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Personally I think there's a real chemistry between Hayward and Campbell, and that partnership should be given the chance to blossom.

I'm positively shocked!! In a good way. So many promotions! I haven't seen much of Hirano, so I didn't realise he was quite so well regarded; I must rectify that. I also thought that it was too early for Hayward and Campbell, but I'm delighted that it's not considered to be so. (Though I do hope we continue to see Hayward especially in smaller/soloist roles - she's so young, and we're only just beginning to see her wonderful talents!). Congratulations to all these special dancers.

Rather sadly, going to visit my father in a special dementia hospital where he will be for at least a month. While there he will be assessed and they will try to bring his delusions under control. It has come to a point where my mother just can not cope anymore and I doubt very much he will return home.

I'm so sorry too, Harwell. I hope that your mother will get some rest while he is assessed, and that he will get the best possible care now and in the future.

Today, as I walked past 118 Long Acre, I noticed the fixing of a blue plaque to the wall.

Thanks for posting this, RobR - I walked down Long Acre after work today and was delighted to see the plaque.

A farewell film is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH9tSJQDyT8&feature=youtu.be

Oh goodness that was so moving!! Thank you for posting it capybara.

Well I am all for the well rounded dancer who is not completely dependent on technique to achieve his or her effects. If the choreographer has created a role for a performer which is simply an opportunity to display technique then I can't object to a performer who does just that but I am entitled to object if a choreographer has created a character with his choreography but a dancer ignores everything except the technical challenges and reduces the character to a mere leg machine.

 

I know that the audience, particularly one composed of newcomers to the ballet, likes the "wow" factor just as it likes to see those elements of technique which it can recognise as being difficult.When men are dancing  it likes to see the limited number of steps which it associates with male dancing. But we have to understand that over emphasis on technique has the effect of debasing ballet as an art form and reduces it to athletics set to music. It seems to me that  this is what Danilova was thinking of when she wrote of  post Revolutionary Russian ballet being merely "a display pf dance". Too much emphasis on expressiveness and the emotional impact of dancing leads to sloppy technique while too much emphasis on technique and the challenges the dancer faces in performance leads to circus. Neither extreme is beneficial to the future of ballet as a serious art form.

What a brilliant post, Floss. As ever. Thank you.

I had been hoping/expecting to enjoy Obsidian Tear after the comments and reviews I’d read; to my disappointment, I didn’t. In fact I really, really didn’t like it. The dancers were terrific, needless to say (except that it must be said). But although the choreography was softer than much of McGregor’s past work, in every other respect it seemed to me to be the same (with Woolf Works an honourable exception). Dense, laboured, repetitive, and always straining for some sort of obscure meaningfulness that ends up expressing nothing. Not helped by the costumes; whoever designed Edward Watson’s hideous outfit (i.e. Hood By Air, apparently) should be defrocked. It made him look like an undersized schoolgirl. And how is it possible that a one-act abstract work for 9 dancers mainly wearing quite basic harem-type pants or t-shirts needs 8 fashion designers to clothe it? How can Luca Acri’s simple black body band require a fashion designer’s input all of its own? How much did all that ‘creative’ input cost? It really made me fume at the pretentiousness and waste of it all. The best bit of the piece for me was when the stage was lit in a warm orange light that spread into the front part of the auditorium. Never has the ROH looked more beautiful.

I had been afraid that I might find The Invitation old-fashioned, or dated. Here again my expectations were confounded. I had only the vaguest memories of it from a few viewings many years ago. I found it absolutely riveting and as original and interesting as if it had been created yesterday. Searing, heartbreaking performances from Hayward, Avis and Yanowsky, with Muntagirov a very touching foil to them, and wonderful dancing from others in the cast (including Ursula Hageli looking – and at times behaving - disconcertingly like Ninette de Valois!). So much real creativity here, so much to think about, so much to feel. A real sense of both the joy and the danger of sexuality (since time immemorial), of the tragic confusion of innocence and naiveté, of the sudden and irrevocable shattering of a young life, of the pain and cynicism of love lost. A brilliant, strange, disturbing and profoundly moving work.

I found that I enjoyed Within the Golden Hour much more on this bill than I did on the all-Wheeldon bill in March. Here (in spite of the men’s shorts which I found very unflattering) it seemed a soothing, lyrical and sometimes beautiful antidote to what had gone before. Cleansing the palate, perhaps, after the unappetising starter and the explosively rich main course. And again wonderfully danced – I especially liked Sarah Lamb’s quiet lyricism but the whole cast was superb.

Yes, it's a term that's been used for a long time. When I started watching ballet, it was often used in relation to Lynn Seymour but it may well have been used before that too. Dance-actor was and is a recognised term too (e.g. David Wall, Stephen Jefferies etc).

From what I can gather from what dancers have said over the years, the acting element of dance has sometimes been somewhat neglected in training, though I'm sure that varies according to school. But some dancers have an exceptional ability to express/embody a character through dramatic ability and not just by dancing the choreography very well. I think it's comparatively rare, and incredibly precious. Zenaida Yanowsky is definitely in that category. I don't know to what extent the talent is instinctive or innate in some dancers, but I think it can also develop. e.g. Fiona Chadwick at the beginning of her career was a beautiful but rather reserved and sometimes even inexpressive dancer; by the time of her retirement she had developed into a superb and sophisticated actress.

One thing I don't understand is why the company should be restricted to one production. I should like to see the production that preceded the Dowell production back on the stage as the company, in its current state, has the dancers to do it full justice.

Yes, that production was beautiful and straightforward and powerful. I came to love the Dowell production after initial dismay, though I never came to terms with the maypole dance which almost made me cry on first viewing and never improved. But I'm hoping that elements of the earlier production will be restored.

Usual problem. Someone cobbles together a not too bad piece from secondary sources and a sub-editor scans it briefly to extract an (inaccurate) headline.

But the headline is quite justifiable in the context of the article, which gives every possible piece of information about the work except for the crucial fact that it's danced by the Royal Ballet with Royal Ballet dancers. So the headline writer was (to give them the benefit of the doubt) as misled as the readers.

Dear members, I should stress at the outset that this is not an April Fool!!!

 

It would seem that you have all been taken in and DID NOT see favourite members of the Royal Ballet dancing Obsidian Tear:

 

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwdance/article/Boston-Ballet-to-Stage-OBSIDIAN-TEAR-in-London-May-28-20160527

 

I've lost the power of speech!  Onward with the links...

That is totally outrageous!! I am well and truly gobsmacked. It's actually quite ingenious - how to write an article that totally misleads its readers whilst sounding quite straightforward. I hope the RB/Wayne McGregor will have something to say about publicity like this. Of course Boston wants (and is entitled) to 'own' it too (though I hadn't realised this was another co-production); but this is just ridiculous.

What strange byways we end up with sometimes on this forum... Has there ever been a naked cyclist in a ballet?? Let's hope there's never an avant-garde production of Enigma Variations.

Anyway I'm not seeing this bill until next week but am looking forward to it very much.

I saw the screening at a German cinema yesterday and I felt like I was beamed back 50 years. Why does a story ballet of 2016 have to look like something that was made in the 1960s or 1970s? Every other art has developed further. I don’t mean dance theatre à la Pina Bausch, but isn’t it possible to tell a story with elements that are a little more sophisticated than just a straight, bland narrative? Mirroring a character, having his alter ego dance, his imaginations, his thoughts – it’s all been done before. Use inserts, dreams, flashbacks, make his fears dance instead of the servants! Leave the decor, get to the inner conflict. Why not cut the corps de ballet if you don’t need it for the dramatic truthfulness of the action, why not concentrate on the main characters? Do you want to make a credible work of art or do you want to follow a well-trodden pattern? I love classical ballet, but this evening was so terribly stuck in a conception of yesteryear that I started to long for a Mats Ek step, a John Neumeier idea ... Try something new, even if it is in small doses. Move on! Why is that so hard in ballet?

I don't think it's hard in ballet, and it has as you say been done by other choreographers and no doubt will continue to happen. But that doesn't mean that every new work has to develop the art form, or be innovative. Just as every novel doesn't have to be experimental. What matters is that a work is good, whether or not it's innovative in form.

I think that any dance work has to stand on its merits as a dance work, in terms of either pure movement or story-telling, not on how well or badly it reflects an idea or theory which the viewer may well know nothing about (and/or care less about). The most that can be said is that it can be interesting to know what a choreographer's starting point has been for an 'abstract' work.

And an email received from the ROH Press Office:

 

"Just to update that Kevin O’Hare has agreed to extend Melissa Hamilton’s leave of absence from The Royal Ballet and she will remain with Semperoper Ballett, Dresden as a Principal for the 2016/17 Season. "

The interview with Melissa Hamilton linked in today's Dance Links says that she has signed a 'permanent' contract in Dresden. Does anyone know if that's right? 

 

So, on to Mcgregor. He is of the Cage and Brackage ilk to me. Ashton etc we all know and love. Wheeldon, Akram, new generation but still understandable, but this chap, like Cage and Brackage, explain their work with such obscure intellectual rubbish that people are fooled into thinking they are clever. I read, or tried to, the meaning of the title "Obsidian Tear" and thought how on earth can this be put to movement, the truth is it can't.

 

Hope I haven't offended anyone with my feelings, but I have to question the sense in spending lots of money on something that will probably never see the light of day again, except perhaps us because we paid for it.

 

I agree with your initial reflections, SPD444, but equally I don't think it necessarily matters what a choreographer says about his/her work - what matters is the end product. And I try and go to new works in a spirit of hope; maybe Obsidian Tear will be enjoyable even if it bears no real relevance from the audience's point of view to the theoretical underpinning as put forward by the choreographer.

Well, is it just me or has anyone else noticed that on the Elmhurst school Facebook page there are photos of a recent visit from Carlos Acosta who would appear to be sporting a round blue button on his lapel.....coincidence right?

Wonder what name he posts under?!

When I first saw Swan Lake I was amazed to hear music that I completely associated with the opening of old horror films - took a while for that association to be overridden by balletic ones!

There's something a bit 'emperors new clothes' about WM (and in the spirit of WM, you can take that to mean the costumes or the choreography, or both - and pronounce it however you want!)

Thank you tabitha! You've given me a laugh-out-loud start to my day. Now to hit the tube...

I very much stand to be corrected on this one but my understanding was that, in comparison to other choreographers one could name,  MacMillan, Wheeldon and Scarlett in their different ways, all worked/work collaboratively with their dancers albeit to different degrees? I remember for example that when Wheeldon went to the Bolshoi to choreograph Hamlet, the dancers there expected to be told what to do and were completely lost when he tried to engage them in the creative process; as I remember he had enlist the help of the Ballet Boyz privately who luckily were along to film a documentary about the event. The difference with Wayne Macgregor, judging by what I've seen and heard, seems to be the degree to which it is the dancers themselves who suggest/create the choreography and he then decides what he likes. I can understand that this approach might create problems for other dancers in alternative and future casts who have not been involved in the process but  I guess the only real question is whether his approach will lead to works which will endure?    

If he works quite so collaboratively, perhaps the dancers should be co-credited as choreographers.

Macaulay"s issue is not with the colour of Edward Watson"s hair or colouring. He is not impressed with his dance style, and, as a professional critic, explains why. People may not agree with him, but it's a personal opinion for which he gives reasons. This "anti a Ginger" misinterpretation seems almost wilful.

I agree with you, Jamesrhblack; but Macaulay does have a particularly cruel way of expressing negative views about dancers at times. I once took issue with him about a review of Bryony Brind in the 1980s, and he did eventually send me a very thoughtful reply - though it doesn't seem to have affected his approach to his writing! And since his red hair is the one thing cited that Edward Watson cannot (realistically) change it must be particularly frustrating for him to have it brought up regularly in a negative context. Though I would say that nowadays his appearance garners more plaudits than criticism, so I'm surprised he's so bothered about what one critic writes. Assuming it's Macaulay he was referring to of course.

I hope he will soon be awarded a knighthood as a nationwide tribute to his achievement.

Something that I think emerged after the cameras stopped rolling (during the Q&A with the audience at the end) was that the scheduled second cast might not perform.  Wayne talked about the challenges of preparing more than one cast when creating new work and as I recall expressed a hope that the second cast would get on stage sometime during the run, but only if he was happy that they were sufficiently up to speed.  I suspect that given that the casting has been announced for some time there would be some pressure on him to respect that, but I definitely got the sense that we may not see the advertised second cast, and if they do get on stage it may not be on the dates advertised.  

All other new works have second and often third casts. It seems ironic to me that Wayne McGregor should find it so difficult to prepare two casts when in most of his works the dancers are barely differentiated as individuals so to me it makes very little difference who is dancing (even in the works I like).

I'm not a fan of ballet competitions generally and am even less of a fan of this 'in-house' competition. I can't see the point of staging something so divisive within a company. Shame that it seems to be growing in popularity.

It does seem odd to have a public competition for an 'emerging dancer' within a company. Surely the AD (and others) can see very well who is 'emerging' and how quickly, and it seems a bit insulting to be getting big parts in a major company and be competing for an 'emerging' dancer prize. I've always thought that this is really just a way of drumming up interest in the company etc, which ENB and Tamara Rojo are very good at - so maybe that's OK. I don't know how the dancers feel about it, whether nominated or not; that's really what matters.

Slightly off theme, but I find it a bit depressing that this story is not in fact about ballet at all but about redheads, and that's why the press have picked up on it. They don't, on the whole, take ballet seriously at all (apart from a few arts sections) and only cover it when they can link it to a non-story like this. But I suppose it's inevitable, since the press will generally cover what they think people will read rather than what actually matters; and people are apparently more inclined to read a story about redheadedness than about ballet.