FLOSS

My enquiry was not about what happens at the school but the personal coaching relationship in the Russian companies.What I wanted to know about was when the selection and special coaching relationship that takes place in the major Russian companies first began? Did it begin in the nineteenth century or was it something that began in the twentieth century with the upheavals after the Revolution?

Wayne MacGregor's ballets always seem to involve expensive stagings. Now what would be interesting would be to see him choreograph something for a bare stage, no fancy lighting effects and no distracting machinery.I wonder whether his works would look so substantial without the technological dressing? I did see Woolf Works and found the middle section confused and overwrought the lighting was cleverness for its own sake.I would love to know how much his ballets cost to stage in comparison with something like Scarlett's asphodel Meadows. As far as Raven Girl is concerned it would require such radical revisions as to be totally unrecognisable before I buy a ticket to see it.Someone I know suggested that it was only the lighting that was going to be revised.So we shall see when it is performed next season or rather some of you will see and no doubt report back.Perhaps they will end up being forced to make the programme one that is sold at popular prices to shift the tickets.

Amelia, Out of interest do you have any idea how long the major Russian companies have employed the personal coach/teacher for dancers with potential? Is it a system whose origins are lost in the mists of time or something that can be identified as having begun at a particular time and place under a particular director? At one level it sounds a bit like the system that many countries have in place for top atheletes. Strange that it is now universally acceptable for sportspeople but not in the arts. I wonder whether it is the history and comparative youth of the company, the cost of the system or the thought that somehow it is inherently unfair to select the few at the expense of the many that prevents the Royal Ballet adopting a system which clearly works?

Years ago it seemed to me that anyone with any sense would try to start their career with SWRB/BRB because in that company you got a chance to dance a lot at an early stage in your career and there were no make or break,one chance to shine performances, that loomed so large in the Covent Garden compsny.At that time there was the problem that casting was frequently undertaken on the basis of seniority and dancers who had seemingly great potential when they left the school were left so long that the spark had gone out of them by the time that they got their chance.There are plenty of companies on the continent that can provide the sort of opportunities that are in short supply at Covent Garden. I hope that everyone who has graduated has a long and rewarding career as a dancer wherever they dance. Xander Parrish spoke about joining the company and being left without the support that newly recruited dancers who have been identified as having potential receive in the major Russian companies.It remains to be seen whether O'Hare has finally hit upon a way of dealing with that problem . Giving dancers a chance to perform is still a problem although changes to the repertory could reduce that problem if not resolve it completely. I hope that restoring Two Pigeons to the repertory is part of his plan to give the large number of talented young dancers in his company the chance to show what they can do.

Bruce,I felt like you about the Chappell costumes until I saw Anthony Ward's redesigns.On reassessing Chappell's designs I found that they weren't that bad after all.I have problems with Ward's costumes as well as his set design.Sets and costumes are supposed to establish the scene and mood of a ballet.Good stage designs prepare the stage for the dancers's performances and make their job easier. The original Chappell costume designs suggested the eighteen forties as photographs of Markova and Idzikowsky in costume show.I can't say that I know whether the later Chappell designs came about because the original ones were impractical,because the originals were lost in the flight from the Germans or for some other reason.But they do at least suggest a time and place other than the twentieth century rather than an indeterminate period between the 1920's and the 1950's. For me Ward's costumes suggest an unhappy combination of the nineteen twenties and the nineteen fifties.The costumes for the men are too close to the Facade costumes for Popular Song while the girl's dresses with their polka dots suggest the nineteen fifties and their badly designed gloves look like Marigolds.So in the Ward costumes is it a ballet of the smart and flippant twenties or the glamorous nineteen fifties with the pas de quatre closely related to the four girls in Facade? The designer clearly does not know and probably thinks the audience won't notice because it is set in the "olden times".Neither of these periods actually suit the work and neither the boy's costumes nor those for the girls suit the style of the choreography which is concerned more with Ashton's idea of classical dance than the creation of character. As I understand it the Chappell designs that we saw on Sunday are a redesign from the nineteen forties.The original costumes suggested the eighteen forties.The current Chappell designs are not time specific but they do dress the stage and performers in a way which does not make the stage action and Ashton's very personal take on the danse d'ecole jar in the way that the Ward ones do. As the history of redesigning Ashton's ballets has been so unsatisfactory I would leave things as they are.

An exceptionally well balanced programme which showed the students and the school to best advantage.It was very nice to see the White Lodgers in a bit of real choreography.If Mazuka des Enfants became a regular feature of the main stage annual performance, I for one, would not complain. As has already been said the excerpt from La Bayadere was most impressive throughout. Chisato Katsura who showed exceptional promise last year was even more impressive this year.She is certainly someone to watch out for in the main company.This may sound trivial but it was a great pleasure to see a dancer whose dancing I did not hear as well as seeing it.Serrano's Solor was very elegant and confidant and I look forward to seeing him next year as I do several of other year two dancers. I know several people who bought tickets for this performance solely because Les Rendezvous was on the programme.I don't think that anyone who was tempted by the promise of Les Rendezvous will have left the theatre disappointed by the performance.The fact that it used the Chappell designs was a real bonus because the floor patterns make total sense with them.The ballet exposes any weaknesses that its dancers may have.The cast made it look effortless and fun.The main couple were very good.Kaho Yanagisawa brought out the Giselle like softness in the Markova role while Joseph Sissens had total command of the Idzikowsky role. Perhaps I missed it but should not he have been blindfolded in his dance with the Four Ladies? The dancers in the Pas de trois Connie Vowles,Scott McKenzie and Killian Smith were excellent. A tonic for the audience and the balletic equivalent of Mozart for the voice. Isn't about time the main company danced it again in this set and costumes? The other pieces allowed the school to show what its students could do with more modern choreography. Scarlett's Third Movement provided some interesting choreography for a group of dancers drawn from across four years at White Lodge and the opportunity to be part of the creative process.Once again, and this is not a backhanded compliment,Scarlett showed his ability to handle large groups and consummate ease in getting them on and off the stage without the movements being obvious entrances and exits. Terrific for the dancers involved to be working on a new piece by a young choreographer. Kylian's Sech's Tanze is fun but he does not seem to know when a joke has overstayed its welcome.It was well danced, the audience loved it and it leaves me wondering why so few of the mixed bills at Covent Garden are allowed to end with something light and amusing.It is not as if there are no ballets of that type available to the company there. Wheeldon's Rush was well danced and again provided a showcase for its cast but I felt that while it did its job it was not that interesting as a piece of choreography. Whether that was because it was made twelve years ago when Wheeldon was a comparatively inexperienced choreographer or whether it was because it came after the Ashton I can't say.It did its job and we certainly got to see what the dancers cast in it could do. This was Christopher Powney's first main stage Royal Ballet School's performance.I can;t recall his precise words but I recall that he said in interview soon after he was appointed that he intended to shift the emphasis from technical facility to artistry and performance.The pieces selected for the programme required high levels of technique and artistry and the students delivered.It will be fascinating to see what the school programmes next year.All in all this year's programme gave the feel of a real ballet programme rather than an end of term show.

Wheeldon's full length ballets were created in the following order Alice in 2011, Cinderella in 2012 and Winter's Tale in 2014. As far as Cinderella is concerned it was, I understand his second suggestion,after his first suggestion of Prince of the Pagodas was rejected. Now it would have been really interesting to see what he would have done with that score. It might have been a case of fourth time lucky as far as the Britten's ballet is concerned and perhaps it would not have been a ballet where all the best effects come from the staging rather than the choreography.I would like to think that someone would take him up on it. As far as the popularity of this version of Cinderella is concerned I suspect that the title alone will have sold the tickets. Parents can be certain that it is going to be a child friendly entertainment and there is no obviously child friendly ballet on elsewhere in London this month.Cinderella clearly has almost as much drawing power as Nutcracker because everyone has heard of it. The standard cuts to Prokoviev's score, in the West at least. seem to be the music for the prince's quest for Cinderella. Ashton famously explained why he had cut the music by saying that he did not like the music or the countries that the prince had visited. It would seem that most western choreographers feel the same about that part of the score.

Aileen, Creating a full length ballet is,at its most basic level,an opportunity for a company to show its depth and strength, if necessary by creating roles for outstanding dancers that are not in the traditional script.By the time that Ashton created his Cinderella the company had acquired a number of capable male dancers whose skill and ability justified the creation of a role to display their talents particularly as male dancers had been in such short supply during the war.I had always assumed that the role of the Jester was included in Ashton's Cinderella to give Alexander Grant a role but it would seem that the role was originally intended for Brian Shaw.

I am not sure whether saying that you do not consider Cinderella to be top drawer Ashton proves that it isn't that good. After all given Wheeldon's age he will only ever have seen it in the coarsened form in which it has been performed since Michael Somes ceased to be responsible for the Ashton repertory. Many of the faults that are currently seen in revivals of Ashton's Cinderella and are ascribed to his choreography have far more to do with casting choices and coaching than they have with characters or the structure of the ballet itself. The decline set in for Cinderella and many other Ashton works with Somes' retirement. The strange thing is that all four of the former members of the Royal Ballet whose Cinderella's I have seen do next to nothing with the music that Ashton uses for his most beautiful choreography.It is as if each of them is held back by it. The problem is that Prokoviev wrote a ballet score with a specific structure. Ashton follows that structure. If, for whatever reason,you decide not to follow the structure and ignore the big tunes which virtually demand grand choreography you make it virtually impossible to create a ballet with choreography that matches up to the music. It ends up being rather worthy but essentially unmemorable. The general tendency to treat MacMillan as the choreographic messiah of the twentieth century and Ashton as the creator of charming small scale pieces to be dusted off and performed from time to time has not helped to maintain this work in good shape.The failure to rein in the antics of the Ugly Sisters,whether through a want of good taste or indifference to its impact on the ballet's structure has resulted in the piece becoming a classical ballet with a slapstick act attached to it which threatens to overwhelm it . Something that I don't recall from my earliest encounters with it when the sisters while played by men did actually belong to the same balletic world that Cinderella and her prince inhabited.It is clear from both the filmed version made for U.S. television with Ashton and MacMillan as the sisters and the 1968 recording with Ashton and Helpmann that the sisters are not pantomime dames. Each revision of the designs has taken the ballet ever deeper into generic ballet land. Cinderella now has pretty rags and the sisters's costumes are so over the top that they encourage coarse performances by their wearers. I wonder whether restoring the original designs would help to restore the balance by making clear the world which the sisters inhabit is not that of slapstick and the provincial pantomime. In Macles' designs Cinderella's costumes were not pretty ballet rags and the sisters's costumes were positively ordinary in comparison with what the characters wear today.Restoring the original designs just might help to put it back on the right course. If Wendy Ellis could be persuaded to remove all the extra bits of unfunny business that the ballet has acquired over the years and keep the sisters firmly under control we would actually be able to see that when Ashton created his Cinderella in 1948 he was following the advice that he gave to others about making ballets. Everything that you need to know about ballet construct is contained in act 1 of Petipa's Sleeping Beauty. We would recognise that Cinderella is Ashton's nineteenth century Russsian ballet and a much better one than performances over the last thirty years suggest it is.

The four choreographers,other than Ashton,with Royal Ballet/Royal Ballet School connections whose Cinderella's I was referring to are Michael Corder who made his ballet for English National Ballet in 1996,Ashley Page who made his for Scottish Ballet in 2007,David Bintley who made his for Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2011 and Wheeldon himself.The fifth choreographer is Ratmansky who made his Cinderella for the Mariinsky in 2002. I have to say that I still find Ashton's Cinderella the most satisfying response to the Prokoviev score that I have seen.The waltz for the female corps at the end of the first act is a choreographic gem at the same level with his choreography for the female corps in Scenes de Ballet,Cinderella's first solo is beautiful and the pas de deux at the end of the ballroom scene is an extraordinary mixture of choreographic simplicity and grandeur which lingers long after the performance is over. It is worth the cost of the ticket in itself. I suspect that it is the memorable nature of Ashton's choreography which so often seems to be the only natural response to Prokoviev's score that gets in the way as far as choreographers with Royal Ballet/ Royal ballet school connections are concerned. It is almost as if so much of their time and energy is directed towards avoiding Ashton that they fail to find a satisfactory choreographic response to it themselves. I am not saying that Ashton's Cinderella as currently performed is without its faults but these are almost all faults of characterisation, coaching and direction rather than inherent choreographic faults. It is not Ashton's fault that each redesign seems to justify broad playing.The Jester is now generally played as a close relative of the Soviet jester in Swan lake,a leg machine rather than a character.But the shift from subtle characterisation to empty technical display is a fault of casting and coaching not a choreographic fault.It is the Ugly Sisters who present the greatest threat to the ballet as it is performed today.They started as characters played en travesti but although they derive from the pantomime tradition they are not pantomime dames.Those responsible for staging revivals seem to encourage coarse broad performances or at least seem to do nothing to discourage them.The fact is that these faults could easily be remedied by those responsible for reviving the ballet if they had the taste and the will to do so. Where to start? Removing the Jester's thick makeup so that we could see his facial expression would be a good start.Making the performer understand that the Jester is not a role in which technique is all that is required but a character who suffers loss during the course of the ballet would help.The sisters are not a lost cause either but they need to be played as characters rather than for broad comedy.The first audiences would have recognised the references to contemporary performers and choreographers and the choreographic jokes.The timid Ashton sister forgets her steps and moves seamlessly from eighteenth century dance to twentieth century musical comedy while the dominant Helpmann sister dances or attempts to dance using the brilliant technique of the late nineteenth century Italian school. They end up dancing a sequence, which as I understand it, was originally danced by Fred and Adele Astaire.The jokes are connected to dance but they also delineate the character of both sisters. There is no need for pratt falls or for Wellington and Napoleon and the latter's detachable wig. The men were originally just two men who danced with the sisters. They became Wellington and Napoleon when Wayne Sleep was given one of the roles.If the company and the ballet's owner were to revert to using women as the sisters as they did for a time in the 1950,s that would bring an end to the competition in coarse playing that we currently see.We might begin to see Ashton's Cinderella for what it is, not simply the first full length British ballet but Ashton's Petipa ballet with much beautiful choreography in it. It is interesting to note that Ashton was only a few years older than Wheeldon is now when he made his Cinderella in 1948.At the time that Ashton began work on his first full length ballet he had years of experience working in the commercial theatre behind him.As Markova said in the tribute shown by the BBC at the time of his death Ashton having worked for C.B.Cochrane was the complete professional who knew how to make things tell and exactly how long anything should last. I suspect that was the highest compliment she could bestow on anyone.It will be interesting to see how much Wheeldon has learnt about structure and timing from his foray into the commercial theatre. I am far from sure that Wheeldon has the same sure touch when it comes to timing, duration and impact.I wonder whether he will decide to tinker with his Winter's Tale by extending the recognition scene so that it really registers and trimming the Bohemia scene a bit or whether we will have to wait to see his next new work before we discover what,if anything,he has learnt from his experience.

Christopher Wheeldon's Cinderella is the sixth ballet I have seen which uses this Prokoviev score and the fourth made by a choreographer with Royal Ballet School/Royal Ballet connections.It must be very difficult for anyone with that background to set about creating a new version because the choreography that Ashton set to the most beautiful music in the score is so memorable. So how did Wheeldon do? I am not sure that anyone staging a version of Cinderella,be it opera ,pantomime or ballet really needs to tell the audience that Cinderella has lost her mother and acquired a stepmother and two step sisters by using the overture to show us said sickly mother;her tombstone;introduce us to the new mother and sibs and show us the prince as a naughty little scamp playing with wooden swords with his friend and tormenting a servant dressed like a pantomime dame. But of course I could be wrong.Perhaps the story is not as universal I suppose it to be and it is necessary because the ballet is a co production with SFB. The problem is that they set up a feeling that the whole thing is going to be episodic.The fact that so much of the choreography seems to have so little to do with the music does not alter that impression. For one moment I thought that Wheeldon might be about to give us a Cinderella with a story line closer to that set by Rossini with the prince visiting Cinderella's home in the guise of a servant but he turned up as a tramp.While it is true that there are no fairies or fairy godmother in this retelling of the story there is no attempt to set anything of choreographic interest in the scene in which the seasons appear and the waltz is simply ignored in so far as none of the movement set to it acknowledge its presence.This is a problem because Prokoviev wrote this score using a fairly traditional ballet structure providing music for solos and divertisements at the end of the act and the choreography that Wheeldon sets is not of comparable quality to the music. The ballroom scene has lots of entrances and exits for no obvious reason. It shows us the stepmother as a woman with a drink problem(very amusing)and shows us the stepsisters rolling around on the floor (very innovative).He introduces three girls in ballet style national costumes but does very little with them.They seem to disappear almost as soon as they arrive.The corps who play the guests are used to dress the stage and their choreography is of little intrinsic interest.Again the problem in this act is that the big tunes are danced across rather than used to show the prince and Cinderella falling in love through a beautiful pas de deux.The choreography does not really bring the two characters together in the way that Ashton manages to do. In the scene after the ball the stepmother throws up into a tureen and we get to see the female corps trying on the slipper and there is a smelly foot joke.After Cinderella has been identified there is nothing of any real choreographic interest.Strange that Wheeldon's response to this great ballet score should be so pedestrian. It underlines how big a step he has taken in choreographing Winter's Tale. As far as the performances are concerned all the dancers performed with whole hearted commitment but the choreography is thin and that for the prince and Cinderella is not particularly inspired.Some passages for the prince look awkward just to be different and do not show him to best advantage.But it has to be said that Golding looks far more comfortable and at home with this company than he does with the Royal Ballet.He did not scowl once.

Wulff, I think that I would discount any decision about Persephone's viability as a revival if Anthony Russell Roberts was involved in it. He may have saved the Royal Ballet from unwittingly subsidising the opera company but on the rare occasion that I have heard him talk about Ashton's works he didn't really seem to know that much. Consanguinity does not guarantee a true understanding of an art form. He is the man who famously announced that Dante Sonata was incapable of revival at the very time that work was being undertaken to revive it. As to Persephone the little sections of choreography that have been restored are intriguing and I would love to see all of it. The bits that were shown in a DVD called " Ashton to Stravinsky" reminded me a little of bits of MacMillan's Rituals.Anyway I do not see how anyone can know how a modern audience would receive it until it is performed. A decision made ten years ago should not be seen as binding for all time.A mixed bill of Daphnis and Chloe and Persephone would certainly attract me and I don't think that I would be alone. Alison, I agree that O'Hare's lack of personal knowledge and experience of the repertory is a a drawback but then so is a fear of taking risks.If you commission new works you can't afford to be totally risk averse.You can find a choreographer whose works you admire and you then have to choose between acquiring a work which is known to be good or having a completely new one.A new work is a risk even when made by an Ashton or a Balanchine. Not everything that these men made was a work of genius.In Ashton's case the turkeys as well as some great works have been lost perhaps in Balanchine's case too many of his works have been conserved.But if an AD is afraid of taking a risk the best that he will give the company and its audience is a series of very safe uninspiring and instantly forgettable works. The real question is how the AD decides to balance the repertory between nineteenth century works, company classics and new pieces. At the moment I don't think that a sufficiently wide range of the Ashton repertory is performed. One of his full length works should be a regular feature of every season Sylvia and Cinderella are about ready for revival and there should be at least one mixed bill including works other than the perennial Dream,A Month in the Country and Rhapsody.Les Rendezvous in the Chappell designs would be a good start and very good for the dancers too. In another discussion I mentioned a revival of Foyer de Danse and was told that only a short section survives on film. A Sarasota newspaper published, I think, at about the time of the Ashton Festival stated that the director of the Sarasota Ballet has it on his list of revivals and has a 32 minute film of the ballet so there is hope.So I would add that to my list of ballets that should be revived at Covent Garden along with Les Apparitions,Valses nobles et sentimentales and A Walk to the Paradise Garden. Very early on in his directorship Kevin O'Hare said that he would welcome suggestions for revivals. Perhaps the time has come to make some suggestions. Before anyone tells me that ENB's revival of Apparitions was a failure it can't have helped that Markarova is reported in "Secret Muses" to have ignored Ashton's corrections to such an extent that he walked out on the revival.

Thank you for correcting my assertions. I had completely forgotten about the revival of Valses Noble et Sentimentales and the year when BRB acquired MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet and O'Hare's involvement in it. The point that I was trying to make was that because of his background and experience as a dancer O'Hare is not a prisoner of the Covent Garden company's "glorious past" and not having experienced the response to the failure of works such as Cyrano and Isadora or the lukewarm response to Mr Worldly Wise at Covent Garden he has not been rendered risk averse.As he did not spend his entire career working in a company in which Ashton and MacMillan were the predominant influence on the company and his career, he is not in thrall to them or their reputations.Finally from his own experience he is probably better able to dampen unrealistic expectations that new works should be works of genius and to explain that the most important thing that a choreographer can do is to develop a company's dancers.If the choreographer turns out to be a genius or the work a masterpiece that is an added bonus.

My machine seized up so I could not add this to my last posting. The other thing that marks Kevin O'Hare out from all his predecessors, except Stretton who I excluded for the reasons set out above, is that he is the first Artistic Director for whom both Ashton and MacMillan are choreographers from the company's past rather than living choreographers instrumental in making his career. Neither of them are people he has worked with.Neither has played an active part in moulding him as a dancer and neither has expanded his artistic experience by the ballets they made,their choice of repertory or choice of guest choreographers. After MacMillan's death Anthony Dowell is reported to have said words to the effect that the Royal Ballet was about to experience something that was novel for it but something which was the norm for other companies. He was talking about a company that was for the first time to experience working without a choreographer at the helm or a major choreographer directly involved with developing its repertory and creating works on its dancers. I think that all these factors make it even more difficult to say with any certainty how frequently particular ballets are likely to be revived in the future except that Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker are unlikely to slip out of the repertory any time soon and that the three MacMillan works will appear every other season or so. It is the rest of the repertory that is uncertain.Me? Well I'm happy to admit that I'd rather see Sylvia or Cinderella than Don Q take a regular place on the Covent Garden stage.Their choreography is better and they place greater and more consistent demands on the female corps than Don Q does. For me Don Q is a ballet to be seen every time the Bolshoi visit but for the rest of the time I am happy to live without it.If it is a choice between vintage Ashton and an inauthentic piece of choreography which is very much "after Petipa" then Ashton wins hands down every time.Not only is it beautiful but it keeps the company up to the mark technically in a way that MacMillan's works don't. Ashton's ballets expose the dancers in a way that MacMillan's most popular works do not. In Ashton's works it is pretty obvious whether a step has been danced correctly or not and emoting will not make up for untidy landings and laziness. In MacMillan's full length works a dancer can more easily get away with sloppiness by emoting a lot. He can even get away with edited highlights if he chooses to do so as at least one Lescaut proved in the last revival.

In an ideal world the companies resident at Covent Garden wouldn't be so anxious to get as much money into their coffers at the earliest date possible.In those circumstance both companies would revert to the system that was in place many years ago when booking periods were much shorter and the dates for booking tickets were much closer to the dates of performance. In those days you got far more information about casting than now. Although it has to be admitted that in some cases if you knew who were dancing the main roles the regulars could have reeled of the names of virtually every other dancer in the other named roles. Reverting to the original question about the frequency of performances of ballets in the repertory. There are some ballets such as Romeo and Juliet and Manon that turn up with such regularity that you begin to wonder whether at some point an artistic director signed a contract guaranteeing performances at regular intervals in his lifeblood, and others which have been out of the repertory for ages.Two Pigeons is one such ballet another is Coppelia.De Valois 1954 production of Coppelia was not performed at Covent Garden between the late sixties and the beginning of this century.Some ballets only last a season or two others come back with great frequency.New ballets if they are successful will be repeated as will new productions of the classics.As far as new works are concerned it is obviously less of a gamble to revive a new ballet first shown in the autumn of one season in the following season than it is to programme one shown for the first time in April or May in the following season. If I understood her correctly Rojo attached a price tag of a million pounds to ENB's revival of Le Corsaire.So you get some idea of the reason for the Royal Ballet's enthusiasm for its new Don Q.Programming it in three consecutive seasons was probably thought to be too much of a good thing. After all they want tickets to sell themselves rather than being forced to sell them at a discount. There are several Ashton ballets that are due for revival Cinderella,Sylvia,Ondine,Daphnis and Chloe, Wedding Bouquet,Jazz Calendar,Les Rendezvous,Facade,A Walk to the Paradise Garden and of course there is Persephone which someone should try to restore while some of the original cast are still above ground. It would be nice to see MacMillan's Solitaire and Nijinska's Les Biches again. As to which aspects of the Royal ballet's repertory we are likely to see over the next few years that really is down to the choices made by the Artistic Director. It isn't clear to me, at least,where O'Hare's "interests lie as far as the "company's classics", the works by Ashton, MacMillan and the Diaghilev legacy, are concerned.He has said that he wants new repertory but what that means for the "company classics" is not clear. It is likely to take a few more years before we really know what his ideas for the company amount to. The revival of Raven Girl next year does not promise well for the future. Kevin O'Hare's appointment was thought by many to be the choice of a safe pair of hands and an absolute guarantee,for good or ill, of continuity.His background is collateral Royal Ballet rather than direct decent and his time at BRB,a company which dances new choreography virtually every season, will have shaped him,but the real difference it seems to me is his age. I am excluding Ross Stretton from this because he was not there long enough to make much of a long term impact on the company.O'Hare's appointment to the post of Artistic Director marked a real turning point in the history of the company because it marks a generational change.Born in 1965 he was in his teens when Forsythe was making his first works. His tastes and his favoured aesthetic are likely to be markedly different from those of his predecessors. I can't imagine any of them allowing Untouchable on to the stage or thinking that Acosta's Don Q was what the company needed or, as one American critic pointed out,allowing a staging that appears to have been set with little apparent understanding of what it would look like from out front.On the other hand we have Alice an entertainment rather than a ballet and A Winter's Tale a ballet that seems to be the real thing; at least two choreographer's who seem to be capable of producing works of true value and more dancers of ability and talent than we have seen in the Covent Garden company for a long while.

While delayed casting information is not good news it could be beneficial to the company in the long run as far as dancer development is concerned.While he will have to cast the next booking period without knowing how dancers such as Ball,Magri,Naghdi and O'Sullivan have in the roles that he has cast them in during the Autumn season O'Hare should be able to take some of that into account when making casting decisions during the latter part of the 2015/16 season. Who knows he might even get to the point where he is able to us when he next revives Sleeping Beauty who is dancing Lilac Fairy,Bluebird and Princess Florine and who is cast in the Pas de Trois in Swan Lake.That would certainly be good news as far as I am concerned.

I think that congratulations are in order for all those who have been promoted.I am sure that some of those who were not promoted this year will be recognised and rewarded in due course.There is a whole season ahead of us. The Casting for the Winter and Spring seasons will give a clearer indication of who is likely to move up a rank at the end of the season. Apart from Naghdi and Ball,Reece Clarke is certainly someone to watch. He did extremely well in Symphonic Variations taking the Michael Somes role. His Jean de Brienne at the main stage RBS matinee last year was very impressive. He is tall has a good technique and stage presence.Here are a couple of names to conjure with Anne Rose O'Sullivan and Tierney Heap who are both dancers to watch. O'Hare knows that he is likely to have two Principal posts to fill in the next couple of years and it seems that he is going to play the long game as far as promotions to that level are concerned. If he has any sense he will not rush to fill vacancies.The longer he leaves it the greater the pool of talent will be from which he can choose. I am sure that he knows the effect that a couple of really well deserved internal promotions will have on the whole company. They say that great dancers are born but good dancers are taught by good teachers.I have no doubt that the fact that recent recruits from the RBS have been very impressive has a great deal to do with Gailene Stock's directorship of the school. We just have to hope that the currnet dirctor does not let standards slip.

It would be very nice to think that the Royal Ballet might consider reviving two of Cranko's works which it danced many years ago namely Card Game and the Lady and the Fool.But I should not want to see Lady and the Fool danced in the designs currently used by BRB. I fear that Cranko's works do not fit in with the long term plans for the company which, with the exception of Acosta's Don Q,seem to involve refreshing the repertory with new works rather than reviving or acquiring works made fifty,or more, years ago. I suspect that the problem with the Cranko repertory is that it is thought not sufficiently challenging or ground breaking. Although McGregor was appointed by his predecessor, Monica Mason, programming works by McGregor and Shechter help establish that O'Hare is interested in,and committed to new developments in dance.It won't be too long before most people have forgotten that McGregor was not appointment by him. As far as the company's repertory is concerned it is difficult to strike the right balance between new works,old works which maintain technical standards and established works where it is possible to cover technical faults by emoting.Programming too many of the latter can play havoc with a company's technical abilities in a very short time.Acquiring new works whether works that are acknowledged masterpieces or works created on the company's dancers is important for the continued health of a company.What gets programmed and what is acquired under any director is dependent on their taste.If we are lucky they have good taste and are alive to the needs of their dancers and are aware of the choreographic riches available to the company.If we are unlucky we get someone like Ross Stretton. The range of works that the Stuttgart Company is able to perform shows what you can do with a decent state subsidy.The Royal Ballet is perhaps too dependent on private money and box office receipts to be very adventurous. That fact should make it more likely than not that Cranko's works might return to the repertory and that a wider range of them is shown, than is the case at present.However there is the question of the director's taste and interests. Given his age I suspect that he finds many of them rather quaint and dated.

The sum of £10,750,000 was spent on ballet in the 2013-14 season I thought that it might be interesting to try to work out where some of the money went. Fortunately Tamra Rojo has recently given an interview in which she talks about new productions and provides a couple of price tags; a full length work does not leave you any change from £1,000,000 and a new triple bill is likely to cost in the region of £500,000.I think that it is fair to assume that the cost of mounting new productions for ENB and the RB are not that different. The two new full length productions at Covent Garden during the 2013-14 season could well have cost more as neither were exactly conventional stagings.The re-orchestration of the Minkus score will have added to the cost of the staging of Don Q while the Winter's Tale, although a co-production, may well have cost a lot more because it was a completely new ballet. Then there is the cost of reviving works.The company has to pay for the right to perform a copyright work or in the case of the revival of a nineteenth century classic pay the director for the right to perform his or her production.The company may have to pay for the services of an authorised coach.That is certainly so in the case of the Balanchine's works. The authorised coach or a rights owner may be involved in casting the dancers or at least vetting those that have been chosen;in some cases the company will be allowed to do this itself.In some cases there may be additional costs because classically trained singers or the opera chorus are required. I have no idea how much the company pays for the right to dance a Balanchine ballet or any other work for that matter.The performing arts are labour intensive and therefore expensive But when you consider that the company has ninety plus dancers who are employed on a full time basis whose salaries and on costs are included in the £10,750,000 as are the costs of the company's administrative staff, coaches, the orchestral musicians and the back stage staff who support the company and make its performances possible then the sum seems quite reasonable.

Hamilton is at the point where a dancer whose potential is being considered is given the chance to show what he or she can do in really exposed classical roles where you can't hide deficiencies.A lot of those roles are no longer considered of sufficient interest to warrant a mention in the booking material or on the website closer to the date of performance so its a matter of hit or miss as to whether or not you see a dancer like Hamilton in them repeatedly or not at all. What I have seen of her in these roles is not as impressive as her modern work but not necessarily incapable of being remedied by intensive coaching and practice through performance.Dancing principal roles will build her stamina and as a principal she is unlikely to be called upon to fill gaps in the corps when they arise as well as doing the work of a soloist. Lack of musicality, if she is unmusical, is a bigger problem and not so easy to remedy.The national dancing at White Lodge was introduced as much to identify the unmusical at an early stage of their training as to provide experience of traditional indigenous dance forms. Regardless of whether anyone is promoted the casting for the next booking period could provide a very useful indication of how committed Kevin O'Hare is to developing the company from the bottom up. Will he entrust Giselle to anyone making making a debut in Romeo and Juliet? Will the casting for Two Pigeons be a repeat of the Autumn casting or will we see some of the really young dancers given a chance? The ballet was created for young dancers and at one time it was a regular feature of the Royal Ballet School's annual main stage performance so it is just possible that we might get to see some really interesting young dancers.

My choice excludes works protected or do I mean embalmed by the Balanchine Trust?and the Cranko works made for Stuttgart which I feel would be more than adequately guarded by the Powers that be at Stuttgart. The five ballets that I would preserve are:- 1. Symphonic Variations which for me is a perfect synthesis of music,choreography and design. Calm serenity made possible by the restraint inherent in classical ballet.Every movement is perfect and absolutely suited to the music and its mood. 2. Scenes de Ballet which is an extraordinary variation on a theme of Petipa's Aurora. It is always seen at its best when danced by a ballerina with plenty of performances of Aurora under her belt who has the sort of musicality which allows her to play with the music and the sensitivity to show the difference between the diamond section and the pearl section.All the dancers on stage need to dance with total precision.It is atypical Ashton and when danced well it takes on the mood of a mysterious ritaul. 3,La Fille Mal Gardee the greatest comic ballet and a strong contender for the greatest ballet created for the Covent Garden company. Masterly choreography throughout and unlike MacMillan,Ashton knows what to do when he has his full corps on stage. There is no padding.Every time I see it I see something new.Looking at a comparatively small section of the work such as the opening of the harvest scene which is merely preparatory to the arrival of the principal characters the audience is presented with the perfectly contrived movement of the corps combining ballet movement and natural movement the patterns and repeats do not out stay their welcome. 4. The Song of the Earth MacMillan's masterpiece.Perfect in its austerity.It does not follow the text slavishly but the images linger in the memory.Its references to the Chinese origins of the text are subtly done. When the boys up end themselves to echo the reference to the porcelain pagoda's reflected in the water they also manage to suggest incense burners.Each section provides images of the transitory nature of life so that the ballet manages simultaneously to hint at the medieval dance of death while providing striking images that reflect the text being sung.In the last section the inevitability of death is accepted and the three figures the man , the woman and the eternal one achieve a beautiful serenity as the music draws to a close. 5. Les Noces. A quite extraordinary work musically and choreographically. Nearly a hundred years old it still feels incredibly modern.Diaghilev is said to have wept when he first saw the ballet.It is the last of the Diaghilev ballets with a Russian theme. Everyone involved in it knew that they would never return home. Perhaps it is that knowledge with gives the work its power. Stravinsky is aid to have been reluctant to have his score used in a ballet. What a good thing that he finally agreed Diaghilev's original idea was to try to repeat the pre-war success that the company had experienced with Le Coq d'Or. As originally envisaged the ballet, which accompanies a score incorporating a fragmentary text containing songs and phrases associated with traditional peasant weddings, was to have been brightly dressed in traditional peasant costumes.It was the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska who insisted that all the dancers should be dressed simply in what amounts to a brown and cream uniform. Noces is concerned with the community and its rituals not the individuals who are to be married. In the first scene the bride has her hair plaited by her friends as the chorus sing about her bright shining tresses. She is blessed by her parents. In the second scene the bridegroom is blessed by his parents and the Archangel Michael is invoked.This section is far more energetic than the first one with grooms friends stamping and swirling around him.The next section shows the bride leaving her parents and her mother mourning the loss of her child. The final scene shows us the communal response to the wedding.The bridal couple and their parents sit on a bench on an inner stage raised above the dancing villagers.At the back of the raised stage is an open door with a clearly visible bed. The villagers dance.The bride and groom stand and walk across the front of the raised inner stage and return to their seat. For the villagers it is a time for drinking and rejoicing. The villagers dance in a mass. The women dance neatly while the men stamp vigorously.Two of the villagers a man and a woman step out of the crowd and each dances a solo. At one point the man faces the audience as one of the singers calls on everyone to raise their glasses.The groom leads his wife into the bedroom. the door is closed behind them and a curtain is drawn across the inner stage. The dancers form a final pyramid. The greatest of the ballets from the Diaghilev repertory the choreography is the equal of one of Stravinsky's greatest scores.

Aileen. The people who post on Ballet Alert may not be representative of the entire ballet going community in the US but from the comments about the tour on that site it seems to be a combination of poor publicity and the choice of repertory rather than brand loyalty that is at the root of the poor ticket sales in New York. Management does not seem to appreciate that the ballet going community in the US is as aware as anybody here about which ballets and which performances were well received here and which were not. For all I know Kevin O'Hare may believe that Osipova and Golding are a wonderful cast in the Dream but anyone can find out what the consensus of opinion was about that cast when they danced in it here last year.For me Golding was by far the worst aspect of the duo so the fact that Osipova was injured in ABT's Giselle would make me disinclined to go and see the Golding cast even if every other aspect of the casting including the replacement Titania was perfect. Mr O'Hare may believe that the second programme contains two masterpieces but everyone in New York can easily discover that they were not that well received here.The odds and ends that are being offered to replace the ballet which has a set which cannot be used in the New York theatre in which the company is due to appear are not that appealing. The most interesting piece in the second programme is Muntagirov's party piece, a solo for the Beau Gosse from NIjinska's Le Train Bleu. It is very short. The New York audience is not a provincial audience that will accept anything because the Royal Ballet is providing it. It is an audience that has the opportunity to see virtually anything of interest or value in the world of dance. That is something that I would have expected would have been taken into account when planning the tour. Even if the New York audience is interested in seeing the company they are unlikely to be impressed by what they are being offered.A programme of the Dream with variable casts and the Song of the Earth and a second programme of two weak ballets and some odds and ends masquerading as divertisements.

Bangorballetboy. Thank you for pointing me to where the figures can be found. I am relieved to discover that my educated guess is not too far off the mark. It seems to me that all the while O'Hare shows that he has his finger on the pulse and knows what he is doing as far as commissioning new works and ticket sales are concerned the ballet management will be left alone. But the minute that his sureness of touch is perceived to have disappeared that will be the end of the free rein as far as choice of repertory and programming is concerned. Whatever you think about his choice of choreographers and the works that they produce it would be nothing short of a disaster if the company has another "Mr Worldly Wise moment". I imagine that the US tour was intended to make money rather than to gain prestige so it must be something of a disappointment that ticket sales seem to be so poor in New York. I understand that ballet tours are underwritten in New York to ensure that visiting companies do not suffer a loss by appearing there but the fact that the company seems to have misread the New York audience is the sort of thing that gets remembered by "bean counters" and can come back to haunt the people concerned. I'm not sure that the casts for the Dream in the first programme or the choice of works in the second programme are exactly enticing.

Two Pigeons.If Prospect was revived for the centenary of de Valois' birth that would mean it was revived in 1998 and that feels about right as far as "dim and distant" is concerned. I have a recollection of seeing it at Sadler's Wells. As with all ballets but particularly ballets of that type it needs careful casting and a couple of runs of performances so that everyone feels at home in it and the dancers don't feel inhibited by being required to dance in a comic ballet. I seem to recall that David Morse appeared in it but I am probably totally wrong. If we have to wait for the 125th anniversary of dr Valois' birth we will have to wait until 2023 and if we wait for the twenty fifth anniversary of her death we will have to wait until 2026. If we wait that long it will be declared incapable of revival.

I think that the problem with Tudor as far as De Valois was concerned was that she had doubts about his professionalism. I don't know why.I have a feeling that this was before he made Lilac Garden.Perhaps she did not like the way he worked. After all when Ashton became part of the nascent RB he had a body of work that she would have known about, if not seen, the works he had made for the Camargo Society and the work he had done in the commercial theatre for Cochrane. At the point when she was making up her mind about Tudor he did not have anything in his portfolio. Two Pigeons could you hazard a guess about how recently "comparatively recently" is in terms of years? I am interested because I recall seeing Prospect but it was some time ago. I have got to the point where something that I think is recent generally turns out to be between eight and ten years ago. My suggestions about the Cranko pieces were for RB.I can think of several people who would make a good job of the Joker in Card Game. Somehow the ballet management at Covent Garden appears to associate ballet as a serious art form with earnest mixed bills. The earnestness quotient has got so high that it needs to be diluted at regular intervals.