FLOSS

I do not think that to say that the performance given on a particular day was not up to par or to say that the company does not look at its best in a particular ballet denigrates the company. The majority of people who have posted comments about Don Q think that the production is good and have no problem with the performances that they have seen. We are all entitled to our opinions.I have found the ballet lacking in vigour; prim and proper when it should be bordering on the edge of vulgarity. Don Q is a ballet that needs to be danced and clothed in primary colours. The Bolshoi production works because they perform the ballet as showbiz entertainment not as high art. All other versions are pallid in comparison. The only reason for staging Don Q,it seems to me,is to provide a feast of full blooded dancing which is what the Bolshoi production does in spades and what the Royal's current Don Q fails to do.The gypsy scene for example would benefit from pruning. It slows down the action and the choreography is dull.Then there are the designs. Danilova in her memoirs wrote of the importance of design in establishing place and mood and preparing the audience for the performance of a ballet. I do not find that mauve,beige and the other subdued tones do much to evoke sun drenched Spain..It seems to me that Acosta's choice of designs,orchestration and choreographic text combine to create a burden that the dancers have to surmount every time they perform this work.

I had always understood that while a dancer might prefer to dance certain steps, with application and determination they could master virtually any step, if they had a mind to do so, So it is strange that the company appears unable to find a single dancer who can consistently make a decent job of the Queen of the Dryads. For the main part the dancing in this ballet seems to be very small scale with nearly every member of the cast,still more concerned with the correct reproduction of the choreography than dancing the ballet.When attending a ballet performance the audience is entitled to expect that the choreography has been so well taught that the performer has assimilated it and is no longer concerned with its mere reproduction but with performing their allotted role and dancing the ballet. A vision scene that wasn't magical but had no mishaps; a Kitri with a solid technique but who appears to be temperamentally unsuited to the role even with an outstanding Basilio does not add up to the sort of performance that you expect from the Royal Ballet. It might be acceptable if it were a student performance but,if it was a student performance, you would ask yourself who had chosen the ballet and why they had done so? It is extraordinary that the management is proposing taking this production on tour to the US.

I don't think that you are being picky at all. If you find that there are things missing in a performance then they almost certainly are missing even if the majority of the audience are unaware of them. I agree that Muntagirov gave a fine performance but that the women struggled and that the corps were ragged in places. Some years ago an eminent American critic wrote of the Royal Ballet's performances of Ashton's works that they were imperfectly cast and coached. I think that on the present showing much the same can be said of the Royal's Don Q where in general performances lack panache.Don Q is not a ballet in which the story line matters at all; at its best it is an excuse for a feast of larger than life dancing. It calls for dancers who are at home with demi-character work. I know that the Royal does not go in for old style emploi but Kitri is essentially a soubrette role. I find it difficult to believe that apart from Nunez and Marquez the company does not have a single soubrette to its name but that is what the company's casting of this work suggests is the case. Acosta has been involved in this revival coaching the Principals but that does not mean that he has had any say in casting this ballet least of all the lesser roles such as the Queen of the Dryads.The casting so far suggests that, at present, the company does not have someone who can dance the Queen of the Dryads. The company had similar problems with casting a decent Lilac Fairy when they last performed Sleeping Beauty. It is difficult to believe that there is no one in the company who can perform the choreography for these roles with accuracy and confidence. Perhaps management is not looking in the right places or perhaps they do not think that it matters after all people are buying tickets.

The performance of Alice on Wednesday came close to persuading me that it really is a ballet rather than an entertainment with a considerable dance element. Hayward, Muntagirov and Hay were all excellent and the piece had a freshness and charm that it lacks when the roles of Alice and Jack are taken by more mature dancers. Perhaps it is a ballet that is improved when these roles are taken by younger dancers or perhaps it is just that these dancers are just exceptionally good. As for ballets that are suitable for younger children Ashton's Fille is the only full length ballet that can be recommended as suitable for audiences from three to ninety three; It is packed with dance and incident and all the dance arises out of the action. The problem is that neither the Royal nor BRB dance Fille sufficiently frequently for it to be the regular repertory piece that it was during the 1960's and 1970's as a result it may not be available as a first ballet for an individual child .The Royal has not cottoned on to the idea of performing the ballet regularly either as its second Christmas ballet or at Easter and if not annually at least every other year. In spite of the fact that the ballet is recognised as a masterpiece the Royal usually ends up advertising its performances of Fille because the title is not as familiar to the general public as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty or Nutcracker, The fact that the late nineteenth century classics were mounted to display the riches of the imperial theatres at which they were created reduces their suitability as first ballets for young children as the narrative stops at regular intervals for dances that have little or nothing to do with the narrative. It has always struck me that,Sleeping Beauty is probably the least suitable ballet for a young child's introduction to the art form because of its length and.the amount of non narrative, pure dance it contains.

I was surprised by how dark significant sections of the action seemed to be in the recording that was broadcast last night. I managed to see both casts during the ballet's initial run and although some parts of the action take place on a stage that is lit in a subdued manner the action is clear; much clearer than some of the atmospherically lit pieces created by Wayne McGregor where, if you sit in the Amphi. you struggle to see the dancers. So I wonder whether the lack of visibility is a result of the BBC failing to boost the lighting levels; the film editor's choice of shots or a combination of the two or whether the lighting scheme for this ballet is just too complex for the addition of extra banks of lights to resolve the problem..In the past the management used to warn you that if you attended a performance that was being filmed there would be additional lighting that would mean that the audience would not see the stage lit as it would normally be for the ballet in question.Although you still get given that warning you rarely see a significant number of lights set up near the stage and I don't recall seeing any extra lights set up there the evening that it was filmed. During the performance there are occasions when parts of the stage are lit and the rest is in shadow an example of this is the point where Leontes hides behind the statues near the front of the stage to spy on his wife and his best friend;he is in shadow,they are lit clearly enough to ensure that the audience can see their actions as he sees them.There are several occasions when the stage is partially lit but when you watch the ballet in the theatre you automatically look at the well lit areas which is obviously where Wheeldon wants you to look.. In Act 1 the darkness is clearly the darkness of Leontes' mind. and in the third act the somber lighting, as I understand it, reflects his loss and remorse. I am surprised that no one seems to have identified the problem that the ballet's lighting scheme might pose as far as filming it was concerned and done something to resolve it . As far as the structure of the ballet is concerned I feel that the lurking behind the statues goes on too long. One less lurk would be an improvement while the recognition scene in act 3 is too short and goes for nothing. In the play the oracle of Delphi not only proclaim's Hermione's innocence but states that the king shall live without an heir until that which is lost is found. Leontes is punished by the death of his heir and the apparent death of his wife because he refuses to accept the message of the god. The restoration of his child is a significant step in Leontes' regeneration. While Wheeldon and his colleagues have, understandably, cut the play to adapt it for ballet Perdita's story is central to the story and a recognition scene that is over as soon as it has begun is plain stupid. I agree that the second act outstays its welcome. It is far too repetitive and not particularly inventive although it seemed to drag far less when Muntagirov and Stix Brunell danced Florizel and Perdita. No doubt when it returns to the Covent Garden stage it will be modified in light of the experience of staging it in Canada ]

We all see things differently but for me this production of Don Quixote is ponderous,dull, totally unamusing, with too many occasions when the action grinds to a stop while we wait for the next outbreak of dancing. The sets and costumes reveal how little Acosta and his designer understand the very basics of ballet design which at their simplest are to provide sets and costumes which clearly establish time and place. A set should provide an uncluttered space for dancing with no visual distractions such as large flowers and moving houses. Costumes should assist in creating character as well as making their wearers more visible ensuring that they don't merge into each other or into the sets or the floor and are visible from all parts of the house; here the choice of colours and their shades is all important.The choice of beige and brown for Basilio, pale mauve for Kitri's friends and washed out colours for the female corps do nothing to establish place or character or to assist their visibility; the costumes for the classical interlude of the vision scene are far too fussy. It is all very well to want to break away from tradition but sometimes traditions establish themselves not as a result of laziness but because those solutions work. This is a ballet that requires whole hearted commitment with large scale dancing and characterisation to make it work. The company still do not seem at home in it;there are too many occasions when the stage is devoid of action and these gaps seem to be filled,if at all, by a lot of pointless shouting.In the first act the corps are more like the boys and girls in a pantomime than a group of dancers creating the world of Don Quixote as imagined by Gorsky.The performers, for the main part,lack the necessary vibrancy and panache to make the ballet work;their dancing is too small, too prim, too proper and too careful. They reproduce the steps well enough but never let rip and just dance the ballet. It's a bit like hearing someone recite a speech from a play without attempting to create mood or character or give the text meaning.It is true that they are not helped in their efforts by the costumes or by the re-orchestrated score which at times makes it sound like palm court music but as this is the Royal's third unsuccessful staging of the ballet perhaps they should call it a day after this run and revert to Ashton next Christmas. A newly designed Cinderella, or a mixed bill of Les Patineurs and Two Pigeons or another revival of Fille would all be preferable to a further revival of a ballet which I don't think will ever suit the company. The truth is that unless a company is willing and able to perform Don Q with the sort of whole hearted vulgarity that the Bolshoi brings to it then there is little point in staging it. Its music is undistinguished and the choreography is Gorsky's not Petipa's since it derives from Gorsky's early twentieth century revival which according to Petipa destroyed his ballet by destroying his floor plans. As for last night's performance the cuts that were made might have been due to the late running of the performance but they are just as likely to have been made to accommodate Takada who had already danced Kitri at the matinee.

Well whoever asked for Cojocaru to dance as a replacement at the Bolshoi she could hardly have gone without ENB management agreeing that she could go. The fact that ENB management agreed to release her suggests that they are more concerned with establishing the company's international standing than they are with their loyal fan base here. I am sure that Lauretta will give a fine performance but there will still be a lot of disappointed people in the audience. When you go to the ballet or opera you accept that there will be occasions when the advertised cast will,as a result of illness or injury. not be able to perform.That is the chance you take. Sometimes the resulting cast is better than the one originally advertised. But I would not expect major cast changes to be made to suit the wishes of a choreographer however eminent. After all it is not as if Cojocaru is the only person who knows the role or that the Bolshoi is a tiny company who could not provide a replacement from their own ranks.

Fonty, it is probably the same little gaggle of "ladies" that were at the end of my row a couple of weeks ago. I also got the" last one in " comment as I went to my seat. In response I smiled as sweetly as I could and said "someone has to be the last one".At the interval they made it clear that they did not want to move to let me out. I got up. I excused myself and said that I had people to meet and that I did not want to tread on their toes and then I left the row.Surprisingly two of them moved the third was reluctant to move. I may have trodden on her toes as I went out but I tried very hard not to do so. I do not think that I could have done anything more. I did not get any comments when I returned to my seat and they made some effort to move.

I think that it is a great pity that we have so few mixed bills in which there is a real range and variety of works in the one programme. I am thinking of the sort of programme that contains ballets in contrasting styles and moods by major choreographers, the so called heritage works, and one new work. I wonder whether the decision to construct programmes in which all the ballets are "heritage" works and others in which all the choreographers are still very much with us is evidence of the fractured nature of the ballet audience or an acknowledgement of the weakness of much new work ?. May be it was a reaction to my encounter with the plastic shark the night before but I could have done with a bit of frivolity in the Ceremony of Innocence programme it was all so very,VERY SERIOUS.Do young or youngish choreographers have no sense of humour? I heard Marian Tait say that when BRB decided to revive Pineapple Poll a couple of years ago the dancers took some convincing that the audience would enjoy watching it and that they would enjoy dancing it. It seems to be a a generational thing.Dancers used to have a sense of humour as did choreographers; Mark Morris clearly still has one but I sometimes feel particularly at Sadlers Wells that the audience is made uncomfortable by any attempt at humour except the very crudest parody of classical ballet. I sometimes wonder young choreographers have had their sense of humour surgically removed or whether they have all received earnestness implants. My second encounter with the mixed bill gave me the opportunity to see new casts in each of the ballets. I think that the second cast in Ceremony gave stronger performances than the first cast had done. As I knew where to look I had less difficulty in making out what was happening on stage than I had on Friday but I still think that it is far too obviously a ballet that started life in a much smaller theatre. The second cast in the Age of Anxiety were, for me,generally more effective than the first one, because they were dancing against type. By this I mean that it seemed to me that Scarlett had given McRae choreography not that dissimilar from the choreography in Sweet Violets, perhaps that is how he sees McRae. McRae of course danced it with great facility but it seemed to me that Campbell used the same steps to give a real sense of a character. The steps may have been danced with slightly less facility but they had an extra depth to them.This time they said" I am Emble" rather than" I am Steven McRae watch me!". The choreography for Rosetta gave more of a sense of character when danced by Lamb than it had when danced by Morera for similar reasons. The steps no longer said" I am Laura Morera doing a Laura Morera dance" but" I am Rosetta".It is always interesting to see choreography which may be almost stereotypical for the dancers on whom it was made released by being performed by other dancers. Sometimes you lose a lot sometimes you gain a great deal.I do not think that this ballet is a great work or even a particularly good one.It is a step in Scarlett's development and it reveals just as much about what he can't do as what he can.If the ballet that he created for the RBS matinee is anything to go by he is still a much better choregrapher of abstract works than he is a story teller or creator of moods.. Aeternum gave the opportunity to see Calvert, Underwood and Hirano in leading roles. Of course they danced it well but it is a very slight work. Ashton, Balanchine, Robbens and many others had the experience of working in the commercial theatre and for impresarios with great theatrical flair. I sometimes think that the fact that so few choreographers today have had that experience and that few would want it goes a long way to explain the vast number of works that seem to be little more than choreographic doodles; lacking the universality and theatrical effectiveness of so many of the ballets of the twentieth century.Too many works seem to be made by choreographers with a particular dance aesthetic for audiences with similar tastes.The true believers. The current management has said that they want to create a new repertory, fine, as long as it does not consign Ashton's works to virtual oblivion. But just how many lookalike ballets with interchangeable movement, floor plans, costumes and "atmospheric" lighting are we going to sit through before the choreographic "chosen one" reveals him or herself to us all? The "chosen one" will be someone who manages more than the occasional success; does not put large pieces of distracting machinery on stage; chooses not to use low lighting levels in every piece; employs a dance vocabulary that is closely related to classical ballet and does not feel the need to write reams of pretentious programme notes in an attempt to persuade us of the quality of his choreography. We have a long wait so I suppose a few more years won't hurt. I don't want the Royal Ballet to become a museum company but at the same time I don't think that a policy of anything will do as long as it is new is a good idea. O'Hare seems to want new works from people like Ratmansky rather than one or two acknowledged masterworks from them which I think is a weakness in the plan.

An evening which left me wondering whether the Royal Opera House was having difficulty in paying its electricity bill. Each of the ballets had lighting which I think was intended to create atmosphere and mood but which made it difficult to see the dancers clearly all the time which, for me,somewhat defeats the object of the exercise.Perhaps the only people who are intended to see these ballets are stalls ticket holders. The most memorable thing for me about Ceremony of Innocence are the waves which are projected on to the back cloth and occasionally on to the stage.Edward Watson sits on a chair while the action takes place,occasionally he is involved in it, then he moves to another chair on the opposite corner of the stage. Other dancers are seen to greater advantage, Sambe in particular, but for me it does not add up to much..I can not make up my mind whether it is because the choreography is essentially vacuous or whether it is because it was made for a smaller space and needs its audience to be closer to the action. The Age of Anxiety starts with lighting levels so low that Steven McRae was barely visible through the mirk and gloom.Was this a profound comment on the character he was playing,fashionable ballet lighting,incompetence or total disregard for the audience in the cheaper seats I am in no position to say, but following a ballet with consistently low lighting levels it was a trifle irritating.We then discover that we are in an archetypal American bar, familiar to everyone from films and paintings. Here we meet the four main characters and a couple of subsiduery ones.Quant,a business man (he has a hat and briefcase)(Gartside); Rosetta (a buyer for a department store) who clearly has far better dress sense than the soldier's girlfriend (Morera); Malin a young man(Dyer) and Emble a sailor (McRae).Emble challenges a soldier and makes clear his interest in both Rosetta and Malin.The four main characters leave the bar and go to Rosetta's apartment, eventually Quant and Malin leave.Emble falls asleep on the sofa. In the street Quant kisses Malin and gives him his business card before walking off. The last scene shows Malin gamboling in an open space with the New York skyscrapers behind him. I feel that the choreographic invention ran out long before the music came to an end and too much of the choreography for McRae and Morera was the sort of thing that we have seen them do in other ballets.Whether cutting the score would help I do not know but I do not think that the Bernstein estate would agree. At least you could see what was going on after the opening section of Age of Anxiety with Aeternum we are back in the world of lighting so atmospheric that on occasion the dancers almost disappear into the back of the stage. Once I saw the false start I knew that I had seen it before but it that is all that it did. At the end I did not feel that I had seen a piece of astounding choreography. I am sure that the costume designs do nothing to assist this ballet. They are all too similar in colour and tend to disappear into the background when the lighting is at its most atmospheric. The men's little shorts look silly and the corset like costume that Nunez wears in the second section is risible. At least the first and third ballets gave the opportunity to listen to vintage Britten.

The reason that New York is the centre of American ballet is exactly the same reason that London is the centre in this country it has nothing to do with being the capital city and everything to do with being the country's major theatrical centre with all the ancillary crafts and services that any form of theatre requires. Even without a resident company like NYCB .there were dancers there. who performed in the opera and shows who would have had some sort of ballet training. In this country the Alhambra had a ballet company long before the Vic Wells ballet was formed. At the turn of the twentieth century its ballerina was a dancer whose name was Adelina Jensen aka Adeline Genee the first president of the RAD and whose name is perpetuated in the Genee awards..Pantomime called for dancers as did opera and de Valois appeared in both types of entertainment. The significance of the foundation of the Vic Wwlls company was that it was a full time one rather than ad hoc one and it had high artistic aspirations rather than simply providing entertainment for tired business men .Genee was the woman who made ballet dancing respectable.in this country. As to why it did not happen elsewhere in this country it probably had a lot to do with the hold that non conformism had over large tracts of it particularly the wealthy towns of the Midlands and the North. Theatre was in the eyes of many churchgoers a frivolous occupation and actresses had dubious morals. In their eyes and those of most chapel goers ballet dancers had none at all. Municipal munificence was generally expressed by those who made their pile in the provision of parks and art galleries not in theatrical enterprises. Washington DC started out as a boggy swamp. It was an artificial creation which provided the Federal government with a capiital that did not give any state undue prominence by housing the national government.It was also reasonably accessible from all the original states of the USA . The arts only really arrived in Washington during the course of the twentieth century. Not a complete account but I trust that this helps.

I think that it is possible to prove anything that you want to with statistics as long as you are vague about your base figures and their source and the precise definition of the area you are talking about Interestingly the period covered seems to cover the lead up to the Millenium and the Olympics when arts spending in London seemed to be what the government wanted. .When I was a child the town in which I lived justified spending next to nothing on the arts because of its proximity to London( 36 miles away). I can't imagine what it would have spent a per capita sum for the arts on.It was not that sort of place and it still is not. Generally speaking anyone living within a forty mile radius or perhaps even a sixty mile radius of London would expect to travel to London to see first class opera or ballet on a regular basis. I am not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing but that is how the economics work out. And I am speaking as someone who did that sort of travelling for years.If you include that population in your calculations then the figures are not as disproportionate as the ones that the Select Committee gave. I recall a time when the major London companies used to tour. It was the closure of the large provincial theatres that could take their productions and the burgeoning cost of touring so that put paid to regional tours by Covent Garden's companies and Sadlers Wells opera years ago. The Arts Council helped reduce the number of companies that you might expect to see outside London by restricting them to their own specific spheres of influence. The report sounds to me like a group of politicians who know that they are going to have to face the electorate in six months time getting ready to go to the country. It may be that it will reappear in some form in policy after the election. In my experience those who raise the subject of the inequality of arts funding usually turn out to be people who do not approve of arts funding at all. I have no idea how large a part any of the national museums and galleries, theatres,concert halls and companies like the National Theatre,Royal Ballet , Royal Opera and ENO contribute directly to the national economy through ticket sales and so on. The number of people that come to London for the theatre alone is probably quite small but it has some impact on overall numbers as it is seen as one of the things that is available to visitors to London. The theatres all support ancilary crafts and staff who would not necessarily be employed without them or the ACE spend.The companies that provide accommodation for visitors and feed them pay taxes as do their employees and is no doubt there that the real impact of the arts on the tourist industry is to be found. Covent Garden and the National Theatre would probably survive virtually any ACE cut in funding.It is far from clear how beneficial an impact the reallocation of resources would have in the regions or on London. We may find out in due course and there again it may turn out to be just another report put on one side to gather dust.

I don't doubt that Fonteyn said that Bussell was stronger technically than she had been. If asked she would probably have said the same thing about the ABT cast that she coached in Birthday Offering in 1989. But her comment about their performance was " They're doing the steps but they're forgetting to dance". I think that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to compare the technique of dancers who were trained in a world in which musicality and sensitivity to the intentions of the choreographer were paramount and technique was a means to that end with those for whom technique seems to be an end in itself. In the past dancers who were only able to reproduce steps ,however brilliantly they did so, were described as" mere technicians." and were unlikely to be seen outside a very limited range of roles.Today technicians dance in everything, for good or ill, and bring their aesthetic, that nothing can ever be too extreme,with them. Audiences come to see the nineteenth century classics only in terms of the set piece technical display pieces and somehow we seem to have gone back to the end of the nineteenth century where bravura displays of technique mattered more than anything else.The same audience which sat on its hands when presented with Mark Morris' Beaux, an inventive and musically sensitive ballet for an all male cast, goes mad when it is presented with a cliched balletic tribute to the Russian school which is all jumps and pirouettes. Technicians rule OK! I think that the current problem is one of performance style rather than technical ability. If you are trained in the Vaganova technique you will learn that it teaches you the correct way to execute every ballet step. You are likely to struggle when you need to modify what you have been taught at school in order to comply with the stylistic requirements of another school or choreographer. I know that Donald McLeary expressed concern that some dancers failed to understand that as ballet is a theatrical art form you can not simply transfer what you have learnt in class onto the stage.It puzzled me at the time but I have now read David Wall's comments on coaching.He said that he was often challenged by dancers who asked whether he was saying that what they were doing was wrong and that he had to explain that he was asking them to do things differently.I leave it up to you to decide how much of a problem this is for the company at present.

.When it comes to the nineteenth century classics it seems to me that all the talk about improved technique has more to do with hyper extensions and the ability to perform tricks such as holding balances for an eternity or squeezing in extra steps whether or not the music permits it than anything else. The fact that this is not what you see in older recordings of these works is taken as evidence of lack of technical ability when it has far more to do with the aesthetics of the period. Many of these " advances in technique" would have been criticised as vulgar and unmusical in the past. Then of course there is what Geraldine Morris describes as the "absolutism"of Vaganova technique which means that anything danced or created using another technique is by its very nature flawed. And finally there is the assumption that the dancers of today and those of the past approach performance in the same way and seek the same effects. Danilova wrote in her memoirs that in Russia in the early years of the century ballet had been used to tell stories or to create a mood but that it had during the Soviet era become a mere display of technique.That aesthetic has,it seems to me.crept into the way that ballet is performed in the West It may even go some way to explain why dancers in revivals of older repertory are so concerned about being seen to execute steps correctly that they sometimes forget to dance the ballet and produce a performance that seems mannered.and dull. .

I was very impressed by Reece Clarke at the RBS matinee earlier this year when I thought that he gave a very stylish performance as Jean de Brienne in Raymonda Act 3. But I thought that when he joined the Royal Ballet he would probably spend several years as the balletic equivalent of a spear carrier before being allowed out to do the Swan Lake pas de trois and Florestan and his sisters. So I was pleasantly surprised when his name appeared in the casting of the current revival of Symphonic. The decision to alter the casting must have come very late in the day as there are no rehearsal photographs of Reece or biographical details about him in the programme while it contains Matthew Golding's biography and what appears to be a rehearsal photograph of him.We shall probably never know whether the cast change was a result of the rights' owner exercising a power of veto over the management's proposed casting. But like many others I do not feel disappointed at being denied the opportunity to see him dance in this ballet. I had hoped that we might see something of Reece during his first year but I did not expect that it would be in something as challenging as Symphonic which leaves the dancer so very exposed with nothing to hide behind; no character or choreographic fireworks to distract the audience's attention from any slight technical imperfection or momentary inattention. While it may not have been the greatest performance of Symphonic that I have ever seen it was an extremely satisfying one. As Reece is considerably taller than the other men in the cast I think that they did exceptionally well to dance in unison. He is tall,elegant, partners well.has a clean technique and did not look at all out of place dancing with Nunez and the rest of the cast. While he may not have quite the stylishness that Muntagirov brought to the role the gap between the quality of the performances given by the two men is very narrow indeed and probably has more to do with the difference in their ages and stage experience than anything else. Reece is, after all, only nineteen and while it is true that Henry Danton must have been about that age when he danced in the first performance he was dancing the role taken by Tristan Dyer in last night's cast not that taken by Michael Somes. James Hay continues to grow into the Brian Shaw role, last night it was a lot closer in style to the manner in which Michael Coleman used to perform it than it had been on first night, Perhaps by the end of the run his turns will be slightly off centre as they should be. It often seems that performances of triple bills involving revivals are periods of extended open rehearsals until, with luck, it comes together in the last couple of performances. This certainly seems to be the case for Symphonic if only it were also true for Scenes. The corps is still not a cohesive group and a friend told me that on Tuesday evening the female corps looked as if they were performing the " Mistake Waltz" rather than vintage Ashton. Pajdak, it would seem, has been blessed with what Ashton once described as a dancer's greatest gift that of "apparent spontaneity" since she dances the Five Brahms Waltzes with an air of abandon which is missing from Crawford's performance. Padjak's Isadora grows with each performance, She appears to be in complete "possession" of the steps and rather than just doing them she dances the ballet. I recall that some time ago there were discussions about what Pavlova and others meant when they said that when you performed a ballet you should forget the steps. These two dancers give audiences the opportunity to understand what they meant. Here you can see the difference between a dancer whose performance is focused on not making a mistake and one who has the ability, in this ballet at least, to take what she has learned in the rehearsal room and use it to give a performance which is about far more than the correct reproduction of steps and arm positions It must be very confusing for Osipova dancing in so many ballets in such different styles in such a short time but last night she certainly showed us Ashton's Natalia Petrovna and her performance seemed very much part of a company performance rather than that of a star. Each of the newcomers to this ballet have deepened and developed their performances since their first night. A very satisfying performance to end a programme which is still a bit too much of a curate's egg because Scenes is still not being performed at the level that it demands.

. It can come as great shock to discover how short a memory the general public,as opposed to the dance enthusiast, has of dancer's names and of the details of new productions.It is one of the reasons why, when, on the rare occasions that the general press write about them, every new male dancer is the next Nureyev and every new female dancer is the next Darcey Bussell . By the time that this version of Giselle is on tour , even after all the publicity surrounding its premier, most members of the general public will need to be to reminded about its existence in order to sell tickets. After all Le Corsaire did not do as well on tour as might have been anticipated as a new production with big name dancers. .It would be interesting to know how much "brand recognition" Rojo or Akram Khan have among the general public. I suspect not great enough to guarantee good ticket sales.on their own.

The Evening Standard article provided some inexpensive publicity for Rojo and ENB as well as clearly stating the financial cost of the company's regional tours. I can see that moving to Sadler's Wells is likely to be a wise economic move for the company as it must be considerably cheaper as a venue than the Coliseum.The fact that it is known as a centre for dance is likely to lead to improved ticket sales. It is said that Giselle does not sell well on ENB tours or at least not as well as Swan Lake does. The Skeaping production of Giselle is an exceptionally fine one. Will a modern reworking of Giselle improve ticket sales or will audiences complain because they had not realised that it was not the traditional version? Rojo appears to be interested in the works of choreographers like Matz Ek .It is very tempting to think that there is a vast untapped audience for modern works but is there? If it exists at all is it big enough to replace the audience that may be put off by the modernisation of the classics? Will it provide the income that the company needs? It will be interesting to see how all the proposed changes effect ENB's financial viability.The Akram Khan Giselle is a considerable gamble. Even if it is an artistic success it is unclear what sort of audience there is here for radical reworkings of the nineteenth century classics. The situation may be better abroad but the company can hardly have two different repertories one for regional consumption and the other for London and international tours. If the venture is an artistic failure does not bear thinking about. Only time will tell whether Rojo's plans will improve the company's viability or put it at greater financial risk. Let us hope that the gamble pays off because a Culture Select Subcommittee which says that too much arts money is spent in London and not enough in the regions is unlikely to be impressed by a company that switches from touring outside London to touring abroad particularly if its programming policy proves unsuccessful.

As for ACE funding Mr Beard told London Ballet Circle that the company is far less dependent on state subsidy as a proportion of its income than was once the case.If I recall correctly he said that ticket sales and subsidy each provided about a quarter of its income and the rest came from donations and gifts. The intention is to reduce reliance on ACE funding even further .In order to do that they have to find other sources of income.It looks as if the opera house is trying to cash in on its position in the middle of a tourist honey pot. If that is the reason for the proposed changes then the opera house will end up being even more of "an ace caff" with a theatre attached than it did when it was reopened after refurbishment. The present arrangements cause problems for anyone in the Amphitheatre who wants to get out to stretch their legs,meet friends or grab a drink of water during the interval because so much of the floor space in the bar area immediately accessible to them is taken up by a handful of tables.I never cease to be amazed by the caterers' ingenuity and skill in positioning their tables to cause maximum inconvenience to a large proportion of the audience in order to enable a few people to share a bottle of wine or to eat.If the proposals mean more room for the Amphitheatre audience to get to the bar area then loss of part of the balcony facing the Piazza may be a price worth paying. If it means that the Amphitheatre audience is to be confined to an even smaller area in order to satisfy the demands of the audience in the more expensive seats then Amphitheatre ticket holders will be in a far worse position than they were before the redevelopment. Then at least the audience in the upper part of the house had its own areas with no fear of encroachment by those in the more expensive seats. The idea behind the redevelopment was, we were told, that the audience in the cheaper seats would have access to the facilities in the rest of the house not that the audience that already had access to those facilities would be able to commandeer the limited space available to those in the Amphitheatre. If you are trying to get more private money to fund the operations of the two resident companies you are more likely to be concerned with the comfort and enjoyment of that part of the audience who has that sort of money than the discomfort or exclusion of any other part of the audience. Or am I being cynical?

I know that there was a lot of injury during the last run of Beauty. It was a series of performances during which the Lilac Fairy had a much depleted entourage. It was not that run that I had in mind when I wrote about the casting of the Fairy Variations although I thought it remarkable for the number of inadequate Lilac Fairies that the company managed to put on stage. It was a more general comment about the casting of these roles over the last ten years or so. The fact that ENB dancers managed to dance these variations in a manner and style that looked far more like the Royal used to perform them suggests the problem at Covent Garden may have more to do with the coaching or lack of it than the initial selection of dancers. The problem is that unless time and care is taken on coaching and developing dancers in these roles then performers will pick up the bad habits of the dancers that they have seen and repeat them. Perhaps one of the problems is that Beauty is performed so often that management feels that it canskimps on rehearsal time for these role in order to accommodate everything else that needs to be prepared. As the company no longer fields an "A team" in these sorts of roles except when a performance is being broadcast the default position of picking up how these roles should be performed by watching exemplary performances is no linger available to the young dancer. The amount of chopping and changing that occurs which has nothing to do with injury or illness does not help either.

I think that it is a good thing for the reputation of the Royal Ballet as a custodian of the Ashton repertory that these performances are not being streamed into cinemas or recorded for posterity because at best the performances of Symphonic and Scenes have not been good enough. While it is true that the first night cast for Symphonic were good that combination of dancers is not being repeated during this run. I do not think that the second cast would have made it onto the stage in the past.While I am genuinely interested in seeing Reece Clarke dance in Symphonic I think it unlikely that he can redeem the situation with the second cast. I know that several people on this site have expressed pleasure at seeing this mixed bill but I have to say that, so far, only the first night cast have come anywhere near giving the sort of performance that I expect to see when Symphonic is staged and that neither the corps nor the principal dancers in Scenes have come anywhere near what I expect to see when Scenes is performed. Scenes is an abstract ballet but the performers should create a mood of mystery and the dancer in the ballerina role should bring out the sense of fun and delight that is in the choreography because of the way that it plays with Petipa's classicism and Aurora's variations. Even if you don't know the Sleeping Beauty you should get the feeling that the main female dancer is enjoying what she is doing Lamb gives me the impression that she is not having a good time and there is for me an air of dogged determination about her performance.Choe brings a sense of fun to her performance but she dances on far too small a scale.I am not commenting on Choe's height but on the lack of scale of her performance.I think that in her case it is a question of temperament and that she is by nature a miniaturist.In the past this ballet was danced by ballerinas or those that had it in them to achieve that status. Dancing a few performances of Aurora does not make you a ballerina. A Ballerina is someone who dominates the stage without moving a muscle, who compels your attention and draws you into her world when she performs. Doing the steps as set is only the starting point and yet for me the current performers have not progressed beyond that. The main male role requires effortless elegance and beauty of movement. Dancing in which you are not aware of any of the mechanics required and where the dancer displays a simple movement and leaves you smiling at its sheer beauty.Unfortunately neither McRae nor Zucchetti are, at present, able to provide dancing of the style required. They both perform the role as demi-character dancers which, they are by nature, rather than the danseurs that both aspire to be. It as if when management set about casting this programme they started with Month in the Country and looked at Scenes and Symphonic as after thoughts.Before anyone comes back to say that Matthew Golding was originally cast in Symphonic, on the basis of what I have seen of him so far, I thought that piece of casting bizarre to say the least. That original casting decision seems to me to be symptomatic of the status that Ashton enjoys at the Royal Ballet at present. if they had been serious about this programme they would have cast Symphonic first using the best people available , considered really carefully whether they could put on a good cast for Scenes, decided that they could not, then cast Month and then put on another Ashton piece such as Patineurs which would have given the younger dancers the chance to show what they could do rather than "having a go" at something which they were unsuited for or not ready to do.

I wish that I could work up more enthusiasm for the Fairy Variations but I have been treating them as optional for some time now.I remember when they were regularly cast from among the ranks of the Principals and you would have been sorry to have missed any of them.The company would probably argue that such stellar casting is unnecessary now when the gap between the technical ability of the highest ranks in the company and the lower tiers is so much narrower than in the past. What that ignores are the essential elements of artistry and stylistic sensitivity which in my opinion count for far more than mere technique in any performance.But it seems to me that if the dancers who appear in those roles fail to register as they should perhaps questions should be asked about their coaching or lack of it. All too often the variations are churned out mechanically as if it is all rather a bore which of course makes it boring for the audience too.The speed at which the music is played does not help either.But if ENB was able to put on Beauty and get the variations pitch perfect then the Royal ought to be able to do so as well.I know that Alfreda Thoroughgood was involved in that revival and if she was indeed ENB's secret weapon then common sense would dictate that she should be invited to assist in the next RB revival to work her magic on the cast.But that won't happen in the same way that you are unlikely to find anyone senior going upstairs to see how productions and individual performances register from the dizzy heights of the Amphitheat I do not know whether management knows or cares about what the specialist audience thinks of the performances that it puts on.It may be that only a significant long term drop in ticket sales would make them take action. Perhaps someone should write to Kevin O'Hare expressing these concerns. It would be interesting to know his response.

Bravo etc is fine by me at the end of a performance. It's the canine impersonators that get me.Can someone tell me when yelping like a dog became a mark of approval.? It appears to be a means of showing approval increasingly favoured by young Americans. Talking through the overture just because the curtains are closed or during the performance when the front cloth is down is a capital offence in my books.The people who deserve the most excruciating punishment are those who yak through the dawn section of the score of Daphnis and Chloe because there is no one on stage and all you have is the light changing as dawn breaks. I have no idea what they think the chorus is doing in the pit at that point ..The only chance that you have to hear this score in its entirety,apart from a Proms performance,is in the context of a performance of Ashton's ballet. The chorus makes it far too expensive to perform in the concert hall so all most people are likely to have heard is the suite..I want to listen to the music which as far as I am concerned is all part of enjoying the ballet whether or not there is anyone on the stage. I wonder if the management will eventually be reduced to requesting the audience to remain silent until the end of the performance much as they do when they ask the audience to refrain from applause until the end of some of MacMillan's ballet? I don't like ballets, particularly a piece like Serenade,being broken into sections on the basis that whenever a dancer stops moving the audience must applaud... So I I find amusing when the audience is palpably bewildered by a dancer dancing through rather than coming out of character to acknowledge applause. Two current examples of this phenomena are Month in the Country and the brothel scene in Manon. .

I wonder how long the Danes will be saddled with Mr Hubbe's clever design ideas for La Sylphide? Oh well it comes as a relief to know that it is not just the Royal Ballet that gets redesigns horribly wrong.

Well restoring the cloakroom for the Amphitheatre audience is a move in the right direction. Not having to fight your way through the scrum in the cloakroom area will make things far more civilised for those of us in the cheap/cheaper seats. Perhaps the audience in the posh seats has complained about being forced to rub shoulders with the hoi poloi..It seems somewhat unlikely that the powers that be have suddenly registered,after all this time the potential danger for a nasty and costly accident occurring as people try to get to the appropriate door to retrieve their belongings..

Smaller dancers are more likely to be able to dance with the precision,speed and musicality required in Symphonic than tall dancers.Stage managers' reports which can be found for some of the performances on the Royal Opera House's Performance Database reveal that performances of the ballet have got slower over the years. The stage manager's report of the first performance records that the original cast took sixteen minutes to dance the piece which suggests that the speed at which the music was played was much closer to that experienced in the concert hall than is the case today when, depending on the cast, it may take them eighteen or nineteen minutes to dance the piece.An extra two or three minutes to dance such a short piece represents a significant slowing down.in the sixty eight years since its premier.