ChrisG

I was supposed to be going to Leeds today to see the matinee performance of this programme, but with the dire weather forecast for the Pennines today decided to brave the Friday traffic on the M62 and get a ticket for last night. So glad I did, as it gave me the chance to see Zenaida Yanowsky in Las Hermanas. She was wonderfully dramatic as would be expected and drew out the best in the rest of the cast, especially Javier Torres as the Man, portrayed as a total sleaze ball. The audience shock when the Younger Sister is seen hanging at the end was tangible. My view on the rest of the programme was unchanged since I saw it in Bradford - Concerto great fun but just a little ragged, and Gloria stunning, but missing the added drama of a live orchestra and chorus for Poulenc's beautiful music. I hope everyone who's booked for today and tomorrow manages to get there!

Wonderful performance by Francesca and Alexander tonight. I think we all knew they had star quality as a couple, but tonight they wrapped it up in a gift box, tied it with a neat bow and presented it on a silver tray to the audience, who responded accordingly. Stunning!

Just got back to my hotel room from seeing tonight's triple bill (quadruple bill if you count Jeux, which was wonderful - my first time in the Clore and it's great to be so up close and personal to the dancers). Having seen Northern Ballet do Concerto in Bradford a couple of weeks ago I was interested to see how tonight's BRB performance compared. It bore out what I suspected at the time, that Northern Ballet's forte is not abstract ballet but dramatic ballets such as the other two they performed in their triple bill. In Concerto, though it was perfectly OK, they never seemed able to relax into it. BRB sailed through it just as I hoped they would, and Jenna and Tyrone in the slow movement were totally sublime. Coming out of the theatre I heard a couple describe The Fairy's Kiss as 'filler'. I can see their point as I thought the same when I saw Scottish Ballet do it in Edinburgh last Friday (I've been doing a lot of preparation for the Macmillan Festival!), especially set against Christopher Hampson's stunning Rite of Spring. However, coming to it again tonight, with the same cast as last week and knowing the layout of the piece, I found it an awful lot more satisfying, and yes the Baiser was tremendous, along with the giver and receiver of it, Constance Devernay and Andrew Peasgood and the jilted fiancee, Bethany Kingsley-Garner. If there's a fault I think it lies largely with the music, and I say this as someone who loves Stravinsky's music with a passion. The problem is that after the rumbustious folk dance music of the first village scene it kind of slowly fizzles out, just as the drama of the story should be increasing. I'd never seen Elite Syncopations before other than on the most recent DVD, though I have vague memories of watching the 1975 TV broadcast referred to in the excellent programme. Highlights for me were a beautifully slinky Precious Adams from ENB in what I'm assuming was the Monica Mason role (I sat behind her for Jeux!), and the splendidly mismatched Scottish Ballet couple, Marge Hendrick and Constant Vigier in the Alaskan Rag. They used to say that it showed great talent that Les Dawson could play the piano so badly, and I guess it's the same here in terms of showing great talent to dance so badly! Looking forward to coming back to London next week for more of this wonderful festival.

Welcome to the Mahler fan club, northstar! I wasn't too familiar with his music until I started singing the choral lines in his 2nd and 8th symphonies a few years back, but now he's a composer I return to again and again. His life was troubled, with his ever present health problems, the death of his children, the troubled relationship with his wife and not least the difficulty of being Jewish in pre-WW1 Austrian and German society. And yet out of it came, music that to me is the most life-affirming music I know. I dare anyone to listen to the great choral climaxes at the end of the 2nd and 8th symphonies and not go away feeling better about the world, about life and about yourself! I'm singing Mahler 2 in Nottingham at the end of the season and am already smiling at the prospect! I agree that his music doesn't seem an obvious fit for a ballet, but I guess it is Macmillan's genius that he saw something in Das Lied von der Erde and was able to bring it out so wonderfully. And I would think there are Mahler works that would more obviously fit the ballet bill, especially given his love of folk song and of dance rhythms, such as the Austrian ländlers that crop up again and again in his music. I was thinking Das Knaben Wunderhorn would fit the bill and a quick google search shows that John Neumeier has already choreographed it - that's a ballet I would go and see!

Just back from this evening's performance and still buzzing. I love the way that Macmillan in Song of the Earth captures the light and dark inherent in most of what Mahler wrote, possibly because it reflected the light and dark within himself. I felt that ENB captured it every bit as well as RB did the two times I saw them do it the other season and the end, as usual, had me in bits. In response to the query above, the singers were two new names to me - Flora McIntosh, who was good but a bit underpowered in the lower registers and Simon Gfeller, who was stronger, and nicely dramatic where required, though with occasional pitch problems. I've wanted to see La Sylphide ever since seeing some Royal Danish Ballet dancers do a truncated version of Act II at the Peacock Theatre a few years ago, and it didn't disappoint - in fact it positively dazzled. To my admittedly untutored eyes they seemed to have got the Bournonville style pretty well - the ensemble dance at the end of Act I being a particular treat. Rina Kanehara and Joseph Caley were outstanding as the Sylphide and James. The way Rina's expression changed from the purest love to the deepest despair on being given the scarf was especially affecting. One oddity though - the orchestra sailed through the difficulties of the Mahler and yet there were a number of distinctly dodgy passages in La Sylphide, especially in the strings - I guess they don't get to play Løvenskiold all that often! In the corps for La Sylphide was Rhys Yeomans, who won the ballet category at the recent Young Dancer of the Year competition, and sitting behind me was his dad. I got into conversation with him - a really nice guy and as Manchester as they come. You've also never seen a father more proud of his son!

Thanks for the alert! I’m coming to the main performance on the 19th but thought I’d missed my chance of seeing this, but my ticket is now duly bought.

I saw today's matinee in Bradford and can't add anything about the performances except what has been said above - outstanding performances of what must have been unfamiliar material. Looking in the programme I see that the costumes and set for Concerto were loaned by the Noriko Kobayashi Ballet Theatre and doing some further digging I see that they're not exactly new, having been created for their performances of Concerto way back in 2007. I didn't find them distracting, though I agree they lacked the visual impact of the Jurgen Rose designs. I did find the use of a recording for Gloria distracting, and particularly as the sound quality of the recording left a lot to be desired, but I guess it wasn't practical to get a full choir and soprano soloist in. A shame, but I'm going to see them perform Gloria again later in the month in London, and I'm pleased to see they'll have the ROH Orchestra and Chorus backing them there! Actually it was a treat to hear three wonderful pieces of of music in this mixed bill. Las Hermanas had Frank Martin's harpsichord concerto wonderfully played by Darius Battiwalla and Andrew Dunlop was equally good in Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto - I saw the Mariinsky dance Ratmansky's Concerto DSCH last year in Cardiff which uses the same music and it's fast becoming one of my favourite piano concertos. I loved the Poulenc too. I've sung it 6 or 7 times in various choirs so know it inside out, which made it doubly distracting that it was a recording.

As a died-in-the-wool Steve Reich fan I will have to beg to differ about the start of Multiverse! It might not be easy listening, but 'It's Gonna Rain' is a classic of minimalism, and I thought it suited the themes of fracturing and dislocation that McGregor was trying to explore perfectly - the way the dancers in the opening section at times seemed to move in and out of phase with each other as the music was doing the same was stunning. The middle section, which to me spoke powerfully of refugees and forced migrations, was almost heart-breaking and very relevant in this post-Brexit, post-Trump world, whilst the final section, with its striking brand-new Reich score, provided a degree of solace. All in all, a wonderful work! If you were looking for a racket, I'm afraid I'd have to say the music for Carbon Life would in my book fit the description. I wanted to like it, but the songs sounded like they were songs from previous Mark Ronson projects that had been rejected from the final mix because they were simply not good enough. Cutting edge dance like this surely needs cutting edge music, and this was the one without the other. Chroma on the other hand, like Multiverse, had a perfect match of music and dance. I'd only seen this on DVD before and it was so much better in the flesh, helped in no small matter by the Alvin Ailey contingent. I loved the presentation at the end - it showed how much McGregor is respected at Covent Garden, and deservedly so on the evidence of this triple bill. I would just advise him not to use Mark Ronson again!

That reminds me of the time I sang in a performance of Messiah with Stephen Layton and he conducted it with a pencil. Simple but effective! I have to say I was impressed by the orchestra - there is an obvious synergy between them and Gergiev that makes the music fly. I had never heard Gergiev conduct before, and I notice he's conducting the Munich Philharmonic in a Prom in July on the night before our choir tackles the Beethoven Missa Solemnis. I think I'll definitely now come down south early to catch that and actually see him conduct!

Back in my hotel room after tonight's brief but wholly satisfying evening with the Mariinsky Ballet and the full might of the Mariinsky Orchestra under Gergiev. There were more there than last night but like last night they closed the Upper Circle so it maybe looked better than it actually was, which is a shame So, just two works on the programme. First off, Alexei Ratmansky's Concerto DSCH set to Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto neatly played by Vladimir Rumiantsev. This is Shostakovich at his most delightfully playful, a million miles away from the Leningrad Symphony. This playfulness was well captured by the choreography, especially that for the trio, in which Kimin Kim stood out as the outsider in an unusual threesome, and the lead couple, Svetlana Ivanova and Konstantin Sverev, portraying their love for each other in a way that was an interesting counterpoint to the way Jerome Robbins portrayed love in yesterday's In The Night. From beginning to end I watched with a smile on my face. Sasha Waltz's Sacre, set to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and premiered 100 years to the day after the stormy first performance in Paris of Nijinsky's original choreography for the Ballets Russes, was a very different affair. Before watching it I read some of the reviews of the first UK performance at Sadler's Wells a couple of years ago and it was fair to say that they were somewhat lukewarm. Having watched it today I wondered whether that was due to some extent to the fact that it was danced then to a taped accompaniment. Today it was danced to the Mariinsky orchestra at full throttle - definitely one of the most violent and earthy performances of this work I have heard. It was danced on a bare stage except for a pile of ash in the centre which gradually got spread across the whole stage as the dancers slowly trashed it. There was also an icicle which slowly descended during the course of the piece as if to spear the Chosen One as she danced her last breath. The choreography, like Nijinsky's original, was uncompromising and and at times downright dirty (helped in no small way by the ash!), sometimes ritualised, sometimes seemingly random. It felt to me like a community attempting to exorcise its demons before settling, as sadly we all often too, on a scapegoat to sacrifice, and silently watching as the chosen scapegoat danced herself to death. It wasn't clear from the cast sheet who was dancing the Chosen One, (hopefully someone more au fait with the Mariinsky's dancers will enlighten me!) but she fully deserved the cheers at the end, as did the whole cast for a work that must have been for many well out of their comfort zone. Anyway, there wasn't a riot, but their was riotous applause at the end. I haven't much to add to the comments above about Friday night's programme except to echo it. In The Night seemed more cohesive than it did when I saw the Royal Ballet dance it last year. I especially loved the Taming of the Shrew-style attitudes of the third couple. Infra was as exciting as I was hoping it would be. I too spotted that each character had the name of an RB dancer. I spent the first five minutes trying to spot who was portraying which dancer but soon decided that was fairly pointless and sat back to enjoy the rest! Five Tangos was quirky and fun. It struck me that it was a sort of anti-tango piece, playing with and slightly mocking the macho tendencies of the tango. To go back to the comment about the Rite of Spring, I felt it was a pity that it wasn't danced to a live accompaniment - there really is no substitute for hearing Piazzolla live. Congratulations to the Wales Millennium Centre for getting the Mariinsky over for these dates. I'm glad they didn't compromise with the choice of works - it would have been easy to programme some instant crowd-pleasers and ensure a full house - but I hope the relatively poor houses won't work against future visits. P.S. I noticed that there was a performance by the Mariinsky of Don Quixote in St Petersburg on Friday night. Does anyone know if that meant the orchestra (and maybe some of the dancers) will have flown in today for tonight's performance?

Here's my top ten of the year, in the order I saw them. A really varied year, thanks largely to off-peak Senior Railcard travel! Royal Danish Ballet Bournonville programme, London Birmingham Royal Ballet mixed bill, especially In the Upper Room (Tharp), Birmingham Rambert mixed bill, especially Rooster (Bruce), Mold English National Ballet mixed bill, especially In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated (Forsythe) National Dance Company Wales mixed bill, especially Walking Mad (Inger), Mold Royal Ballet, Woolf Works (McGregor), London Paris Opera Ballet/Company Wayne McGregor, Tree of Codes (McGregor), Manchester Dutch National Ballet, Cinderella (Wheeldon), London Birmingham Royal Ballet mixed bill, especially The King Dances (Bintley) and Enigma Variations (Ashton), London Royal Ballet, Romeo and Juliet (McMillan), London (Francesca Hayward debut) If I had to choose a company of the year, I think it would be Birmingham Royal Ballet, for proving that you don't need great stars to perform consistently at the highest level, for The King Dances, and for finally giving me a chance to see Enigma Variations.

I see Sarah Hay has got a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Flesh and Bone in the 'Best performance by an actress in a mini-series or motion picture made for television' category - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35060100. Say what you like about the series as either ballet or as drama (and I have to say I really enjoyed even though it was grim viewing in terms of subject matter at times), I think this nomination is well deserved.

Living up in the North West, I find matinees are the easiest Royal Ballet performances to get to - two hours down on the train, a bite to eat, the ballet, two hours up on the train and back in time for tea. Sometimes though, I find that there's an evening performance that leaps out at me and tells me I have to brave a London hotel and stay over to see it. When the cast lists came out for this season tonight's performance, Francesca Hayward's debut as Juliet in what is probably my favourite 3 act ballet, was one such. So I had one thought going in - would she shine? Would she ever! I was transfixed by her performance from beginning to end. I can't describe it technically in ballet terms as I don't have the language, but emotionally she made us believe that she was a shy teenager falling suddenly but deeply in love. She simply was 'Juliet', no more and no less, which is all we should ask a good actor to do. The Act 1 pas de deux stood out especially and led to a spontaneous roar from the audience at the end of the act, which I'm guessing doesn't always happen! I've seen Matthew Golding several times before and I would agree he's not the world's best actor, but it seemed to me tonight that one of his big strengths is that he is a more than sympathetic partner and the applause was as much for him as for Francesca. From the front row of the amphitheatre it was difficult to see the detail of her acting in the last act and there was just a suggestion from back there that there is more to come from her in that act as she matures and has more real life experience to call on. Even here though, her final duet with Sander Blommaert's Paris was full of subtlety and nuance. To my eyes at least, therefore, a stunning debut from Francesca, as shown by a veritable flowerfest at the final curtain! Now I definitely want to see her Manon. The rest of the cast performed strongly and I was particularly struck by the rapport between Golding, Marcelino Sambe as Mercurio and Nicol Edmonds as Benvolio, definitely three lads out for a good time (at least at the start!). Up in my amphitheatre eyrie the structure and patterns of the crowd scenes were more obvious than they've seemed from my previous Covent Garden R&J and from viewing DVDs, though I guess that's true for most ballets viewed from up there!

Just watched the Mariinsky Cinderella Blu-Ray, and despite the minimalist staging (and Valery Gergiev, who I have very little time for) it's a charming production, with Diana Vishneva utterly delightful as Cinderella. I saw the Wheeldon Dutch National Ballet version at the Coliseum in the summer and I think that's still my favourite (despite the Bintley BRB version having its moments and not yet having seen the Ashton), but it's still a production well worth seeing. Next up in my queue is Napoli. Having seen the Royal Danish Ballet soloists at the Peacock Theatre earlier this year that's something I'm really looking forward to.

This is pretty much how I saw it too (with one exception that I'll come to later). I've seen NYCB do Balanchine and it's hard to believe any of their dancers would have been better than Zenaida in the final variation. The whole thing was a complete delight and has, I think, now become my favourite Balanchine piece! I too liked Untouchable but could sense the unease around me from the audience about what they were seeing. My final thought was that if I'd seen it danced by, say, the Rambert, then I would have thought 'wow!', but as it was, I just wondered if it was the right piece for the right company. I saw English National Ballet do their two commissions from Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant last year and they both seemed right for a ballet company to be doing, but I'm not sure this piece did. My one gripe with you would be your comment about the singing. As one who has sung with the Hallé Choir in performances of Mahler 2 and Mahler 8, I was drawn to this ballet just as much by the prospect of hearing Mahler's glorious song settings as by the ballet itself, and I wasn't disappointed. Samuel Sakker sang the tenor songs extremely well, but his is obviously still a young voice and will improve with age. It would have interesting to hear Tom Randle sing the part, as it looks like he is doing later in the run. Catherine Wyn-Rogers started a little uncertainly (it must be unnerving to come out cold and sing so exposed on the corner of the stage like that, even for seasoned opera singers!), but her singing grew in strength and stature as the performance unfolded. Her final 'ewig, ewig' was breathtakingly beautiful, matching perfectly the final procession of the the three main dancers down the stage. I felt time was suspended at that point and I'm not ashamed to say I had tears in my eyes.

I agree completely with what you say about Iana Salenko. I found her performance extremely nuanced, playing Odette in Act II as a shy introvert (I was thinking what word would describe her and the word 'modest' came to mind) and Odile as a complete extrovert. In Act III Odette came out of her shell and I was completely blown away. Steven McRae is such a wonderful partner too - such a shame this was their only performance together

Good question and i don't have an answer! I just thought that the word Stateside was very dated and maybe counter-productive.

I'm not perhaps the best equipped technically to actually start a thread on a performance, but as no-one else has on BRB's latest mixed bill, here goes! I saw the matinee performance at the Birmingham Hippodrome yesterday and the first thing that has to be said is what a terrible title it is. Surely no-one says 'Stateside' these days? It sounds awfully like '60s DJ-speak! The good thing is, however, that the title was the only thing that was terrible about it. What we saw were three ballets, totally different in character, but all with a vivid American sheen. First off was Balanchine's Serenade, set to Tchaikovsky's sublime Serenade for Strings. I'd read lots about this work in my stumbling efforts at a ballet education, so I appreciated its iconic status in the history of American ballet. The Telegraph review mentions occasional lapses of unity which my untutored eye picked up occasionally, but as an ensemble piece it worked wonderfully well, full of graceful neo-classicism but filled with the quirky little touches that came from the ad hoc way in which Balanchine created it. Altogether lovely, as were the women's costumes, a feature of all three ballets. The second piece was Jessica Lang's Lyric Pieces, premiered by the company in 2012 and being given a second outing. The mood here again was classical, but with a modern twist in the black folded kraft paper props that the cast manipulated during the course of the piece. At first these seemed a distraction, but as the dances stretched them, fanned them, sat on them and generally played with them they became increasingly an integral part of the piece. I particularly liked they formed the backdrop for a number of tableaux that from time to time interrupted the general movement of the piece. The Grieg piano pieces, played expertly by Jonathan Higgins, were lovely in themselves, and the choreography captured the folk elements in the music in a number of the pieces, particularly in the well-known March of the Trolls. The highlight though was the wonderful pas de deux by Jenna Roberts and Iain Mackay that preceded the finale - simply gorgeous. The final piece was Twyla Tharp's In The Upper Room. I'd never seen any of her work (though she'd been on bucket list for a while), but I was surprised to see it listed as the final work in the programme given the far more well known Serenade was also on the bill. When I saw the piece, however, I understood why - it's such a demanding piece to dance that it must almost impossible to follow it with something else. It's hard to describe it except that it is a complete tour de force, a constant driving, pulsating dynamo of a piece that mixes just about every style you can thing of from contemporary through jazz, taking in a bit of aerobics on the way, to pure ballet steps. It's also one of the sexiest ballets I've yet seen, and the red pointe shoes that four of the dancers wore will live long in my memory! I'm guessing some might have found the smoke effects distracting but the way the groups of dancers emerged out of it was particularly affecting. The work was set to a recorded score by Philip Glass. Glass isn't one of my favourite composers - if I want minimalism I find much more depth and feel in composers like Steve Reich and John Adams. I'm afraid this didn't make me any more of a fan of him, though it fulfilled its task of driving the piece forward relentlessly, if perhaps a bit too loudly at times. A final thought: the title of the piece of course relates to the Last Supper and the programme notes make the point that there are no overt biblical references in the piece. However, I did notice that there were 13 dancers, which of course is the same number that sat together at the Last Supper. Maybe Tharp intended that to be significant or maybe it's just a coincidence! All in all a wonderful afternoon out, though as with the WW1 programme I saw at the Hippodrome before Christmas there were a disappointing number of empty seats. One final comment: it was refreshing to see a programme with two female choreographers, especially in the light of ENB's announcement of an all-female programme at Sadler's Wells next season.

Thanks for the tip! I'll have to make it down

I wasn't sure which topic to post this under having seen both Alice in Wonderland and the Royal Danish Ballet Bournonville programme in the same day but thought I'd plump for this one. It was an amazing contrast in view, from high up in the amphitheatre at Covent Garden to Row C at the Peacock Theatre, and an amazing contrast in styles. The matinee performance of Alice was enjoyable but I found the ballet a triumph of staging but oddly unengaging, though Francesca Hayward was wonderful as Alice (I can see what the fuss is about her and I came away wishing I'd seen her Manon). A shame I didn't enjoy it more because Winter's Tale was one of the absolute highlights of my as yet still brief ballet-watching career, so Christopher Wheeldon is definitely in my plus column rather than my minus column! The Bournonville programme, by contrast, was engaging from the moment the curtain went up on the first item. There were a couple of hitches, a wing malfunction in La Sylphide and a slight slip at the very end of the Napoli selection and it was a shame not to have a live orchestra, but that didn't detract from an evening that was a delight from beginning to end. I'd never seen any Bournonville ballet before and was blown away by the grace and beauty of it, though it was obvious from Row C that it's a style that requires tremendous physical effort and agility from both the men and the women. Not that any of the dancers showed the effort - it all seemed totally effortless, lighter than air. It was wonderful to see some of La Sylphide for the first time, and also wonderful having seen Francesca Hayward in Alice to see two more English dancers holding their own with the dancing Danes in the evening, namely Gregory Dean and Kizzy Matiakis. Dean was especially impressive as James with Gudrun Bojesen as the Sylph in La Sylphide. Sorry I couldn't be more forthcoming on the technical merits of the the two performances but I'm still in learning mode as far as ballet is concerned, and today felt like I'd read an important new chapter!

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I was at today's matinee and having read previous threads on this forum expected that there would be lots of comments about the lighting, especially in the Ceremony of Innocence. However, I would like to be at least one voice standing up for its lighting design. I thought it matched the theme of the piece perfectly, which to me was the remembrance by one's mature self of the shadows of lost innocence, lost potential and lost love. A different, brighter, design would have made it a completely different piece. And before anyone asks where I was sitting, I was actually in Row G of the Amphitheatre, not the stalls!

Can't help thinking that the title of the programme may have put people off attending. The only direct reference to war was the sound of bombing before Miracle, and even that felt a bit tacked on. I agree however that it was a wonderful triple bill. Can't wait for the American one in the spring!

I was at this afternoon's matinee too. So much to enjoy but what a shame it was so sparsely attended. It made an interesting contrast to the ENB Lest We Forget programme in that the links to war were much more oblique - 'Shadows' was very much the key word. I felt that Miracle in the Gorbals got a bit West End at times but it was very much a worthwhile excavation. You could see how the subject matter and style might have affected the young Kenneth MacMillan. And yet his contribution to the programme was paradoxically the sunniest thing on offer. La Fin du Jour was a delight throughout, with Celine Gittens and Yvette Knight standing out especially. I was conscious of the patched together nature of Flowers of the Forest - the shift in tone in the middle is sudden and not entirely satisfactory. I did however feel that the lighting was perfect, matching the changing mood of the piece. Finally it was nice to see a name check for my favourite band Fairport Convention in the programme - surely the first time they've ever been linked with ballet!

Thanks for the info. I like to keep track of these things! With regard to lighting, it was obviously quite difficult to light to the same standard as the original production and even there live in the room there were obvious blind spots. it was an amazing place to see dance though - the subject matter chimed so completely with the raison d'être of this branch of the IWM, which is to concentrate on the personal effects and consequences of war.