FLOSS

Well we keep hearing that people's attention span is much shorter than it used to be perhaps the use of mobile phones whenever the opportunity arises is a manifestation of this.But it could be a manifestation of the reality that most people get their entertainment at home rather than in the theatre or cinema and as a result they are not socialized into the norms of behaviour deemed appropriate when engaged in collective entertainment. As the antisocial behaviour ranging from talking and eating to mobile phone use seems to afflict all age groups and classes it is probably the dominance of home entertainment that is the cause but may be it's not that new.Audience behavior must have been a problem in the nineteen fifties as Jerome Robbins includes women chatting and the distracting noise caused by rummaging in a handbag in his ballet the Concert. Today he would almost certainly include ring tones and selfies. But it does seem to be a lot worse now.As people spend increasing amounts of time in their own world rather than with others outside their family group they appear to be less sensitive to the needs and rights of other people. It can't be too long before someone writes a book of popular sociology or psychology which explains the compelling need that people now have for outside stimulus and why live theatrical has become something that a significant group of people now tune in and out of.But it is still possible to find an attentive audience who do not suffer from telephonephilia and one which is not plagued by persistent coughers and hackers who clearly ought to be at a chest hospital. This ideal audience is to be found listening to Wagner. Perhaps we should not be surprised by this phone obsessed behavior in the theatre when we see people standing on the steps at the entrances to underground stations engrossed in conversation on their phones totally oblivious to the swirl of people around them and to the fact that they are blocking the entrance for other people and other people walking along the pavement staring at their phones rather than watching where they are going. Obviously the interior life is far more real to them than the external one.Whoever writes that book is likely to make a mint.

Before my last post, which I dashed off before leaving for Covent Garden, gets misinterpreted I hasten to say that I look forward to seeing Hamilton back at Covent Garden in a years time. If she were to decide to pursue her career elsewhere RB management would not be short of replacements as the company seems to have a large number of talented young dancers under contract at present.

I think that the problem is that for a lot of people what is going on via their phone is more real than what is happening around them. Somebody posted about the use of mobile phones on the ROH website where they ask you to tell them about how much you enjoyed the performance and the response from the powers that be at the ROH was that you should tell the staff. Perhaps the answer is for a few more people who have posted here to post on the ROH website to complain about how distracting the shining screens are and to ask what the management intend to do about it. As some of the worst offenders seem to be in the stalls I suspect that the answer is not very much. A significant part of the audience are foreign visitors so a starting point would be for announcements about the use of phones to be made in languages other than English such as Japanese and Russian.The management have the right to refuse any of us admission and they have the right to eject anyone who causes annoyance to other audience members.They are almost certainly entitled to confiscate phones whose use is causing annoyance during a performance for the duration of the rest of the performance.They would probably be wise to inform the audience by incorporating that information in the general terms and conditions printed on their tickets. Those conditions already prohibit the use of cameras and recording equipment. Stating that the prohibition extends to the use of mobile phones in the auditorium whether or not they are being used to record performances must be within the ROH's powers.

In which case there will be more opportunities for the dancers of Hayward's age cohort to show what they can do.

Melissa Hamilton is a very determined dancer who by her own account had an unhappy time at Elmhurst until Irek Mukhamedev's wife, working at Elmhurst in a totally different capacity, was asked to take over teaching Hamilton's class. Hamilton said this teacher was the only person who believed that she had potential and when she moved to Greece Hamilton followed her.A student who had that amount of focus and determination and who knew how to take charge of her own training does not, I think,require protection from carefully considered accounts about her performances on this forum.The fact is that Hamilton is stronger in some areas of the repertory than in others and it is technical strength rather than suitability for particular roles that I am talking about here.Her recent performances in Sleeping Beauty,Don Quixote and Symphonic Variations have revealed some technical weaknesses which she needs to address if she wants to get to the top at the Royal Ballet. She has to master and own the nineteenth century classics if she wants to have a chance of ever becoming a Principal dancer in a company with as wide a repertory as the Royal Ballet's.She needs to show that she has the technical mastery and artistry which the full range of the company's repertory demands rather the ability to dance a small part of it extremely well. If she does not manage to do this then she will find herself remaining a First Soloist through lack of adequate technical skills rather than through choice.The fact that she is going to Dresden for a year and the ballets she is to dance there suggests that she is fully aware of her need to improve her technique and gain experience in this area.The ballets programmed at Covent Garden next season will not give her the opportunities that she needs if she is to progress to the next level.They will not assist her to improve either her technique or her artistry. The Royal Ballet tries to be all things to all people. It has to cover its costs and keep its senior dancers happy, which it does by programming long runs of full length works;it has to ensure that technical levels are maintained which it does by programming the Petipa classics MacMillan is unsuited to this task as his works offer too many opportunities to emote and fudge; it has to develop its dancers and it has to programme works which keep all the company interested in their work; it also has to keep the audience happy and willing to buy tickets.There are few opportunities for debuts in major works and those made by the inexperienced need to offer a reasonable chance of being successful.I think that Hamilton's decision to gain experience in another company shows a great deal of enterprise on her part I hope that she returns to the RB a far stronger dancer.

We all see things differently.For me there is nothing wrong with this programme on paper although I have some quibbles about some of the casting. But then what we see in the performance of any ballet is the result of decisions made by artistic directors, rights owners, the representatives of trusts protecting the ballets of dead choreographers and the availability of dancers as a result of rehearsal commitments and injury, Any ballet, even a near perfect one like Fille can be undermined in performance by bad casting you just try to make sure that you're not there when it is. Jerome Robbin's Faun is a brilliantly subtle ballet.When Robbins made it in 1953 there can have been few ballet goers in the US who were not familiar with a version of the Nijinsky Faun which was set in Bakst's vision of ancient Greece, as it was a staple part of the repertory of the various Ballets Russes companies that toured there.Robbin's ballet is set in a sunny dance studio about as far away from the world of ancient Greece, nymphs and fauns as you can imagine. It is said that Robbins decided on its setting after seeing a young dancer asleep in a sunny dance studio.The ballet is set in a dance studio with the audience as the mirror into which the dancers spend a great deal of their time staring. At one level it is a ballet about the preoccupation of dancers with their bodies but Robbin's also captures something of the sensuality of the original ballet and even includes a couple of poses in which his Faun echoes iconic images of the original. It is an understated ballet of mood and I felt that it was far better served by Bonelli and Lamb than by Muntagirov and Hamilton. There should be very little "chemistry" between the couple. Their relationship is virtually non existent, each is a self absorbed dancer, far more involved with their reflection than with the other dancer in the room.When they look out at the audience they are looking at themselves. Both Bonelli and Muntagirov are very good, if anything Muntagirov has the edge over Bonelli but he is let down by Hamilton, his nymph, who is far too knowing. Lamb plays the girl/nymph as cool, detached, enigmatic,self absorbed who just happens to be in the same studio as Bonelli. For Lamb the kiss breaks the spell of the encounter in the studio. Hamilton enters the studio as if she is going to meet her boyfriend and as a result the action makes little sense and reduces the ballet to eleven minutes in which nothing happens at great length. In the Night needs a good cast to make it work as it should. It also requires a better lit stage. As there were only four performances O'Hare should have chanced his arm and given us one good cast rather than two of variable quality.He could still have given Maguire and Campbell some performances. It may help to give you an idea of the sort of casting required if I say that the company's original cast was Sibley, Dowell, Mason,Macleary, Park and Wall dancers with strong personalities, great stage presence, musicality and wit,and with the ability to dance as if their movements were a spontaneous response to the music rather than something that they had taken great pains to learn. With the right dancers this ballet fills the stage and does not look remotely like a chamber work.Both casts had couples who were good in the first section. Yanowsky and Kish brought wit and glamour to the second section while Kobayashi and Hristov were dull and dutiful.The third section's first cast were Nunez and Soares who whipped through it as a Nunez, Soares showpiece but there is more to the choreography.Marquez and Pennefather are an ill suited couple. It would have been interesting to see Pennefather with Nunez or even better with Lamb then we might have seen what the choreography contains As for Song of the Earth. It is MacMillans's masterpiece his perfect ballet. it does not contain an ounce of excess choreographic fat and in its austerity it is a wonderful evocation of the text which is about the transitory nature of life. Personally I would be happy if they danced it every year and we only got to see Romeo and Juliet with the frequency that we usually see Song programmed. We are only being allowed to see it again this season because it forms part of the company's New York season and the corps in particular needed to do a lot of work to get it up to scratch. In the first run of performances some of the male corps struggled and frequently looked surprised by what they were being required to do. I don't find the performance of a masterpiece at the end of the season anything remotely resembling a low note on which to end the season. I also think that this mixed bill far from being flung together as an after thought is far better constructed than the programme in which Song appeared earlier in the season.

The ROH Database gives the 16th December 1987 as the date of the first performance of this production.

Of course we should remember that those who choose to post their views about performances and performers are hardly a representative cross section of those who actually go to see those performances.It seems to me that a significant proportion of those who post about performances on Ballet Alert are far more interested in technique as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end.It was noticeable, for example, that Muntagirov's performances with ABT went without comment.That tastes are different on either side of the Atlantic should not come as a surprise but are they that different?.There are also people here who want fireworks rather than artistry. They are the ones who seem to associate male dancing with a limited vocabulary of jumps and turns and complain that a dancer was "doing nothing" when he does not jump and spin but partners or does petite batterie. A couple of years ago there were performances of Ashton's Dream at Covent Garden when, for reasons best known to the management and the Titania?, we were given the opportunity to see a very big name from ABT dance Oberon. I have to say that I saw the dancer in question and found him heavy,slow and unmusical.His performance did not impress me and I had the distinct impression that he gave us edited highlights as he struggled to perform all the steps in the time available.The comments on Ballet Alert, presumably from fans who did not see him dance here,were very positive about his performances and expressed the view that the audience here was very fortunate to be given the chance to see him.

Well, I get that sort of feeling all the time whether it's ballet, opera or straight theatre. There are so many new works and/or performances of old works which are described in such hyperbolic terms in journals and newspapers where you might expect a balanced critical response that I am frequently left wondering what else,if anything, the writer has seen or heard.I get that reaction when ever I see a goodish performance being praised to the skies or when what seems to have been the standard way of staging a particular play for the last thirty plus years is written about as if it is wonderfully inventive and dealing a death blow to a traditional style of production that ceased to exist sometime in the late nineteen fifties. I begin to feel that critics should be required to disclose their date of birth, that way we would get some idea of the likely range and extent of their experience to help us gauge the value to be placed on their opinion. It is one thing to read a review written by an experienced theatre critic telling you that a new work that everyone else gas dismissed is a work of genius,which is what happened to Peter Hall's first production of Waiting for Godot,quite another to read such a review from someone who is unlikely to have seen much else. Perhaps the author of this particular review only has a performance or two of Nutcracker as background.That would explain a great deal.But then who knows he/she might be the equivalent of a young Kenneth Tynan. We all learn to single out the critic who has seen or heard the same thing that you did when you went to a particular performance and those who have particular obsessions.It is a very rare critic who makes you review your opinion of a particular writer, composer or choreographer by pointing out aspects of their work that you have somehow managed to miss. I agree that the first and third sections of this work have echoes of other works, at some points I was reminded of MacMillan's Las Hernanas, but then some of Ashton'w works echo or quote Massine and Nijinska. That does not matter, it's what you do with the ideas that you are reusing that counts. Ashton always managed to add something really interesting to what he was borrowing so that it was transformed and became his I am not entirely sure that McGregor managed this.

I think that Alain's handstand is more noticeable now because the ballet is danced more slowly than in the past and the angle of the seat on which Simone,Thomas and Lise sit has been altered.I think that it used to be placed at a slight angle rather than almost parallel to the front of the stage so that the handstand was concealed from the audience. It's one of those small details like keeping the rustics upstage so that they distract the audience from seeing Bottom's transformation in the Dream,or making sure that the lads bringing in the sheaves in the second act of Fille conceal Colas as he is smuggled into Simone's house that are not seen as that important by those staging these works.As with much else in Ashton's ballets you ignore his floor plans at your peril. As with so much to do with Ashton ballets it is small details that make all the difference. There are two snippets of film on You Tube of Ashton rehearsing his ballets one is of him coaching Sibley and Dowell in the final section of the Dream, which I think was filmed as a masterclass for the BBC, the other is of him working in Canada with a girl who has learnt the rudiments of the role of the Gypsy in Two Pigeons.In both cases his involvement with the dancers is transformative. He takes a good performance by Sibley and Dowell and by insisting on apparently trivial changes turns it into a great one full of detail that is sadly missing from a lot of the performances we see today.In the Canadian rehearsal studio he transforms a dancer from someone doing the steps into someone portraying a character through performing the choreography. Something missing from many of the Ashton roles, particularly those created on Alexander Grant, is an understanding of and commitment to demi character dancing.Grant gave an interview at about the time of the centenary in which he insisted that Alain was a character rather than a role. He also said that what everyone forgot was how much Massine had influenced Ashton and that in order to understand Ashton you had to understand Massine. I have seen several Massine ballets and in everyone of them it is the effect created by the dancer's application of their technique to the creation and portrayal of a character that is important not simply technique. That the dancer has the technique is a given, it is what they do with it that matters. As Colas and Lise are demi character role it is rather sad to see the Fanny Elssler pas de deux treated as a Russian style display piece broken up to garner applause rather than danced through in character. Today's emphasis on technique as an end in itself rather than a means to an end has had a stultifying effect on the way in which Ashton is danced which is perhaps best illustrated by comparing two performances by the Royal Ballet in La Valse one recorded in the the late 1950's or early 1960's which can be found, I think, on the DVD An Evening with the Royal Ballet which includes Aurora's Wedding and the other on a recent all Ashton DVD. In the earlier recording the dancers just get on and dance the ballet for all its worth. I think that Elizabeth McGorian said that they went "woosh" which is a very succinct way of describing the performance. In the later recording there is a greater hesitancy and it seems to me, more concern about doing the steps and not making a mistake, than actually performing the ballet.It is a bit like someone trying to talk in a foreign language who is more afraid of getting the idiomatic phrases wrong than conversing.

Could it be that despite all the journalistic support for the current ENB Director that her predecessor had more vision when it came to developing the company and its dancers and more idea about how to attain what he had in mind ? He, after all, did not have the distraction of pursuing a dance career and had many years of experience running a pretty important ballet company before he came to ENB.I have to say that I was more impressed by the company's development of its dancers and its repertory under Eagling than I have been by Rojo.Under Eagling the company had the sort of liveliness and buzz about it that it had under Peter |Schauffus.

It is,of course, true that dancers at the Royal Ballet are coached for specific roles but the system of coaching that operates for the select few in Russia seems to involve far more than simple preparation for a specific role. The impression that Parish gave was that his coach had worked with him on his technique as well, and that coaching is a regular part of his life as a dancer. Now of course there is inevitably a certain amount of discussion on a forum like this about casting decisions.Fans tend to suspend their critical faculties and want to see their favourites in everything and will complain if they are not cast in a particular role even when it is one to which the dancer concerned is manifestly unsuited.They will complain about the number of Swan Lakes in a season but would be quite happy if the number were increased if it meant that their favourites were added to the list of dancers performing in it.Their wish to see their favourites dance generally far outweighs any wish they may have to see young dancers develop.At the same time they will complain if the artistic director has not developed the talent within the ranks of the company.It sounds irrational because it is just that.But that does not mean that everything discussed here is irrational. Every organisation carries its origins deep in its corporate DNA.At one level both the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky seem like government bureaucracies. Their systematic selection of dancers for levels of responsibility within the company has echoes of the civil service about it with the stars of the future as the equivalent of First Division Civil Servants and the character dancers and members of the corps the equivalent of Clerical Officers and Executive Officers.But the members of the Imperial companies were state employees and it should come as no surprise that nearly one hundred years after the revolution they continue to operate in a way that members of the Imperial companies would almost certainly recognise. The Royal Ballet's origins are very different.It is the result of the vision of one woman Ninette de Valois much of whose professional experience was in the commercial theatre where you learn on the job and grab your opportunities where and when you can. De Valois said that she learnt everything about running a ballet company from her time with the Diaghilev company not an organisation that had much in the way of structures to systematically develop young dancers.Whatever de Valois's company is today it is not run like a bureaucracy and arguably does not have adequate systems in place to ensure that the talent that it recruits develops and makes it to the top. During the last revival of Sleeping Beauty we were presented with a series of Lilac Fairies who lacked stage presence and most of whom struggled with the Italian fouettes. Things were not much better when it came to the performances of the Queen of the Dryads in both runs of Don Q the dancers lacked presence and struggled technically.Of course you could say that these are examples of poor coaching and that may well be true but these technical weaknesses should have been acknowledged and remedied and not allowed to continue.If O'Hare wants to build his company up from the bottom it seems to me that he needs to establish a systematic approach to developing dancers which includes dealing with technical problems such as the Italian fouette and stage craft in particular teaching dancers how to make their performances project to the back of the auditorium.Theatrical skills come naturally to the few but most people learn on the job . As there is little or no opportunity to gain experience away from the Covent Garen stage then all a dancer's artistic development will inevitably take place there with the only external stimulus to that development coming from coaching for specific roles.As coaching is dependent on that season's repertoire and the management's casting decisions it means that the opportunities for a dancer to develop are patchy and to say the least hardly consistent or systematic and yet it is the consistent,systematic approach of the Russian system that pays dividends. From time to time there are discussions on this forum about the apparent inability of the Royal Ballet to produce star dancers.Belinda Hatley said that the problem was low self esteem and that no doubt is a significant factor.But it seems to me that the main reason for the Russian's success is the systematic effort that they put into developing dancers after they have graduated.

Alison.The Russian coaching system goes a long way to explain how they manage to produce a seemingly constant supply of good dancers and some great ones.But it is very hard on all those who don't fit in with their ideal of the dancer.It leaves far less room for the "one off" like Ed Watson for example who does not fit into any of the pigeon holes.So the Royal Ballet's system which clearly has its weaknesses and could do with improvement turns out, like democracy, to be "the worst system in the world except for all the rest." Perhaps the solution is to leave it up to the dancers to show what they can do but to provide coaching support for those who show themselves to be performers.There are after all dancers who aren't particularly exciting in class or in rehearsal but come alive when they are performing and those are the ones I want to see on stage not the efficient but dull, machine like dancer.Perhaps what I am moving towards suggesting is a sort of class of perfection for those who make it to soloist roles.

Nina I suspect that the answer is that the soloists don't get that sort of support at the Royal Ballet.I know that Xander Parrish was a very junior member of the company when he left to go to Russia but the way that he spoke about the coaching that he was receiving at the Mariinsky when he talked to the London Ballet Circle gave me the very strong impression that it was very different from what happens at the Royal Ballet. At the Mariinsky and at the Bolshoi coaches are allocated to promising dancers and that coaching relationship may continue for years.The individual dancer's coaches are recognised as playing a part in the dancer's career at least as significant as the dancer's natural aptitude and schooling. . As I understand it in these companies dancers are allocated to specific areas of activity according to the rules of emploi at the outset of their careers. Some will be selected to be character dancers, others for the corps and the select few who have been identified as having what it takes to become leading dancers get the personal coaches.The select few being selected through a subtle mixture of emploi, their technical proficiency, and their presence.The system clearly works for the Russians and has done so for years. I am not sure that the blatant pigeon holing of dancers in that way is a price that everyone here would consider worth paying even if it did provide a guaranteed supply of great dancers. How comfortable would we feel if we knew that when dancers enter the company on graduation their career had been pretty much decided before they had set a foot on the stage as professional dancers? In a society that pays lip service to the ideal of meritocracy any company that put the Russian system in place would lay itself to the accusation that its dancer's careers were being determined through favouritism.

I do not buy into the idea that technique is more refined now when compared with the mid and late twentieth century when Ashton, MacMillan and Balanchine were active, Technique today is different. It is,not better or worse than in the past it is simply that there is one dominant school rather than several schools and the aesthetic has changed. As we learn to watch ballet we assimilate the style and aesthetic current at the time that we begin watching it and those initial viewings influence everything that we see subsequently. The aesthetic within which most twentieth century choreographers operated was, it seems to me, essentially the one created by Fokine in reaction to what he saw as Petipa's overemphasis on technique.None of the major twentieth century choreographers wanted the audience to be aware of the level of technique required or the effort involved in dancing their works and each in their own way was concerned with symmetry. What we see now is the result of a change in taste and training.As I understand it the Vaganova school is absolutist claiming to teach the way that each individual step should be performed regardless of its context in a particular ballet. That makes it difficult for dancers to reproduce the work of a choreographer who deliberately departs from school room steps or plays with them. Today there is a greater emphasis on technique for its own sake rather than as a means to an end as a result a lot of dancers and their fans have come to regard ballet performances as an occasion on which the steps as taught in the classroom are to be reproduced rather than the steps as modified by the choreographer. And as far as the music is concerned the tempi set by the composer are to be ignored if they prevent the performers from displaying their ability to dance slowly or their ability to hold a balance interminably. There has always been a tension between those who see ballet as an art form and those who see ballet as little more than a box of technical tricks performed to music.In the early nineteenth century female dancers learnt how to go up on pointe .This technical trick was transformed and given dramatic meaning when Maria Taglioni appeared in her father's ballet La Sylphide where pointe work transformed her into a supernatural creature.A similar transformation of technique occurred in late nineteenth century Russsia when Petipa took Legnani's ability to perform fouettes and made that technical feat an expression of Odile's character and in creating the Rose adagio made Brianzi's ability to balance an expression of Aurora's royal status. The advances in technique were used for artistic effect by Petipa and were assimilated into the vocabulary available to later choreographers. Legnani's fouettes were used by Ashton in Les Patineurs to totally different effect.Technicians are always present in every ballet company and at present they seem to be in the ascendant. But at some point a choreographer will arrive on the scene who values the lyric aspects of ballet rather than raw displays of technique and the aesthetic will change again. There is little point, it seems to me, in judging the dancers of the past against today's technical standards.The performers of the past were not expected to dance the Rose Adagio as if it were an Olympic event or stick their feet in their ears when they performed an arabesque.The emphasis at that time was on symmetry rather than extremes.;musicality judged against the tempi set by the composer rather than against a score tortured into submission so that it fits in with the dancer's wishes and on dancing a ballet rather than simply reproducing classroom steps. So of course the performances of the past may seem wanting if you judge them against current performance fashion. It seems to me that ballet is currently where classical music was at the turn of the twentieth century. At that time no one thought it unacceptable to re-orchestrate Bach or Handel so that they could benefit from having their works performed on the modern post Wagnerian symphony orchestra. The argument was that the composers concerned would have used the late nineteenth orchestra if only it had been available to them.It was even acceptable to transpose roles composed for contraltos so that tenors could sing them Then the early music movement came along and all those .well intentioned "improvements" became unacceptable and performance practice, even among non period orchestras, switched to an attempt at authentic performance practice and style. There is currently considerable interest in reconstructing ballets with a real concern with reproducing steps as they were performed at the time that the ballets were created rather than according to current practice. Ratmansky has been involved in revivals of Don Q and Pacquita. The latter appears to involve a real attempt to get the dancers to perform in the appropriate period style and at the correct speed. A Russian company is going to revive Ivanov's Fille mal Gardee. In the light of this apparent shift in fashion I wonder how long it will be before taste changes here and we start to see Petipa and Ashton both danced at the correct speed and in the appropriate style?

Janet.I have every reason to believe that you are right about SWRB being in danger of being sacrificed at some point if it had not moved to Birmingham and become BRB. When MacMillan took over the directorship of the Royal Ballet one of the things that he did was to close down the old Touring Company as a cost cutting measure.If it could happen once it could clearly happen again. The thing that I don't understand is that knowing that a significant number of its outstanding dancers had come through the touring company the Royal Ballet management team at the time of the establishment of BRB failed to recognise the need to put in place and maintain a system to develop its own young dancers. Succession planning is a fundamental need in all organisations but not apparently in arts organisations. But then perhaps I should not be surprised, Despite making money on its tours which for years helped keep the Royal Opera House afloat financially the ballet company accepted that it needed to make cuts when the Board told them that that they were necessary. The odd thing is that, at least according to Anthony Russell Roberts, the ballet company had, unknowingly, been subsidising the opera company for years because of the way the costs of the two companies were handled.Instead of each paying their own costs their costs were combined and then allocated between the two companies according to the number of performances that they had given.An organisation that can be duped like that is probably not going to worry about regenerating itself.

Alymer, Thank you for clarifying what I wrote.Do you know if Ashton's Casse-Noisette was ever performed at Covent Garden? The performance database is somewhat patchy. I don't think that it is anywhere near complete as far as performances of individual productions of ballets are concerned.There are too many apparently free standing performances of ballets which take a lot of effort to put on stage and are, as a result, unlikely to be performed for one night only in any one year. Some of the material which has provided the source for the database must be the theatre's own records because the database occasionally gives the stage manager's record of the duration of a performance. But whether it is exclusively based on the theatre's records or whether they have used old programmes as well is far from clear.I assume that it has been compiled from both sources. It is clearly incomplete but there is no indication to suggest that they want to complete the task.

Going to see BRB dance Swan Lake is not the solution to the inevitable consequences of hiving off the Covent Garden company's training section. BRB is the current incarnation of SWTB/SWRB which was specifically created to provide the opportunities which it was recognised that the move to Covent Garden would deny young and inexperienced dancers and choreographers. The difficulties in developing dancers and choreographers in house at Covent Garden that de Valois identified in the late 1940's did not disappear when SWRB moved to Birmingham and became BRB. They were simply ignored.The ballet was of little interest to Jeremy Isaacs. In fact it seems to me that most, if not all, of the changes to the Royal Ballet companies over the years have been driven by the Board's concerns over the opera company's finances. The loss of the touring company was not the only self inflicted wound that made the Covent Garden company an organisation seemingly without the ability to regenerate itself.The sudden loss of dancers who might have been expected to have left over a lengthy period of time and to have provided an element of continuity as exemplars of performance style also played a significant part. Michael Kaiser made his contribution to the current state of affairs by suggesting to Anthony Dowell that he should reduce the company's costs by getting rid of some of the older, more expensive dancers.Fiona Chadwick and Ravenna Tucker suddenly disappeared without any announcement being made about their retirement. A little later uncertainty about the continued existence of the company while the house was closed led Kumakawa and four other men including Gary Avis to leave the Royal Ballet and go to Japan where Kumakawa set up K company. Michael Kaiser's advice to Dowell had been that he should close the company down during the closure of the theatre and then when the redevelopment was completed go out and hire a whole new group of dancers who would not be employed for the full year much like the employment pattern of dancers at ABT. As we know that did not happen but the uncertainty led to the loss of dancers who would, like the women who were retired, have provided continuity and acted as exemplars to members of the company.Ross Stretton's short directorship also led to the departure of key dancers. The loss of dancers led to Dowell, and then Mason buying in dancers to fill gaps. But it seem to me that what began from necessity became something of a habit. It became too easy to recruit from the outside by video rather than developing dancers from within the company's ranks. It seems to me that it is the cumulative effect of these events that has done the damage as far as the company's ability to regenerate by developing talent is concerned.It has simply got out of the habit.That is why the decision to employ Salenko and cast her in the sort of ballet that was previously the preserve of a dancer like Hatley is of so much interest as it suggests that O'Hare may be about to follow the same route as his predecessors.Is the decision to cast well known dancers in the initial run of Two Pigeons intended to get people to buy tickets or is it evidence of O'Hare taking the easy route? Booking for the second run of Pigeons is not going to be influenced by the first run of performances as booking will open for the second run before the first run has been danced.It would be unfortunate if the performance to be streamed into cinemas were to be danced by someone outside the company but who is prepared to put money on it not being McRae and Salenko who dance in that performance? There is no possibility of establishing another training company. The solution to developing dancers in house has to be found at Covent Garden.Perhaps the refurbished Linbury should be used to enable the younger dancers to perform some of the old repertory that is suitable for a small stage.Ballets like La Fete Etrange, Capriole Suite,La Boutique Fantasque,Les Rendezvous and Facade spring to mind.In fact anything created for, or performed on the old Sadler's Wells stage would be fine in the Linbury.Perhaps a mixture of old and new works, two older works and a new one is the answer.The fact that new works would have to stand comparison with works of proven quality might improve the quality of the new ones. It must be possible at certain times of the year to divide the company so that it can perform two separate programmes simultaneously.An in house equivalent to the split tours that BRB undertake.That is a possible solution as there are quite a few ballet evenings when the corps is not used. But perhaps the best solution is for the Royal Ballet to perform in the Linbury on opera evenings. I think that regular performances of this type would assist in developing the dancer's stamina,technique,and theatrical artistry as well as a real understanding of the inherent differences in choreographic styles of the works that they dance.It is unlikely to happen but it does no harm to wish.

Salenko is a very nice dancer but I hope that O'Hare does not appoint her as a permanent member of the company or even as a guest principal as that will reduce the number of performances available for the very talented dancers in the lower ranks of the company and effectively block their chances of promotion. Many people have commented on Muntagirov's maturity and the quality of his performances since he joined the company. What we see on stage when he performs is a subtle mixture of ability, training and experience. Experience which he gained because the then director of ENB, Wayne Eagling, gave the young dancer the opportunity to dance in major roles on a regular basis with an experienced partner week in week out rather than waiting for his turn.I some how doubt that O'Hare would dare do that and yet that it is what he needs to do if he is to have locally trained talent leading the company rather than acting as a backdrop to a group of international star dancers . If Kevin O'Hare is serious about developing the talent within the ranks of his company then he will have to ensure that young dancers are given the chance to learn on the job rather than waiting in a queue for their turn while vacancies in the higher ranks of the company are filled from the outside by dancers who have to learn to acquire the company's style and the ability to act.Those with real theatrical talent and technical skill need to be given preference over those who give their best performances in class. He may have to skip a generation of dancers and perhaps deny the rank of Principal to dancers who might expect to be promoted on a "Buggin's turn" basis. Casting Salenko who, as far as I know, is not an Ashton dancer in Two Pigeons next season makes very little sense if he is committed to developing the company's own talent.It is as if O'Hare is saying that there are no suitably talented short girls in the company who could take the role of the Young Girl. There are within the ranks of the company a significant number of dancers under twenty five who show great promise. Hayward,Nagdhi and Ball are getting the chance to dance in Romeo and Juliet next season but there are others such as Reece Clarke and Anne Rose O'Sullivan who should be given an opportunity to gain experience through performance now rather than waiting in a long queue for their turn while their opportunities for advancement are blocked by management buying in dancers.Development opportunities have to be given on a regular and consistent basis rather than treating dancers as flavour of the month.If he believes that the current repertory is unsuited to less experienced dancers he has the power to select works such as Les Patineurs and Les Rendezvous which give opportunities to a lot of dancers he could even ask Wheeldon and Scarlett to create works on the younger dancers starting with Stix Brunell.He is not obliged to churn out 21 Swan Lakes or 21 Sleeping Beauties every season and unless someone signed a contract in their lifeblood he is not obliged to stage MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet every time. There is the Ashton version which was made on young dancers. It needs a home and some performances. I recognise that management can not be completely certain about when a dancer will retire after all a serious injury can cut a career short but it does not seem to me that the company has ever gone in for even the most rudimentary form of succession planning which might help to explain their increasing reliance on the cheque book to fill vacancies rather than internal development which requires long term plannining.

Jane S Thank you for pointing out that Ashton's one act Casse-Noisette was made for Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet. Presumably it was made for the company so that it would have something classical to include in its mixed programme on its first US tour.Billboard 1952 mentions it as part of a mixed bill which included Les Rendezvous an excerpt from Beauty and the Beast,Cass-Noisette and Pineapple Poll.The reviewer seemed to find Rendezvous slow but thought that the programme picked up with Casse-Noisette and was very taken with Pineapple Poll. Ashton's Casse-Noisette had its first performance on 11th September 1951.The cast included Roger Lunnon(King),David Blair (Nutcracker Prince),Svetlana Beriosova(Queen) and Elaine Fifield (Sugar Plum Fairy), Peter Wright was in the corps.I know that his early years in dance brought Peter Wright into contact with a wider range of dance styles and choreography than is usual now, ranging from Kurt Joos to Ashton and the rest of the SWTB repertory.I imagine that he first came into contact with the nineteenth century classics as a performer as a member of SWTB. This Ashton production of Casse-Noisette was probably his first experience of the ballet.Apart from Ashton and Markova and Dolin at Festival Ballet the only other person who I can think of who was involved in staging the classics in this country at about this time was Mona Ingoldsby. Peter Wright has said that he is writing an autobiography so perhaps we will find out just how dependent or independent the TV version of Nutcracker was on his experience with SWTB in 1951.

Yes this work is a considerable advance on what McGregor has done before but it needed to be. Wayne McGregor is the company's Resident Choreographer not a young and inexperienced choreographer trying to find his own voice.He has been working on the main stage at Covent Garden for some years now but he still seems to be choreographing his ballets for the audience in the lower part of the house and appears to be completely oblivious or indifferent to the fact that half his audience is in the Amphitheatre. In fact I think that the only pieces of his which have been visible throughout the house were the superfluous bits of choreography that he provided for Acis and Galatea and Dido and Aeneas. I note that many people who have posted on this site have said that they have undertaken preparatory reading before attending a performance of Woolf Works.I am afraid that I believe that you should not have to spend a lot of time reading libretti and performance notes in order to understand a ballet let alone three novels.It is the choreographer's job to ensure that his ballets have clarity and are visible to the entire audience and not only to a select few in the most expensive seats. The first and third sections were reasonably effective but so they should have been given the cast McGregor had at his disposal.But I do wonder how much impact they would have had if other dancers had been performing in them. Ed Watson is rather good at portraying mental anguish and he can now add a man suffering from shell shock to his portrayals of Rudolph and Leontes. But haven't suffering angst ridden characters become a bit of a cliche as far as he is concerned? Would this role have as much impact if it was danced by someone else? Again Ferri was effective but was it the performer or the choreography which really carried the day? I found the middle section was the weakest.There was too much going on and given the atmospheric lighting some sections of dancing were over almost before you noticed them.It was the most McGregorish part of the work. I am not sure how his stock repertoire of dance vocabulary was intended to connect with the story which was the starting point for his creation. The choreography allowed Osipova and McRae to strut their stuff but what was the point of the middle section of Woolf Works if it was merely intended to provide an opportunity for two star dancers to display their facility with his style of movement ? The lighting was so clever that I felt that it prevented sections of the stage action and choreography from registering properly.I have no idea why we had a laser display apart from the fact that McGregor seems to like expensive lighting schemes for his works and the other sections were not suitable for such a display. It would be interesting to know whether the audience find the three sections equally effective whether or not they have read the books which were the starting point for this choreography. It is said that dancers develop by having works made on them because choreographers see things in them of which they are unaware but it seemed to me that in all three sections the choreographer was merely typecasting his dancers and getting them to do things that they are already known to be good at.It seems quite likely that this full length piece will turn out to be one of those ballets that really only work with the original cast.

Fonty the Wiener Staatsballet dance the Nureyev version and there is a DVD to prove it.By the way the Nureyev version is closely connected to the Vainonen staging except for those sections of choreography which give the impression of being a sort of dance obstacle race.Nureyev seemed to me,on occasion, to be more concerned with the display of technique for its own sake than for its aesthetic effect.Strangely it always seemed to involve a great deal of what he was good at and avoided anything that might show him to disadvantage and suggest that he was a mere mortal. As to why the Nureyev production was dropped. Well at the time there was a noticeable decline in the standard of performances of the supporting roles such as the Chinese tumblers which had been performed brilliantly in the past but towards the end were either beyond the capacity of the dancers involved or were very badly coached. Then there was a great falling out between Nureyev and the company which I now believe had a great deal to do with the fees that the company was paying him for his performances. I should have said that Ashton mounted a one act version which I suppose is what is on the DVD of Somes and Fonteyn dancing excerpts from the Tchaikovsky ballets. It was really act 2 which of course means that it must have appeared in mixed bills from time to time before the 1968 production. The ROH website is silent as to the number of performances that it received.

Although the Vic Wells Ballet first danced Nutcracker in January 1934 it does not appear to have become a regular part of Christmas in this country until Festival Ballet was established in 1951 and it was probably Markova who was responsible for performances of Nutcracker becoming associated with Christmas.She had spent much of her career in the US where Balanchine had begun to make this ballet an essential part of Christmas for many American families. The absence of the full length Nutcracker from the Vic Wells company's Christmas schedule seems odd today. It needs to be remembered that De Valois introduced nineteenth century classical ballets into the repertory of her young company to ensure that her dancers acquired and maintained the skills necessary to dance them.They were of use in developing her dancers not as core repertory.Her experience as a professional dancer had shown her that a company which had mastery of these old works could dance anything that a choreographer could devise. Until the company moved to Covent Garden after the war it was new repertory created by Ashton, De Valois and others that was central to the company's repertory. Following the precedent set by Diaghilev the company existed to create new works not to preserve the full length ballets of the previous century. Diaghilev had revived an interest in ballet in western Europe that continued after his death. He had taught a new audience about ballet and that audience knew that ballets were modern, chic and came in a single act. Prewar Audiences may have attended performances of Giselle, Swan Lake and Coppelia at Sadler's Wells but the majority of them knew that real ballet was made by living choreographers and did not need three acts.While audiences did not require sweeteners to persuade them to attend a mixed bill they still had to learn how to watch and appreciate full length works. It was the move to Covent Garden that changed the company's repertory because not everything made for Sadler's Wells looked as good on the Covent Garden stage. The people at the top of the company realised that things would change with the move to the Opera House.The audience was different as were its tastes. It was less keen on short works and as a result the company became increasingly reliant on full length ones but many of these full length ballets were recent creations.In a thirty year period beginning in 1948 Ashton and then MacMillan created a series of full length works some of which continue to play a significant role in the company's life.It was only as this period of exceptional energy and creativity began to wane that the nineteenth century classics came to dominate its repertory with months taken up in repeated performances of one of the ballets guaranteed to put bottoms on seats without any effort required by the marketing department such as Nutcracker. The Royal Ballet does not seem to have bothered that much about Nutcracker until they acquired the Nureyev production in 1968. It seems to have been intended for the Christmas season 1967/68 because Zoe Anderson describes its first performance in February 1968 as a delayed premier. The Board clearly felt a bit guilty about acquiring this production because they warned Anton Dolin who was running Festival Ballet that he was going to have competition.But the Royal Ballet did not become overly reliant on Nutcracker. It was not scheduled three years out of every four and in those years in which it was scheduled there were fewer performances than now. Nutcracker did not dominate the schedule from November and until late January. So what did they dance at Christmas before 1968? Well Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty seem to have kept everyone very happy over the Christmas period before 1968 and afterwards too.There were even performances of Fille in some years, The company seemed to have a larger number of ballets in its current repertory than is the case today. There were no performances of Nutcracker at Covent Garden between 1977 and 1984 but I don't recall anyone feeling particularly deprived. A lot of people, including DE Valois, felt that Sir Peter Wright's production was a bit of a disappointment after the Nureyev one. The dominance of the nineteenth century ballets seems to have begun as the company's own creativity declined and died.Since 1984 the frequency of Nutcracker performances at Covent Garden has increased as has the number of performances in a run.It would seem that Nutcracker became more popular with the company's artistic directors over the years as the company finances worsened.The company's financial crises of the nineteen nineties and the reduction in Arts Council's grants were, no doubt,responsible for the company's increasing reliance on lengthy runs of works like Nutcracker. Dowell tried to extend his company's Christmas repertory by staging The Tales of Beatrix Potter which did nothing to enhance Ashton's reputation as a serious choreographer although it was popular with grandparents with grandchildren in tow. The fact that O'Hare has pensioned off the Tales of Beatrix Potter and was able to put on Acosta's Don Q and Wheeldon's Alice last year suggests that we may not necessarily be seeing quite so much of Nutcracker in the future.This year's revival of Nutcracker and the revival of Giselle early in the New Year could well have more to do with Sir Peter Wright's ninetieth birthday than long lasting financial need.The fact that we are getting mixed bills before and after Christmas which include the Two Pigeons suggests that O'Hare does not feel the need to repeat the same limited number of ballets over Christmas year in year out.Let us hope that this proves to be the case.

I understand that ENO allow you to book on line and print your tickets at home if you choose to do so. Clearly not everyone does this. I said nothing to suggest that there were no queues at the Coliseum box office I merely indicated that it was possible to avoid queues to collect tickets at the Coliseum. Of course the problem about collecting ticket at Covent Garden may simply be caused by a reluctance to upgrade their computer system, The box office management seemed incredibly reluctant to spend money on replacing their credit card readers although they must have known that the malfunctioned quite regularly, the box office staff were certainly well aware of the problem. Before the card readers were replaced I had the experience of being locked out because the reader would not accept my pin number.

As the box office does not usually have so many last minute sales to cope with I don't expect front of house management to change the way they work in order to accommodate a programme that has required a great deal of publicity to shift the seats. I suspect that the reason that the Opera House has not gone in for the print at home ticket option is concern about forgeries.There are performances at the theatre during the year when the overall demand for ticket far exceeds supply and I imagine that it is concern for ticket security that explains the way that they operate. As this is a problem that rarely affects other companies such as ENO I imagine that those responsible for running the box office at the Coliseum have decided that audience convenience rather than ticket security should be their priority. I believe that the reason that they are so bureaucratic about returning tickets for resale at Covent Garden is because in the past there were occasions when two people had tickets for the same seat at the same performance. No doubt the concern for ticket security and a fear of upsetting the well heeled part of the audience is thought to be of greater concern than the convenience of those who buy tickets a matter of days or weeks before a performance. I have to say that if I thought that I had been put to considerable inconvenience by the operation of the Covent Garden box office I would be interested enough to write to enquire, in the nicest possible way, about their failure to embrace the modern world.