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FLOSS

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  1. Who is Mr T. referring to to when he talks about the "half trained West"?Is it western choreographers who have mounted productions of Swan Lake; western choreographers generally or simply those who do not adhere strictly to the Vaganova system when setting steps? If I recall Mr T. was to have been involved in a ballet created by Christopher Wheeldon but it was eventually performed by others. Perhaps in reality it has nothing to do with the current state of Russian ballet or his experience of working with a western choreographer and everything to do with making the sort of noises that make it clear that he is supportive of the Russian government and its policies.
  2. The Russians have a long and glorious history of ambivalence towards the West which predates the reign of Peter the Great and his policy of enforced westernisation. In the nineteenth century it was expressed in cultural as well as political terms. You were either a slavophile or a westerniser.The slavophiles were Russians who emphasised their indigenous culture and their links with other Slavic peoples.Turgenev and Tchaikovsky were two of the most prominent westernisers. Mr T's reported comments seem to be little more than part of the long standing struggle for the Russian soul.It is ironic that the composer of the ballets that Mr T clearly regards as part of the Russian legacy that needs protection from exploitation by the West were not merely choreographed by a French man but composed by a man who, in his own lifetime, was criticised for being a western rather than a truly russian composer.
  3. I recall travelling to Bournemouth to see Sir Peter Wright's Swan Lake very soon after its premier and being impressed by it as a touring production and of course I have seen it since then. At the time that I first saw it I did not think that it was as good as the production th shown at Covent Garden and it is the latte production which is on the Dowell Markarova DVD minus the mime which Markarova did not do. I recall that during the 1970's John Percival wrote a review of the visiting Bolshoi production which he compared unfavourably with the Royal's version which he declared to be the best version to be seen anywhere. If it was my choice I would opt for the old production in its final form with all the Ashton additions except the prologue;Rudi's solo for the prince at the end of the first act and with the original fourth act shown in one run of performances and the Ashton one shown at the following revival.Audiences deserve the opportunity to see both versions of act four performed regularly.
  4. The problem with bringing back the old production, by which, I assume you mean the choreographic text used on the 1980's DVD is that Derek Deane owns the rights to the Ashton choreography.The Act 1 waltz,the Act3 Spanish dance, which Deane does not use in his production, the pas de quatre and the Neapolitan dance and Act 4, in its entirety, all belong to him. While ENB may not mind the Royal restoring the Neapolitan dance to its production they might be less happy if all of the Ashton text was restored.They would not be able to do anything about it unless its use was restricted by their contract with Deane, but that would not prevent sections of the press having a field day with stories about the Royal Ballet stealing ENB's ballet Then there are Deane's own choreographic pretensions.Some of his choreography may be attributable to the the relative size of the ENB and the Royal( even the Royal might be hard pressed today to provide a mixed corps of twenty four plus the twelve dancers required for the waltz) but a lot of it is choreography for its own sake and it is not very good.His choreographic embellishments include such gems as the dance for the girls who present the posies. They dance, for reasons known only to the choreographer, in little circles as they approach the Queen and turn their backs on her as soon as they have presented their flowers. Then there is the dull choreography for the corps in that Act which includes relentless, uninspired dances for the processional music and an exceptionally dull Spanish dance in Act 3.Would Deane be prepared simply to accept the fees for the use of his property or would he be unable to resist the temptation to insist on being involved in the new production and providing some new choreographic gems? Perhaps they will ask McGregor to become involved. He does go to the ballet occasionally and was apparently very surprised by the difference that different dancers make to performances of the classics. He is after all, according to some people, a choreographic genius and his involvement might help bring a newer, younger audience to the classics. Then there is the problem of the designs does the company revert to the old ones; does it ask Mr Farmer to produce costumes inspired by the old ones, and wait for pastel hued ones to be delivered or does it try to find someone who might be able to do the job?
  5. Following reports in a number of newspapers that the current run of the Royal Ballet's Dowell production of Swan Lake is to be its last, this is your opportunity to discuss a potential new production. The thread wasn't actually started by FLOSS, but by Alison to concentrate all the discussion in one place. FLOSS commented: I know quite a few people who, like me, have loathed the current Swan Lake since its first performance.It is not the basic choreography that is the problem, but it would be nice to have the opportunity to see the Ashton Act 4 and his waltz rather than Bintley's contribution to Act 1.The old production got by quite comfortably without the need for extra characters such as the chaperones who behave as if they think that they are playing procuresses and a tutor who clearly should be of concern to those engaged in child protection. This is after all a nineteenth century classical ballet not an exercise in social realism. I can't wait to see the back of the drunken officers; the flouncing princesses; all those ghastly Act 3 guests; Von Rothbart's entourage of grotesques and all that bling. But they say that there is only one thing worse than not getting what you want and that is getting it. Who is likely to stage the new production? It will almost certainly be an "insider", by which I mean someone who knows the history of the ballet as performed by the company.No one will want to repeat the Markarova Soviet style Sleeping Beauty fiasco.It does not have to be a choreographer who does it, but the chances are that it will be and the obvious candidate is Wheeldon and his tinkering with the Sleeping Beauty ( two dud Garland dances )does not exactly inspire confidence. I know that he has staged some of the classics abroad but I do not recall any one saying that they were particularly good. Then there is the question of design. Putting it mildly in the last thirty years the Royal Ballet has been incredibly unfortunate when it comes to designing non abstract works. It is as if there is no one in the company who knows or cares about what productions look like on stage. Perhaps the truth is that in this country, at least, there are,at present, no stage designers who know or care about ballet design. Good stage design gives the audience a sense of the time and place in which a narrative ballet is set and helps create the atmosphere and mood for the dancers's performances.Inept designs require dancers to work twice as hard as they would have to if the designs were doing their job.Bad designs can virtually kill a ballet, even one which which has been successful in earlier designs.The decision to abandon the Craxton designs for Daphnis and Chloe nearly did for that ballet;the new designs for Les Rendezvous which set the ballet in the wrong period and make a nonsense of the choreography and the floor plan are almost as bad, Then of course there the company's Don Q with designs which according to Clement Crisp make it look as if the ballet is set in sunny Frinton.I would ask anyone who thinks that I am being unfair to take a look at the Dutch National Ballet's Don Q to see what good design and a real understanding of how a ballet should be staged can do for a piece as lame and unamusing as Don Q.
  6. ENB's current production of Swan Lake is in large part the old RB one which the current Dowell production replaced.It was replaced because Dowell wanted to restore the original text so out went all the Ashton interpolations, the Act 1 waltz, de Valois' peasant girl dance,Rudi's moody solo,Ashton's Act 3 Pas de Quatre,Spanish dance and Neapolitan dance and his Act 4.The Royal acquired the ghastly dance with the stools and Maypole and the prince's bouncy Tigger like solo which is totally out of character for the prince in Act 1. The whole thing seems to have been badly mishandled.Ashton was so upset that he gave the rights to his choreography to Derek Deane and refused to let Dowell use any of it. As a result the production was performed for some years without the Neapolitan dance. Of course Dowell did not restore the text as Benno has no partnering responsibilities.I doubt very much that the earliest RB production had any of the boorish behaviour that the current one includes. The Dowell Markarova DVD gives an accurate account of what the old production looked like and how the choreography was performed.The one exception is Markarova's performance. She did not do mime and resolutely dances through the mime music while Dowell reacts as if she were miming. Had anyone else been filmed we would have seen the mime and the Act 2 pas de deux would not have been danced so painfully slowly. For me the greatest failure of the RB was not to capture Sibley's account of the role which was quite wondereful and far preferable to Markarova's. A problem with the ENB production is that Deane has introduced fussy bursts of choreography for the processional sections;another problem is that the Ashton choreography is not danced with any understanding of the style required.
  7. As far as the DVD issue is concerned,unless the copyright owners relent, we will have to wait until 2044 when the ballet comes out of copyright for a DVD to be a possibility and by then tastes may have changed so much that it is even less of a viable financial option than it would be now. I think that you will find that financial viability looms large when it comes to decisions about which ballets to show in cinemas and which to issue on DVD.The limited number of ballets that the Royal has chosen to show in cinemas is not representative of its repertory of full length ballets let alone its one act works.It reflects the limited range of ballets that the Royal Ballet and the cinema chains showing them believe will put bums on seats.They tend to be the works that sell themselves without recourse to special offers at Covent Garden.It is truly sobering to discover how little the occasional ballet goer knows about ballets other than Swan Lake,Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet. I went to the matinee.As a friend said it was unfortunate that Stepanek was cast as Prince Gremin and Kish as Onegin as it did not really present Tatiana with any sort of dilemma. Rich, handsome with a palace and secure social position what's to choose? The simplest way of describing the performance is to say that Kish and Mendizabal reproduced the choreography with great care and let it tell the story. Their performance did not really catch fire until the final scene. Edmonds was a surprisingly unsteady Lensky in his first scene and failed to do very much with the role Stix-Brunell was strangely muted as Olga. It was the sort of performance where you have time to think about the structure of a work.I began to wonder whether the choreography for the corps represented a lack of ideas or whether it took the form that it does because of the dancers Cranko had at his disposal. It would seem that someone had decided that the casting of the Act 2 party scene needed to be reviewed.Instead of dancers caricaturing the middle aged and elderly we had several of the company's finest character dancers on stage and it made all the difference.Perhaps it made too much of a contrast with the performances of the main characters.
  8. The difficulties that White Lodgers seem to experience in getting into the Upper School could be the result of failings in the Lower School and its curriculum but we need to exercise a degree of caution.There are a number of things that we need to consider about the pupils from outside the UK who make it into the Upper School. Many of them have been receiving their ballet training after school.Some have come to ballet comparatively late. Perhaps because of the circumstances in which they receive their initial training and the age at which they make their decision to pursue a career in dance they do so with a greater knowledge and understanding of what it entails than someone who has been at a vocational school since the age of eleven.The fact that you are prepared to leave your family and go to live in a foreign country is evidence of tenacity and commitment and makes it more likely that the decision to become a dancer is entirely that of the student.Someone who makes that choice is going to make sure that they get everything that they can out of the training and the experience. I am not saying that indigenous students are not motivated merely that the foreign students have to do a great deal to get into the Upper School and that perhaps their experience, which does not involve assessing out, does not undermine their confidence, toughens them up and enables them to make a mature decision about their chosen career.
  9. The whole point about the origins of this ballet and Petipa's other later works such as Raymonda, Swan Lake,Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty was that they were created to display the Imperial company's abundance of dance talent.It's the reason for all the divertisements which hold up the action which are feature of these ballets. The Jardin animee in Le Corsaire is a prime example of a scene which exits for no other reason than to show off the corps and the choreographer's ability to display them to best advantage.The vision scene in Don Q is another example of display for its own sake. It seems to me that there is no point in Mr O'Hare acquiring a ballet unless he had dancers capable of performing it or was prepared to invest the necessary time in training and coaching them until they were capable.The technical weaknesses were obvious during the last revival of Beauty when none of the Lilac Fairies were up to the mark and again when this production was first mounted.I would have expected to have seen real improvement among those cast as Queen of the Dryads this time round and at least one or two who had achieved real mastery of the role. It is a Principal's role or a role for a dancer whose technical strength and artistic ability mean that she is destined for the rank of Principal. If you have not got that sort of dancer readily available then common sense would suggest that you look among the young and eager who are technically secure and confident and, who, have not, yet, been persuaded that the role is beyond them.We might have expected Acosta to have plucked someone from the core for their potential,much as Makarova did when she selected a very young and inexperienced dancer called Lauren Cuthbertson to dance the Lilac Fairy in her new production of the Sleeping Beauty. But perhaps he does not have a good eye for potential either.It is worrying that we have had a series of casting decisions relating to roles which require a strong technique. Myrthe, Lilac Fairy and now Queen of the Dryads which are either evidence of a lack of suitable dancers for a role within the ranks of the company or an inability to identify them.
  10. The Acosta production of Don Q is evidence, if evidence were needed, that being a great dancer does not guarantee that you will be any good at staging a ballet. I have had a chance to see the DVD of Ratmansky's production of Don Q for Dutch National Ballet and it is so much structurally tighter and better designed except for the tutus worn in the last act.There are no points at which everything stops while we wait for something to happen;Kitri gets a better first entrance than she does in Acosta's production;there is no Gypsy encampment; no shouting; the orchestration does not lurch between town band and palm court orchestra and the music may even be played in the order that Minkus intended.I'm afraid that I find the ballet's comedic elements heavy handed and unfunny whoever performs them.I do agree that Basilio's death is ineptly staged.Is Acosta just trying too hard to be different or hasn't he watched it from the front? Perhaps the difficulty that the Royal seems to be experiencing in casting a half decent Queen of the Dryads or Lilac Fairy is evidence that some of the much vaunted improvement in technique are not all that they are cracked up to be.Perhaps the ability to put your foot in your ear or to hold a balance interminably regardless of what the choreographer intended or the music permits is impressive to audiences and former dancers trained to a satisfy a different aesthetic but it's not much help if a company does not have dancers able to meet the choreographic requirements of ballets that are central to its repertory such as Beauty. I know that Kevin O'Hare has expressed a wish to develop his dancers but I think that some of the casting decisions have done no one any favours.I am not asking that we should always see the current equivalent of Deanne Bergsma cast as the Lilac Fairy or that Myrthe should always be danced by the current equivalents of Monica Mason and Deanne Bergsma but it would be nice to think that there were some dancers of their artistry,consistency and technical strength lurking somewhere in the company. On Monday night I thought that the company had finally found a decent Queen of the Dryads in Kaneko. The comments of those who attended last nights performance makes clear that she is not, at least at present,a consistent dancer. Is the problem lack of skill or too many casting decisions made to give dancers the chance to have a go regardless of their ability?In a company the size of BRB it may sometimes be necessary to make compromises in casting a ballet but that should not be necessary in a company the size of the Royal Ballet.If the Covent Garden company has to make casting compromises that suggests that something has gone wrong with recruitment to the company. Perhaps it is simply that in his desire not pigeonhole dancers in the company's old emploi categories Mr O'Hare has completely ignored their suitability or unsuitability for certain roles?
  11. Unfortunately Yuri Girgorovich's dead hand lies heavily on the Bolshoi's productions of Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty reducing both to approximations of the great works that they purport to show.I think that the excuse that they give for his productions is that they are poetic evocations of the works in question Danilova's description of the development of Russian ballet during the twentieth century as a display of dance rather than a means of creating mood or telling a story says all that needs to be said about his productions and his ballets.
  12. I have always understood that the reluctance to allow young students undertake pointe work at an early age was because of the damage that can be done to the feet if it is undertaken at a really young age. I seem to recall de Valois writing that her feet had been saved by Espinosa after they had been damaged by undertaking pointe work when too young. I am not setting anyone up to do this,and perhaps the letter has already been written but I can't help feeling that a letter to the Dancing Times with even a fraction of the points raised in this discussion would bring this debate into the open and might force both the school and the Covent Garden company to acknowledge some of the concerns raised.It is too easy for both institutions to behave as if this was simply a matter of concern for them and no one else.If it finds its way into the general press this topic is most likely to be discussed in terms of elite art forms, training cost and the lack of indigenous Principal dancers with a first paragraph describing the sylvan setting of White Lodge and the second, the cost of stalls seats at Covent Garden.It is most unlikely to ask any questions about the quality of the teaching.or to ask what part inadequate training plays in the rate of attrition . I think that anyone interested in ballet understands that heartbreak and disappointment are inevitable in a training system where a proportion of students will fail to meet the required standard for any number of reasons some of which will be beyond anyone's control, such as a failure to grow tall enough. In an article by Luke Jennings published in the Observer in 2012 Jane Hackett the former director of the ENB school expressed the opinion that the RBS does not make the best dance artists it can of the children it selects.The article left me wondering what proportion of students are assessed out as a result of the student's irremediable failure to make the grade and what proportion leave because of a failure in teaching or the fear of failure?
  13. Sunday's performance gave London the opportunity to say farewell to a dancer who has always used her technique in the service of the choreographer's vision of the role that she was dancing rather than treating a role as an opportunity to display her technique.As someone once said a ballerina is a dancer who can do everything but has the taste not to do so.Elena was a true ballerina and a true artist. It is to be hoped that the younger members of the company will recognise her approach to dancing the classics as one that they should follow. I enjoyed her performances and hope that she gets as much enjoyment from her future career, whatever it may be,as she has given to us. .
  14. Mr Powney has only been in post for a short time.His career history, switching between companies and schools,suggests that he does not stay anywhere for long; so it will be fascinating to see whether he remains at the RBS for any length of time. As he taught at the school during his predecessor's directorship before going to Holland to teach, his directorship may not mean dramatic changes at the school. He has said that he wants to give his students more opportunity to gain stage experience. I am not sure whether he believes that saying this will make him sound innovative. Using students in the corps and to play courtiers is nothing new. He has also said that the school is training for long careers. Does he intend that statement to act as a counter to those who express concern that foreign schools seem to produce dancers with exceptional technical skills? Perhaps the most interesting thing is that he wants teachers from White Lodge to give some classes at the Upper School and those at the Upper School to give classes at the Lower School.This seems to suggest that he feels that the two schools have not always perceived themselves to be part of one organisation. If he believes that the two schools have, on occasion, each been operating in a vacuum, he might believe that this goes some way to explain why comparatively few Lower School students make it into the Upper School.Perhaps his reference to a "sense of entitlement" is no more than an inept attempt to contrast the hunger to dance openly expressed by overseas students, most of whom have not had training at residential school and some of whom have made the decision to pursue a career in dance in their mid teens, with the reticence of local students. But might it be possible that the unfortunate phrase has got something to do with a disconnect between the schools that has resulted in the Lower School failing to get their students to understand the standard required to enter the Upper School and to train them to achieve it? I don't know. One thing I do know is that while the appointment of a new director may have some immediate effects,the overall impact on the whole school may take a lot longer to manifest itself. If a significant number of Lower School students were to make it into the Upper School in the next couple of years I wonder who would have been most responsible for their success Mr Powney or his predecessor? The answer is almost certainly both but it is most likely to be reported as a success for the new director's regime.
  15. I am very pleased to have the chance to see Song of the Earth twice in one season in two mixed bills. It is a masterpiece and should be shown far more frequently than it is.Apart from the fact that the company has to cover its costs and clearly sees full length works as the easiest way of doing so the main argument against its frequent revival is that it is one of the more expensive ballets to stage.I am just grateful that as they are taking it to New York we get it in two programmes. I agree with other people's comments about over lengthy runs of full length works but how would you prevent it happening?.In the dim and distant past the casting of the nineteenth century classics and the modern full lengths did not require that every Principal female dancer gave us her Odette/Odile, her Giselle or her Juliet. At a time when the company had fewer full length ballets than now, I am talking pre Manon,the director applied a system of emploi to casting which meant that you did not see dancers who the director deemed unsuitable in a particular role. Ashton famously decided after Sibley had made her debut as Lise that she was too sophisticated for the role and she did not dance it again. Even the regular ballet audience had their views about the suitability of certain types of dancers for particular roles.They knew what a price should look like and the type of dancer who should be seen in the roles of Giselle,Aurora and Odette/Odile.I recall the shock expressed by older "Regulars" when Merle Park, a soubrette, who they associated her with the Neapolitan Dance and Lise,danced Swan Lake. The director was saving us from too many performances of a particular work and may have been saving some dancers from themselves but he was also exercising enormous control over their careers I can't imagine that many dancers would accept anything like that degree of control today. There are certain ballets where virtually every Principal gets the opportunity to dance the lead roles, Manon, and Swan Lake are two prime examples where the number of performances scheduled appears to be directly connected with the need to give each female principal two or three performances apiece.The more female Principals the company has the greater the number of performances of these ballets it seems obliged to show.Then there is the problem of developing the younger dancers. How many performances should be allocated to them as a group and how many should each be given? I hope that the seemingly interminable run of Don Q this season has more to do with ensuring that they enough dancers available to cover injury and illness during their American tour than anything else.
  16. The Royal Danish Ballet were here in 1968 and in 1995 when they brought Fleming Flindt's ballet Caroline Mattilde and his production of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges, neither of which were well received. Since then we have had two small groups of dancers visit London in 2005 and the group that have just completed their performances at the Peacock. I seem to recall that in 2005 there were suggestions that the visit might be the precurser to a visit by the full company which, as we know, turned out to be wishful thinking. I know that the Danes do a lot more than dance Bournonville all the time.The last time they tried to show us what else they danced they performed Caroline Mattilde and while there was praise for the dancers there was at best polite acknowledgement of the pieces itself and a lot of discussion of its weaknesses.Perhaps it is the memory of that response that has dissuaded the company from returning here. It would be nice to think that Kevin O'Hare's presence at the Peacock is evidence of a renewed interest in Bournonville and his works. But much as we might like to see a revival of La Sylphide or a new Conservatoire I think it unlikely that they will be performed at Covent Garden in the foreseeable future by either the Royal Ballet or by the Danes.
  17. I recall a talk that Barry Wordsworth gave about ten years ago when he explained that a tempo was agreed for an entire run of a revival so the orchestra did not end up playing fast one night and slowly the next. It was a compromise but I think he suggested that the tempo was set pretty much by the speed that the ballerina on opening night wanted.Presumably because that dancer tended in the past to be the most senior dancer appearing in the work. I do not know if something similar happens at ENB But I would not necessarily assume that Deane exercises control over the speed at which the ballerina's role is danced in this production. I know that I used to avoid performances at Covent Garden conducted by Emmanuel Young because I found them sluggish.I was amused to discover that Donald MacLeary did not rate him too highly either something to do with being too accommodating to the dancers if I recall.
  18. I did not have time to notice if it was a bit rough round the edges or not.There was too much else going on for me to notice any short comings in the staging. I came for the dancing and elegant,clean,clear,crisp dancing is what I got Yes, it would have been nice to have had live music and well, perhaps a bit more thought to the backcloth for the section from La Sylphide; but if that is the price I have to pay in order to see substantial chunks of Bournonville performed by dancers from the RDB then for me it is a price worth paying. Having live music would have scuppered the entire enterprise financially.Getting the chance to see part of Sorella Englund's Madge at close quarters was in itself worth the price of the ticket. For me five minutes of this programme is worth an entire performance of Acosta's Don Q.Before anyone accuses me of being disrespectful towards the dancers of the Royal Ballet let me say it is my " home team" and I am fully aware that it contains many fine dancers within its ranks but if I compare these apparently effortless performances of "bleeding chunks" of Bournonville with the obvious effort that the Bow Street company has to expend to give any semblance of life to their Don Q then this programme wins hands down. I think the reason is pretty obvious Bournonville just happened to be a choreographer of genius and whatever changes may have been made to the texts of his ballets or the company's technique over the years in performance they seem to be effortless expressions of joie de vivre. Petipa was also a choreographic genius but how much of his work remains in any Don Q staged today is a moot point.He was not very complimentary about Gorsky's restaging of it; and that is the production from which every subsequent version of Don Q derives. There is too much flouncing about and too many laboured attempts at humour in Acosta's production for my taste.In the end I am far too conscious of how hard everyone has to work to get the piece off the ground. For me the dogged effort which the company displays is at odds with creating the appropriate atmosphere for the ballet. Perhaps the problem lies with attempting to update it for modern audiences which is what Acosta said he wanted to do. Perhaps that is the secret of the Danes' performances at the Peacock all they seem to be concerned about is letting the choreography speak for itself.
  19. Why is everyone surprised by the choice of very slow tempi in Act 2? After all if I recall both Rojo and Cojocaru expressed great admiration for Markarova's interpretation of Odette in the documentary on Swan Lake .No one seems to remember that at the time we were first exposed to Markarova's distortion of the role and the score there were more people who were critical of her approach than were enthusiastic supporters of it. Personally I still think that a great interpretation of Odette requires sensitivity to the score.rather than incredible balances which have the effect of chopping the choreography up into a series of poses but then I don't think that you measure the greatness of an Aurora by how long a dancer manages to balance and how many of her suitors she manages to ignore in the Rose Adagio.
  20. I know that one or two people have picked up what Yuri Fateyev has said about the Vaganova's graduates only being suitable for corps work as evidence that this prestigious school has difficulties similar to those that are said to be present in schools here.The statement may not be all that it seems.It may have more to do with justifying the appointment of Nicolai Tsiskaridze as rector of the Vaganova and the decision of talented Vaganova graduates not to join the Mariinsky than the school's ability to produce dancers of quality. You might want to ask yourself why, if the Vaganova's graduates are so poor, the Bolshoi has been recruiting them? Are Obratsova and Smirnova only suited for corps work? It must be far easier for the Mr Fateyev's to explain the failure to recruit Vaganova graduates who are clearly destined for great things by denying their existence than admitting that the dancers have voted with their feet.If you admit that talented dancers did not want to join the Mariinsky that might be seen as being disloyal to Gergiev who is regarded by many as the real boss of the Mariinsky. It would be unlikely to lead to awkward questions being asked about recruitment to the company or the company's choice of repertory but it certainly would displease the powers that be.
  21. I think that we should assume, until the contrary is proved, that the designs, as with everything else in this ballet, reflect Acosta's taste and wishes.The designer is rarely in a position to go off on a frolic of his own when it comes to deciding what the audience will see on the stage unless of course you are asked to design a production of the Sleeping Beauty. Anyone interested in seeing Francesca Hayward in something else could always try to get a ticket for Alice on the 15th January. I assume that she will turn up in Swan Lake but as management assumes that no one needs to know who is dancing the pas de trois or the Neapolitan dance because that sort of minor casting information would never influence ticket sales we shall have to wait and hope that some of us strike lucky in the ballet casting lottery.I understand that, as the Opera House no longer has booking periods covering two months at a time, it may not be possible to give details of the casting for divertisements when booking opens but I should have thought that it would pay to divulge that information when rehearsals begin as it might shift a few more tickets without the need to discount them.
  22. I find it interesting that Fateyev refers to the difficulty that companies have recruiting dancers of suitable quality to dance major roles because of the competing interests of football, gymnastics and football. It's much easier and safer to say that, than to say well actually we have had a number of outstanding graduates from the Vaganova but they have all decided to go to the Bolshoi because they know that Mr Gergiev is only interested in the Mariinsky Ballet as a cash cow. I seem to recall the rector in one of his more lucid moments, while he was bemoaning the fact that Russian artists no longer won artistic competitions as a matter of course,expressing concern that the Russian state no longer engaged in active dance talent spotting across the country which in the past had ensured that children with the greatest potential had become students at the greatest Russian ballet schools.He seemed to be calling for the re-establishment of this system to ensure that Russian ballet was restored to its rightful position of world dominance. In the meantime while he waits for the national talent scouting system to be reintroduced it will do him no harm if the populace at large come to believe that the Vaganova was not producing dancers of any quality under the old regime because it will bolster his position by justifying his appointment. If, by some happy chance, one or two outstanding dancers should emerge from the Academy at the end of his first year in office that will, no doubt, be cited as proof of his abilities as teacher and leader and provide further evidence of the appropriateness of his appointment.It won't matter that the bulk of the work was done by those he replaced.
  23. Primrose's reference to her daughter's experience of "hands on" teaching at the Bolshoi school is very telling. I recall some years ago reading the comments of teachers about the difficulty of teaching ballet students when you could no longer touch them because, in the wake of the concerns about child abuse, it was no longer an acceptable practice. The question that they asked about teaching was how were teachers going to ensure that their pupils physically experienced the corrections that they were making if they could no longer use their hands and had to rely exclusively on words. I wonder how long it takes for changes in an institution like the Royal Ballet School to take effect and bear fruit? I seem to recall that Gailene Stock was recruited as head of the Royal Ballet School after Merle Park's tenure to address issues concerning its syllabus and training. Now throughout the tenure of both heads dancers were recruited into the company from the school and some of those who had received most of their training at the school eventually became principals with the company. I am sure that the Royal Ballet School is no different from other schools when it comes to the effect that a change of head can have on a school for good or ill.According to my calculations it is only in fairly recent years that we have started to see dancers enter the company who have received all their training at the school during Miss Stock's headship.It will be interesting to see how far they progress both at home and abroad. It will be at least another twenty years before it will be possible to accurately evaluate her impact on her pupils and by then we could well have seen at least two more heads at the school each of whom will come in with their own ideas about what needs to be altered. The training institutions in France and Russia seem to be less driven by the need to change things at regular intervals than we do here. A very interesting book will one day be written about the Royal Ballet School's history and its changing fortunes particularly those occasions starting in the 1960's when it has had to be sorted out; its changes of syllabus over the years and the reasons for them;its teaching staff and their backgrounds; its change from feeder school for the Royal Ballet companies to a school whose senior section sometimes appears to be geared towards catering for international students and the impact that these changes have had on the companies which it was established to serve. Somehow I don't think that it will be capable of being written any time soon
  24. Ribbons when I said that it was understandable that Mr Powney would talk about student's sense of entitlement,when according to at least one recent practitioner the real problem for British dancers is lack of confidence, I was suggesting that it was easier for the head of an organisation to ascribe its recent failures to its students' apparent lack of application to the task in hand because that lets the institution off the hook. If the problem is a sense of entitlement then it is not the school's fault that its students don't make it to the top. If it is fear of failure and lack of confidence which holds them back then the school must take some responsibility for the situation.As lack of confidence clearly does not afflict students from other parts of the world, then the seeds of the problem must have been sown at a stage of training which predates their entry into the upper school.I am saying that blaming other people for an institution's past failings, is in my experience, a standard response to criticism As far as lack of confidence not afflicting young people that go to RADA and other drama schools is concerned surely the difference is that drama school students are considerably older and therefore less impressionable than ballet students when they embark on their training;they have already experienced success in acting before they start professional training and are not told daily that they have faults that need to be corrected, They have not spent years of training as small children receiving corrections, knowing that they can be assessed out and seeing that there are lots of people who are as skilled as they are and some that are a lot better. Now I recognise that this is true of any great ballet school but it is not true of other forms of art training.The other significant difference is that a trainee actor has been surrounded from his or her earliest years with evidence that the British can act and are rather good at it.The Russians, the French, the Danes and the Italians all have several hundred years of evidence that they are rather good at dancing Our dance history is just over eighty years and for much of that time it has been a history of foreign dancers being very active in the senior ranks of the company. It was less noticeable in the past because the majority of such dancers were the children or grandchildren of people who had emigrated from Britain.The last twenty years has been a time when the company's dependence on foreign dancers has been very obvious because the dancers have clearly not been of British extraction. This does not necessarily mean that there is a great deal wrong with the technical training that dancers receive at the Royal Ballet School,It could mean that students find it difficult to imagine themselves getting to the top because in their very short life experience they have not seen many school graduates do so.They can't do it can easily become I can't do it. If you are told that you are not doing something well, which is inevitable in ballet training;you lack confidence and fear failure and you don't have indigenous role models that you aspire to emulate you create your own purpose built self fulfilling limitations. At four every child can paint by the time they have been at school for a year hardly any of them can paint because they have been told that they can't. Children and young people are very good at meeting the expectations of their teachers and parents. I can see no reason why dance training should be an exception to the rule. As far as coaching is concerned I am not saying that company principals do not receive any coaching they clearly do and the names of the coaches appear on the front page of the cast sheets that are available for Royal Ballet performances I am saying that the Russian approach to coaching is very different from the Royal Ballet's. The Royal Ballet has a small team of coaches which includes Leslie Collier and Jonathan Cope both of whom were distinguished exponents of certain roles. Occasionally this small team is augmented by other former members of the company such as Mason, Sibley and Dowell for particular ballets or sometimes for particular debuts. The point that I was trying to make is that this is that calling on other former dancers is not done consistently which means that comparatively few dancers have had the benefit of coaching by Sibley in the roles of Aurora or Odette Oile. Some great dancers such as Brenda Last who must know more about Lise than any dancer now living is never used as a coach and Lynn Seymour who created a number of major roles is never invited to coach them. The other point about coaching is that the major Russian companies identify potential major dancers as soon as they enter the company and that they are allocated their own coach with whom they work when preparing roles for performance and this coaching relationship continues, as far as I am aware, throughout their career.I have no doubt that this,combined with a much larger initial pool of talent, explains the Russian's ability to produce a seemingly endless supply of fine dancers. I imagine that it is a question of money at the end of the day combined with the way in which the company developed in its early years that explains the Royal's approach to coaching.I wonder how members of the forum. let alone the public would react if they learned that on entry into the company dancers were allocated according to their perceived potential either to the corps or to a group selected as soloists and potential principals.
  25. I think that it was Belinda Hatley who said that the real problem for British dancers was their lack of confidence. Some people find that the best way of coping with lack of confidence is not to push to be put into situations in which they are convinced they will fail It's a phenomena that can be observed in many fields not just dance training. It is understandable that the head of a training institution might choose to interpret that sort of behaviour as evidence of a sense of entitlement.When you combine that with the English myth of effortless mastery of all sorts of skills and knowledge which actually require years of sweat, application and determination then you can let the institution off the hook by convincing yourself that your students have fallen for that lie and that the fault lies with the students rather than the institutions that provided their training. The school has had a somewhat chequered history and has needed sorting out on a number of occasions over the years.But if Danilova was right when she said that while great dancers are born good dancers are trained by good teachers then it would seem to me that the reason why so few British dancers make it through the ranks of the company to senior positions is in part attributable to the school.But there are other factors at work.Lots of British graduates choose to work abroad because they see more opportunity to dance and develop away from Covent Garden. Those who join the company have to make their way through the company hierachy waiting their turn and making their mark in what they are given to dance. There is nowhere for young dancers to learn their craft by regular performances in major roles away from the glare of publicity that was once provided by the touring company.The company almost certainly can not afford to have the sort of coaching system that the Russians have as a result, young dancers are rarely coached by major exponents of the roles that they are due to dance. As far as I know Brenda Last has never been asked to coach anyone about to dance Lise;Sibley has coached some aspirant Odette Odiles but has not been invited to do so on a regular basis.Recordings are used regularly where Russian companies use retired dancers who were outstanding in the roles that they coach.Dancers with real potential are identified early on and given their coach as a result they are always building on experience and success. Finally the company has got out of the habit of developing dancers and into the habit of recruiting from outside. Whether this has now changed will become clear when we see how the careers of dancers like Hay and Hayward develop.In the past there have been any number of young dancers who have been flavour of the month, cast in everything and then in nothing. If the company is interested in developing its young dancers then it will need to modify its choice of repertory performing the Ashton works which originally created the company and gave it its style and treating some of its ballets such as Alice as the preserve of the young, with only those roles which require mature dancers such as Alice's mother and father being danced by dancers over thirty. Only by doing this will some of the talented younger dancers have a real opportunity to make their mark.It is not as if there are no ballets in the company's repertory that would enable the company to pursue such a policy.It would no doubt do wonders for the confidence of company members and students to see that there is no reason why they should not get to the top if they have the application and determination. It must be really dispiriting to discover that the company that you aspire to join is regularly recruiting dancers whose style is the complete antithesis of everything that you have been taught to admire and emulate.
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