FLOSS

It is unfortunate that the costs are not broken down so that we could compare the costs of the opera side of the organisation with the ballet's. As I understand it the opera and ballet companies are each required to cover their own costs. The ballet company no longer subsidizes the opera.As far as the opera side of the organisation is concerned I heard a long time ago that the cost of mounting a new production is covered by the time of the third revival. I have no idea when a new ballet production breaks even and goes into profit but I think that we have to accept that a new production like Don Q does not have lots of performances simply to run the production in and to ensure that the company has the choreography well and truly embedded in their bodies. The large number of performances ensures that some of the expenditure is recovered in double quick time. The ROH annual report is accessible on line.It describes expenditure under a number of headings one of which is "Performance,Learning and Outreach". As there appears to be no separate heading for the costs of the people who actually perform in the pit and on the stage I assume that these costs are included under this heading as well as the costs of sets and costumes,licences to perform ballets and the cost of authorised coaches. The opera company no longer has a number of contract singers which reduces the on costs but it does have a chorus which it will add to on an ad hoc basis for certain operas.As singers in the chorus are older than the dancers they are generally paid considerably more than members of the corps de ballet. That may seem unfair to some but they were required to appear in nineteen different productions during the 2013-14 season, singing in Italian, French and German. There were four new productions during the season plus a production that was new to the House and fourteen revivals on the main stage.We had a new Sicilan Vespers and a new Parsifal,a new Die Frau ohne Schatten and a new Manon Lescaut and a new Maria Stuarda. The Dialogue des Carmelites was described as new to Covent Garden. New productions cost a lot not simply because of the initial production costs but because the casts for new productions tend to consist of big names. But that does not mean that revivals come cheap the revival of La Fille du Regiment included Juan Diego Florez who will have cost quite a bit. Most of the productions being revived paid for themselves a long time ago but that does not mean that they did not cost a lot to stage.The cost of each opera varies according to its category, Italian, French or German whether star names have been engaged for a particular revival and the general scarcity of certain types of singer. Generally singers required for Wagner and Strauss are in shorter supply and are therefore more expensive than those required for the Italian repertory unless you are staging Turandot which requires singers with big voices. A good rule of thumb is a big voice costs big money and as Wagner and Strauss went in for big orchestras operas by these composers require singers with big voices. The new Parsifal had a set that looks like nothing very much but costs a bomb while Frau probably had a lot more spent on it than was obvious from the auditorium.The Maria Stuarda looked like a pretty cheap production the presence of Joyce DiDonato would have added considerably to the costs. The new production that almost certainly cost considerably more than intended was The Sicilian Vespers. It was directed by the latest fashionable opera director who the world's musical press have agreed is a genius. As a result no expense was spared.The action was set inside an opera house so the back of the stage had tiers of opera boxes, each chorus member appeared to have an individually designed costume and the whole thing should have been pressed into service for use in the new Masked Ball that we had at the beginning of this season. So far so good. But this new Vespers was supposed to include the entire ballet music with choreography by Johan Kobborg and as we all know that did not happen.The director decided that he did not want Mr Kobborg and his ballet. And almost as soon as the change of plan was announced Mr Kobborg decided that he wanted to leave the company.Given that this occurred only about four months before the production was due to be premiered quite a lot of cost must have been incurred in preparation.My recollection is that the ballet was intended to involve members of the Royal Danish Ballet so I assume that the opera company must have incurred expenditure in compensating everyone effected by this last minute change of plans on the part of the opera company. Unfortunately the truth may not be revealed for many years but at the time it seemed like pretty shabby treatment by the opera company. Now for the ballet. New productions cost a lot but some revivals don't come cheap either. I know I attended a meeting some time ago at which Monica Mason was the speaker. One of the first things she told us was that while it was nice to know that we wanted to see performances of certain ballets but we had to understand that in asking for revivals of Gloria,Requiem,Song of the Earth and Les Noces we were asking for the revival of some of the most expensive works in the Royal Ballet's repertory. The new ballet productions were Carlos Acosta's Don Q , Wheeldon's Winter's Tale and a new work by Marriott. There was also a revival of Gloria.The two full length works had complicated stagings and in the case of Don Q involved re-orchestration of Minkus' score and in the case of the Wheeldon a new score.The revivals would have involved the cost of licensing and in some cases at least the use of authorised external coaches.An ill educated guess of the break down in costs between the opera and ballet companies is that for every three pounds spent by the opera company the ballet spends two. Anyway although I agree that Wayne McGregor's works call for over complicated lighting and other effects which I sometimes feel are there to distract us from the lack of real choreographic content in his works I fear that we will be forced to find him not guilty as far as the bulk of the expenditure on the ballet during 2013-2014 is concerned.

Surely it is because the work was printed and published at a relatively early stage in the European wide development of secular literature in the sixteenth century that it became a cornerstone in every European linguistic literary tradition with every country having its own pronunciation of the hero's name? The literate population in each country were beginning to use their local languages in preference to Latin and were creating new literary forms and coining new words at an incredible rate. "Quixotic" is not a recent addition to our vocabulary.The pronunciation of the word retains the original and correct pronunciation of the Don's name in English.However in order to avoid much debate and controversy over my use of my mother tongue I always call the ballet Don Q. It's so much simpler than being required to use the Spanish pronunciation of the name of the greatest European chivalrous adventurer whose exploits are preserved and savoured in colloquial phrases across Europe. I trust that you will not accuse me of tilting at windmills by posting this.

I would add Anthony Tudor's Echoes of Trumpets to the list of works that MAB has made of ENB's works. I am intrigued to discover that the repertory of both Royal ballet companies is so perfect that few works have been suggested as acquisitions.The other aspect to this discussion which is equally intriguing is that no one has suggested works by Anthony Tudor, Peter Darrell or Walter Gore.It is as if they never existed. So here are some works that I think that audiences should see and dancers should perform. De Valois' The Prospect Before Us a ballet about eighteenth century theatre rivalries,arson and a drunken Irish theatre owner;Ashton's Jazz Calendar and his Persephone;Tudor's Gala Performance,as long as it is played straight rather than for laughs ;Cranko's Card Game and Brouillards;Peter Darrell's Jeux which sounds intriguing and his Tales of Hoffmann and last, but by no means least Walter Gore's Street Games which also sounds fascinating. I recognise that my suggestions reveal my frivolous nature but you can have too much sack cloth and ashes.I thought that the audience's response to the last revival of Fille was not simply a reaction to a series of fine performances of a sunny masterpiece. At some very deep level it was a response to the triple bill that preceded it. I love mixed bills because of the opportunity they give to experience a wide range of choreographic styles and to see a lot of the company but even the presence of two acknowledged masterpieces in that programme did not relieve the feeling that it was overly earnest and intended to do us good rather than entertaining us. Some of these works might not be suitable for the main stage but there is always the Linbury. These works would be useful as a counterweight to the dominant place that MacMillan's ballets and earnest works in general have in the repertory and in the minds of dancers and young choreographers. Most young choreographers go through a phase of trying on other choreographer's clothes and Scarlett's Sweet Violets,Hansel and Gretel and The Age of Anxiety suggest that he is stuck in his MacMillan phase. Perhaps making a wider range of twentieth century choreography available to audiences and dancers alike would be beneficial and act as a stimulus to the creation of a wider range of works than we see at present.

MAB Your list of fine ballets that ENB has had in its repertory over the years supports the view that I have of the company but expressed rather awkwardly.Most new ADs at ENB seem to treat the company as if it has no history.They accept that it has a couple of productions that the public will always be prepared to pay money to see but after that it is as if the company has never acquired or performed anything of great interest or significance.Each AD "transforms" the company acquiring ballets new to its repertory which it performs until that director leaves and is replaced which,in turn, results in those works slipping out of the repertory to be replaced with the new director's choice of works.Wayne Eagling seemed to be an honourable exception to this corporate amnesia but his proposal to revive Ashton's Romeo and Juliet was rejected by the Board. What a missed opportunity that was! The ballets that you list have for the main part slipped out of the collective memory and into oblivion and on the rare occasion that works like Etudes are revived the company seems to find it more difficult to dance them than they used to in spite of the much vaunted improvement in technique over the last thirty years.

As I have never had anything to do with running a company I would not know how dancers are selected for particular roles or the basis on which promotions are awarded.But there are some things that I feel that I can talk about from my own observation.It may seem strange but technique alone is not enough to guarantee good roles or promotion.Sometimes it is obvious to everyone that a dancer has everything that is needed technique, stage presence and the ability to transform steps and gestures to give them meaning.Others have to wait to be discovered by someone who has the ability to identify potential that may not be obvious to others. In a BBC tribute to Frederick Ashton broadcast soon after his death Sibley spoke about his selection of dancers for particular roles. She commented that he did not always select the dancer who was the strongest technically but his choice was always right.This is somewhat similar to the account that Hans Brenna gave of casting roles in Bournonville ballets where he said that he selected dancers who looked right for the role and "had enough technique".For both men technique was clearly a factor to be considered but not the starting point nor the decisive factor in making casting decisions.It seems to me that lengthy experience of individual ballets in performance is central to the ability to get casting right. Once the link is broken successful revival becomes more difficult.A compelling reason for ensuring that individual ballets are revived regularly and the entire repertory is scheduled for performance in a methodical manner so that no part of it remains unperformed for any length of time.. I know that several people have commented on the need to avoid type casting and the interest that can be generated by casting against type. At least one person has reminded the Forum that Osipova joined the Royal Ballet to avoid the rigid type casting imposed by the Bolshoi.It would be interesting to know which ballets or which type of ballets are thought to be suitable for innovative casting. A pragmatic approach to casting where dancers are allocated roles on the basis that any one can do anything gives us a Giselle.in which there is an inadequate contrast between Giselle and Myrthe because the latter role is under cast and a Sleeping Beauty with a totally inadequate Lilac Fairy. Ballets, even abstract ones, are animated stage pictures.Casting can make or mar a ballet.Dancers are not interchangeable.There are tall dancers and short ones, some who dance quickly and energetically, others who dance slowly.Should a slow,sedate dancer be cast as Oberon or Troyte for the effect that it will have? Should a dancer who normally performs Puck be cast as Elgar? A tall elegant dancer is not going to make much of an impression as Ashton's Blue Skater.A role created for a lyrical dancer is unlikely to suit a dancer whose forte is fast,brilliant footwork.A dancer without a natural jump will make little impression as Lise. It is the balletic equivalent of casting a tenor in a role written for a bass. Inept casting can destroy a ballet or a section of a ballet. I wonder whether anyone posting on this forum has seen a half decent let alone an outstanding account of the Fairy Variations in the last ten years? Somewhere along the line the need for contrast between the variations has got lost and you may see the same dancer appearing in three of the variations at different times over the course of a few days with each variation danced in a virtually identical manner. As to who get promoted.Sometimes it is obvious from the day that a child enters a ballet school that there is something special about them.It is said that Sibley was identified very early on as having the potential to be a great classical ballerina.But it is not always the case that the dancer identified as having that special something is someone who is like everyone else in the class only more talented. At a time when the Imperial Theatres were dominated by the great Italian technicians and those who were ambitious sought to emulate them Pavlova was recognised as special by her teachers because she was perceived to embody the purity of the French school.Really talented dancers tend to make fairly rapid progress through the ranks. Others have to wait longer. One danger an AD has to guard against is that of rewarding dancers for long service rather than the quality of their dancing. Every AD has their own ideas about repertory and the type of dancers that they want to see on stage. The irony is that it is often their successor who reaps the benefit or suffers the effects of the changes that they set in train. MacMillan disbanded the Touring Company because he was told it was necessary to save costs. Ashton told John Percival that they had got rid of all the character dancers and they would not be able to dance his ballets. In fact the Covent Garden company continued to programme and dance Ashton's ballets well into the late 1980's without too much trouble although as time went on, and certainly after Somes ceased to be responsible for the Ashton repertory, you had to be careful about the cast you chose to see.Meanwhile MacMillan who may have favoured taller dancers as an ideal created his major works on dancers most of whom had been trained and recruited by de Valois and Ashton. It is a long time ago but my general impression is that sometime in the early 1980's it became obvious that there was something wrong with the company this in turn was evidence of long standing problems at the school. The older principal dancers were retiring but they were not being replaced by dancers of comparable quality.In Ashton's time there was no question that the principal dancers were not suited to principal roles During MacMillan's directorship that began to change. By the 1983-4 season John Percival was writing about "the customary miscasting ( based on the assumption that anyone who has been named a principal dancer must be suited to principal roles)". Does favouritism play a part in casting and promotion? Well it certainly can play a part and sometimes a very large part in such decisions. The most blatant example that I can think of occurred during Ross Stretton's directorship when dancers like Hatley, Yanowsky and Wildor were sidelined in favour of younger dancers.Changes in AD have not generally had a significant impact on personnel at the Royal Ballet and certainly don't seem to prompt the degree of speculation as to Who's up? Who's down? that the change of director has prompted at the POB.

I think that Melissa Hamilton is being very astute. She will not get much opportunity to dance classical works at the Royal Ballet this season so going to Dresden with the repertory that it is said that she will dance there will certainly assist any ambition for promotion that she may have. It is one thing to have a good stage presence but you need the technique to go with it. Her dancing of the Queen of the Dryads is better than last year but with that role as with Lilac Fairy, at present, she lacks the necessary technical command that is central to those roles.She would also improve her chances for future promotion if she can learn to dance with greater speed when occasion demands. She had difficulty with the speed required in Symphonic Variations.It will be interesting to see her on her return from Dresden. A name to look out for in a year or so Reece Clarke a very assured Jean de Brienne at the RBS Opera House matinee in 2014. He danced the Somes role in Symphonic Variations earlier this year dancing the performances for which Muntagirov was not available. As with Muntagirov he looked far better dancing with Nunez than with Hamilton.

Janet, I will try to give you some points of reference that we probably do share to explain what I find lacking in Choe's dancing. Some of Choe's fans try to deal with criticism of the lack of scale in her dancing by pointing out that she is not very tall which is why I mentioned Anne Jenner who was petite but danced big and could dominate the stage. If I say that for me she lacks the grandeur of Samsova and Barbieri both of whom were great in the classical repertory and equally capable of playing Lise extremely well; the stage presence of Yoshida and the sheer voltage of Donovan and Tait in performance I think that you will get an idea of what I think is lacking in her performances. I don't think that it is simply a question of coaching. You can help a performer make the most of their abilities but coaching can't put in things that are not there to begin with.There are dancers who are not very interesting in class or in the studio but are transformed when performing on stage in front of an audience. There are also dancers who catch the eye of the powers that be in class or in the studio where they give fine performances but lack the ability to perform in front of an audience because they are not stage animals. They may be fine in ballets that only require musicality and the accurate reproduction of steps to make their effect but if they have to evoke a mood or play a character they are lost. Perhaps it is the difference in sensibility between someone who regards ballet as purely concerned with the reproduction of steps and someone who understands innately that ballet is a theatrical art form.

It clearly isn't the case that you can say that someone who gets to the rank of First Soloist is a likely candidate for Principal rank. Some of the dancers at that level are specialists in the Ashton repertory but not necessarily seen by management as having what they want at Principal level.Belinda Hatley is a good example. She was a fine exponent of Lise and Swanhilde lovely as the secondary Sylph and a compelling Betrayed Girl. She actually managed to make the embroidery solo, which can seem overlong, interesting.But she clearly was not seen as Principal material. Then there are dancers like Cervera and Choe who have been at that level for several years now. Cervera has said that he is happy where he is and that he does not want to be a Principal because of the additional responsibilities that go withe rank. As for Choe I know that lots of people feel that she should be promoted.She is good technically but for me she is rather bland and I find her dancing particularly of Ashton rather small scale This observation has nothing to do with her height but when I compare her with someone like Anne Jenner for example I find that she does not dominate the stage and compel my attention.She reproduces steps efficiently but does not always dance the ballet. All of this is purely subjective.But AD's however hard they try to be objective will always have preferences as to the type of dancer that they want to see leading their company.Now all we have to do is wait and be patient.The first group of dancers that he promotes to Principal from within the company may give us more of an idea of the direction in which O'Hare intends to take the company than the appointments that he made last year.

It is strange that while the French are comfortable with their pronunciation of the character's name and would almost certainly find it affected to pronounce it in the Spanish manner the staff at the ROH cannot bring themselves to utter the name in anything other than the Spanish manner. I suppose it is something to do with signalling that the Opera House is a sophisticated international organisation. Perhaps it is so international and sophisticated that the staff are unaware that the standard English pronunciation of the good Don's name is Quicksott. Royal Opera House staff use the Spanish pronunciation when they make announcements but then the corporate approach there is rather affected. The House Style Book clearly tells everyone to use Latinate polysyllabic words whenever possible rather than one with a Germanic root.. Could it be because Germanic words are too plain and don't sound grand enough within the hallowed portals of the Royal Opera House?This affectation means that when it is only five or ten minutes before curtain up they can't bring themselves to tell you that the performance will begin in ten minutes they have to tell you that it will commence in ten minutes. Then as an international opera house they can't bring themselves to acknowledge that the names of many operas have well known English equivalents. That sort of thing is alright down the road at the Coli but not at the Royal Opera House. Recently there were performances of La Scala di Seta in the LInbury. Someone I know made an enquiry about the availability of tickets calling the opera The Silken Ladder the box office staff did not answer her question at once but did correct her by saying "La Scala di Seta".

I know that it is an old fashioned idea but just as some actors are naturally more suited to comedy than tragedy and each classically trained singer is more suited to certain areas of the repertory and certain roles within their voice type so dancers are better suited physically and temperamentally to certain roles. Michael Coleman a great demi character dancer was a fine Solor in Nureyev's one act Kingdom of the Shades but I can not imagine him dancing in the full length ballet. No amount of coaching will ever make tall dancers like Pennefather or Golding suited to dance Ashton's Jester,Blue Skater,Puck or the male role in the Neapolitan dance no one will ever make Paul Kay, fine dancer that he is, convincing as the Prince in Cinderella. The old division of dancers into types still has its place. I know there are people who want to see their favourite dancers in everything regardless of their suitability for particular roles but a role created on a soubrette technician is not suited to the lyrical dancer nor to a dancer who like Lamb is serious. or like Sibley is too sophisticated. As to the casting of Symphonic Variations the problem this time round was that management decided that the company could perform it and Scenes de Ballet on the same bill.I can't remember a time during the period when Ashton or Somes were in charge of these ballets when both were performed on the same evening although they were very occasionally danced on different evenings in the context of a mixed bill where the other ballets were performed every evening during the run.Both ballets were only performed when it was felt that there was a cast available that could do them justice. The reason that they were not performed on the same night was that there was a considerable overlap between the two casts and an extraordinary degree of continuity in casting from revival to revival.The man in the Somes role in Scenes was often the dancer who took the Brian Shaw role in Symphonic and the Ballerina in Scenes was, more often than not, also dancing the Fonteyn role in Symphonic. This time it was as if the management had no idea how difficult it is to get these ballets absolutely right and did not much care.It was seriously contemplating letting two slow dancers Golding and Hamilton appear in Symphonic. Golding was to dance the Michael Somes role at every performance and Hamilton was to dance the Fontyen role at some of them.I assume that the revised casting was attributable to the rights holder exercising a right of veto over Golding. It must have been clear that Muntagirov who came to the company with other contractual commitments was not going to be available for the entire run of that mixed bill. I think that Reece Clarke made a pretty good job of his first attempt at the Somes' role. He improved with each performance and was markedly better with Nunez than with Hamilton who just could not dance at the right speed. There was so much chopping and changing with the cast each night that it seemed as if the management had decided that a ballet that lasts about eighteen minutes could be used as a training opportunity for as many dancers as possible. The performances of Scenes were if anything worse. The dancers cast in the ballerina role failed to make the two sections sufficiently different. There was no real difference between the diamond and the pearl section and no sense of mystery as if everyone was engaged in some sort of rite. The management cast the four men from the corps rather than from the soloists and the overall result of its casting decisions was that we were treated to a series of performances which rarely managed to be more than laboured, dutiful,dull and somewhat untidy. Casting against type can be of interest it does less harm in a ballet which is performed with almost monotonous regularity such as Romeo and Juliet where casting someone who is not a natural Mercutio only harms the performance for the audience who attends it and is unlikely to undermine the reputation of the choreographer or the ballet. It is, for me at least, a different matter when it is a ballet which is rarely performed whose style is no longer central to the company's way of dancing. The problem is that casting against type quickly leads to an inability to identify the correct style in which a ballet or a variation should be danced. This indifference to stylistic differences between variations in the same ballet sooner or later lands you with a revival of Sleeping Beauty in which there is no one able to make much of the Fairy Variations because no one can identify the type of dancer required for each variation. The resulting performances become bland and indistinguishable and before long someone decides to revise the ballet by cutting the boring bits

Melody. I am not talking about attempting to reconstruct ballets, I am afraid that the reconstructions of early Diaghilev ballets that I have seen have not impressed me over much.We had an outbreak of reconstructions in the 1990's and most of them seemed to be exhumations rather than revivals.The ballets that I was referring to are ballets, in good productions, that were acquired by de Valois and Ashton. The RB's Massine ballets and Nijinska ballets were set on the company by the choreographers themselves and the others were set by Diaghilev's ballet master. The problem about reviving any ballet that has been out of the repertory for any length of time is the loss of collective knowledge about the piece. It is one thing to revive a ballet where there is a living tradition of performance quite another to revive a ballet when no one in a company has any experience of dancing it and there is no one with that experience available to cast it correctly and coach it.It is the reason why the entire repertory needs to be revived methodically rather than limited sections of it . There need to be people in the company who know and care about getting the casting right. Any ballet can be reduced to a piece of irrelevant nonsense if unsuitable dancers are cast in it.Although the current fashion is to cast senior dancers in everything regardless of their suitability I think it does no one any favours.The audience does not really get to see the ballet as the choreographer intended and the audience will almost certainly blame everything on the choreographer because they will assume that the management know what they are doing and that their favourite dancer could not possibly be miscast.Casting is very much a case of horses for courses but management generally seems more concerned with keeping dancers and their fans happy than showing ballets at their best by concentrating on getting casting and coaching right. Then there is the little problem of copyright which put Isabella Fokine in charge of revivals of her grandfather's works and Lorca Massine in charge of his father's works.Unfortunately blood relationship with a major choreographer is no guarantee that the individual concerned will have any great skill in reviving and staging ballets. The revivals in which Fokine's granddaughter has been involved have, to my eyes, been pretty much inert. ENB's recent revival of Petrushka was not a patch on past revivals by the RB and BRB which had clearly started with identifying a dancer or dancers who might do the role of Petrushka justice and neither of which had her dead hand laid upon them. In the ENB's staging the movement of the crowd was pretty aimless and the dances of the coachmen,stable boys,street entertainers and wet nurses had the air of divertisements rather than activity in a swirling crowd which the choreographer brings to your attention. The stable boys were clearly getting ready to dance rather than bursting out of the crowd and then disappearing back into it. The coachmen's dance was clearly a little dance and not a dance that developed from the chief coachman beating his arms to keep warm .The two street entertainers were only on stage because the choreography required them to be there; there was no suggestion that they were trying to entertain the crowd to earn money,no hint of bitter rivalry between the two of them.It was all very dispiriting and anyone who saw those performances would no doubt think that the ballet was pretty pointless. But it is not just the Diaghilev repertory that is in danger from inept casting. At the beginning of the season management proposed that Matthew Golding should appear in Symphonic Variations. We were saved from that but the overall casting was far too variable to ensure that everyone who attended those performances saw a fine account of the major works that were programmed.Again anyone attending the final programme of the season gained very different impressions of it depending on which performance they attended. MacMillan's Song of the Earth was well performed but the same could not be said of the Robbin's pieces.The performances of In the Night were more variable than was the case when it was last revived. The first cast brought far more to it than the second cast managed although.Lamb and Bonelli were excellent in both the Robbin's works in which they appeared. I am not convinced that management has got the balance right nor that it is as sensitive to getting casting right as it should be. It is as if such matters are considered irrelevant.

I am not sure that the problem with the Massine ballets is that they are weak. The problem is that they are usually badly cast. I also recall seeing Cippola in Tricorne and much as I admired him in other ballets I thought that he was hopelessly miscast in the role of the Miller. Sections of the ballet for example when the Miller dances the farucca should dazzle the audience I am afraid that my recollection of the revival is that it was dutiful and pallid. I suspect that part of the problem is that companies recruit dancers for their perfect bodies rather than their stage presence.If a company decides to revive a Massine ballet which contains a role that he created for himself it is going to be forced to undertake compromise casting. A principal dancer is selected and cast because the role of the Miller is the main male role and the dancer concerned has a certain stage presence, But what gets forgotten is that a real dance actor is needed who has a strong technique and fierce attack. A technician who can act rather than a prince is called for. Massine was a demi character dancer who was torn between becoming an actor or a dancer. His Moscow training gave him a thorough grounding in national dancing and character dancing. In addition when he created Tricorne Massine studied Spanish dancing with a young dancer called Felix.There is a short section of film. which I saw on television years ago.It showed Massine in the wings preparing to go on as the Miller.He is clearly in character and the speed and ferocity of his dancing has to be seen to be believed. He clearly had the ability to mesmerise an audience.The sort of dancer that you have to watch even when they are simply standing still.Such dancers are rare in any company.But the fact that so few demi character ballets are performed makes the revival of any ballets in the genre difficult. Even a ballet like Cranko's Pineapple Poll presents casting problems, Most dancers are happy in pure abstract works and the classics but they seem uncomfortable when dancing demi character comedy ballets. BRB's last revival of Pineapple Poll only had one satisfactory Captain Belaye.Of the casts that I saw only Robert Parker had the right demeanor and the necessary technical brilliance to perform the irresistable captain.In the other casts that I saw the Belayes danced neatly but they were small scale,dutiful and dull and a friend who did not know the ballet asked why it had been revived when she first saw it.It was only when she saw a performance in which Parker performed Belaye that she saw the reason for its revival. It seems to me that unless you have a .really good technically strong demi character dancer available there is little point in reviving any of Massine's works in which he danced if you do revive them without such a dancer there is a big hole in the ballet where there should be a dominating character.His ballets are a bit like Bellini's Norma they have to have the right performer to work as their author intended.With the wrong performer they look pale and lifeless.

Well, it is a very interesting question but not one which anyone but Mr O'Hare and Mr Acosta are likely to be in a position to answer at this moment.As it costs a lot to mount a new production of a three act work I imagine that Don Q will be revived. It is fascinating to see that the response to the RB's Don Q from critics and ballet goers who blog are pretty mixed in the US and not dissimilar to the responses from similar sources here. I found the comment that the production appeared to have been mounted from the perspective of a dancer on stage rather than from the point of view of someone sitting out front watching the stage was very perceptive. It goes a long way to explain some of the awkwardness of the staging. A little Don Q goes a long way for me.If I were going to see a live Don Q I would prefer to see a performance of a well thought out carefully staged revival such as the one that Ratmansky mounted for the Dutch National Ballet which tries to retrieve aspects of the original production that were lost in revivals from 1905 onward or the completely over the top display of the Russian idea of sunny Spain that the Bolshoi perform. The Royal Ballet does many things extremely well but the style of classical dance that is normally associated with Russian and Cuban performances of Don Q doesn't come naturally to its dancers who generally lack panache.The RB has many ballets in its repertory that it performs infrequently to which it is much better suited and which it should be dancing regularly. In the dim and distant past the RB did not have a "Christmas show" that dominated the schedule from November well into January.O'Hare does not seem inclined to depart from this style of mindless scheduling that I associate with Dowell's directorship so I expect that Don Q will remain a Christmas repertory piece for a long time to come.But there are many other family friendly ballets that the RB could and should be dancing regularly which are structurally and choreographically stronger than Acosta's Don Q,such as Fille, Coppelia and Cinderella. I am sure that the next time that the Bolshoi visit here they will bring their Don Q. So in the unlikely event that Acosta's production is quietly dropped after the US tour you should not have too long to wait.

The decision to limit the question to the two Royal Ballet companies was a deliberate one. Both companies are big enough to be able to perform most ballets and the Covent Garden company, in particular. has an extensive range of major works available to it ranging from the nineteenth century classics acquired in the nineteen thirties to masterpieces created for Diaghilev and those created in house by Ashton, Cranko and MacMillan. I hoped that knowledge of the existence of this group of twentieth century classics would encourage everyone who responded to my question to think in terms of suggesting major works that both dancers and audiences should experience in live performance rather than suggesting that it would be nice to have a work by a particular choreographer without specifying the work to be acquired.During the first fifty years of the existence of the Royal Ballet companies,because the in house choreographers were very productive,most of the ballets acquired from outside choreographers were acknowledged major works not ballets of unknown quality from known choreographers .The idea behind this question is not to identify a ballet that it would be nice to see for one or two seasons as a novelty but one that should form part of the company's regular repertory. That is a ballet that would be revived from time to time. As to why I left out ENB the reason is simple enough.My experience of London Festival Ballet/English National Ballet over the years is that while it has had a limited number of classic productions such as Mary Skeaping's Giselle and Markova's Les Sylphides it does not have an extensive back catalogue of masterpieces that it can dip into from time to time because changes of artistic director tend to mean upheavals in repertory.In addition I am anxious to avoid having a discussion about repertory degenerate into a debate about the relative merits of the company's current artistic director and her predecessor.

Two Pigeons. I understand that de Valois acquired Coppelia, Giselle,Swan Lake,Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker century for their historical and musical significance as well as a means of attaining and maintaining a high level of technical skill but I think that they should all be danced at regular intervals. I think that the Ashton works particularly Cinderella and Sylvia are almost as capable of securing and maintaining technical skills. I do not think that MacMillan's full length works are much use in this area as they do not expose the dancer to the same degree. They provide too much hiding space for those whose forte is emoting rather than clean technique. Of course there is MacMillan's Concerto that was designed to enable him to identify dancers with technical weaknesses perhaps they should programme that every year. Runs of the classics are too long because virtually every principal has to be given their chance to dance in them. It was much simpler in the past when you saw the principals in the roles to which they were best suited.It came as a bit of a shock when Norman Morrice became AD and let them dance a wider range of roles to discover that some dancers were not suited to everything. Because runs of ballets were shorter this enabled a greater proportion of the repertory to be performed each year and I suspect that it made revivals easier. I know that the repertory was smaller then but each mixed bill covered a wider spread of the repertory than is now the case and we were not exposed to earnest triple bills. We haven't seen Daphnis and A Wedding Bouquet for at least ten years and it's even longer since Facade was staged. It is ages since we saw Balanchine's Prodigal Son, Massine's La Boutique Fantasque,Mam'zelle Angot and Le Tricorne and Nijinska's Les Biches and Fokine's Petrushka. I am happy to see new works but I think that both companies should actually perform the Diaghilev classics and the company's classics rather than trotting them out for anniversaries.If the new works are good they can withstand comparison with the major works of the past.

Jane s.Thank you for the correction about the source material. What thoughts if any do you have about the repertory danced by both companies?

I recall reading a lengthy interview that an eminent ballet critic gave to Jane Simpson in which not surprisingly he discussed the state of the Royal Ballet.This was in 2001.He talked about the three bases on which the company had been established. 1)The classics in honourable productions. 2)The works of the home choreographers Ashton, MacMillan and Cranko. 3) A sense of history. Here he was talking about the works of Fokine,Nijinska,Massine and Balanchine theirs were works that people ought to see and know about. He said that the company should be full of dancers who know the stylistic difference between Petipa, Nijinska,Balanchine, Massine and Fokine and have these works in their bodies just as a pianist will know his Bach and Beethoven. The question about getting the balance right between old and new was prompted by the burst of creative activity that we have recently experienced and the thought that over the years the company has become reliant on an increasingly limited number of ballets.A handful of classics not all of which are to be seen in good productions and a couple of MacMillan blockbusters to generate most of its income.We see comparatively little Ashton and not all of what we see is particularly well cast and as far as the Diaghilev ballets are concerned their revivals often leave a lot to be desired.The last time Les Sylphides was revived it was embarassingly bad . Ballets only live in performance and there is a great deal of difference between reviving a ballet that has passed out of the performance experience of an entire company and one that is part of a living tradition of performance. Is the balance between the nineteenth century ballets acquired by de Valois, the four or five viable MacMillan full lengths and the five by Ashton right in terms of frequency of performance? Do we see too many full length ballets compared with the major twentieth century one act ballets? Do we see too many performances of some works because every principal or virtually every principal must be allowed to give us her Juliet or Manaon? Do we see enough Ashton? Do we see too much late MacMillan and not enough of his early works? Should we see more of Cranko's one act works such as Jeux de Cartes? The themed mixed bill reduces the range and variety of works to be seen on one evening and arguably limits the number of choreographers whose work we are likely to see in the course of a season. Is this a price worth paying in order to put bums on seats? The themed evening can,after all only be aimed at selling tickets.

Bristol BillyBob you can suggest any works that you like. While it would be nice to think that the majority of suggestions are about ballets that would fill gaps in the repertory of BRB or the RB or works that are in danger of being lost because they are not performed the question is about the ballets that you would acquire for the company. Which company do want to acquire this proposed new work by New Adventures and what would it add to its repertoire? I am interested.

Gore's 1952 ballet is called Street Games. There is an entry about it in Brinson and Crisps'book A Quick Guide to Ballet and Dance. I wonder whether this work or others by him are capable of revival? There are several other British choreographers whose works have all but been written out of the narrative of the history of British Ballet where there is only room for the "towering genius" of the unappreciated Kenneth MacMillan whose works have come to dominate the Royal Ballet's repertory and the "smaller scale art" of Frederick Ashton. It would be very good to see the works of choreographers such as Walter Gore,Frank Staff and Peter Darrell whose Jeux sounds intriguing. I am not sure that their works are essential additions to the repertory of the Covent Garden company on its main stage but apart from a few pieces by Peter Darrell I don't know their works. I sometimes think that the Linbury Theatre could be put to better use than it it is at present by being used for the systematic revival of works by choreographers such as these and for revivals of works that were made for a smaller stage such as Tudor's Lilac Garden,The Judgement of Paris and Gala Performance, Ashton's Capriol Suite and Andre Howard's La Fete Etrange.

I understand that it is beneficial for dancer's development to have works created on them because choreographers often see things in dancers that no one is aware of until it is revealed in a ballet but new ballets cost money and the expenditure has to be justified.I know that it is not very adventurous to acquire ballets that have already got a proven track record but when it comes to contemporary choreographers such as Ratmansky do you think that it is better to acquire a ballet that has been successful elsewhere or take a chance on the choreographer concerned making a ballet which while it is unique to the company is not very good? After all too many unsuccessful new ballets send management back to the ever diminishing list of ballets that audiences are prepared to pay good money to see. I would love to see more Robbins ballets but it would seem that his works present problems for some people.This is not a "wrong audience" statement but a suggestion that while it is obvious that casting is of great significance in ensuring that an audience sees a performance that does a particular work justice there is also the question of what the members of the audience are looking for in a ballet performance.I will give an example of what I mean from something I read yesterday about a performance of a ballet in Australia. The critic said that it was a happy ballet which did not keep you on the edge of your seat and that the dancers were constrained by the choreography which gave none of them the chance to show off. The ballet was Ashton's Symphonic Variations. That critic and presumably a good part of the audience expected to see exhibitions of bravura technique rather than a ballet of mood and serenity in which the technical difficulties are hidden and everything is apparent nuanced ease.I have to say that my mind boggles at the prospect of a Soviet style ballet set to that score. But the fact remains that if you started your ballet going watching works which were created to display technique and saw those works and the classics danced as if they were only in the repertory to enable a dancer to treat the set pieces as opportunities for display with the occasional MacMillan full length danced to display technique with out pourings of emotion then you are going to find many major pure dance pieces a bit tame.We all of us learn to watch ballet by going to performances and the performance style and the director's choice of repertory that we first see makes us the ballet goers that we are. If a ballet goer who sees performances in terms of opportunities for bravura technical display watches a ballet of the nuanced mood variety, even one danced by a strong cast, he/she is likely to be more aware of what it does not deliver than what it does and will probably consider the work a weak one.If it is badly cast the ballet goer will think that it is the ballet rather than the cast that is at fault. But I don't think that the answer is not to perform such works because the ballet goer just starting out on their exploration of the world of dance needs to see them and coming with innocent eyes and no preconceived opinion of what a ballet should be may well take to them. Anyway there are some ballets that everyone should have the opportunity to know and experience in performance.

I would gladly drop the Markarova La Bayadere in order to have Nureyev's Kingdom of the Shades with its thirty two Bayaderes and the sunburst ending restored to the main company's repertory and I would love to see Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer which appeared in 1985 and then disappeared without trace. But neither of these are strictly acquisitions and as I initiated this discussion I ought to keep to the rules. My choice for the Covent Garden company would be Ashton's Romeo and Juliet which he made for the Danes in 1955 and was mounted by ENB in 1985. What was staged in London in 2011 was a pale shadow of the original.It seems that the Royal Ballet can hardly survive a season without Romeo and Juliet. But does it always have to be the same one? I am sure that we would all appreciate the MacMillan version far more if we did not see it quite so often.I choose Ashton's ballet rather than Cranko's version because unlike the MacMillan and Cranko versions it does not approach the score and use it in the way that choreographers familiar with the Lavrovsky version do. It was made before the Lavrovsky version was known in the west and so it is very much Ashton's response to the score rather than one filtered through another choreographer's vision. It portrays a domestic tragedy rather than an epic one and the choreography provides new insights and ideas so for example when we first see Tybalt we see him as "prince of cats".The pas de deux are beautiful and different.It provide a genuine contrast with the versions that we are used to seeing. The Russians manage to have several versions of some ballets available to them and that does not seem to confuse anyone.I can see no reason why the Covent Garden company can't have more than one version of Romeo and Juliet in its repertory. Ashton was one of the two greatest choreographers of the twentieth century and it would be criminal if this ballet were to be lost. I think that Onegin would be a wonderful acquisition for BRB apart from the quality of its choreography its creator played an important role in the early days of the company which eventually became BRB. The company used to dance quite a lot of Cranko apart from Pineapple Poll and the Lady and the Fool, Card Game and Les Brouillards come to mind immediately.Perhaps the Ashton Romeo and Juliet would be better suited to them but Onegin should be part of their repertory as it would widen its range and it would enable more people to see it.

Imagine that you are suddenly put in charge of either the Birmingham Royal Ballet or the Royal Ballet which ballet or ballets would you want to acquire for your chosen company ?

As the ballet season has quietened down I thought that it might be interesting to ask members of the forum the following question. If you could only save five ballets from the Royal Ballet's twentieth century repertory which would you choose to save and why?

The Royal ballet has an extraordinary history of creativity. During the period from the early nineteen thirties when Ashton joined the Vic Wells company until MacMillan's death in 1992 many important works were created for it which shaped and developed the company and created and sustained its reputation at home and abroad.Do you think that the company currently strikes the right balance between the old and the new and between the nineteenth century classics and its twentieth century heritage in its programming?

Perhaps the reason for not making a fuss about Barry's retirement is that he is only stepping down from his post. As I understand it we will still see him in the pit from time to time. My wish as far as the new Music Director is concerned is that he decides to discontinue the practice of engaging Russian conductors when the Peripa classics are being performed. I am convinced that their presence in the pit is the main reason why Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake are played more slowly than they used to be.Russian conductors indulge the dancers here because that is what they do at home so that for years we have had performance danced at speeds which neither the composer nor the choreographer would recognise. It would be wonderful to see them danced at the right speed.As far as Sleeping Beauty is concerned failure to observe the tempi set by the composer is inexcusable as Petipa provided Tchaikovsky with minutage before he began composing setting out not only the speed for each dance but its duration.