FLOSS

My recollection is that pretty much everyone was dissatisfied with the original designs for Rhapsody but the subsequent history of the designs created for it suggests some uncertainty about what should replace them. As Ashton's nephew owns the ballet the uncertainty is all his and I have some sympathy for him. Finding designs which support the dancers rather than diverting attention from them or reducing their visibility and presence has proved surprisingly difficult. The first replacements were the bright Bauhaus inspired Caulfield ones which got in the way of the performance by drawing far too much attention to themselves were no improvement on the original designs. Then the Curtiss ones went to the other extreme and were far too pastel, self- effacing and apologetic. I seem to recall that the designs by Jessica Curtiss were in turn replaced in 2012 by ones which are a little more assertive and owe a great deal to the original designs created for the ballet. In fact I think we were told at that point that although the costumes for the original production had been credited to William Chappell they were to all intents and purposes by Ashton himself as Chappell had proved incapable of producing any designs because of his age. It will be interesting to see which designs are used in Paris. I hope that we now have an authorised final version.

In my opinion it is merely an exercise in cost cutting which shifts the cost of producing evidence of purchase onto the punter.

I don't know how many people invested in the all Ashton programme which Sarasota Ballet have been streaming. I will simply say that while the company's programming policy clearly sets it apart from other American companies and gives it a unique identity and selling point the work the Webbs are doing is clearly a labour of love. It proves once again that the fact that a work has been neglected for years is rarely a reflection on its quality or effectiveness as a piece of choreography. A mixed bill of Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, last seen in London thirty years ago,The Walk to the Paradise Garden only performed a handful of times in the 1970's and the once hardy perennial Facade which remarkably was last seen at Covent Garden in the 1980's. It is sad to think that the work of the Frederick Ashton Foundation is having so little effect on the programming policy at Covent Garden. The mixed bill opened with Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, music which Ashton had used a decade earlier in a work for Rambert called Valentine's Eve which had a clear narrative about a coquette, a lovelorn poet and a love token. This later ballet using the same music was made for the second company and is essentially an abstract work in which the relationship between the dancers is elusive and only ever hinted at. Its real subject seems to be the ecole de danse and so it seems to fall squarely into the type of work Ashton had advocated in an article about ballet written immediately after the war as an artistic riposte to the expressionist works which Helpmann had been staging for the Sadler's Wells Company. It is very interesting to see how very classical and Cechetti inspired Ashton's surviving works from this period are. So many dance themes and choreographic ideas turn up in this work which will be seen in later works such as Daphnis and Chloe and La Valse. I do hope that Kevin reinstates the Ashton triple bill which was due to be shown in the Linbury last year as I would love to see Valses Nobles again. As with so many of Ashton's work it bears repeat viewing. The second ballet The Walk to the Paradise Garden was, as far as I am aware, only ever danced by its original cast during Ashton's lifetime and then only on a handful of occasions. It is a wonderful ballet and when it was seen in London it was only ever danced by David Wall and Merle Park who had the advantage of being in a ballet created on them. In addition Wall had the advantage of having a much smaller and more manageable partner in Park than we saw in this performance. This probably goes a long way to explain the care with which the choreography was executed and the lack of apparent spontaneity in the performance as a whole which is a shame as it makes the difficult bits stand out in a way that was never intended. Ashton used technically tricky elements in his choreography but never intended that they should draw attention to themselves or to the dancers' skills. None of the Bolshoi lifts should register as anything other than expressions of the couple's emotional state. The choreography is tricky but neither in this ballet nor in Voices of Spring nor Raymonda pas de deux should the audience be aware of the technical challenges or anything remotely resembling earnest effort on the part of the performers. I am extremely pleased to have seen the work again and would love to see it at Covent Garden with say Hayward and Bracewell. Finally we had what I would once have described as that "hardy perennial " Facade. But can I really call it that when it has not been seen at Covent Garden in decades ? Perhaps someone can explain what the powers that be at the Royal Ballet have against this particular Ashton ballet. Is the problem its age as it still works when it is put in front of an audience? Is the problem that the work is frivolous and amusing and management is suffering from a bad case of earnestness or is it something else? I find the neglect of Facade most perplexing as it is, in my experience,virtually fail proof as it can even withstand a certain amount of less than ideal casting. If the choreography is deemed insufficiently challenging for today's dancers then perhaps management should consider reinstating the original ending to the Polka Girl's solo which Markova said ended with a double tour en l'air when she danced it. I will simply say that it is good to know that there is at least one company in the world that takes Ashton sufficiently seriously to stage a wide range of his output. It makes the mere handful of Ashton works which the Royal Ballet permit us to see seem more meagre and the selection even more uninspired than it usually does.

After apparently overlooking the Fonteyn centenary in 2019 and remedying the oversight by adding a gala in her honour somewhat late in the day perhaps Kevin has become a little more aware of the company's significant anniversaries. Perhaps he has appointed one of the more historically aware members of staff on the admin side to remind him about them as they arise or perhaps he got someone to draw up a list of them to avoid further embarrassment. Well whether the choice of repertory is the result of the desire to mark significant anniversaries or merely a matter of chance Kevin has managed with the two of the ballets he has announced to suggest that he is acknowledging the company's ninetieth anniversary and the centenary of the first London staging of the Sleeping Beauty the ballet which has played a significant part in the history and long term development of the company and its international standing. Perhaps staging what to all intents and purposes is Aurora's Wedding is more appropriate than performing the whole ballet since it is a reminder of the important part that Diaghilev played in creating a real interest in ballet in this country which made audiences far more receptive to the early efforts of Rambert and de Valois and willing and eager to support them. I wonder what state the company's twentieth century repertory will be in when it comes to celebrating the centenary and how much of it will be left given the limited range of works from it which we are permitted to see with anything approaching regularity. I don't think that denying the Ashton two and three act ballets a regular place in the seasonal turnover of repertory helps maintain his performance style when the company is dancing so many works which seem to rely on asymmetry and displays of extreme energy for their effect. While the label "Heritage Works" suggests that the ballets in question are old fashioned and irrelevant and only merit revival on special occasions such as significant anniversaries. Then if they fail to make much of an impression their past neglect will be justified as will their further long term neglect . The problem with the beneficial neglect approach is that works which lie unperformed for any length of time wither and die and the works to which this policy is being applied include a significant number of major works by the great choreographers of the last century. They are works which should be part of the company's active repertory even if that means they only see the light of day every five or six years because dancers need the opportunity to dance in them more than once in their careers and audiences have the right to see them.

I wouldn't get too excited about seeing Cuthbertson as Aurora or anyone else among the principal dancers in the final mixed bill. We are only getting act 3 of Sleeping Beauty not the entire ballet. With any luck management will use these performances as an opportunity to try out some of the younger dancers in roles they must covet. As far as the divertisements are concerned I sincerely hope that we are spared Voices of Spring as everyone who dances it now is far too earnest about it and completely fails to recognise it as a tongue in cheek homage to soviet style exhibitions of dance like Spring Waters. I should like to think that we will be given the opportunity to see some of Ashton's less frequently performed gala pieces such as the Thais pas de deux; Raymonda pas de deux; Varii Caprici and The Walk to the Paradise Garden. I would be quite happy to see the Awakening pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty once again and his Pas de Quatre from Swan Lake. As far as Clemenza is concerned the fact that Kaneko has been cast suggests that the new production will include Berenice's departure from Rome something which is not essential to a successful staging of the opera but was included in the 1974 production.

I can remember many years ago reading in a ballet programme words to the effect that the original designs for the Sleeping Beauty had been a problem from the outset because they were devised by an aristocratic amateur and so lacked any sort of unifying artistic style adding that fortunately they were soon replaced by designs which had real artistic merit. It is those improved designs and subsequent redesigns which have made the link between the ballet's narrative and the act three fairy tale characters more and more tenuous. All but severing the link as the action of the ballet was moved back in time in one production to medieval ballet-.land and then forward to the reign Louis XV and even later in others. Successive redesigns have had the effect of removing all the fairy tale characters from their original intended cultural and theatrical context. This effect I suspect is most problematical for the characters who have no divertisement assigned to them and only dance in the polonaise and mazurka. The choice of characters seems to be arbitrary as there is no obvious reason for their presence other than as stage dressing and if they are only moving scenery why choose one character in preference to another?. In order to put these characters into a theatrical context we have to forget the brothers Grimm and their versions of the tales with which we are familiar. Restore the ballet to its original setting with a third act set in the gardens of Versailles at the time of the Sun King himself which is where and when the Mariinsky reconstruction sets it in accordance with the original designs and the presence of these fairy tale characters seems far less arbitrary. I know that Scholl can find no political message concealed in the Sleeping Beauty but Alexandre Benois seemed to think that there was more to the ballet than a simple entertainment or fairy ballet. I don't think it is chance that led Petipa to populate the last act with these characters who were never intended to have their own variations. In a final act which as originally staged had an apotheosis in which Louis XIV descend in the guise of the god Apollo to bless the bridal couple it makes perfect sense that two art forms associated with him are on display during the course of a performance. The first is dance itself with whose development, in the form of ballet, the king was closely involved the second is literature. The literary form in question is the fairy tale. The fairy tale characters who appear on stage in productions based on the 1890 original or the Vic-Wells 1939 staging have one thing in common they are all to be found in the fairy tales written by either Charles Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy who were the greatest exponents of the genre. Essentially much of the last act is devoted to celebrating the cultural flowering which was made possible by the peace and order which Louis XIV had imposed on his kingdom. Extolling the benefits of orderly government and ,by implication,autocracy past and present no doubt appealed to Alexander III. Swan Lake question. I have a funny feeling that questions about the precise point at which the act 2 swans are restored to their human form and when they are forced to return to being swans might have been easier to determine before Fokine's Dying Swan than it has been since. I doubt that many dancers in those early years were tempted into doing bird imitations and emulating swans. When a few years back Ratmansky staged a reconstruction of Swan Lake based on the Stepanov notations for both La Scala and Zurich the costume designs he used made clear the dual nature of the swans by giving them not only the usual white head coverings but a plait much like the one worn by the Tsar Maiden in the Little Humpbacked Horse. As his design choices usually reflect the style of those used in early stagings of the ballet he is working on I imagine that he has stuck closely to the early designs in this case as well. Of course costume designs do not tell you when the dancers are in human form and when they are swans. I suspect that this is one of those ballets in which the wisdom of generations of coaches working in the same local tradition is what really counts. Remember that Fonteyn was insistent that Odette is a woman and never a swan. Something which she presumably learnt through the usual train of transmission from Ivanov and Petipa to N. Sergeyev and then either directly or indirectly to her. I think that the traditional choreography gives you some clues as to when Odette is seen as a human being and when we see her as a swan By the time Odette speaks to Siegfried and tells him of her plight she must have been restored to human form The point at which she is forced to resume her swan form is particularly obvious. As far as the corps de ballet are concerned I am not sure that their form is so clear nor that it needs to be. I think that the ambiguity of their nature and form is deliberate. If Ivanov did not have to show the bulk of swans as entirely human at various points during the second act that gave him far greater freedom over the type of choreography he could create for the corps in the white acts act producing two theatrically desirable outcomes. First the acts which feature the bewitched swan maidens stand in sharp contrast to those which don't. Their acts have choreography which is softer and clearly inspired by the older French school while acts 1 and 3 contain Italian inspired steps and involve those unaffected by Von Rothbart's magic. In addition by giving the corps a somewhat ambiguous form in act 2 Ivanov had the opportunity to emphasis Odette's plight even when she is in human form. I also have to add that recent alterations to the second act which deprive Siegfried of his attendant courtiers leaving him to take aim at the flock of swans after Odette has told him about herself makes little sense. The traditional version in which Siegfried intervenes to stop his fellow huntsmen slaughtering the swans which have settled in front if them followed by Odette's second section of mime in which she claims the swans as hers makes far more sense. It also suggests that the flock are still in bird form at that point. For those who lose sleep at night over the question of when the corps are and are not swans in the second act could always invest in a copy of Cyril Beaumont's book on Swan Lake.

Opus Arte have just reissued the 1968 recording of Ashton's Cinderella on DVD. From the comments made on Amazon it does not sound as if the tape has been restored which is a pity but should not deter anyone from buying a copy as the cast involved is a vintage one from the company's 1960's "golden age". Its great selling point is that everyone who appears in it is completely familiar with Ashton's choreography his aesthetic and his style,which means they dance their roles in a completely idiomatic manner. On a big occasion such as this broadcast Ashton would have been involved in coaching the leading dancers, ensuring that they and his choreographic set pieces were seen to best advantage. The recording gives the viewer Sibley and Dowell as Cinderella and her Prince; Ashton and Helpmann as the Stepsisters; Leslie Edwards as the Father;Alexander Grant as the Jester in a performance which makes it clear that he is a character rather than the leg machine which subsequent changes of costume and make up have made him and Georgina Parkinson as the Fairy Godmother who is transformed from beggar into fairy on stage and whose entourage of season fairies give their variations real character. If I remember correctly, it also includes Christopher Carr as the Dancing Master with Dereck Rencher and Wayne Sleep as the sisters' partners in the ballroom scene. In fact it gives the viewer an entire cast who had the great advantage over most casts seen this century of being able to dance the choreography with apparent ease and at the right speed. No one involved in this performance mistakes apparent simplicity for lack of content or lack of character and no one makes a big thing about technical challenges when they arise. In short it is a performance in which the ballet is danced rather than one in which the steps are done or technique displayed.

I believe that Pappano's current contract with the Royal Opera runs until 2024 but the chances are that we may see quite a bit less of him in the pit over the next three years. I am sure there will be people who will disagree with me but I think that a tenure of more than fifteen years is too long for any music director and that one of more than twenty years is excessive as even the most gifted and innovative of music directors will eventually become stale. I should be very interested to know what you think his most significant contribution to the Royal Opera has been, how his time as music director will be judged in the context of the undoubted contributions made by those who preceded him and what you think will be seen as his lasting artistic legacy to the organisation ?

The Garland Dance performed on the recording made in 1959 is not one that I have seen in the theatre so I don't think that I am in a position to say how accurately the recording reflects the choreography which the company was performing in the theatre in the late fifties or what it might have looked like in the theatre. As far as I know Ashton was responsible for adapting the ballet for television so he decided what to cut and what to preserve for a broadcast whose main purpose was not to reveal the choreographic wonders of The Sleeping Beauty but to make Fonteyn's Aurora available to as large an audience as possible. I think it unlikely that he would have created a new version for the broadcast. As far as this Garland Dance is concerned it is unfortunate that the positioning of the cameras means we do not have an unobstructed view of it as it begins. Instead we are forced to peep at a couple of dancers who are clearly on the periphery of the dance from behind the backs of a couple of courtiers. Sadly we cannot be sure that we ever see the waltz as you might have hoped to see it in the theatre. The Opera House's record of the company's ballet productions, performances and the changes to the choreographic text is only of limited assistance in tracking the story of Ashton's Garland Dances. When it comes to following an individual choreographer's work on a production which was revived over several decades, the information that a specific section of the text was created by a particular choreographer may tell you everything you need to know about it or it may tell you very little because unless you know what changes were made to a section of choreography in a particular season and whether they were retained or dropped you may be unaware that a choreographer has been tinkering with his own work or has restored a version he made earlier on in his career. The other complicating factor is that unless it is made clear you may think that the version you first encounter is the first one the choreographer made. Here for what it is worth are the results of my researches about Ashton's Garland Dances. Ashton made three versions of the Garland Dance, one for Peter Wright's 1968 production of the ballet using a mixed corps and two made for earlier productions using an all female corps. According to David Vaughan Ashton's first all female Garland Dance was created during the war to deal with the loss of male dancers to conscription. This is the version which resurfaced in the production de Valois staged for the company in 1977. It can be seen in the 1978 recording of the ballet. While Madam said that her staging was based on Nikolai Sergeyev's 1939 production for the company it might have been more accurate to say it was based on the revised version of that production. The Garland Dance in the 1959 recording would therefore seem to be Ashton's second thoughts on the dance. As far as his third version is concerned I saw it in my very early days of ballet going but I remember nothing about it which might be because according to Vaughan it was staged as background action to the Princes' entrance or it might be that I was not that interested in the corps de ballet at that time. We are told that the tape on which the first part of the 1968 production was recorded was later wiped so it is unlikely that we shall ever know what it looked like. Sadly unlike its quest for missing episodes of Dr Who the BBC has shown no interest in trying to find out whether anyone has a recording of the missing sections of the ballet.

Florestan and his Sisters made their first stage appearance in the 1921 London production of The Sleeping Beauty which , on advice, Diaghilev called The Sleeping Princess to avoid the ballet being confused with the popular pantomime of the same name. According to Dyenely Hussey's account of Tchaikovsky's score for the ballet in 1921 Diaghilev replaced the Jewel Fairies with this pas de trois because he though that by the third act of the ballet the audience might well feel that they had seen too many fairies. Diaghilev could have been right about this because he had added a seventh fairy to the usual six Prologue Fairies. Although he had cast Lopokova as the Lilac Fairy he thought that the waltz written for that character needed a dancer who was taller than she was He therefore decided that Lopokova should dance to the music for the Sugar Plum Fairy while Tchernicheva danced to the waltz written for the Lilac Fairy. Of course no one would be able to get away with tinkering with the score and the choreography in that manner today as the music is so well known. But you have to remember that 1921 was the first occasion on which the full ballet had been seen in the West. The audience did not know the ballet. They were unlikely to be familiar with Tchaikovsky's score as the composer was not that highly regarded at that time. Diaghilev presented the ballet with a modern twist. Stravinsky was hired to re-orchestrate the score and Nijinska to provide new choreography when needed. As far as the Three Ivans are concerned Diaghilev felt the production needed to display its Ballet Russes credentials so the coda of the grand pas de deux was allocated to three new characters whose Russian origins were beyond dispute because of their names and the style in which they danced. The 1946 staging of The Sleeping Beauty was, I think, intended to establish the fifteen year old company's right to be resident at Covent Garden. By departing from the text used in its 1939 staging and adopting some of the changes incorporated into the London staging of the ballet seen some twenty five years before, the Sadler's Wells Company was not just laying claim to the right to be acknowledged as part of the Russian Imperial and Ballet Russes traditions it was also creating an instant and enduring tradition and establishing its artistic identity as a classical ballet company. The opulence of the staging was intended to evoke not only the ballet's nineteenth century origins but to withstand comparison with memories of the earlier Diaghilev production in London. The 1946 staging included the Three Ivans and a pas de trois in place of the Jewel Fairies. But in the 1946 production Ashton's Florestan and his Sisters was a display piece for its cast rather than an antidote to a surfeit of fairies. On opening night it was danced by Michael Somes, Moira Shearer and Gerd Larsen. The 1946 staging included at least one further major change to the text which the company had danced in 1939 and that was a change made from necessity. In 1939 Sergeyev had staged a waltz for the company for a cast of twelve male and twelve female dancers. By 1946 the fact that the waltz had a mixed cast was causing practical problems. According to Joy Newton who was Ballet Mistress at the time as soon as a group of men became useful in the waltz they would disappear into the armed forces. As the company was far less international in those days and a significant part of the company were British born conscription would continue to be a challenge for the company's management and the careers of its male dancers until it was abandoned in 1963. Ashton's solution to this problem was to create a waltz for an entirely female cast. Ashton choreographed at least two all female waltzes for the company. Those who saw both of them say that they preferred the 1946 waltz.

As far as the Royal Ballet main company is concerned Adagio Hammerklavier seems to have been a work seen in a single season, 1976. The performance database suggests that it had three performances at Covent Garden in that one season and was not subsequently revived. Four Schumann Pieces is another Van Mannen work that it would be nice to see again. However I would not give either of them priority over works in the company;s back catalogue or works drawn from the Tudor repertory which we get to see so rarely. If it was up to me and I had the opportunity to select the ballets to be programmed for one season or over several seasons then Ashton would be my first choice for revival. I would ensure that his ballets were part of the regular turn over of repertory rather than the occasional revival. It is noticeable that Ashton's demi-character works rarely get an airing. The other works I would love to see again are de Valois' Job in its entirety, not just Satan's solo, Les Biches and a triple bill of Tudor's works drawn from the following list Lilac Garden, Dark Elegies, Pillar of Fire, Echo of Trumpets, Moments Musicaux and Gala Performance. There is one Tudor work I don't need to see again and that is The Leaves are Fading which I think of as substandard Tudor.

Anyone who is interested in the company, its artistic identity and its future development will inevitably start at some point to think about the riches left unperformed in the company's back catalogue and about the Ashton repertory in particular. It is not nostalgia which prompts this but the certain knowledge that there are important works by Nijinska, Fokine, Ashton, and others quietly mouldering away which rarely see the light of day but deserve their place in the company's active repertory rather than being granted the occasional exhumation under the category "Heritage Work" and are then generally cast in a way that suggests that management lacks complete confidence in the work's ability to attract an audience on its own. There may be all sorts of reasons for the neglect of a particular work or works which seem perfectly valid to management. The excuses include the cost of reviving a work and the perception that a certain style of ballet will not appeal to the current audience, of course the AD's personal taste may come into it but no one will admit that openly.The cost of revival is almost certainly management's justification for the neglect of works like Les Noces and The Song of the Earth. Long neglect of ballets like these means an entire cast will be on a steep learning curve working their way into the ballet whenever the work is revived, with the result that most audiences will see a less than perfect account of them. This sadly does not seem to matter. Casting is a dark art which calls for an understanding, on management's part, of the dancer types required in many of the older works which lie dormant, collecting dust in the company's heritage cupboard. While dancers today are very versatile they are not suited to every role that may need to be filled. Seniority, technical ability, fame and popularity are no substitute for suitability for a specific role whether in works by Fokine, de Valois or Ashton. Management failed to make a compelling case for Les Sylphides, La Fete Etrange, Lilac Garden and Birthday Offering when they were last seen on the Opera House stage. Indeed they probably put paid to arguments for their significance or their regular revival. The company's revival of Les Sylphides struggled to establish any sort of mood other than tedium and was scarcely the evocation of the Romantic era which Fokine had intended it to be. There are plenty of neglected Ashton ballets which I think would be worth reviving. They range from works he made for Rambert in the years immediately following Diaghilev's death when the future of ballet in this country was so uncertain to those he made at the very end of his career.Some are entertainments,some have dance as their subject, some are abstract works while others are clearly story ballets. If you say "Balanchine" you know you are talking about abstract works; if you say "MacMillan" you can be pretty certain the work in question will be dramatic but if you say "Ashton" it is not that obvious what sort of dance work it will be. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the neglect of such a large part of his output. The problem is that it is difficult to find an all encompassing description for his output which ranges from Capriol Suite to Varii Capricci. As the company's centenary is only ten years away I should like to think that Kevin would do more than merely pay lip service to Ashton's memory and the contribution he made to the company's repertory by making a much greater part of his output available to the audience on a regular basis. The ballets which tend to be revived at present are not representative of the range and variety of his output for the company and even his earliest surviving works are worth investigation for their sheer energy and inventiveness. The work of the Ashton Foundation has reminded me of how much I enjoyed The Walk to the Paradise Garden all those years ago while it has also shown, I think, that Foyer de Danse would be worth reviving. The Fonteyn centenary was a reminder of other works that have been out of the repertory for far too long. It suggested that the full Apparitions would be well worth reviving with the right cast. The excerpt from Ondine suggested that the title role is one that Hayward was born to dance . Now while I hope that Kevin revives it for her , the ballet I would most like to see revived, is Daphnis and Chloe which was last staged in 2004 for the Ashton centenary. The company has several young men who would be excellent as Daphnis while I can think of at least three dancers who should be given the opportunity to dance Chloe. I have seen next season's programme and to be honest the choice of full length works does not come as that much of a surprise.It is essentially a couple of works held over from last season, the perennial Nutcracker plus the works which probably were scheduled for revival this season any way. No doubt casting details will make what is proposed look a bit more exciting.I can't help wondering whether Wheeldon has made a sensible choice of subject for his new ballet. I am not convinced that the novel or the film based on it will transform that easily into a ballet as the family relationships in the story appear to be too complex to be easily portrayed in balletic terms. I sincerely hope that it proves to be another Winter's Tale rather than a Strapless or Wind.

The Enrico Cecchetti Diploma recording is a two DVD set which was issued by Opus Arte in November 2019. As I understand it the discs cover the Cecchetti syllabus. Dancers appearing on the recording include James Hay, Brandon Lawrence and Romany Pajdak. The teacher is Van Schoor. I trust this information is of assistance.

This recording has long been unavailable in this country which is a great pity since it is of great historical and artistic interest. This is one of the first ballet productions which Nureyev staged in the West and also one of the BBC's earliest outside television broadcasts in colour. De Valois thought it the best Nutcracker production that she had seen and reportedly said as much when she attended the premiere of Sir Peter Wright's production of the same ballet. I believe that she held to that opinion even when told how much Nureyev's staging owed to earlier Kirov stagings of the work. Although I can't comment on whether any attempt has been made to clean the tape or not I think it extremely good news that it is once again possible to buy it.My recollections of the dancers who appeared in this recording was enough to persuade me to buy a copy of the DVD. The list of names that I have provided is far from complete. It merely reflects the names I can remember off the top of my head.

The Bolshoi occasionally bring Gregorovich's Spartacus to Covent Garden when they come to London but the ballet has never been performed by the Royal Ballet and no one in their right mind would ever contemplate acquiring it for the company. It is said that in the 1990's when the Royal Ballet School seemed to be awash with Russian teachers Dowell had occasion to comment that the school was producing male dancers who could dance Spartacus,which was not in the company's repertory, but that they had trouble dancing works which were. I seem to recall that at one point Carlos Acosta appeared as a guest with the Bolshoi in Russia and danced Spartacus. Perhaps that is how you have come to connect the ballet with the company. I am no fan of Katchachurian. His score for Spartacus is accessible in the same way that a Korngold film score is, and as with a film score, in Gregorovich 's version of the ballet the music seems to be used as an accompaniment intended to heighten the action and emotion depicted on stage rather than the engine apparently propelling the narrative to its conclusion. Fortunately although Gregorovich's bombastic version is probably the best known or, at least, the most ubiquitous he is not the only choreographer to have created a ballet using the score. Yakobson also made a version of the ballet in which Plisetskaya created the role of Phrygia. The Mariinsky revived that version some ten years ago . The clips from rehearsal footage which float around on You tube combined with Plisetskaya's own enthusiasm for the work suggest that it is far more interesting than Gregorovich's version. But then she had a low opinion of both the Gregorovich version of the ballet and of the man himself.

The choreography danced by Kaneko and Clarke in this programme is not intended to have any narrative or emotional content. If it is about anything it is about calm serene movement in contrast to the quirky movements of the opening and closing movements of Concerto. MacMillan's inspiration for this part of the ballet came from watching Lynne Seymour doing simple basic movements at the barre and it has been a real test of artistry for every dancer who has performed the choreography subsequently to make simplicity the essence of its theatrical impact. Seymour had beautiful arms and was capable of making simple shapes and movements seem revelatory in their beauty. The man in this pas de deux is an old style self-effacing danseur who is elegant, impassive and as unobtrusive as possible as he presents his partner effortlessly amplifying and enhancing the aesthetic impact of every movement she makes Although the range of movement develops during the course of this part of the ballet it is essentially about the beauty of movements and shapes some of which are simple and some which must be made to seem so. It is the man's task throughout to present his partner unobtrusively while achieving maximum aesthetic impact for her.

I suppose it was inevitable that the evening would end up being the Tony Pappano show with only a nod to the work of the one world class company currently resident in Bow Street. The The balance between the two art forms may have something to do with the idea that Pappano is the greatest music director that the so called opera company has ever had and the idea that ballet is merely a secondary art form but there again it could well have something to do with individual dancers' fitness and performance readiness after so many weeks away from the studio. I doubt that anyone would feel up to performing one of the great nineteenth classical show pieces or any equally challenging pieces by Ashton or MacMillan at the present time. Getting the balance right between operatic lollipops and more serious matter can be difficult at the best of times when you know that you that your audience is going to be an equal mixture of dance and opera enthusiasts. It must be much more difficult when your programming must be dictated in part by who is available and you have no idea whether the audience will be evenly split between opera and ballet enthusiasts or whether there will be a preponderance of opera buffs or ballet fans tuning in. The initial free concert is probably best judged as an experiment which will give an indication to those who arranged it about what is possible within the social distancing regime As far as repertory is concerned in my experience most singers,other than Italians, have a repertory of art songs drawn from both the standard international art song repertory and from their native tradition, holding in reserve a few more popular pieces such as "I'm Tone Deaf" , for encores. Given that all three singers involved in the concert are English speakers we were given works from the English repertory. I was pleased to have an opportunity to hear the Butterworth setting of "A Shropshire Lad" for a change and I thought Spence made a good job of it. Generally it is only Italian singers who give recitals of operatic arias with a few of Rossini's "Sins of Old Age" and perhaps Tosti's "Farewell " with which to end. No doubt the final selection was the result of negotiations between Music Director and singers. Personally I was rather relieved to be spared excerpts from La Traviata, Puccini arias and other late nineteenth century verismo offerings . I was disappointed by the choreographic offering which did little to dispel the notion that ballet is only a secondary art form. I understand that many dancers admire McGregor for his ability to choreograph in the absence of the music to which his dance works are to be performed, and no doubt that is very clever and intellectual, but I am old fashioned enough to think that Balanchine's dictum about seeing the music and hearing the dance is how it should be particularly if you are going to make a piece using a score as luscious as Strauss' Morgen. Music like that demands considerably more than the tangential relationship between movement and score which McGregor gave us and his dancers. The signature asymmetry and distorted poses added nothing to the experience as far as I am concerned. While it was lovely to see Hayward and Corrales beck on the Opera House stage I think that we, dancers and audience, all deserved something better.

What are the chances that the new Wayne McGregor piece is the other half of the Dante project which was due to be premiered at the end of the season for which the casting was to be announced , or at least something closely connected with it ? I think it is difficult to judge how much interest a new work by McGregor would generate whoever is dancing. Whatever the powers that be may believe McGregor is not universally admired. It will be interesting to see what sort of audience the new work generates. Perhaps the ballet management is banking on the idea that the ballet audience is feeling so deprived of seeing dance performances by the company that they will be prepared to pay to watch a new McGregor work. I hope that they have planned something more popular for their second show particularly if it turns out that the anticipated audience aren't that keen on the initial offering. I wonder how far the rehearsals for the heritage mixed bill got ? At the very least they should be able to give us "Satan's solo " from Job. The problem as far as the programme being suggested by others is concerned is that it is far from clear how popular an evening of odds and ends would be. Perhaps we are so dance deprived we would lap it up. However it seems to me that without some real imagination such a programme could so easily descend into an evening of standard gala fodder. Assuming that management will want to be a bit more adventurous than that Ashton gala pieces spring to mind. They include works as varied as "Raymonda pas de deux"; Thais and " The Walk to the Paradise Garden" perhaps the third character death will have to be eliminated from the latter for the time being, but that may not be necessary as he wears a mask anyway. I would suggest "Voices of Spring" but it is so overdone and all the while it is danced simply as a serious gala showpiece rather than a tongue in cheek rendering of a soviet style technical display it rather misses the point. Other Ashton choreography which could easily be pressed into service includes the ballroom pas de deux from Cinderella; the "Pas de l'Ombre" from Ondine if Hayward dances it; the final pas de deux from Daphnis and Chloe which makes a surprisingly good stand alone piece and the final pas de deux from Sylvia is another possibility. I seem to recall that when it was danced by Collier and Jefferies as a stand alone piece at the Ashton eightieth birthday gala held in 1984 it was performed in a slightly revised version which involved cutting the music for the corps thus eliminating the gap in stage action which is inevitable without the cut. A piece they might ask Muntagirov to perform is another of his gala pieces the solo created for Dolin as the Beau Gosse in Nijinska's Le Train Bleu. It has to be said that his performance of that solo suggests that the ballet was a whole lot better and far more entertaining than was suggested by the POB recording of it. Finally what about Balanchine's Tarantella the company has at least six dancers who could do that piece justice and only New York audiences have seen O'Sullivan in the McBride role. Now if they announced Anna Rose was dancing it with any of the men who currently have it in their repertory I would subscribe like a shot.

The companies performed at different venues across London during the closure which meant that they retained the audience's interest and support and had a stream of income which covered part of their costs but that is only part of the story. The real difference was that both companies were far less dependent on private money than they are now as their subsidy covered a greater proportion of their costs which made them far less vulnerable than now. In addition the opera company was far more conservative when it came to productions. There were no opera production involving radical revisions of texts or where the action was set ; no creating the operas the directors thought the composer and librettist should have written rather than the one they did with the result that the company had a back catalogue of classic or at least serviceable productions which singers wanted to appear in and audiences wanted to see revived over several seasons. This meant that a large number of the opera productions went into profit and helped pay for productions of operas like Henze's Boulevard Solitude which the management thought London audience needed to see but were unlikely to be popular successes or finally cover their costs.Such minor details make a great difference to an opera company's bottom line. Finally I seem to recall that the Arts Council stumped up additional money for the redevelopment when it was needed although they did so with bad grace.

I don't think that anyone is in a position to say when the theatres and other places of public entertainment will be able to reopen. We are still in lock down in the UK and although the Prime Minister seems to be contemplating some sort of easing of restrictions which will be announced on Sunday I don't think that it will be anything major and that everything will be taken very gradually to prevent a flare up.The number of people dying in hospital seems to be going down but there are still major problems as far as care homes are concerned. I can't see anyone except a complete idiot ignoring the fact that they are corona virus hot spots or the possibility that they could end up being a source of further infection within the wider community. I would not put my money on autumn performances. I saw a headline which said that Cameron Mackintosh did not expect theatres to reopen until the New Year and that seems quite likely to me as most theatres of any significance draw their audiences from across a wide area and because of their design and function provide the very best conditions for a virus to spread. The experts still don't know what proportion of the population has been exposed to the virus, how much immunity anyone who has had it actually has or how long immunity might last. As no one will want their theatre identified as an infection hot spot I think that everyone will err on the side of caution even after they are told that places of entertainment may re-open.

I have just visited the ROH website and it is clear that all remaining opera and ballet performances due between now and the end of the season have been cancelled. The one exception seems to be the RBS main stage performance and that may simply be an oversight on someone's part. I don't expect any early information about next season's opera or ballet programmes. At this point the ballet company is at a considerable advantage as the management knows who will be in the company next season and their versatility, the availability of those who also perform abroad and how much flexibility in programming it will therefore have.The opera company on the other hand will have to work around the singers it already has signed up for the operas it had intended to stage next season and their " fach" or precise vocal type. It seems to me that we shall have an opera season made up of those works which are in virtually every singers' repertory.I expect that both companies will settle for crowd pleasers which sell themselves rather than challenging or obscure ones which need to be plugged or require ticket discounts or the house to be papered.

I think that anyone anticipating that the season will resume any time soon is being wildly optimistic. In fact I think it quite likely that we shall be told in the not too distant future that the season is being abandoned. The shut down started last week and we shall not begin to see its beneficial effects for at least three or four weeks because of the time lag between controlling the sort of social interaction which makes high infection rates possible and reducing them by the closure of places of public entertainment and placing other restrictions on our behaviour . We also need to bear in mind that the rate of infection and the incidence of new cases of corona virus is only going fall if everyone, whatever their age, understands that we are all vulnerable to corona virus and complies with social distancing and limits the amount of interaction they have with others. However concerned politicians and others may be about the economic impact that the shut down is having on the economy as a whole and on individual businesses no one is going to authorise the reopening of theatres and other places of entertainment and social interaction until it is deemed safe to do so. I think that the Government will exercise considerable caution in authorising places of public entertainment to reopen because of the public health implications of doing so prematurely. The Government is likely to be very sensitive to how effectively it is perceived to have handled the easing of restrictions if only because it is vulnerable to the accusation that it failed to use the month or more it had between the Chinese announcement of the presence of a new virus in Wuhan and the first cases identified in this country. Time , it might profitably have used to buy essential equipment and plan its response to the arrival of the virus. As far as the ROH is concerned while it may be concerned about the age profile of its audience and anxious to find a new one I doubt that it is that keen on being identified as a hot spot of viral infection. Somehow I think that the powers that be at the ROH will be anxious to avoid the accusation that in their anxiety to recoup their losses they have exposed the more vulnerable members of their audience to the unnecessary risk of infection and managed to kill off a goodly proportion of them. Yesterday the Deputy Chief Medical Officer made it clear that the restrictions currently in place were unlikely to be lifted for at least thirteen weeks and that it might be necessary to keep them in place far longer. By my calculation the initial thirteen weeks takes us to early June and given the fact that dancers and orchestral musicians are unlikely to be able to able to resume their collective activities until non essential workers are able to return to work I don't see how the season can resume. I understand that Glyndebourne has abandoned the first part of its season and anticipates at best only being able to perform one or two of the operas which were scheduled towards the end of its 2020 season. Now if I am right about how the Royal Ballet's season is likely to end that means that Kevin is going to need to think very hard about the 2020- 2021 season not simply because of the loss of revenue which cancelling the rest of the 2019-20 season will entail but the number of dancers who had anticipated making their debut in a leading role in Swan Lake who will end the season without having achieved that significant milestone in their careers. I suspect that whatever he intended to stage next season Kevin will be "advised" that in order to plug the hole in the company's finances caused by the disruption of the current season he should stage works which are guaranteed to attract an audience rather than works which require cheap tickets to get an audience into the theatre. I shall be really surprised if we get much of the retrospective season celebrating the company's new found creativity that was on the cards for the 2020-2021 season at one time. The loss of revenue caused by this season's closure will be one factor influencing any revisions that are made but the decision to sever ties with Scarlett will be another. Alice and The Winter's Tale may well have been planned for the forthcoming season and no doubt they will retain their place on the season's bill of fare but I can't see much else created since 2012 being programmed. I think that the need to rewrite next year's schedule may well be one of the reasons for the terse statement about cutting ties with Scarlett. I think it more than likely that Kevin will programme a rather more popular season for 2020-2021 than he originally intended and that it will probably include a production of Swan Lake which will enable all those dancers who were due to make their debuts this season to do so without undue delay. Given the cost involved in staging a new production it will almost certainly use Macfarlane's designs and a far more authentic text than we have seen this season. I for one will not mourn the loss of Scarlett's ill-conceived version of the ballet with a dumb show which reduces the impact of Odettes first entrance and renders her mime sequence redundant ; contains MacMillan style filler choreography; superfluous princesses providing a floor show in acts 1 and 3; a Spanish dance that would not be out of place in a third rate night club on the Costa del Sol and a dire fourth act which sees only Odette die. I think that the ballet season when announced will prove to be far more "popular" than originally intended. However that does not mean that it can't be artistically satisfying. Perhaps Kevin will come to see that if he is to restore the hole in the company's finances then he needs to programme works which people will be prepared to pay to see rather than works which require reduced prices or the occasional papered house to get anywhere near securing a decent average attendance, Perhaps a retrospective of the company's twentieth century classics rather than works created since 2012 is what is really required ? It is unlikely to be controversial given the number of major works in the company's back catalogue which have not been seen in years.

Why not take the opportunity to look further afield and explore some of the offerings on Vimeo ? Here are a few suggestions 1) Frederick Ashton A familiar name however the range of his works which we are permitted to see is somewhat limited. Here is an opportunity to watch "Frederick Ashton performed by the Satasota Ballet" which runs for about an hour and includes excerpts from the works in Sarasota Ballet's repertory some of which we may only know by name rather than being works with which we are all familiar. It includes excerpts from Apparitions the work which established Fonteyn's artistic potential and her working relationship with Ashton; Illuminations a work Ashton created for NYCB and Sinfionetta. 2) Antony Tudor A major twentieth century choreographer whose work is sadly and inexplicably neglected. New York Theater Ballet provide the opportunity to watch two of his greatest works Jardin aux Lilas/ Lilac Garden and Dark Elegies, the charming Soiree Musicale and a fine account of The Judgment of Paris. All four of which were made for Rambert's company and an excerpt from Tudor's almost mythical Romeo and Juliet which has not been seen in years because ABT's artistic director says it would cost too much to revive. It is not set to the all too familiar Prokofiev score but to music by Delius. You might also like to look at Inaki Urlezaga's official website where you will find excerpts from Romeo and Juliet which he danced with Cuthbertson and a full account of Birthday Offering. You need to know that the lead ballerina does not dance the Fonteyn solo but while. it is not a completely idiomatic account of the choreography it is a whole lot better than the Royal Ballet manged last tine they danced it. The site also includes far less familiar works which you may find worth watching.

It seems pretty clear to me that when Hayward was talking about the "classics" she was talking about the five nineteenth century ballets which de Valois acquired for her young company in the 1930's and chose to describe as "The Classics". I have no idea whether or not Hayward wants to dance lead roles in Don Q or Bayadere only time will tell.whether she wants to dance them. In fact if she chooses not to dance them I would be tempted to ascribe her failure to sound artistic taste. I think that we have to accept the sad fact that not all nineteenth century ballets are of equal quality musically or choreographically and some of them even if they have the Petipa label attached to them are more twentieth century constructs than nineteenth century ones as far as their choreographic texts are concerned. The obvious point of distinction between Don Q, La Bayadere and de Valois "classics" begins with the quality of the music to which they are set. The five works which de Valois selected have major scores and were acquired from an impeccable source as they were first staged for the company by the man who had been responsible for staging them at the Mariinsky in the years before the Revolution. The scores for all five of them are of importance in the development of ballet music and all of them contain substantial passages of late nineteenth century choreography which embody the changes in technique which had taken place in Italy since the 1850's. They are works for which Petipa either created the choreography or are the work of other choreographers working in the same Franco-Italian style over which as the Ballet Master of the theatre. he had the final say as he had to approve them before they could be placed before the public. Don Q and the full La Bayadere were first danced by the company during Dowell's directorship and both present problems beginning with the music to which they are set . Their scores are the sort of workaday ballet scores which ballet composers churned out throughout the nineteenth century with little regard to the place in which the action of the ballet for which they were composed was set. La Bayadere 's score does not really get any further east than the Hungarian plains. As far as the choreographic texts of those works is concerned it is difficult to know what if any part of Don Q can now safely be attributed to Petipa as it was given a major overhaul by Gorsky during Petipa's life time and people have been tinkering with its text ever since. Acosta, is merely the latest, would be, choreographer to do so. The version of La Bayadere which the company currently performs is a mangled salvage account of the original with some Soviet style pyrotechnics thrown in for good measure. I should not be at all sorry if the company were to quietly drop them and then spent more time on keeping its Ashton and Nijinska repertory in good condition . I am still not convinced that Don Q with its in your face bravura technique really suits the company or its artistic traditions that well. It is going to be interesting, to say the least, to see how BRB''s dancers cope with Acota's Don Q. As far as La Bayadere is concerned I could happily live with Nureyev's staging of the Kingdom of the Shades on its own. If the company has to have a full length version of the La Bayadere then it should try to get Ratmansky to stage a reconstruction.for it. His reconstruction for Berlin is far more interesting and sophisticated choreographically than Markarova's production which is largely based on the Soviet text which she danced when she was at the Kirov.

I think that from what I have read elsewhere the point being made here is that the change at the top in a ballet company based in Germany has the potential to be far more disruptive than it is elsewhere in the world as the new director is free to replace every dancer in the company should he or she wish to do so. Of course something like Ratmansky's reconstruction may be years in the planning and may not always disappear overnight with a change of director, in the absence of repertory to replace it, but the fact remains that the artistic direction which a German company takes can, and often does, alter almost overnight with a change of artistic director. If my understanding is correct and a change of artistic director often means not only a change of repertory and the type of dance works being performed but a complete change in dance personnel then a change of director can be very rapid and disruptive indeed. I should be happy to be proved wrong but I don't think that the Paquita reconstruction staged for Munich a couple of years ago survived the change of director.