DrewCo

I am looking at front row of 3rd tier, just off centre for a slightly lower price than bang on centre and I am guessing it is like front row Amphitheatre at ROH. I've been hunting for pics and reviews on Google and so many people say that all of the seats are great. Am a terrible procrastinator when it comes to trying out new seats. Fourth tier seems to be open for this run - looks like they have at least a couple of premiers. I definitely prefer the view from above but dragging my American sister in law along with me and also mother in law so it has the potential to get rather pricey!  

Front row of 3rd tier just off the center (not down the sides of theater if I understand you correctly) is an excellent seat. If you prefer to be a bit closer, then you might want to go down to 2nd tier. But I have sat in the last row of the 3rd tier just off the center and found it pretty good. Actually I have sat in 4th ring and found it not bad at all and I'm someone who, on the whole, does prefer to be close.

However, just as I was typing this, now voyager posted and said exactly what I was about to type. The ABT program you mentioned (Symphonic Variations etc.) is perhaps a bit more intimate -- not large scale works with a large corps for example -- and 2nd ring would likely be preferable if it's not too pricey for you.

I will also mention that sightlines downstairs are not bad. Banking is good unless you are quite short -- a problem I have, but not everyone does -- and sightlines from the sides, where the tickets are often quite a bit cheaper, are also not bad at all.  (In the orchestra you don't want to be too close as the marked banking doesn't start until a little further back -- K/L perhaps? -- and from the first two rows sometimes one can't see feet well depending on how short/tall one is.)

But though 2nd ring might hit the sweet spot, I don't think you will find the front of the 3rd ring a problem at all.  Hope you have a great time and write about it!

Thanks very much for these reports on ABT's Sleeping Beauty in Paris.  I enjoyed the production a lot when I saw it and I hope one day also to see Trenary's Aurora which I have not seen.

I don't know if there was a mistake in the French cast lists, but did want to mention that it's "Hee Seo" not Sao or Soa. 

I believe the rake in the ROH is better than in the Mariinsky. I would not sit in the stalls (orchestra) at the Mariinsky unless I was very, very tall indeed. Whereas I have done more or less okay at the Royal Opera House. In the first level boxes (the Benois level I believe it's called), there are three rows within the box, but the second row is not higher than the first, so those seats seem quite terrible. When I was in the front row of one of those boxes the people behind said they couldn't see anything and moved to the (then empty) third row of the box which was perched on an elevated step. I think this may be different on the different levels though.

You can also find information about the theater/seating on Tripadvisor.  I don't know the rules here about links, but google the three words Tripadvisor/Mariinsky/Seats and various discussion threads on Tripadvisor will come up...

The banking in the new Mariinsky is altogether much better. Seats are more comfortable too. But it's not the same ballet-history thrill to be there -- nor anything like as simply magical a space. Still, when going to the ballet, there is something to be said for being able to see over the head of the people sitting in front of you!

Fountain of Bakhchisarai is an orientalist Soviet fantasy; for my taste it's not the most sophisticated choreography in the world, but has its charms for sure. And there are two big, contrasting ballerina roles. I think you have to enter in to the spirit of it...but if you do, probably would enjoy it.

Hope you have  wonderful trip!

Just catching up with this thread. Since Stalin has been pictured enjoying this ballet, I thought it was worth making explicit (what people may just be thinking everyone knows) that...uh... Stalin would likely NOT have cared for the Ratmansky version of Flames of Paris which pretty substantially changes, re-orders, and adds to the original libretto in ways that rather undermine its celebration of revolution (sensational pas de deux notwithstanding).

My understanding is that Messerer's staging for the Mikhailovsky tries to stay truer to the (partially lost) original. It is a rip-roaring celebration of revolution with, for example, a revolutionary (not an aristocrat) as the ballet's martyr. I've seen and enjoyed the Messerer in the theater, but the Ratmansky only on video so I can't compare their theatrical impact. But I'm not sure the more consistent 'propaganda' approach doesn't have a very compelling energy that's actually lost - or at least changed into something else - in Ratmansky's approach. But in any case Ratmansky's ballet is more commentary on the ballet and its history than straightforward attempt to revive it.

The performances sound very enjoyable!

Very much appreciate reading about these performances. Thank to everyone posting.

Kretova--not on this tour to London I think?--is also a skilled and charming Bolshoi Kitri. At least I found her so. (There are others, of course, but a number are on maternity leave as may already have been mentioned.)

Vaziev has also indicated in interviews that he was the one who first cast Smirnova as Kitri and now thinks she 'was born' to dance the role. Interviews are not always altogether candid and, not being lucky enough to see any of these London performances, I have no opinion about the casting, but I tend to think it does reflect his choices...

Of course, sometimes the young, unknown, non-principal dancer turns out to be the tour sensation!

This past year the Mariinsky toured the Sergeyev production to west and east coasts of the U.S. I saw it in D.C. and loved it, but it's for hard-core fans of nineteenth-century ballet-spectacle. (I had seen full length Raymondas before--Nureyev's, Holmes's, and Grigorovich's--but not live in the theater for some years...)

If you enjoy Petipa and Petipa-derived classical pageantry--the whole shebang (mime, character dancing, vision scene, pas d'action, variation after variation after variation)--and, too, enjoy late nineteenth-century Medievalist fantasy, lushly pretty music, leisurely pacing -- if you enjoy all those things taken almost, I might say, to the edge of decadence...well, then seeing Raymonda is like dying and going to classical ballet heaven. As I say, I loved it.

It's also a stupendous ballerina vehicle: as mentioned earlier in the discussion, the ballerina has one set piece after another, each one requiring different qualities--and each one, in a different way, a killer. 

 

I somehow think that ballet's dramatic output in the mid twentieth century was a return to its nineteenth century roots after all it was not all Italian technicians. I think that a dancer like Carlotta Grisi must have had some skill as an actress when you consider that both Giselle and Esmeralda were created for her. Please remember neither of these ballets looked much like they do today when both have suffered from "improvements"by stager's afraid of boring the audience.

I think Fanny Elssler, too, has to be given a lot of the credit for turning Act I of Giselle into a dramatic tour de force--I'm thinking of the mad scene in particular which dance historians have credited to her 'version' of Giselle. 

A great dance actress who took over a lot of Nora Kaye's roles at ABT was Sallie Wilson. She would be on my list of great dance actresses that (uh...unlike Elssler) I actually got to see.

Dance actress is a meaningful category to me, but I don't tend to oppose it to dance technicians. Actually, I'm always made a bit uneasy by the opposition of acting skills to technique. I suppose it depends what someone means by the word "technique." But when non-narrative choreography is substantive, the dancing usually calls for more than technique even if what it calls for isn't acting. For example--there are qualities of musicality, phrasing, line, power, lyricism etc. that the word "technique" alone doesn't usually imply.

 

 

 I seem to recall that when the RB went to Moscow in 2014 a major critic whose reviews were translated into english remarked about the lack of rapport between the dancers cast as Manon and de  Grieux and when  I read the names of the dancers concerned I felt that she had a point. But they were the company's "best dancers" or at least the best known ones and clearly the dancers who the AD wanted to show off..I can't help thinking that while he might have shown better cast combinations, if he had done so, the same critic would inevitably have complained about being deprived of seeing the company's "best dancers" even if those other combinations proved to have real rapport. Something similar happened in New York this year Song of the Earth seemed to leave those who saw the opening night cast baffled. They had seen Nunez and were entitled to assume that her performance was all there was to the work. Those who then went to Cuthbertson's performance came away satisfied that they had seen the ballet because everything that had baffled them initially made sense in Cuthbertson's performance..

 

The idea that a company should show its best known dancers/stars and that those dancers are by definition its "best dancers" and they will inevitably be best in every ballet danced by the company is an idea that it is hard to disabuse people about. It is nothing new. I seem to recall that the cast for the premiere of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet were not the dancers he wanted or indeed the dancers he had created it on but they were the company's mega stars and good box office.

Off the main point you are making which I am very sympathetic to...but in fairness to Nunez: by no means everyone who saw her in Song of the Earth in NY was "baffled" by the ballet -- speaking for myself I was seeing it for the first time, and plenty liked both the ballet and Nunez' performance (which for all I know was modified from her London performances which I remember were criticized by fans--'too smiley' etc. --I saw nothing like that). I went to all three performances of Song of the Earth in NY, and enjoyed the other leading ballerinas as well (Morera and Cuthbertson)--in my eyes, each bought something different to the table.  But, from the social media I saw--and people sitting around me--I know I wasn't the only one who was moved opening night ... (Nunez didn't get dinged by the professional critics either.) If anything got somewhat better between the first and third performance in a fairly clear-cut way, it was the ensemble, which, to my eyes, sometimes looked sloppy at the first performance.

The main point, I follow--I remember sitting at a performance of the Bolshoi two years ago and hearing a disappointed couple behind me remark that the ballerina "wasn't a principal."  The ballerina they were talking about? Olga Smirnova.

And if I could go back in time and see a historic Romeo and Juliet--Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable would be my first pick.  Though I must admit I wouldn't exactly turn down a time-travel ticket for Fonteyn and Nureyev ...

When I saw this, I thought Odette being dressed differently from the other swans made the parts when Siegfried is trying to find her in the flock not work!

Many are the times I've resisted the temptation to shout out "She's the only one in the short skirt, idiot!" to Siegfried

 

[....]

I hate to laugh because I find it such a moving part of the ballet--but i suppose lack of observational skills is one way of explaining his confusion during Act III...

Do you live in the UK, DrewCo? I ask because you mentioned NYC and baseball.

Those things do give me away! I live in the U.S. -- I have been fortunate enough to do a little ballet-going in London when work took me there and (a little more often) to see the Royal Ballet on tour.

I'm a balletomane who would attend almost every performance of my favorite companies if I could, living along with the life of those companies in all their vagaries, watching dancers develop their interpretations etc. But...back in reality I live far from major centers of classical ballet, and I often plan trips to see a cluster of performances in a particular city. Sort of a mini-festival approach. This has slightly altered my onetime "inside baseball" approach to casting and performances especially since I can't always choose exactly the dates I am able to attend.

Sometimes I am interested in seeing a less-experienced dancer or a close-to-retirement one--that may even be the reason for attending a particular performance--but the performances I see are limited enough that I don't want to find myself constantly making allowances or saying to myself "oh well...I guess xyz was having an off night" or (something I sometimes hear of companies in New York) "well, it's the end of the season and the dancers must be exhausted" etc.  (I'd like to say that money doesn't factor into my attitude, but I'm sure it does at least a bit...)

I hope I'm not without compassion! I know perfectly well dancers are only human and I certainly expect careers to have trajectories. Also, companies have to take some risks with casting or younger dancers especially may never develop. But, in my experience, it can add to one's disappointments as a fan to see something that should not be but is well below par and know that that particular cluster of performances may be pretty much IT for quite a while.

I would love to see the revamped Cinderella, but I would be sorry to lose the variations for the four male seasons as well as some of their other choreography...Choreographers' second thoughts are not always better than their first, though in this case I would be happy to have the chance to compare.

Peculiar costumes (or what seem to a lot of viewers peculiar) are rather a consistent Ratmansky trait and his Cinderella is more "fractured fairy tale" than conventional one -- which any designs should reflect. ("Fractured fairy tale" I owe to Rocky and Bullwinkle.)  

 

 

  TONIGHT Nadezhda Batoeva, in what I believe was her debut, entirely lived the title role. 

 

 

 

      

She has danced it at least once before. (I say this based on what has been posted on youtube.)

Thank you for the review. I have seen Ratmansky's Cinderella just once, w. Pavlenko and Sergeyev, and found it very enjoyable and choreographically compelling if uneven, though I think I share some of the reservations expressed by others about the designs--at least in the ballroom scene. Wish I could have seen this performance...

I just wanted to say that while I try not to let professional or amateur critics influence me--while also being willing to learn from them (I hope)--I have been impressed at the amount of press coverage dance events get in London as compared to what I tend to find for New York.

Trying to find (professional, print) critical comment on the Mariinsky in London, I have found more than I was ever able to find on the Bolshoi in New York just a week or two earlier, especially concerning second and third casts. I don't know how long that situation will last, but I find it enviable. One obvious problem in NY is the minimal number of major daily newspapers altogether ...