Richmondhill

This isn’t strictly related to the ‘new’ Royal Opera House (ROH) - or it may well be - and I don’t think it warrants a separate thread, but the ROH have ceased offering the 50% off Q-Park parking that most other West End theatres appear to continue to offer for patrons attending performances at their theatres. I found this out to my cost last week... Apart from the ROH disappearing from the list on Q-Park website I don’t think they (ROH) have communicated this change. Anyone driving in should be aware. ROH simply advise it’s due to changes in Q-Park’s terms and conditions - no other reason forthcoming. 

19 hours ago, Sophoife said:

 

I actually complained to a choreographer in person once that the projection that had been made much of was invisible from anywhere except the stalls in the two very different theatres in which I'd seen the ballet. His response was that I should buy better seats.

How arrogant of him! They have a duty to reasonably convey as much as possible to the entire audience regardless of the price of a seat. This is doubly the case and therefore inexcusable when pieces are conceived for a specific space such as that at Covent Garden.

On 30/11/2018 at 11:05, ninamargaret said:

Let's face it, the Opera House was never designed for 21st century dance to be seen in! There are probably very few seats that offer an uninterrupted view of the stage, and an awful lot that don't. I hadn't seen Symphony in C before, and my side S/C seat, Row,A, offered a somewhat warped view, at times the whole thing looked a muddle, which I know it's not. I think choreographers and designers who are producing new work for the ROH  would do rather more to help, after all it's not just the cheaper seats that have some sort of restricted view.

It does make you wonder if choreographers and stagers take the trouble to visit each area of the auditorium when making or designing a new piece. I was lucky to sit in the Grand Tier for a head-on view but you could tell for US at least a third of the horizontal staging would be obscured for seats above, let alone traditional problems of far stage left/right sight lines.

I remember hearing that Margot Fonteyn took the trouble upon the company moving to Covent Garden to visit each part of the auditorium in order to better understand reach and projection. If people still do this then they are making some serious errors of judgement (I suspect some don’t).

1 hour ago, alison said:

"Outside the Crush Bar" makes me think on the stairs, which would be even worse.

Almost: it was the bench seat at the top of the staircase - you couldn’t miss it (or the aroma)!

1 minute ago, Richard LH said:

 

I think Infra does bear repeat viewing - the Richter music is hypnotic (although I would like  the screechy bits to be toned down as they hurt my ears) and the dancing is thought provoking,  suggesting (to me at least)  various  experiences of human interaction, city-based or otherwise, whether sensuality, danger, isolation,  tenderness, confusion.....On a more surface level,  the piece also demonstrates the amazing forms and movements that  human bodies can achieve through dance. Fumi Kaneko stood out for me, but they were all great.

 

SIC, however, is worth  experiencing time after time. On occasions the technique last night (with just two principals dancing) did not seem to quite match the opening night (when there were seven principals on show), but it was still glorious. I enjoyed William Bracewell in particular.

I concur. Infra has something - almost universal in a city like London - to say about human dislocation or more plainly the inner story of every face in the crowd. I think my gripe previously was more of a matter of taste with his work inside a ‘classical’ company but his work has strengthened and my attitude has warmed over the years!

Technique did wobble a bit in Symphony’ especially in the Third. 

4 minutes ago, Blossom said:

Can’t believe that this was allowed. There are plenty of suitable areas and plenty of staff to notice and direct people to the appropriate places. 

Yes, there are plenty of options or they can go outside. An embarrassed member of staff stood close pretending not to notice from what I could briefly tell. Perhaps Drop-In is a better name for Open-Up!

It’s odd how something you previously felt indifference towards - Infra - now shines, partly due to last night’s cast, but also in comparison to it’s first near neighbour on triple bill. I’m talking of course of The Unknown Soldier which felt weak in depth and gravitas compared to the McGregor. Doubly sad given the source material.

An issue I have with much new commission at the RB is the often distractingly lavish over-staging and the consequent reliance on multi-media to either tell the story or fill in the gaps. Yes, the backstory to ‘Soldier is moving but we don’t need the constant interpolation of video interview to convey this - most annoyingly in being told about the dread of the telegram arriving. Dance should convey all, of nearly all, of this. The McGregor, for all my issues with some of his earlier pieces, was danced through: movement conveyed meaning and emotion. The habit of over-staging marred much of Frankenstein, Alice... and The Wind to name but a few where flashy pyrotechnics (brilliant though they often are) fill in the story where steps or movement should be telling it. Other than that it was a rather ho-hum piece with some decent ideas - the ghostly dead especially - worthy of rework. Nghadi was a lyrical delight as ever.

Symphony was a delight too with Lamb wonderfully deft and Osipova emphatic but clear and clean. It’s also another demonstration of the barest bones staging allowing the dance to tell everything - no hiding places here.

It’s difficult not to sound like a moaning old Aunt Edna but to see people sat outside the Crush Room eating takeaway food out of those large aluminium trays is pushing Open-Up - or the blind eye to anything it seems to encourage - to logical if awful conclusions. 

I agree, they’re harder to read at any age and point to a general meanness of spirit and less sense of occasion. Of course a cast sheet is better than no cast sheet, but that’s one-way traffic and I do miss the more technical information. Hopefully the review will increase font size if not content and paper size. 

Re: The House. It was indeed broadcast on BBC2 under that title; the programmes loaded on You Tube are taken from a video release (American I think) which retitled the series to The Royal Opera House, presumably for the sake of clarity. Either way it's the same own goal I remember watching back in 1996! 

7 hours ago, alison said:

What was up with McRae?  Was he injured?  I'd thought Sambe was, so am a bit confused!

I think this might arise from my summary: McRae wasn’t injured; Sambe was a - late I think - replacement for Tierney Heap in the third and fourth movements of the Tharp.

I’m rather late to the party with this particular bill having only attended last night’s final performance, although once was probably enough.

My opinion is broadly is broadly in-line with previous posts finding the Tharp more sympathetic than expected despite the awkward joins between new and old & the occasional ‘jazz hands’ interpolations. The dancing (notably Lamb and a substitute Sambe) was animated and playful throughout and - if not damned by faint praise or weak pairings - the strongest of the three pieces of the evening.

The Wind was near dreadful with the now rather typical trend at the Royal Ballet to throw practically everything into the staging - although even that was a clumsy misfire here with awkward positioning (pity those on the left) and a malfunctioning push-me pull-me not to mention tangled costumes - with insufficient attention to dance to convey narrative let alone emotion. Poor Tomas Mock had practically no dance time at all. The motifs were literal and clumsy to the point of distraction and quite frankly sub-Seven Brides... The lukewarm audience response to the piece was palpable. It would have been more effective to reduce this piece to a four-hander with a tussle of kinds between wife, husband and predator with wind conveyed more figuratively by the Mawarra motif (a wasted Watson).

Untouchable remains an exercise of interminable stylised shuffling which would sit more easily at Sadler’s Wells not within the ROH and certainly not within the wasted classical lexicon of this company. It’s not awful just within the wrong frame. The ‘Faragian’ chanting however remains puerile. I might be wrong but were there not dreadlocks in this piece’s first outing a couple of years ago? It’s either my imagination or they’ve been shorn this time. The combat gear, alas, remains. 

A very variable evening indeed and one wishes O’Hare would take a firmer grip on the tendency for the stage styling over dance content of recent years which betrays - if not too strong a word - the near total dance narratives of Ashton and MacMillan (how the assault scene in The Wind was revealed for the crude blocking it was when considered against the sexual tensions of Mayerling).