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RuthE

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Everything posted by RuthE

  1. RuthE
    There isn't a ban on kids, but if I was travelling with a child who was likely to make lots of noise, I wouldn't dream of taking them to sit in the quiet carriage. That doesn't include normal civilized conversation which most children over 5 or so are capable of understanding should be made using their "indoor voice". I'm talking really particularly about toddlers who are especially prone to shout or squeal at the tops of their voices. If on the other hand I was travelling with a sleeping baby, I'd try to sit in the quiet carriage near the door...
  2. RuthE
    Victoria Street.
  3. RuthE
    I imagine it's not practicable because there are vast differences between station platforms along routes run by the same operator. Some have platforms where the train comes in nice and snug to the platform, with hardly a gap and no height difference; at others there's a massive step up (platform 4 at Elephant and Castle mainline, anyone? - you have to be able to pull one foot up to knee height and haul yourself on - I've had to give a hand up to a short-legged and arthritic friend who literally couldn't reach) or a hugely wide gap because the station is on a bend (like the Central Line platforms at Bank on the Underground). I'm struggling to imagine a one-size-fits-all design solution that would work on, say, Central Line trains at all their stops, or Southern trains at every station on their entire network.
  4. RuthE
    I suspect this is a mistake on the website - I went to see this at Clapham Picturehouse not long before the DVD came out (several months after it had been filmed) and I remember the cast sheets supplied at the cinema gave the wrong casting for Meditation and Voices of Spring, so it looks like the same error.
  5. RuthE

    Olympics 2016

    RuthE replied to alison's topic in Not Dance

    I didn't get that far. Started watching it last night on iPlayer, and my musical sensibilities overrode my visual curiosity when it got to the routine (very early on) set to part of an awful souped-up version of La traviata, and I gave up and switched off!
  6. RuthE
    I'm seeing two performances, and I do have a lot of time for the piece, but to me the last run feels very recent - not 18 months before this one. Also, I wish they had published the casting of Widow Simone when they announced the principal pairings. They still haven't, I definitely don't need to see more performances of it than I have already booked, but I'll kick myself if one of my existing bookings doesn't feature Will Tuckett.
  7. RuthE
    I can't say I've noticed a recent change, but it's smelt of fish for years!
  8. RuthE
    Indeed (though it's clearer on her "artist page" on the ROH website).
  9. RuthE
    I am neither a poor student nor a working mum, but both of these tips form the absolute foundations of how I run my (busy single professional, at work all day, out most evenings) household. Cooking for one gets time-consuming and expensive otherwise! :-) The two principles are particularly satisfying when combined - that is, finding a kilo of mince or a big box of diced chicken thigh (or whatever) reduced to a couple of pounds just before closing time on a Sunday, and getting six or eight portions of chilli, curry, risotto out of it for the freezer!
  10. RuthE
    I note that there have been a few surreptitious edits to the RB Promotions and Joiners article on the ROH website. Joseph Aumeer has been taken off the list of Aud Jebsen Young Dancers because as we know he is now taking up a position in Paris, and I'm pretty sure the original article had no mention of Leticia Dias joining the company - I believe the only RBS graduate originally mentioned as joining as an Artist was Joseph Sissens. I have a feeling that even the sentence about Mica Bradbury may have been missing from the original release? http://www.roh.org.uk/news/promotions-and-joiners-at-the-royal-ballet-for-201617 Still no statement on Leavers...
  11. RuthE
    I'm with Nick on this one... longest night of my life, or so it felt, despite some very fine dancing (especially, IMO, from Tikhomirova). I considered leaving in the first interval, but then remembered that ENB's version has loads of massively impressive stuff for the male characters in Act 2. So I stayed, and nothing happened, and I realized that that Grand Pas d'Action or their equivalent of it had, I think, already happened in Act 1, and made much less of an impression...
  12. RuthE
    ENB's Corsaire premiered in Milton Keynes of all places, didn't it?
  13. RuthE
    I assume physical lightness must also be to a female dancer's own benefit, particularly to minimize the amount of force directed through the leg, foot and toe when en pointe.
  14. RuthE
    But it descends with controlled speed and force. It isn't as if somebody disconnects it at the top and then just drops it. I've seen curtains come down on people's heads/shoulders (thanks to optimistically-timed full company bows) on many occasions and never yet heard of any harm being done.
  15. RuthE
    It is a statement of fact that lots of little girls want to be ballerinas. It is also a statement of fact that lots of little boys want to be footballers. I'm guessing both of the above apply to the named sex to a much greater extent then the opposite sex. Yes, that's a product of gender-biased media and (in some cases unintentional) social attitudes that most children are exposed to from a very early age, it's great that there seems to be real momentum behind efforts to change the gender bias in these areas (the Let Toys be Toys campaign, for example), and there's a lot of work to be done to ensure equality of opportunity in these and other fields. But mumof6 statement was an unarguable fact about the current demographics of wannabe ballet dancers and footballers.
  16. RuthE
    One element of the "story telling" which did work very well for me in this production was the start of the Odile act, with the presentation of the five national dances each led by one of the foreign princesses who then team up for their waltz. Made far more sense than the recently-retired Royal Ballet production, in which the (six) visually-undifferentiated potential brides do the waltz first, and then the national dances take place with no suggestion that they are meant to represent the princesses' nations.
  17. RuthE
    http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/12065-those-dance-mums-help/
  18. RuthE
    And I have an answer to the above: "This is for people who have been to one of our Welcome performances but never returned." (Damn. I'm going to miss this cast then - just like I did with their R&J...)
  19. RuthE
    I have sent the Royal Opera House a message on Twitter asking this question so I hope to have an answer soon which I will post here. I do hope I can get a ticket for this performance as I already know I will be away on this cast's only other date...
  20. RuthE
    I thought she did... I know she had the last of her scheduled performances cancelled and given to somebody else because of injuries among the men (I remember her saying on Twitter "They ran out of Princes for me...") but I thought she danced her earlier two. And the last run was in 2014.
  21. RuthE
    It is large and has a very deep (in both senses) pit - even the front row of the stalls, where I have sat a few times for Welsh National Opera performances, feels a long way from the stage compared with my occasional treats in front row at ROH or ENB. I don't like it as a venue, tbh - too big, so almost always half-empty. BUT it's super-convenient for trains (only five minutes' walk from the station) and now has a couple of really nice places to eat nearby, which was not the case even five years ago (look up the Vestry restaurant).
  22. RuthE
    Agreed - I attended the dress rehearsal, which was fantastic, and am going again tomorrow.
  23. RuthE
    Hmmm. She isn't mentioned on the RB Joiners press release...
  24. RuthE
    I once bought a ticket in the returns queue in row W of the amphi with 3mins to spare... I wasn't even first in the queue - I was no.7... but I was the first person not in a couple and looking for two tickets. In fact, the person who sold me mine was ahead of me in the queue, but had decided that if her companion couldn't get a ticket as well, then they'd both go and spend the evening doing something else.
  25. RuthE
    Melissa Hamilton had only been a First Soloist for a year, I think, when she took her sabbatical to move to Dresden. Regardless of whether she might have developed into "principal material" or not if she'd stayed at the RB during the last and next seasons, and indeed regardless of how she may be developing in her current chosen circumstances, she was not a dancer who had been languishing for several years at the same rank, and she'd had no shortage of RB principal roles either in her last couple of years as a Soloist or after her promotion to First Soloist. That is, she'd been recently promoted within the RB, so there was nothing - at least from my outsider's perspective - to suggest that she was being overlooked or taken for granted within the company. If I was Yuhui Choe, on the other hand, I might be very seriously considering my options now.
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