FLOSS

I think that something needs to be done about the limited amount of Ashton choreography that is shown each year at Covent Garden before any requests are made for more of his works to be filmed and made available on DVD.There are dancers in the company who are able to perform in the requisite style but there are a large number who can not.It would be wonderful to think that dancers would be cast according to their suitability for roles rather than their seniority.The fact that Golding who made a poor impression as Oberon last season has been cast in that role for performances in New York suggests that seniority continues to be the major factor in casting decisions.There are other recent examples of poor casting of Ashton's works for example Golding and Hamilton in Symphonic Variations. Golding was removed, presumably at the request of the owner,but Hamilton danced and she struggled with the speed and the choreography which clearly did not come to her easily. One of the problems has already been touched upon during this discussion;it is the choice of casts to be filmed. Of course if the company danced these works more frequently then there would be a larger pool to choose from but regardless of the size of the pool it is almost inevitable that the cast chosen for filmed performances will be the one that will appeal most to the wider public rather than the best cast that the company can muster.Making and selling DVDs is a commercial enterprise not an educational activity. I know that Kevin O'Hare told the Ballet Association that he would welcome suggestions of works that should be programmed. I do not know if anyone has taken up that suggestion.Perhaps it is the time to do so as far as the Ashton repertory is concerned.

The BBC have a programme on Radio 4 called Feedback which enables the audience to complain about everything on TV and radio from political bias(usually from both sides of the political divide about the same interview), radio coverage or lack of it,the switch to DAB,unfunny comedies, rescheduling favourite programmes and the increasing improbability of the Archer's story lines,in other words the full range of the company's output. There is nothing to stop anyone on this forum contacting the programme about the paucity of dance coverage. As for the interviews on the screened performances I think that any complaint about their quality would have to be sent to Kevin O'Hare. Somehow I think it unlikely that he would be prepared to contemplate removing the President of the RAD from that job. Bussell is, at present, the only British ballet dancer whose name the general public knows.I suspect that a lot of the general public find all the smiley, giggly, girly incompetence totally unchallenging and perhaps even endearing.

Booklover89 I am sure that you discovered very early on that discussions about ballet and its performers is not always entirely rational.Well the same is true when it comes to discussions about artistic directors and choreographers.In New York there were ballet fans who loathed MacMillan because he was not Ashton and there are, perhaps, still fans of NYCB who can't forgive Peter Martins for not being Balanchine.The word for an avid ballet goer is balletomane.It is an exceptionally apt description for someone who goes to three or more performances of the same ballet over the space of one week. Those who are not afflicted will ask with complete disbelief why you are going to something you have already seen many times and must know by now. Some shake their heads sadly because they don't accept that there could ever be a sufficient difference between the performances of two dancers to justify going to a ballet more than once.Perhaps the French were being more open about the mental state of ballet goers when they named their ballet forum Dansomanie but then they have several hundred years more experience of this sad affliction than we do. McGregor is clearly a choreographer who divides opinion. I don't think that it is simply because he works in a style that has no obvious connection with the classical idiom although that plays a large part in people's view of him and his work. Unlike Ashton or Balanchine who seem to have had unlimited freedom because they were working within the rules of classical ballet McGregor seems limited by his freedom.Where Balanchine and Ashton take you by surprise by breaking,inverting or simply making up new rules McGregor often seems to be recycling a limited number of movements and ideas. This remains true even though he has taken to incorporating some balletic movements into his works.It remains to be seen whether he becomes a choreographer whose works truly incorporate and use classical ballet idiomatically, like Glenn Tetley, or whether it remains an appendage to a style of movement that is essentially contemporary. I enjoyed Chroma and Infra but I have found McGregor's other works surprisingly limited in content. I am going to see Woolf Works. I am sure that it will be interesting. Who knows it might turn out to be a significant work. I should not worry about what other people have said about it after all none of us have actually seen it in its entirety. All will become clear next week.There may even be a stampede to snap up the unsold tickets. It will be most interesting to know your views on the new work.So please tell us what you think of it.Ignore all the Grumps. They know as little or as much as you do on this particular topic.

The cast sheet says that the ballet was performed by dancers and students, I wondered whether the lads in charge of Peregrine and the "poop basket" were students?I can't say that I recognised them. It might explain their apparent failure to recognise that there was a problem with the trap wheel. I don't think that I have ever seen Moseley move as quickly as he did getting out of the trap and sorting out the front cloth.

Cojocaru's footwork is brilliant but her feet are not beautiful.They have protruding lumps which do not register too much when they are in motion but are very noticeable when she stands still.I certainly don't like looking at them in repose whereas Lynn Seymour had beautiful feet which in simple movements and repose could make you gasp at the beauty of the human body.The beauty of Seymour's feet is one of the reasons why Month in the Country contains moments in which the positioning of Natalia Petrovna encourages the audience to look at the dancer's feet and admire them. I suspect that when Ashton was choreographing for Seymour in this ballet he was, at one level at least,choreographing for Seymour as Pavlova.

I am not surprised that Yanowsky's name is missing from the casting for performances on the main stage during booking period one.The ballets scheduled for performance are not really her territory are they? Once the decision has been made about the ballets that are to be performed, then without even beginning to allocate roles management has, in effect, made decisions about the dancers we are likely to see.As far as Osipova is concerned I imagine that her contract stipulates the number of performances she will give with the company. I do not think that I would waste her contracted performances on the few minutes of the Nutcracker's grand pas de deux either. Perhaps not seeing Morera's Juliet is the price we have to pay in order to see some of the younger dancers in the role. A lot of people groan when the season's ballets are first announced because eighteen performances of Romeo and Juliet or Manon always seems excessive before we know the casts. If management is serious about developing its own dancers rather than buying in principal dancers then it has to give its young artists the chance to dance major roles. If every principal dances a main role in every full length ballet that leaves little or no opportunity for talented dancers in the lower ranks to show what they can do.There is an inevitable trade off between casting experienced dancers and casting young aspirants. At least this time management seem to be fully aware that several senior dancers are approaching an age when they might be expected to retire and is taking action to deal with the situation. I am pleased to see Hayward, Nagdhi and Ball's names appearing in the casts of Romeo and Juliet but management needs to have a consistent approach to casting its young dancers. They should have more than one performance each if they are to develop although I am guessing that some of them may be appearing in school's performances of R and J. I am disappointed that Stix-Brunnell is only cast in Raven Girl.She is an interesting dancer who seems to understand that ballet is a theatrical art form as a result she gives performances rather than merely reproducing steps; but I do not think that even she can persuade me to sit through that piece again. I am disappointed that Two Pigeons is not cast exclusively with young dancers but I suppose that management believe that they need to cast dancers with name recognition in most performances to entice people to buy tickets for a ballet which the company has not performed for thirty years. I expect to see Yanowsky's appearances reduce over the next couple of years.In 2012 she gave an interview to the Ballet Association in which she said she thought that she had about another five years as a dancer. I just hope that they revive Les Biches before she retires as her portrayal of the Hostess is on a par with Beriosova's.

Alison I am sorry if I have been obscure. The Touring company was established in the early 1950's to provide, among other things, a training ground for young dancers and choreographers who might subsequently transfer to the Covent Garden Company. It was recognised that the main company's new home was not suited to the development of young dancers in the way that Sadler's Wells had been. There would be fewer opportunities for young dancers at Covent Garden and there would be more pressure on dancers making their debuts on the main stage than had been the case when the company was at Sadler's Wells.The Touring company was linked to the main company and there was considerable interchange of dancers between the two companies. Fonteyn was still dancing occasional performances with the touring company as late as 1970.The two companies danced a very similar repertory. When SWRB moved to Birmingham and became BRB it did so as a free standing company. It no longer had the function of providing a training ground for dancers who were expected to transfer to the Covent Garden company in due course. That meant that anyone joining the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden was no longer going to have the developmental opportunities that had been provided by a touring company.It also meant that anyone with any talent might have to wait a very long time before they got a chance to do anything of significance on the main stage.Perhaps waiting until it was too late.I think Darcey Bussell was one of the last dancers to do an apprenticeship of sorts on tour before moving to the main company.Instead of providing training for dancers coming from the RBS and preparing them for senior positions in the company the Covent Garden company now recruits a significant number of dancers to senior positions who have learnt their trade in other companies.Dancing for ENB Muntagirov gained exactly the sort of experience that he would once have obtained from the touring company or SWRB. I hope that this is a bit clearer.

Good luck to Hamilton , given the grit and determination that she has shown to get where she is I have no doubt that she will use her time at Dresden well.Very few dancers move countries to stay with a teacher who has faith in them. Someone who does that is unlikely to use her time with another company unwisely. A new company that can give her the opportunity to do a lot of dancing is exactly what she needs at this stage in her career. It continues to be a major weakness of the Royal Ballet that it does not provide enough opportunities for its younger dancers' development. The girls get a lot of corps work but comparatively few developmental opportunities. The choice of repertory plays a significant part in this. Manon provides far less opportunity for inexperienced dancers to learn how to carry a role than Facade, Les Rendezvous or Les Patineurs do.The added advantage of these Ashton ballets is that they sharpen up the technique because everything is very exposed.The choreography is either performed correctly or it is not. There is no opportunity for a dancer performing in one of them to fudge things technically or to perform edited highlights of the choreography as it will be noticed. Young dancers need to be given the opportunity to dance during their early years to develop stamina as well as artistry. The company has nowhere for young dancers to gain the experience of dancing the classics which the Touring Company used to provide.Antoinette Sibley said that she needed at least ten performances of roles like Aurora and Odette/Odile before she felt that she had got anywhere near to getting to grips with them.If you think about it a member of the company today,destined for the top, would need three revivals of Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake to achieve that number of performances which means it would take between six and nine years,unless everyone got injured, to obtain the amount of experience that Sibley regarded as the minimum.While Sibley did not join the Touring Company she did go on an extended tour of Africa early on in her career which, no doubt gave her the performance experience that she needed. When I think about it, a significant number of the dancers who were at the top of the Covent Garden company in the 1960's and 1970's had served an apprenticeship with the Touring Company. I know that David Wall said that when he first arrived at Covent Garden he felt in awe of his new colleagues until he realised that he had far more experience of dancing the classics than they had. The effects of disbanding the touring arm in 1970 has never been satisfactorily addressed.It probably explains why Clive Barnes felt able to write that MacMillan had handed his successor a much weaker company than he had inherited. When SWRB was established it looked as if the developmental gap had been recognised and was about to be plugged. But when the company moved and became BRB the problem returned. It is noticeable that during the 1980's and 1990's the main company became less able to produce dancers of quality and increasingly turned to buying in talent. I do not think that the failure to find dancers of the requisite calibre is solely the fault of the school. It may be correct that good dancers are made by good teachers but good dancers having learnt their craft at school need to learn their art by performing, A company with a large number of principal dancers most of whom expect to appear in all the major ballets in its repertory may provide pleasure for their fans but they also present an obstruction to the development of talented dancers in the lower ranks of the company. It will be interesting to see whether allowing dancers leave of absence to work in other companies as part of their development becomes a feature of O'Hare's directorship or whether it is a one off arrangement.If the latter it will be even more interesting to see what solution he finds to plug the developmental gap.

Indigo welcome. Make sure that you see The Two Pigeons.

MAB. Thank you for reminding me about Dansomanie. I went onto the site and discovered that most of the items posted about the current revival of Fille in Paris concern casting. The posters, not surprisingly,seem to be using the casting of this revival to try to work out what the future holds under Millepied's directorship.Some seem to be concerned that there are so few etoiles dancing in the current revival and that a couple of men who were coached as Alain by the role's originator are not featured. Others seem to think that the current casting is evidence that Millepied is concerned with developing his young dancers. There are comments on other Dansomanie threads that suggest that there was a considerable amount of favouritism under the former director.But then fans tend to accuse management of favouritism when the powers that be fail to recognise the superior qualities and talents of those dancers that they follow with fervor.Casting according to suitability rather than seniority can cause all sorts of problems for management, as can casting for developmental purposes.We may get an insight into how committed O'Hare is to "growing his own" rather than buying in talent this afternoon when the casting for the first booking period is announced. Anyway at least some of the posters on the Dansomanie site think that it is a good idea to cast young inexperienced dancers in Fille because the choreography is not too difficult and it will give Millepied the chance to see what the youngsters can do.I suppose the point is that the Nureyev productions of the classics tend to be stuffed with obvious technical challenges so that even the uninitiated can see that they are difficult.They are in many ways what Danilova described as "displays of dancing".If that is the sort of work that the ballet goer is used to watching then being presented with a ballet with a totally different aesthetic where the emphasis is on apparent effortless dance it is easy to believe that you are watching a simple piece suitable for training purposes.It will be interesting to read the comments of those who attend the performances in Paris. FONTY While my enthusiasm for old fashioned mixed bills continues I seem to recall reading somewhere that Richard Buckle once gave a definition of a triple bill as a programme which was guaranteed to contain one ballet that you would loathe. And he was writing about the old fashioned triple bill not the sort that we get now.

One of the problems with Fille as with Cinderella are the travesti roles which seem to be played increasingly broadly. I do wonder sometimes how roles that were clearly intended to be characters rather than caricatures have been allowed to degenerate into broad comedy and slapstick.Widow Simone for example is not part of the British pantomime tradition but part of the performance tradition of the ballet. According to the French version of Wikipedia "..the role is traditionally taken by a man in all versions of the ballet"and a quick look at the video trailer for performances of the reconstructed original version of Fille at Toulouse clearly has a man in the role. Checcetti was a famous Simone and clearly did not play her as anything except a character since Karsavina said of him that when his Simone saw that her plans for Lise's marriage had been dashed his face registered anger,sorrow and regret. That suggests that Cecchetti was in character and acting rather than a performer who had decided to enliven the role of a middle aged woman by adding stage business of his own. Cecchetti's Simone seems far removed from what we see today on the Covent Garden stage not merely by time but by sensibility. Karsavina's account of Cecchetti's performance sounds like one that she observed at close quarters so you might have thought that someone who had been on stage with Ronald Emblem,such as Leslie Collier, might have had some idea about how the role should be played.If she can't remember details of those performances then I am sure that Brenda Last can. The point about Emblem's Simone was that there was no obvious additional stage business any embellishments that he may have added were strictly in character and clearly accepted by Ashton. His Simone was a fully rounded portrayal just like Grant's Alain. I know that there is the slight problem of the current ownership of this ballet but I am surprised that Grant allowed such broad portrayals of Simone.Many of those now dancing Simone did so while he was in charge of revivals. Perhaps I should not be that surprised about the coarsening of the role since I seem to recall that when Grant brought his Canadian company to Covent Garden in, I think, the late seventies there were lots of comments that it did not look quite right. It is almost as if those now responsible for reviving the ballet have forgotten the company's own performance tradition established by Stanley Holden and Ronald Emblem of Simone as a credible character and take their lead from professional dance critics who describe Simone as a pantomime dame.How I wish that those responsible for staging this revival would tell all the dancers cast as Simone to concentrate on characterisation and getting the clog dance right. Perhaps the root cause of the problem lies further in the past than Grant's custodianship of the ballet.In 1970 the Board decided that the Royal Ballet had to reduce its size in order to reduce costs. Perhaps we are still living with the effects of that decision. After all Ashton told John Percival at the time that they were " getting rid of all the character dancers,they won't be able to do my ballets." It remains true that there are a few character dancers in the company. Perhaps it is the shortage of such dancers within the ranks of the company that explains the sometimes less than satisfactory portrayals of some key characters in this ballet.

Aileen did your daughter enlighten you as to what "middle aged" humour is? A scenario dating from the late eighteenth century which has appealed to a large number of choreographers over the years appears to have considerable resilience to me.Perhaps the problem is that the humour in the ballet is the humour of recognition or perhaps it is the story line which no longer has resonance. A plot which depends on a couple attempting to thwart parental marriage plans has a long and glorious history in western theatre. It provides the basic plot line of plays,operas and ballets such as Romeo and Juliet, the Recruiting Officer as well as Fille but it is essentially a conventional plot. It is what the author does with it that is important. Ballet goers and dancers seem to have more problems with the concept of comedy ballets than was once the case. I suspect that in large part this is because so few are performed and even fewer created. If you grow up with the idea that ballet is a serious art form and that its seriousness is demonstrated by the earnest nature of its themes and the challenging nature of its choreography,if you only perform in abstract ballets and serious works then being asked to perform in a comic work must seem like letting the side down. I know that Marion Tait said that when it was announced that BRB were going to revive Pineapple Poll the dancers looked very dubious about it.They did not seem convinced when they were told that they would enjoy performing it and it was some time before they became persuaded that it was a good idea. It sounds odd because at one time a light work was an essential element in a mixed bill. Today however audiences tend to take their ballet going very seriously. I suspect that this shift in taste began as a reflection of the tastes of those in charge of ballet companies rather than audiences suddenly being converted to a monoculture of serious works. It could be that this change in the content of mixed bills has contributed to the idea that Frederick Ashton was essentially the creator of a large number of lightweight choreographic trifles since his are the only lightweight ballets we see with any regularity. It does not seem to be the done thing to add a light touch to a mixed programme unless of course it is an Ashton mixed bill. After some of the mixed bills we have had recently I begin to long for old fashioned triple bills that end with a light ballet like Jazz Calendar,Facade,Mamz'elle Angot,La Boutique Fantasque, The Prospect Before Us,Les Biches and so on.What we get at the moment often seems like the equivalent of a meal in which the same ingredients appear in every course. T

Don't you think that the reason why so many young dancers are are surprised at the difficulty that Ashton's choreography presents is that everyone"KNOWS"that technique has improved so much in the last thirty years so it comes as a shock to discover that something that old is technically challenging. I suspect that it is challenging because it uses the whole body with torso,arms and legs not always in accord,it is very exposed and requires tremendous stamina. Francesca Hayward gave a demonstration of a very short section of the ballerina's solo from Rhapsody at an Ashton event at the RBS. It was before Hayward had really started learning it. Collier gave her a very short section and when Hayward had finished she simply said "It's really hard". The fact that it looks so simple and has no obvious bravura display must lead to idea that it must be easy to perform. McRae said something along those lines when he spoke to the Ballet Association. He said that when he was told that he was being cast in Symphonic Variations he looked at the recording and then was puzzled when everyone told him how difficult it was to dance.It is only nineteen minutes after all. His words were to the effect that the experience of dancing it showed how right they had been and how inaccurate his initial assessment of its difficulty had been.Then there is Sylvia which some people on this forum thought could easily be converted into a two act work because act two is so short. Yanowsky said it is exhausting because it is like performing in three different ballets in one evening. I think that she said that she was numb from the knees down in the last act. Then reverting to Symphonic there is the story told by Antoinette Sibley of two dancers appearing in the ballet for the first time coming to her and asking whether the pianist could slow the music during rehearsal because it was obviously being played too fast. They needed it to be slowed so they could point their feet. Her answer was that the music was being played at the speed that they would be dancing in performance and that as far as pointing their feet was concerned at that point in the ballet you could not feel your legs. I often think that it is the fact that MacMillan's works do occasionally let the audience see that ballet is difficult is one of the reasons why dancers seem to prefer his works to Ashton's. After all who wants to exhaust themselves performing a role like Palemon which is all partnering when they can be certain that a significant part of the audience will leave the theatre thinking that they did nothing?It's almost as bad as dancing the poet in Les Sylphides who clearly does nothing unless of course he fails to get the "nothing2 that he is doing right.

The BBC has a programme on Radio 4 called Feedback which airs the views of the TV and radio audience. Perhaps contacting that programme might elicit some sort of response from the Powers that Be about the amount of coverage that dance,particularly ballet,is given. Does anyone have any idea about the numbers who are actively involved in ballet in this country? How many children attend ballet classes for example?

I recall that when I first saw Fille Simone was danced by Ronald Emblem who performed the role with both the Covent Garden company and the Touring company. Perhaps Ashton preferred a single dancer who got a role absolutely right to several who each got it wrong in their own individual way. It was a great pity that it was Brian Shaw rather than Emblem who appeared in the Collier Coleman recording of Fille. In fact it is a pity that the whole thing was not recorded five years earlier then we would have had Coleman at the height of his powers and we might have had Emblem who played a convincing French peasant rather than Shaw, and Alexander Grant, rather than Gary Grant who was a pale shadow of his brother as Alain. I recall some time ago someone asked whether the ballet was really danced at the speed you see in the Coleman recording. It certainly was and the result was that the entire ballet seemed physically lighter and more exciting. Looking at the recording of the ballet with the original cast it would seem that the ballet had slowed down quite s bit between 1962 when the BBC recorded the original cast and 1980? when the Coleman recording was made. What lay between the two recordings were the years of the MacMillan directorship and the impact that his taste had on the company and its style. Fascinating when you think that Ashton was alive and active when both recordings were made.

RBS matinee a few years back did include a short section for the corps from The Four Seasons. The girls bouree and the nod at a girl who joins them. The problem,as I recall it, is that the short section which was shown at the matinee is quite amusing when you first see it in the ballet but that it was repeated more than was good for it or the audience.It was the choreography for the principal dancers that was special about the ballet and why it was described as a company work.I know that the section that I remember most was Summer in which David Wall and Monica Mason spent a section of their pas lying down at the front of the stage presumably overcome by the heat. The original designs were very specific as to time and place.Nineteenth century Italian ballet land with what I now think might have been conscious references to La Caterina which was created as a vehicle for Lucille Grahn. But then perhaps the designer just thought early Verdi ballet music, looked at a few contemporary ballet prints and then came up with the designs and surprised himself.The ballet was acquired by Nureyev's POB but was not, I think, so well received by the dancers or the audience as it was here.I think that in Paris it was shown in revised form bits of the choreography were cut,presumably the sections for the corps.Lady MacMillan provided new designs for its Paris staging which were more abstract or at least less specific than those for Covent Garden. It has been suggested that the dancers in Paris were going through a rather negative phase at the time that Nureyev introduced it into the repertory and that they were not very keen on it because it was by MacMillan.This was a long time ago, long before they acquired Manon. I don't think that the adverse response was anything to do with the revisions. It is certainly a piece that should be revived.The fact that other choreographers have used Verdi's ballet music and that there are ballets with titles that include the word Seasons does not seem a good reason for ignoring a very good piece of choreography while at the same time seeking the revival of weaker works.

Sky is a commercial business and you can not expect it screen programmes that do not attract large audiences.The BBC is not,in theory, a commercial organisation.It has a duty to educate and entertain but it appears very happy to concentrate on entertainment and forget about educating its viewers about the theatrical art forms of opera and ballet on terrestrial television. It seems content to fill late night hours with The Old Grey Whistle Test and documentaries about pop singers of the 1960's to 1980's. I suppose that such programming ensures that the corporation will not be accused of elitism. It seems ignorant about and/or indifferent to the art programmes that I assume are still in its archives After all you might have expected the documentaries about the dancers of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, John Drummond's Speaking of Diaghilev to be dusted off and screened occasionally.Other programmes that should have been retained are the masterclasses that Markova gave on Les Sylphides and some other ballets with Ashmole and Barbieri as dancers. Then there is the Fonteyn series about ballet history; recordings of a number of ballets including Peter Wright's production of Sleeping Beauty with Sibley and Dowell which the BBC say was wiped, and De Valois' 1977 production with Park and Wall which was screened in 1978. I am always suspicious of the BBC's statements that recordings are not available or have been destroyed because that used to be the corporation's stock response to enquiries about sound recordings at a time when they were not considered to have any commercial value.If the tape of the Sibley and Dowell Beauty really was wiped than the corporation could always ask the public whether anyone has a recording of it. It was just such an enquiry that led to the recovery of several missing episodes of Dr Who. Both recordings would be of considerable historic interest as they show the company dancing at a speed and in a style somewhat different from what we are used to today. Some people say that they are bored by Sleeping Beauty and I certainly find the Fairy Variations as currntly cast and performed something of a trial.I no longer feel any regret if circumstances prevent me seeing the Prologue.Forty years ago I would have felt very differently. Seeing performances in which the Fairy Variations are cast with real care and a coherent,musical account is given of the entire choreographic text rather than one in which the Rose Adagio is treated as an Olympic style event and the rest of the ballet,is,as a result reduced in significance might lead to a radical rethink of what we currently see on stage.Sleeping Beauty performed at a speed that both the composer and choreographer might recognise is a very different experience from attending a performance in which the score is tortured so that Aurora can ignore as many of her suitors as she likes. Danced in the way now fashionable there is no arc of development from act to act and the Grand pas de Deux comes as an anticlimax. I would be really happy if the BBC just dusted off its dance archive and showed some of its treasures such as the recording of Les Rendezvous with Brian Shaw and Doreen Wells which is totally different from any live performance that I have seen in recent years.I can't help feeling that everyone who has subscribed to Sky would be happy to see the BBC recognise its role as an arts educator and revert to being an active promoter of the arts in general and ballet in particular.

It would be nice if all the Simones concentrated on getting the clog dance right rather than adding little bits of stage business.It is almost as if the company has forgotten that Simone is a dance role and that it is essential that the clog dance makes an impact through the skill of the performer.That section tends to sag at present and few of the current crop of Simones are really justified in returning to the stage for a second bow as the applause has often ended before their return to the stage. As far as the first act is concerned the section in which Simone throws things at Colas would be improved if all the Simones threw the vegetables at Colas as if they wanted to hit him and left it to Colas to get out of the way. Marriott is either a very bad shot or thinks that he should not hit Colas which completely reduces the effect of the scene. I find it very odd that the double take with the flower pot is ignored completely by some Simones and that others fail to give it time to make effect. When Ronald Emblem danced Simone it was always clear that he wanted to hit Colas with all the vegetables and that his hesitation over the flower pot and contents had nothing to do with not hurting Colas and everything to do with not doing anything that would cost money.You could see Emblem's Simone thinking "If the flowerpot is broken it will have to be replaced and that will cost me money.No I will just throw the contents" The time was taken in looking at the flower pot. This small piece of apparently inessential business is the first point at which Simone reveals her character to the audience.Its importance lies in helping to establish her as a thrifty peasant whose main concern is money.The section in which she haggles over the wages she will pay the harvesters should add to our understanding of Simone's character.This also fails to register as it should, mainly I think, because the Simones no longer look reproachfully at Lise who has intervened to raise the wages the widow will have to pay. Today's Simones tend to smile happily when the bargain is made or show no reaction to an arrangement that is going to cost them money.They should show some response to the situation that has been created by Lise's action. These two small sections are the build up to her short exchange with Thomas and her response to Thomas' promise of the money she will receive.I recall that Emblem made more of the section in which Simone receives the money by smiling broadly before she struggled away with it to hide it in the rainwater butt. You need all of that detail building Simone's character to prepare the audience for their first sight of the proposed bridegroom. Alxander Grant said in interview that it was the details in Ashton's works that created the characters and that because they seemed unimportant to dancers they were easily lost. These small details in Simone's actions during her first few minutes on the stage establish her character with a few deft strokes.If given their full weight then Simone emerges as a rounded character rather than a pantomime dame whose performance is enhanced by engaging in slapstick. I wonder whether this erosion of detail arises from a general belief that Ashton is in some way inferior to MacMillan as a choreographer and creator of stage characters and that the stage business that I have described is fussy and unnecessarily prescriptive. MacMillan after all gave some leeway to dancers in small roles to create their characters but even in his works there is a noticeable loss of detail in the way in which some of his major characters are performed.Thus few Mercutios now do the markedly off centre turns, similar to those in the Brian Shaw role in Symphonic variations,in their solo during the ball.But it is the off centre nature of the turn that reveals his character as a joker and sets him apart from his friends. It would be interesting to establish whether this erosion of detail is the result of the prescriptive nature of some of the current training systems or whether it is the current emphasis on technique that is the root of the problem. .

I was not saying that none of MacMillan's works were well received,Romeo and Juliet clearly was;it was thought to compare favourably with the Lavrovsky version.But its reception does not necessarily challenge the image of MacMillan as an unappreciated genius, it is after all a relatively uncontroversial subject for a ballet. It is the ballets which MacMillan could only create in Germany because the Board objected to the use of the music, works such as Song of the Earth and Gloria;works subject to adverse criticism because of weak structure and padding such as Manon and Anastasia and works which were criticised because of their content such as Judas Tree which contributed to the image of their creator as an unappreciated genius who pushed at the boundaries of classical ballet.The point is that critics like John Percival who had been more than happy to point out all the deficiencies they saw in works like Manon admired The Four Seasons. John Percival described it as a company ballet, by which he meant that it was the sort of work that showed off the company to advantage and,as such,filled a gap in the company's repertory. I suspect that the real reason for not reviving it has little to do with the number of works on the theme of the four seasons and a great deal more to do with the fact that while the ballet challenges the dancers it does not challenge the audience.It is a well constructed work with attractive choreography but its style and content do not fit into the idea of MacMillan as a choreographer whose works challenged an audience who had grown up on Ashton. It is works like Valley of Shadows,Different Drummer and Judas Tree which do that. I find it strange that Lady MacMillan should have agreed to revive an inferior work like Isadora but made little or no effort to revive a much finer work whose greatest weakness may be that it shows MacMillan's command of the classical idiom.

The author of the biographical sketches would have been about twelve in the year of the Ashton centenary and would have been extremely lucky to have seen everything that was revived then. But there was so much missing Monotones,Pigeons, A Walk to the Paradise Garden, Capriole Suite and much much more. Of course the author has only seen a very limited number of MacMillan's works.I keep wondering why MacMillan's Four Seasons is not revived. The only rational explanation that I can think of is that it does not fit the carefully cultivated image of MacMillan as a tortured,unappreciated genius.It's far too light and entertaining and it would never do to reveal that MacMillan ever made a single ballet that was highly regarded by audience and critics alike from its first performance.

Here's a new one. A short section of the Today programme given over to a piece about Woolf Works.Does this reflect a new spirit of openess or a degree of concern about slow ticket sales?

Here are few suggestions. 1.Theatre Street, Tamara Karsavina's account of her training at the Imperial Ballet School in the late nineteenth century and her early career. 2.Dancing for Diaghilev, Lydia Sokolova 's autobiography written with the assistance of Richard Buckle. Sokolova whose real name was Hilda Munnings grew up in London and was renamed by Diaghilev himself. 3.Choura. Alexandra Danilova's autobiography. 4.Speaking of Diaghilev. John Drummond. He filmed interviews with a large number of dancers who had worked for Diaghilev.The edited version was shown by the BBC in two parts years ago.The interviews were transcribed and the book is the result. 5.My Theatre Life. Auguste Bournonville. 6.Secret Muses a biography of Frederick Ashton. 7.Different Drummer a biography of Kenneth MacMillan. 8.Theatre in my Blood John Percival's biography of John Cranko. 9.Any of the autobiographical works that De Valois wrote and Kathrine Sorley Walker's study of the founder of the Royal Ballet all bear reading. 10.The Making of Markova. The recent biography of Alicia Markova who danced for Diaghilev when a child, danced her first Giselle for the Vic Wells ballet, knew and worked with both Balanchine and Ashton at the beginning of their careers and who,,with Anton Dolin founded London Festival Ballet. 11.Bronislava Nijinska's autobiography. She embarked on an autobiography.The first part was published I do not know if the second part was ever completed let alone published.The book is fascinating and tells you a great deal about her brother Nijinsky. 12. Anything by Ivor Guest or Cyril Beaumont. If you are at all interested in ballet history then Ivor Guest is the authority on the subject of nineteenth century ballet.His books on the Romantic ballet in England and France and ballet under Napoleon.are all well worth reading.He also wrote biographies of Adeline Genee and Fanny Elssler among others. Cyril Beaumont was an authority on ballets, their texts and stage action..He wrote a series of books on ballets which describe them. They are now out of print but well worth searching out. I think that the first one was called The Complete Book of Ballets and there were a series of supplements to it. It contains descriptions of some long lost Bournonville ballets.it can on occasion even be consoling. It is somehow reassuring to discover that even in the early twentieth century some ballets were totally dependent on their original cast for their effect. He wrote of Thamar a ballet that the Maris Liepa group brought to London a couple of seasons ago that only those who had seen the ballet in its first season with Karsavina in the title role could ever truly be said to have seen the work. He also wrote monographs on Giselle (The Ballet called Giselle) and Swan Lake (The Ballet called Swan Lake) which discuss their origins, performance history and choreographic texts .Both of these.monographs are still in print.

I think that it is very easy to underestimate the technical demands that Ashton's ballets place on the dancer, Because they must be performed without any obvious effort it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that they are easy to dance. They seem simple because their complexities are hidden and their technical challenges are concealed. The fact that there are rarely any obvious displays of technical fireworks adds to the impression that they are simple and undemanding works when, for example, compared to MacMillan's ballets. I sometimes think, perhaps uncharitably, that the reason why dancers want to appear in MacMillan's works is not just because of the juicy roles but because he lets the audience see, in a way that Ashton does not,that his ballets are not easy to dance. . The only Ashton ballet that I can think of which contains any obvious bravura display piece is La Fille Mal Gardee which contains the Fanny Elssler pas de deux. Despite the much vaunted improvements in technique that have taken place since Ashton's time his works,particularly his postwar works still present real challenges to the dancer. The " Ashton style" is far more than musicality and a bit of epaulement. It is an understated approach to classical dance rather than a showy one and it is based on Cecchetti technique with fast footwork,subtle epaulement and placement of the head..Ashton's works require considerable stamina and a strong flexible technique. The role of Lise requires a good unforced jump and the ability to shift weight incredibly quickly in order to maintain balance. It was created on Nadia Nerina who was probably the strongest technician the company has ever had.It is said that she once performed thirty two entrechats six instead of the usual thirty two fouettes during a performance of Swan Lake at which Nureyev was present because he had spoke disparagingly about the technical level of the company. Ashton created roles on individual dancers and of course gave them choreography which created the character that they were portraying and which showed the dancer concerned to best advantage.I think that while nearly every female dancer who has been a principal in the Covent Garden company has performed Juliet at one time or another comparatively few have danced Lise. The reason is simply that Juliet is not that technically demanding while the role of Lise exposes technical inadequacies, Juliet was created on Lynn Seymour a great dance actress who was a lyrical dancer rather than a technician. She had more than enough technique to dance the roles in which she was cast but she could never have danced Lise as made on Nerina, MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet is fascinating because it suits those who are great classical dancers almost as well as those who are great dance actors. The ability to move an audience is the greatest asset that a dancer can bring to the role of Juliet not an exceptionally strong technique,There is no hiding place with the role of Lise you either can do it or you can't. Emoting won't save a dancer playing Lise from being found out but it will the dancer playing Juliet.

They may all sell. But that number of unsold tickets for a new work is not usual. It is not I think something that the management will be taking that lightly.The impression I got when Alex Beard spoke to the London Ballet Circle was that everyone was very happy with ticket sales for the ballet. and that all the time the Director shows that he knows what he is doing, knows his audience and can grow it and is able to meet whatever targets ACE decides to set all is well and there will be little or no interference from the Board.But if sales are not up to the mark and/or the US Tour does not go to plan that could all change particularly as the cuts in public funding begin to bite.I wonder what the Board's view will be if ticket sales are slow for booking period one?

I am not suggesting that either of these are perfect ballets but Adagio Hammerklavier and Four Schumann Pieces are both Van Mannen works that it would be nice to see again but I do wonder whether they would make the same impact now. I recall that Grosse Fuge seemed something of a quaint period piece last time I saw it. The dancers were, no doubt, far stronger technically than the first cast that I saw but they seemed to lack the presence and weight of performance that the earlier casts had. Even a perfect ballet needs to be cast with sensitivity to the nature of the work,its mood and style and then coached with comparable care.If you see ballets perfectly performed revival after revival as you tend to with works protected by the Balanchine Trust, and was the case with the Ashton repertory when he was alive and while Michael Somes was its custodian, you can easily come to believe that the works concerned are virtually dancer proof.The quality of performance of Balanchine's works is guaranteed by the Trust's involvement in casting decisions and their provision of coaches. Ashton's works are not subject to the same quality control and protection. Dowell and Mason both had a firm grasp on who was suited to the Ashton repertory with a sort of internalized company emploi because of their long experience with the company and the dancers they had seen in particular works. I am not sure that Kevin O'Hare has quite the same grasp or such a good eye for the right dancer to cast in a particular role. Last year's revival of the Dream with Matthew Golding as Oberon combined with the initial decision to cast him in Symphonic Variations suggest that he does not. It is possible that O'Hare's experience as a dancer exposed him to a greater amount of compromise casting than would have been the case had he been at the larger Covent Garden company and that it is this that has made him less able to identify the right dancers for certain ballets. But it could simply be that he is more interested in the new works that the company is in the process of creating and that as long as the Principals appear in the requisite number of performances and they are happy with the roles that they are dancing he is not that concerned about nuances of casting and a dancer's suitability for particular roles. If this is the case then we can expect to see works that are not protected by outsiders cast in a more pragmatic way than previously, resulting in performances of far more variable quality than we have been used to. The casting of Myrthe next year may give a bit more of an insight about the management's views on this issue . I do not think that it can be true to say that only a ballet that is dancer proof is capable of being described as a perfect ballet. That is like saying that only plays that work regardless of the actors cast in them are great plays.Just as you need a very wide range of actors in a company that is due to perform Macbeth,Hamlet,Twelfth Night and All's Well That Ends Well a ballet company needs a wide range of dancer types in order to perform a repertory as wide as that of the Royal Ballet. It is up to those responsible for casting to select the right dancers for a particular ballet.The success or failure of the individual performance is at the end of the day the result of appropriate casting and coaching. Performance experience in a role should not be overlooked.I understand the need to give dancers an opportunity to develop but it makes no sense to me to treat works such as Symphonic Variations or Scenes de Ballet as training opportunities. One of the reasons why they were so well performed in the past was that they were meticulously cast and coached and there was always a significant level of casting continuity from one revival to the next.Now each revival seems to involve little or no continuity which reduces the likelihood of fine performances. The problem is that you only notice how important the corps is in Scenes de Ballet when they are not up to the mark.I have recently seen less than satisfactory performances of Scenes de Ballet but those performances do not make it a poor ballet. At least one poster has said that Sleeping Beauty is not a perfect ballet because of the way in which the story telling stops for dancing interludes but that is to misunderstand its nature.Contemporary critics complained that it was not a ballet but merely a ferie. It certainly was a very different type of work from a ballet like Le Corsaire where there are clear sections of pas d'action as well as lots of opportunity for dance.The jardin animee in Corsaire displays the size of the corps and its technical expertise but that is one scene in a work that is generally concerned with telling the story of Conrad and Medora .In its reconstructed from the jardin animee can seem a bit like an exercise directed solely at seeing how many dancers you can get onto a stage and still keep them moving but it is the only scene created merely for the purposes of display. The Sleeping Beauty was created entirely as a display piece to show off the technical skills of their latest Italian guest Brianzi and the balletic wealth of the Mariinsky company as a whole.Every single pas from the Fairy variations to the character dances in the final act are there to show off the skills of the dancers and the choreographer.It is best to see the entire ballet as a setting for the display of fine jewels rather than a story ballet.But a setting for jewels however finely crafted is not going to look beautiful if it displays ill chosen gems and paste.Companies seem far more democratic than they once were and while this can be wonderfully liberating for an individual who might otherwise be trapped in a very limited range of roles it can lead to a blurring of vision as to the need to cast according to type in such apparently insignificant roles as those of the fairy variations. But if they are cast as training opportunities without any thought about the need to provide contrast between each soloist then they can seem very dull and it can become very difficult to understand what Ashton was talking about when he described watching them as taking private lessons with Petipa. Perhaps in a world in which Aurora is not cast with that much care, and is danced as if the Rose Adagio was an Olympic event it is a bit much to ask that any one should be concerned about casting different types of dancers in each of the fairy variations. The ballets put forward as perfect in this thread cover a wide range of types and a considerable part the history of ballet. .Currently ballet performances show considerably less interest in period style than is the case in the performance of music.I wonder how long it will be before the balletic equivalent of authenticity in performance style becomes a significant issue. Many people on this forum seem to accept the "sore ear" arabesque in performances of ballets of whatever period. But while in the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was accepted performance practice to re orchestrate the works of Handel and his contemporaries for the modern orchestra on the basis that if it had been available to them they would have used it, that performance practice and argument would now expose a performer to ridicule. I wonder how long it will be before people start to demand period style including period tempi for the nineteenth century classics and the works of the twentieth century.After all unlike musicology where you need to know and have access to the literary sources to begin to understand early performance practice the evidence for ballet performance practice is, for some choreographers at least, readily accessible in the form of film and DVD. When viewed they reveal a very different quality of movement from the one to which we have become accustomed and provide yet another angle from which to view the concept of perfection.