bridiem

Oh no! I am very happy to see Naghdi again but I was so looking forward to seeing Hayward and Campbell together and this is their last performance. I hope Hayward recovers quickly. (Whose Instagram account is this on, please Clara_f? It hasn't appeared in my feed.)

Except that that would infringe Aurora's personal privacy; probably best if he just leaves her to sleep and lets Carabosse triumph. Who really cares after all - it's only a silly fairy tale.

I did wonder if it was just me, but there were some very negative online comments on YouTube from people who'd clearly (and not unreasonably) been expecting only the RB.

Very beautifully expressed, Toria. (Way too subtle/interesting/imaginative for some modern interpreters.)

Well there are many possible 'originals'; but the BALLET The Sleeping Beauty - of which Les beaux dormants purports to be a version - is not. (And I see from the ROH website that Les beaux dormants 'explores all the changes – physical and emotional – that come with blossoming adulthood: easy for some, but a nightmare for others. With its new take on a familiar work, this is an immediately engaging ballet for everyone. Rediscover the sleeping beauty ready for awakening in the heart of each of us, whether child or adult.') Of course there are nightmare elements in the tale (as in life); but even this version is allegedly about the awakening of beauty (not a concept associated with sexual assault).

She was embracing Corrales to congratulate him on how spectacularly he had just danced part of his solo; the audience also responded ecstatically to his technical prowess. It was a lovely moment for everyone.

Well it seems your response would only have been removed anyway, capybara, so just as well you didn't waste your time.

I watched tonight's Insight online; it was billed as 'The Royal Ballet rehearses The Sleeping Beauty', but there was a long section in the middle which involved the RB's creative director, the director of the Ballet du Rhin and the choreographer of Les beaux dormants talking about that production which is on in the Linbury, accompanied by some filmed excerpts. So the Insight should perhaps have been billed differently. The live RB elements were Samanta Raine coaching Yu Hang, Sae Maeda and Leticia Dias in fairy variations. Samantha Raine is another wonderful coach, seeing absolutely everything and helping the dancers so much. All three of the dancers were lovely, and clearly thrilled to be dancing these famous solos. There was also some footage of Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae dancing part of the third act pas de deux with breathtaking beauty and skill. I found the Ballet du Rhin section far too long and although I started off being interested, my attention wasn't held. I also felt extremely irritated when the choreographer mentioned #MeToo again in relation to the awakening kiss, although since she then talked only about awakening passion and the memory of one's first kiss etc quite what she thought that has to do with #MeToo I don't know. NB in case she or anyone else is in any doubt, Sleeping Beauty is NOT about NON consensual sexual activity of any kind. End of.

I am shocked by this - both that the critical comments have been removed, and that/if Bidisha is to be their new dance critic. Appalling on both counts.

I see your Comment on the 'review' has been removed by a moderator, zxDaveM. ?? Unfortunately, plenty of comments even if negative may be deemed to be a mark of success in some quarters.

I'm not sure perspective is always a generational thing; there are people of my generation who have a very different perspective from mine. Having said that, of course everyone coming to ballet for the first time will have their own perspective, and a good thing too. When I was young (17) and first interested in ballet, I wanted intelligent, erudite writing to inform and elucidate me. Do the younger generation now not want that?? (And this is the Observer, not for want a better comparison - the Sun, we're talking about. The Observer used to be aimed at people (of all ages) who relished intellectual challenge.) Bidisha no doubt knows what she's doing in writing like this. All I can say is that intelligence doesn't necessarily equate with wisdom.

I assume she thinks it makes her look 'relevant'. Very insulting to Observer readers, who might expect that a critic has some knowledge of the art form about which they're writing. Or maybe they don't care, and prefer this sort of writing to anything more serious? Only the Observer (which used to be a serious newspaper) can answer that.

It was at that point that I realised that the writer was simply wanting to be noticed rather than wishing to write anything serious about the ballet.

Anyone who equates the kiss that wakes Aurora up with 'a sexual assault' (as Bidisha does in her review) doesn't in my view deserve to be taken seriously on any level.

She was the best Firebird I've ever seen.

Wow! Maybe the dressing room deserves a nomination! 😁

Well that depends what you find interesting, of course. I found her fascinating.

Much as I enjoyed his performance, Kish's nomination is incomprehensible. Needless to say, I am very pleased that Alexander Campbell has been nominated as best male dancer... and since he and Muntagirov share a dressing room and tease each other on Instagram, I think they will be highly amused that they have both been nominated. I wish they could both win! And, I suppose it would be rather nice if Nadine Meisner won the Creative Contribution award for her Petipa book. Not that I've actually read it, I'm afraid; but it would be good if the amount of time and research and solitary effort that goes into writing such a book (and probably without great remuneration or sales) were to be recognised.

I heard an usher at the ROH telling someone last week that they could take photos in the auditorium but not after the curtain went up. But as he says, if the ROH are using Rob's curtain call photos (I'm not surprised - they're amazing!) they must be OK with it.

Thanks, Bluebird - I hadn't registered that. I hope they will indeed appear next year. And I hope that David Bintley will be awarded the De Valois award (which he won many years ago, but presumably there's no rule that it can't be awarded to someone again?). That would go some way to recognising not just his contribution but that of BRB.

Yes, absolutely. On the other hand, sometimes when you do show them, they don't 'get' it! I once took a friend to a performance including Serenade, and afterwards he looked puzzled and just said 'well what was all that about then?'. I was in an exalted state and was completely crushed and baffled by his response.

I see that BRB is (as I think is usual) totally ignored (apart from Koen Kessels). I personally would have nominated both Momoko Hirata and Cesar Morales for their performances in Giselle. I don't think BRB currently fits in with the NDA vision. More fool them. But delighted to see Gary Avis (and others) nominated.

The nominations for the 2019 National Dance Awards have been announced. Press release: In the year of the Awards’ 20th Anniversary, the Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle is pleased to announce the short-listed nominations for the National Dance Awards (#NDA20), covering performances in the UK between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019. The short-listed nominees are taken from nominations made by the members of the Dance section of the Critics’ Circle, over thirty of whom participated in the judging process this year. In total there were 418 companies, choreographers, performers and other creative artists nominated (up from 396 in 2018) from which the short-listed nominees are: DANCING TIMES AWARD FOR BEST MALE DANCER Alexander Campbell (The Royal Ballet) Jeffrey Cirio (English National Ballet) Israel Galván (Compañia Israel Galván) Vadim Muntagirov (The Royal Ballet) Marcelino Sambé (The Royal Ballet) BEST FEMALE DANCER Sara Baras (Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras/Flamenco Festival) Francesca Hayward (The Royal Ballet) Katja Khaniukova (English National Ballet) Laura Morera (The Royal Ballet) Marianela Nuñez (The Royal Ballet) STEF STEFANOU AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING COMPANY Mark Morris Dance Group Northern Ballet The Royal Ballet San Francisco Ballet Scottish Ballet BEST INDEPENDENT COMPANY Ballet Black James Cousins Company National Dance Company Wales Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Yorke Dance Project BEST CLASSICAL CHOREOGRAPHY Patricia Guerrero for Catedral (Flamenco Festival) Cathy Marston for Victoria (Northern Ballet) Helen Pickett for The Crucible (Scottish Ballet) Stina Quagebeur for Nora (English National Ballet) Alexei Ratmansky for Shostakovich Trilogy (San Francisco Ballet) BEST MODERN CHOREOGRAPHY Matthew Bourne for Romeo + Juliet (New Adventures) William Forsythe for A Quiet Evening of Dance (William Forsythe/Sadler’s Wells) Shobana Jeyasingh for Contagion (Shobana Jeyasingh Dance) Arthur Pita for The Mother (Alexandra Markvo/Bird & Carrot) Pam Tanowitz for Four Quartets (Pam Tanowitz Dance) EMERGING ARTIST AWARD Jemima Brown (Dancer, Tom Dale Company & James Cousins Company) Salomé Pressac (Dancer, Rambert) Mthuthuzeli November (Choreographer, Ballet Black) Stina Quagebeur (Choreographer, English National Ballet) Joseph Sissens (First Artist, The Royal Ballet) OUTSTANDING FEMALE MODERN PERFORMANCE Avatâra Ayuso in No Woman’s Land (AVA Dance Company) Cordelia Braithwaite as Juliet in Romeo + Juliet (New Adventures) Jemima Brown in Epilogues (James Cousins Company) Natalia Osipova in the title role as The Mother (Alexandra Markvo/Bird & Carrot) Solène Weinachter as Juliet in Juliet & Romeo (Lost Dog) OUTSTANDING MALE MODERN PERFORMANCE Mathew Ball as the Swan/Stranger in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake (New Adventures) Jonathan Goddard in The Mother (Alexandra Markvo/Bird & Carrot) Liam Mower as the Prince in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake (New Adventures) Joseph Sissens in Night of 100 Solos (Merce Cunningham Trust/The Barbican) Saburo Teshigawara in The Idiot (Saburo Teshigawara/ The Print Room at the Coronet) OUTSTANDING FEMALE CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE Sara Baras in Sombras (Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras/ Flamenco Festival) Francesca Hayward as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (The Royal Ballet) Katja Khaniukova as Frida in Broken Wings (English National Ballet) Pippa Moore as Princess Beatrice in Victoria (Northern Ballet) Anna Rose O’Sullivan as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (The Royal Ballet) OUTSTANDING MALE CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE Gary Avis as Kulygin in Winter Dreams (The Royal Ballet) Cesar Corrales as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (The Royal Ballet) Nehemiah Kish as the Husband in The Concert (The Royal Ballet) Marcelino Sambé as the Blue Boy in Les Patineurs (The Royal Ballet) Nicholas Shoesmith as John Proctor in The Crucible (Scottish Ballet) OUTSTANDING CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION Koen Kessels (Conductor; Music Director, The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet) Nadine Meisner (Author, Marius Petipa: The Emperor’s Ballet Master) Dimitris Papaioannou (Designer, The Great Tamer) Peter Salem (Composer, The Crucible) Gavin Sutherland (Conductor/ Music Director, English National Ballet) The winners will be announced at a lunchtime ceremony to be held in Central London on Wednesday, 19th February 2020. The event will also play host to the De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement for which there are no prior nominations. The National Dance Awards have been organised by the Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle in each year of this Millennium to celebrate the vigour and variety of Britain’s thriving dance culture. They are presented by the Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle, which brings together over 60 dance writers and critics. They are the only awards given by the body of professional dance critics in the UK. In announcing the awards, the chairman of the Dance Section, Graham Watts OBE, said: “Once again, the short-listed represent the remarkable diversity of dance in the United Kingdom with considerably more than half of the UK-based nominees originally coming from overseas. It is also pleasing that eleven of the short-listed nominees were from visiting companies, more than double last year, including four from the world of flamenco, three from the USA and Saburo Teshigawara from Japan.”. The Royal Ballet tops the list with a record number of fifteen nominations (plus another three for Royal Ballet dancers appearing in other productions). English National Ballet has six nominations; Scottish Ballet and New Adventures have four each; the Flamenco Festival, Alexandra Markvo/Bird & Carrot, James Cousins Company and Northern Ballet have three apiece Arthur Pita’s The Mother for Alexandra Markvo/Bird & Carrot and Helen Pickett’s The Crucible for Scottish Ballet are the most successful productions with three nominations each. Dance theatre based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet received a total of six short-listed nominations, from three separate productions, spread across several categories. Four separate interpreters of Juliet have been nominated, including Solène Weinachter, nominated for the second successive year for her performances in Lost Dog’s Juliet & Romeo; and two dancers from The Royal Ballet (Francesca Hayward and Anna Rose O’Sullivan) competing for the same award for their respective performances in Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet. The Awards Committee wishes to express grateful thanks to our sponsors, without whom the event would not be possible; to the body of dance critics across the UK for giving their time to ensure the best possible list of nominees; and, above all, the companies, choreographers and performers for providing such a rich variety of choice.

Slightly bizarre (though appropriately enthusiastic) review of the Takada/McRae/Hirano/Campbell/Naghdi performance (!) in today's Links, from the Londonist, by Hari Mountford - throughout, Takada is referred to as 'Akana Tawada' and the director of the RB as 'Kevin O Hara'. Not sure if this is some sort of autocorrect gone bonkers, or if the reviewer actually doesn't know their names.

He seems to be guesting a huge amount at the moment. I know he's at the height of his powers, but I hope he's not taking on too much. (But then I suppose his level of fitness is inconceivable to me ).