian technical advances that were introduced to Russia at the end of that century.It is late nineteenth century Russian ballet,an amalgam of the French and Italian schools, with its extensive use of pointe work which produced the idea of specialist male and female steps that we have come to accept as the norm in classical ballet.Strangely by the end of the nineteenth century a new generation in Russia led by people like Fokine was striving to restore what they saw as the purity of the French school. If you enjoy the developments of the early years of Soviet ballet which led to what Danilova described as "exhibitions of dancing" then you may find it small scale and desperately old fashioned.But interestingly enough neither NYCB nor the Bolshoi seem to think that Bournonville has had his day. Bournonville's Sylphide was created at a time when the use of pointe work was in its infancy and the division between male and female steps based on the sophisticated development of pointe work that is so clear in the late nineteenth century classics had not taken place. In his works it is the contrast between male and female bodies performing the same steps that seems to be central to his choreography rather than the execution of male and female specialist steps.As he was not under pressure to provide vehicles for visiting female stars and was not subject to demands of an audience that had fallen out of love with the male dancer as anything more than a porteur his ballets contain meaty roles for the male dancer. I suspect that the supported arabesque with James in Act 2 was introduced some time in the last century as Bournonville,in my limited experience, does not create choreography that is at variance with the story that is being told.Anyway by the nineteen sixties it was clearly part of the standard choreographic text as it appears in the von Rosen production for Ballet Rambert. However badly Queensland Ballet may have done at the box office on their tour it would seem that they have got a winning formula as far as their home audiences are concerned.At the L.B.C. meeting last Monday we were told that the company has increased its season subscriptions from a thousand plus to seven thousand plus and that some of its programmes sell out soon after booking opens.That suggests that not only have they built up a following but their followers trust the company when it comes to repertory choices. Sadly Incognito is right that at the moment ENB does not seem able to sell tickets for anything other a very limited number of ballets and the Royal Ballet experiences difficulties as far as some parts of its repertory are concerned.Now both organisations have marketing departments that are ready to tell the company what their ticket sales are like for any work that they perform but it seems to me from what I see of their activities that they don't have much idea about how to sell their product. It is too easy to blame the public for not being enlightened enough to turn out to see a particular work.Why should anyone know anything about ballets other than Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and Nutcracker ? Aren't people entitled to assume that these must be wonderful works because everyone performs them and that ballets that don't get performed by everyone can't be that good for the very reason that they aren't performed by every company. But what do ballet companies' marketing department do to persuade people to attend performances apart from announcing the dates and venues of performances? Very little in my experience. Instead of accepting a limited repertory as a given and consigning Bournonville to the dustbin of history it might be more useful to ask what marketing departments need to do to persuade us to buy tickets? I think that a discussion about how companies build audiences and secure their loyalty and trust to the extent that the company;its dancers and repertory enjoy a sort of brand loyalty is a very important one. Of course I recognise that marketing is not the only element in the equation. There is the artistic director whose choice of repertory,recruitment and casting decisions play a significant role in the life of a compan and its audience.Then there are external factors the most significant one,apart from the government's role in art funding, is the part that the media plays in creating and maintaining the public's interest in the arts and dance in particular.Should the BBC be doing more to entertain and inform by showing programmes about ballet on a more regular basis?

Something strange happened while I was typing so I did not finish what I was saying about Guillem. Her retirement will be mourned more by some than by others.But that is true of all dancers on their retirement.Someone once said that a ballerina is someone who can do everything but has the taste not to. So for me Guillem was a great dancer but not a great ballerina. I'm afraid it's the foot in the ear,six o'clock arabesque stuck into the nineteenth century classics that leads me to that opinion. Although I find it ugly I don't have a problem with it if that is what the choreographer intended. But where it is totally out of character with the style of the choreographic text I think it is the balletic equivalent of performing Mozart as if it was Puccini. In the late nineteenth century it was acceptable to re-orchestrate and update eighteenth century music.People used to justify this by saying that Bach would have used the late nineteenth century orchestra if only it had been available to him.The same thing has happened in ballet during the last thirty plus years. In the absence of major choreographers able to channel and control technical exuberance dancers have, for good or ill,transformed not only the content of new works but the look of the classics in performance. It is strange to think that while a musician performing re-orchestrated Bach today could not expect to be taken seriously dancers frequently express the view that being required to reproduce a choreographic text as set by its creator is a denial of their artistic freedom and impinges on their artistry. According to MacMillan's biographer Guillem told him that he was only the choreographer when he objected to the changes she had made to his choreography. But there are some indications that the tide is turning.Ratmansky has just mounted a new production of the Sleeping Beauty for ABT which attempts to reproduce not only the text recorded in the Stepanov notation but to dance it in period style. His Pacquita for Munich is not merely an exercise in period appropriate style and technique but a revival that restores lengthy mime sequence. Yes Janet you have caught me out. I did not go to the Coli last week. A friend of mine who did,said that the pieces that Guillem danced were not particularly memorable and that the only reason for going was to see her.She added that she thought Guillem's choice of new works over the years had done little to advance the idea that dancers should have a say in the choice of repertory.

Bruce, perhaps not everyone idolized Guillem in the way you clearly do. I know that while I admired her in some things I thought that her Marguerite was unidiomatic and a great mistake while her updated Giselle was,well, bizarre.Being a great dancer does not guarantee the ability to identify great choreographers a problem that Osipova is experiencing at present.As far as her post Royal Ballet career was concerned the problem for me was that so much of the new work that Guillem appeared in was pretty vacuous and only of interest because of her presence.On the basis of these works I am far from convinced that we would have seen much that was worth keeping if she had stayed on and become the spearhead of the new at Covent Garden. The question about the work that the Covent Garden company should be performing is an interesting one. De Valois intended that her company would create its own repertory and only acquired the nineteenth century classics to establish and maintain the technical skills of her dancers.For its first sixty years it was a choreographer's company.Its first three directors made works for it and had very clear ideas about the major works that it should add to its repertory apart from those that were being created in house. The overall result is that its back catalogue is particularly rich.The question about what a company in this situation should do is of particular interest as Hamburg is about to experience the same problem as Neumeier who created that company's style is succeded by Lloyd Riggins. The options available to a choreographer's company which is no longer led by a choreographer are at one extreme to follow the NYCB and the Balanchine Trust route and preserve every choreographic nail clipping and at the other to wind up the company and abandon its repertory. There is also the via media of the Danes who started out in 1870 with seventy Bournonville ballets prepared for preservation and performance and which by the nineteen thirties had lost the bulk of them because they did not fit in with, the then, director's ideas about the Bournonville repertory. Guillem like all dancers is the product of her birth, background and training in Paris.The Paris Opera, in its pursuit of the novel and fashionable ended the nineteenth century with only Coppelia to its name. In the twentieth century Giselle was restored to it and Lifar made some works which are performed from time to time. When Nureyev became its director he gave the company the nineteenth century classics that the Royal Ballet had acquired fifty years before.The other important factor in all this is the size of the Opera's subsidy.France rarely stints when it comes to the arts and la gloire. The Covent Garden company is in a very different position.It performs in a country which is cheerfully philistine or at least does not regard the word as an insult. It is required to cover its costs.As it came close to being reduced to a part time company and at one point faced threats of being disbanded it comes as no surprise to me that it concentrated on its "traditional knitting" rather than pursuing the nebulous new choreography that so many express enthusiasm for and say that it should be doing.It is not entirely clear which sort of dance works those proposing new choreography have in mind; who the choreographers are and where the audience for these works are going to come from since they can not be at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden on the same night.Sometime ago Guillem gave an interview in which she said that she left when Mason became director because unlike Nureyev, Mason lacked vision.As far as I am aware Guillem never got as far as saying what she thought the company should be dancing.That information would have been interesting but in all of this she never addressed the different situation the two directors were in.Nureyev became director of a company with a glorious past but precious little to show for it by way of repertory. Mason became director of a company which although only a quarter of the age of the Opera Ballet has a an extraordinary repertory. She also had a number of significant anniversaries during her time in charge should she have ignored them? I think that the Royal Ballet is over reliant on the three MacMillan works and would be happy to see them rested for several years but I know that is not going to happen any time soon given the effect of Lady M's threat to withdraw the performing rights to them during Stretton's tenure.I think that it is overly reliant on the nineteenth century classics and that there are far too many performances of them in a run.But I can imagine the indignation that would be expressed here if the company reverted to the policy it pursued in the sixties when dancers were cast according to their suitability for a particular role so no one danced everything.There needs to be a better balance between the nineteenth century works and the Ashton classics which are just as testing.I fear that the bulk of the Ashton repertory is in danger of being lost because unlike the MacMillan works they have no active advocate.

A production that was first seen and loved in London in 1979, where it won an Evening Standard award, and loathed in Copenhagen when it was staged there has to be of interest to anyone interested in ballet. On the basis of the size of last night's audience there are not that many ballet lovers in London at present which is a shame since the Queensland company has clearly worked hard to recreate Peter Schaufuss' version of the work. It is longer than the Kobborg version because Schauffus opened up some of the traditional cuts in the score and created choreography for the restored sections.He said that he believed that the traditional cuts had been made when Bournonville gave up dancing the role of James.During Act 1 he gives James a solo which I do not recall seeing in any other production and during the communal dancing he gives us a short pas de trois in which Effie and James are joined by the Sylph. This does not seem to have been part of the original Paris production and is said to have been added to it in 1839.I think that Schauffus' production is the only version of the Buornonville ballet to incorporate it.The corps has more to do in Act 2 than we are used to seeing. The choreography for the Sylph and her fellow sylphs seems to use less full pointe and more demi pointe than we were accustomed to see in Kobborg's version. I think that the difference in the reception of this production by audiences in London and Copenhagen all those years ago is best explained by the level of knowledge of this work possessed by the two audiences and their resultant expectations.In Denmark there were lengthy debates about the effect that the style and tone of the production had on the narrative.Perhaps this production is in reality a Sylphide for beginners.The production clearly brings out the conflict between dream and reality,something which is useful to an audience knowing little or nothing about the ballet and its history, but perhaps, too much for an audience who were almost as familiar with it and its nuances as the dancers themselves. I would encourage anyone who is in a position to do so to buy a ticket and see it.

It sounds as if Polunin can't work out what project Polunin is either.But that isn't necessarily because it has no substance.It can be difficult to be that articulate about an idea that has not taken final form.I think that Polunin made it clear some years ago that he felt that dancers should be as well known as footballers,if not as well paid.At that time it seemed to me that he craved the fame and artistic clout that Nureyev had enjoyed.But it is one thing to see someone like Nureyev as a role model and another thing to achieve comparable status,artistic freedom and wealth. Nureyev was a product of his school and the international politics of the time.A time when the West had limited access to Russian dancers and their repertory and Russians had similarly limited access to developments in dance in the West. He was very knowledgeable about the traditional repertory as performed by his home company. He was also interested in the western repertory from the Diaghilev ballets to the works of the major choreographers such as Ashton,Balanchine, Robbins,Cunningham and Graham who were all active at the time of his defection. Polunin seems to want to be involved in the world of classical dance but not to be part of it; to dance classics but to be free to change the choreography much as Guillem wanted to do.Of course the problem with the dancer's demand to be freed from the choreographic text and to dance what they want, in their own way,is that at some point the choreography may become so altered as to be totally unrecognisable. As Nijinska pointed out, many years ago, dancers involved in reviving a ballet will,unless they are prevented, modify the text so that they dance steps that they find easy rather than ones that challenge them.I am not sure that I am interested in seeing a dancer whose comfort zone is technique given total artistic freedom with the text to be danced.A limited amount of artistic freedom has led to musical and choreographic distortion in both Act 2 Swan Lake and the Rose Adagio.Full artistic freedom it seems to me led,in Nureyev's case, to choreography which at its worst is simply a series of technical challenges which are the balletic equivalent of show jumping;tests to be passed which does no more than display the dancer's technique. It is unfortunate for Polunin and his generation that while there are some interesting choreographers about there is no one of the obvious stature of an Ashton or a Balanchine working at present.It will be interesting to see whether project Polunin has any substance to it, and if it does, the form it takes.

I am not sure how or whether you can make your views known about under casting major roles. There was quite a lot of adverse criticism of Kobayashi's Myrthe in the streamed performance of Giselle in 2014.People just posted what they thought of her.It will be interesting to see whether she gets cast next year. She is a classic case of "civil service casting". We shall never know whether she would have been any batter if she had been given more to do early on in her career.But given who was in the company when she joined it you can see why she was not given that much to do at that time. Getting the balance right between established dancers and the talented up and coming coming dancer without ruffling feathers must be almost impossible if the same ballets are performed every two or three years. That is why I expressed concern that Two Pigeons was not being used from the outset to develop dancers like Hayward and Nagdhi and their juniors.There is always a danger that by casting dancers like Marquez or guests like Salenko you are limiting opportunities for the next generation.The continuing ascendancy of Fonteyn at Covent Garden had a terrible effect on the careers of several generations of dancers.Ann Jenner gave an interview in which she said that it was dispiriting to know that the audience was going to be disappointed because "it was not Margot".It must be awful to know that you are regularly performing before an audience who would prefer to see someone else.

I think that the roles that suffer most from being cast without due consideration being given to the need for stage presence and technical assurance are Myrthe and Lilac Fairy.Although as far as Lilac Fairy is concerned while my preference is for technical command such as Bergsma and Mason possessed you can be almost as effective with marginally less technique but the ability to project great beneficence which is how Porter performed the role.But while she did not possess the blistering technique of Mason and Bergsma she shared their presence and ability to command the stage and she was able to do the Italian fouettes that have recently defeated so many of the dancers cast as the Queen of the Dryads. I think that the Prologue Fairies present a number of problems:- 1)The tempi at which the variations are performed is slower than in the past. 2)They are not danced as a flow of movement which slows slightly to emphasise a pose but does not stop until the music stops.Today they are performed almost as freeze frame to freeze frame.This approach is most noticeable in the first variation but not absent from the others. 3)Casting.At one time the roles were danced by principal dancers or people on the way up who were being considered for possible promotion and they had stage presence.It have heard it argued that casting Principal dancers was a necessity at one time because of the gap between the technical abilities of the Principals and the corps but that with the higher technical standards that new recruits display it is no longer necessary to use such senior dancers. But it seems to me that this is only part of the story.There is also the need to cast dancers who are suited to the roles and are able to command the stage.And it is this aspect of the ballet's structure that has been ignored for a long time. I know that there are those on this forum who dislike the idea of dancers being type cast but it seems to me that these variations cry out to be cast in a way that the choreographer would have expected.This section of the ballet was created to display the range and variety of the dancers that the Mariinsky had at its disposal, the soft slow lyrical dancer(Crystal Fountain),the dancer who excels in petite batterie( Song Birds/ Canari qui chante)and in the variation Temperament/Violent which was created to personify electricity, a dancer with ballon and real attack.Today these roles are cast in a monochrome one size fits all way and as a result they are dull and boring.Anyone interested in what the variations should look like or indeed what the entire ballet should look like could do a lot worse than trying to find the performance of Sleeping Beauty that the Royal Ballet gave in 1978 to celebrate de Valois' eightieth birthday.The performance is of the production that she had mounted for the company in 1977 and you can be certain that it looked right and was danced in accordance with her views of how the ballet should be performed.There was no criticism of the text that was danced the only adverse comment, at the time, was that it lacked the grandeur of the Messell production. The performance sometimes turns up on You Tube. Years ago you would not have expected to see the degree of interchangeability of dancers in the Fairy variations that you see now. No one would have expected to see a dancers who was cast as the Fairy of the Song Birds turn up in different variations at other performances and yet now we can see the same dancer in two or three other variations.I can't put my finger on precisely when this changed but it only serves to diminish the impact of the Prologue.It is as if casting is undertaken by drawing names out of a hat. All this means that no one currently dancing then will have an exemplary performance of all of the variations and that will impact on their performance of the roles which so easily lapse into mere displays of technique rather than expressions of the gifts that they are conferring on Aurora. I don't know how these factors interact to produce the performances that we see today but it seems to me that getting the dancers to perform at the right speed would be the place to start followed by sensitive and consistent casting.I wonder whether the La Scala performances of the Ratmansky Sleeping Beauty will prove to be a catalyst?

I don't think that you will find that any of the dancers cast as Giselle this year have danced the role more than half a dozen times on the Covent Garden stage. Nunez was still dancing Myrthe in 2006 and danced her first Giselle in 2009. Morera was still dancing Myrthe in 2009 and danced her first Giselle in 2013.So for me, at least, most of this season's Giselles are work in progress rather than the finished article.But perhaps Giselle is always work in progress as far as the dancer is concerned.The fact that nearly all the dancers listed for Giselle in this revival danced it in 2013 does not concern me at all as they are still in the process of claiming the role as their own. It is disappointing that Takada is the only new Giselle.Casting dancers like Hayward or Nagdhi for a couple of performances would have given them an opportunity to work on the role with Peter Wright in the studio and would have really shown that O'Hare is committed to developing the company from the bottom up.Casting Stix-Brunell in Two Pigeons is a step in the right direction but there was an opportunity to do more without ruffling too many feathers. I am more concerned by the fact that the role of Myrthe has clearly been downgraded in the mind of management so that it impacts not only on act 2 but on the ballet as a whole.For some years management has thought that the role of Myrthe is not sufficiently important to be announced in advance of the performance.In 2013 it became clear that it no longer considers it important enough to be cast with any real care.Having grown up with Myrthe being treated as a major role to be danced by Principal dancers like Mason and Bergsma the 2013 performances were particularly disappointing because the Myrthes as a whole were weak and lacking in stage presence.It was not the fact that management was trying out a couple of young dancers, one of whom was Tierney Heap that was the problem. The problem was the experienced dancers cast as Myrthe who did not provide a sufficient technical contrast with Giselle. None of the established dancers were sufficiently steely and strong in dance and stage presence to make a real contrast with Giselle.

If you know nothing about dance then it is not unreasonable to assume that going to see a ballet performed by principal dancers will be much better than seeing the same ballet performed by more junior dancers and that performances by principal dancers that you have heard of will be better than performances by principal dancers that you have not heard of.You may notice that when the company goes on tour it does not invariably show the best casts in a particular ballet it tends to show the dancers that people will want to see because they have heard of, them.

Well I imagine that the overall rise in ticket prices is not unconnected with the fact that the Opera House has had a cut in subsidy. Of course the ballet company could save a lot of money if it gave up live music; was reduced in size;ceased to be a full time company or got rid of its older more expensive dancers.But would you want to go to its performances? With the exception of abandoning live music all these options have been discussed at one time or another as ways of cutting the company's costs. .As to the ticket prices for the Two Pigeons programme, the company charges full price for Giselle without an opening ballet so, no doubt, it was felt that Two Pigeons with an opening ballet should be similarly priced. I don't think that anyone who knows the Two Pigeons would be surprised that the programme was not being treated as a mixed bill.As it is years since either the company or the school danced it at Covent Garden there may well be the usual start up costs of producing sets and costumes. The sets for Covent Garden were slightly different from the ones that BRB uses. It will be interesting to see if we get the Covent Garden sets A few of Ashton's works are performed regularly at Covent Garden the rest are performed so infrequently that they can scarcely be described as known let alone as popular. It has to be at least thirty years since Pigeons was performed by the resident company I am not sure that I would describe it as a popular ballet as far as the audience there is concerned. I think that ballets like Romeo and Juliet and Nutcracker are works which will sell almost regardless of price, I am not convinced that the demand for tickets for the Pigeons programme will be such that these performances will enjoy comparable price elasticity. This is nothing to do with the quality of the ballets and everything to do with name recognition.

Amelia, Thank you very much for the fruits of your research.It sounds as if the personal repetiteur may well have started as a pragmatic response to two things which occurred in rapid succession.First with the dismissal of Petipa, the absence of a major choreographer whose taste and aesthetics influence every aspect of the company its repertory and performance style. Second the loss of a large number of senior dancers to the West.

At some point the management is going to have to decide where its priorities lie between casting its established dancers and giving the younger ones their opportunities. We all have to accept that at some point a lot of people whose performances we have enjoyed are going to retire.I would rather see evidence that management recognises this fact and is engaged in doing something about developing the next generation of dancers than see the same names crop up in everything whether or not they are suited to the roles in question.There are a lot of unknowns which may well have an impact on this and subsequent booking periods. Who is dancing in the revised Elizabeth?How many casts will the company field for Winter's Tale? When will Scarlett begin work on his new full length ballet and who will be in it? It is a very difficult to strike the right balance between the established dancers and the aspirants.So far it looks as if it is succeeding in getting it right. Morera gets Giselle and the casting for Two Pigeons is not merely a repeat of the first run. Stix-Brunell gets to dance the Girl and there is a gap in the casting which I assume is the young man rather than the Gypsy man.I would be more inclined to see Takada's Giselle in the context of giving aspirants an opportunity than as evidence that she is going to be the next principal.It may merely be a case of what Mary Clarke used to describe as "civil service casting" having more to do with her place in the pecking order than assured principal status.Not all her debuts in the classics have been equally well received. There are still gaps in the casting.The Wheeldon mixed bill seems to be short of a few names even if the names listed are the casts for all three ballets and not just for After the Rain and in the Golden Hour.As far as Watson and Marquez are concerned I don't read anything into their absence from this booking period.Unless we hear something official to the contrary I assume that the absence of a name or names from the current programme is of little or no significance as far as the future of those dancers is concerned.