Blossom

On 29/10/2018 at 00:37, loveclassics said:

 

I've heard that Gaynor Minden shoes are state of the art - do they use materials that can be recycled?

 

My dance teacher was actually recommending them to the girls taking their exams tonight. Apparently they are made of plastic! 

2 minutes ago, nycitybird said:

 

I've seen his hands visibly shaking for the first few minutes in the last runs of Manon and Mayerling but then he seems to relax after he's done his first solo.

I really enjoy his dancing and feel for him so much if it is a case of nerves. 

Really enjoyed the performance tonight with Bonelli/Morera. I think Morera makes this ballet for me- final pas de deux was so emotive and final moments before their suicides so heart stopping. I’d seen her perform it at one of Acosta’s farewells and it made me feel I had to see the full ballet. I was rather underwhelmed last run- finding the story impossible to follow and the final pdd lacklustre in comparison to this time - must dig out the cast sheet. 

Wonderful to see Corrales at the ROH- thrilled he danced in this cast. A slight slip at one point but such a professional and an excellent save... 

Stix Brunell was a marvellous Mitzi Caspar.  Really enjoyed her dancing.

I always seem to find Bonelli a bit shaky at the start but wonderful post the first 5 mins or so on stage. Does anyone know if he has ever spoken of stage fright? 

Thanks so so much to all of the Mayerling experts out there - I enjoyed the performance all the more having swotted up on the story (inc watching the dvd) and having the hints about following Marie Larisch (Mrs Bonelli this evening). A completely different experience to before.

Overall a really pleasing cast and a wonderful night out. 

1 hour ago, Richard LH said:

Blossom from what you have described, you were probably the lady sitting just to our left  - we were the couple, slightly beyond the late 30s mark, also on the barstools and fighting over a £4 chocolate brownie. We were also grumbling a bit that the staff weren't too quick about clearing up the mess on the tables left behind by the mucky opera goers, after  the area suddenly emptied for their next Gotterdammerung fix. 

Apart from that, we totally agree with your generally very positive view of the place. It was our third visit since The Opening and, like you and Esmeralda, we noticed no invasion by the unwashed hordes.  

And wasn't the Insight fantastic?  

Brilliant! Yes it was me. I always wonder who might be another Forum member at these gatherings!

1 hour ago, Odyssey said:

Felt privileged to watch Makarova coaching and Yasmine responded to the corrections magnificently. Really enjoyed the midway chat regarding Petipa’s interpretation and visualisation of the Orient as opposed to any historical representation of India. This was one of the most stimulating Insights to be broadcast.

 Yes and yes. Absolutely spot on review. Also felt the privilege of seeing Makarova coaching and to see the response to such detailed corrections.  The historical context was fascinating and the incredible amount of knowledge of both Olga and Shobana. Yasmin was pushed very hard this evening with the sheer quantity of work but what a charming, modest dancer. In the short interview post broadcast she shared that she feels incredibly privileged to have had the opportunity to work with Makarova. Overall, some incredible ladies tonight all round- Takada and McNally included.

My first visit to the ROH was this evening and I have to say I approached with extreme trepidation given all of the reviews already. I first walked through from the piazza at about 6pm which was lovely to be able to do again. The shop was just gorgeous, lots of lovely books and treats which I imagine I will be swayed into buying. 

The cafe area was gently buzzing as the opera was starting early. Having decided to eat elsewhere, I returned just before 7 to find it very quiet.

i really liked the airy space, great lighting (it was actually quite cosy sitting on a barstool having a coffee looking out onto the dark street) and love the balance of wood and stone. I had a look at the small exhibition in the Linbury foyer which I greedily would like to see more of then headed up to the amphi. 

The levels game is definitely confusing, especially as the amphi is 3 separate levels in itself! There is a lovely Swan Lake exhibition up in the Amphi (I mean level 5), with the Odette/Odile tutus at the entrance to the restaurant and 12 (?) images of leading ladies (and sometimes couples) in costume on the wall sort of opposite the bar. By the cloakroom (there’s a cloakroom!!) there was a lovely exhibition with pieces of fabric and costume detail with accompanying photos. I can’t wait to see what they will share next. 

The amphi restaurant looked quite lovely but the bar area did look as beige and bland as described. The covered outdoor areas looked lovely though, again, especially in the darkness of the outside. The area feels like the restaurant balcony areas on the central Covent Garden market.

I adore mixtures of old and new styles and from the clean, modern stone and wood to the plush opulence of the old opera house areas. The modern areas still feel cosy to me, just in a different way. Except for the amphi bar area. Having lost a lot of space during the building project it’s nice that the building can breathe again and that it can have a new life.

I have to say that I didn’t see any evidence of people there who weren’t attending a performance or the Bayadere Insight. The staff also are hugely excited by the wonderful new space.

Just to add some context, I am in my late 30s (and am not considered a Millenial)!

Very excited for this tomorrow- now even more so!

On 21/10/2018 at 12:24, Fonty said:

Sounds like a good idea.

 

This is not a personal criticism of Darcey herself, so I hope people will not be offended if I say that I am a little disappointed that she hasn't done more to promote ballet to the wider public.

 

I know she has done programmes such as her own personal heroes, but something along the lines you suggest, Lin, might do wonders to bring a new audience to the art form I love so much.

Surely it should be our new British talent on our screens and in our newspapers/mags now- Hayward and Naghdi. 

Documentary series like Agony &Ecstasy is prob what ballet PR actually needs. Reality tv is all the rage and fly on the wall documentaries are still popular.

We should really start a thread of its own to come up with ideas to solve the issue of diminishing audiences. Collectively we must have some good ideas (so many already). 

On 21/10/2018 at 20:53, jmhopton said:

When I was at Manon last week I overheard a lady in the auditorium in the second interval bemoaning the fact she hadn't brought her 7 year old niece! Even allowing she hadn't see the graphic sexuality in the last act I was still surprised she thought the ballet suitable for a 7 year old!

I would love to take my 11 year old but feel she is still too young for this. I think there should be age limitations for Manon and even more so for Mayerling. 

5 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

Actually Fille is coming to The Lowry which is located in the City of Salford.

Fair point Janet. My parents actually live in Salford too and I grew up there, but in the days before Media City made Salford better known! 

On 02/10/2018 at 17:49, Two Pigeons said:

I would like to add a point  relating to the poor houses for Fille.  I don't live in Birmingham itself, I live in Worcestershire which is not that far away.  I knew it was Fille to be scheduled in September as I am a friend of BRB, a friend of the Hippodrome and a past BRB subscription holder.  Everything I saw about Fille was contained within those parameters.  This smacks of preaching to the converted but I cannot remember seeing anything about it in the local papers or on Midlands TV.  

 

This comes up time and time again with BRB.  Matinee performances can be very well  attended as Fille as it is ideal for coach parties but the evenings are very sparse.  The Hippodrome and the company cannot rely on the corporate core audience as the theatre is not a destination venue the way the the ROH is.  It is a similar situation when the company appears at Sadler's Wells or the Coliseum.  Unless the performances are Nutcracker, Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet the audiences just aren't there any more.  I am not sure what the publicity department does but it clearly isn't working.

Its not just BRB, I feel this in London about ENB too. For Fille, they could have had a nice slot on Blue Peter or in First News (kids weekly paper) like they do for other plays and new books. Digital media might appear to drive ROI but it isn’t so great at awareness and I agree that audiences reached tend to be the most obvious.

On the plus side and back on topic, my mum is thrilled that Fille is coming to Manchester- first ballet she saw as a child and she adores it. I am also delighted it’s so affordable at Sadlers Wells vs ROH. Am taking both my daughters (will be my 8 year old’s first full length ballet) and we have excellent seats at a snip. This will be our second year seeing BRB in London so am enjoying getting to know the dancers. 

I went to see Mayerling in the last run having been gripped by the final pdd performed by Carlos Acosta and Laura Morera at one of his farewell performances. I found the synopsis incredibly hard to follow, partly because I couldn’t keep on top of who all the women were! It’s taken some serious swotting up - Macmillan website synopsis and dvd purchase - since to feel well prepared for this time! I just think it’s one of those ballets which is incredibly difficult to follow as the story and characters make it so complex...

56 minutes ago, Margaret said:

   The example I gave was the increase from £59 for the front row of the amphi for Nutcracker  to £85 for R & J.  Even if you compare evening prices, there is still an increase of approx 14% .     I hope this might make the ROH think and change, but I doubt it.  

You will actually find it is more than a 14% increase- you should be calculating the increase of £26 over the original price so 44%. 

1 hour ago, Fonty said:

 

And talking of the Open Up campaign, I have been walking past a poster at tube stations for a while now, which advertises the fact that the ROH is open from 10am every day.  Unfortunately, that is just about all it says. No other information, and not even a decent picture of the building.  Not sure this particular piece of marketing will have a whole new audience flocking through the doors.  I only noticed it in the first place because I was looking for it.

 

That sounds like a complete waste of money and won’t deliver the sort of ROI any Arts Council funding might generate. Surely they should at least talk about the free lunchtime events which might bring some new people in. Or Month of Sunday’s. Out of interest, would love to know what sort of things have been presented in the Linbury foyer and Crush Room. 

In terms of bringing in new and younger people, as I said previously, sampling ballet content could help them out, or even mirroring ENB and BRB’s kids’ programmes (My First Ballet). BBC symphonia and others also run children focussed events which are inexpensive and they seem to ‘recruit’ through social media so huge opportunity to seek out diverse audiences.I also think they could probably create some online content or mail packs for primary schools to explore key pieces of music and use that as a way to signpost key family events and pique curiousity among broader audiences than Chance to Dance. My son’s class did a lovely music topic last year on Peter and the Wolf which looked at instruments and musical themes for each character - this was in year 1. Basically I think their downfall will be that they don’t seem to be playing the long game, only short term wins which will likely result in one off seat purchases. I know plenty of parents who are happy to take their kids to a My First Ballet annually but would never consider going to see a full length ballet with or without their kids. 

If you look look at other industries like car buying, once you are with a brand, they aim to keep you by encouraging you to trade up a product - so from a Fiesta to a saloon car to potentially a big family sized car as your lifestage changes. In my opinion, that’s how they need to secure audience growth.  A lovely job done at the kids concert I went to at the Barbican at the weekend, both the programme leaflet and a separate leaflet on exit shared the next event which is less symphony orchestra and more focussed on singing and storytelling.  And while the family Sunday events at ROH are lovely, there’s nothing really which specifically encourages repeat visits (ie beyond welcome performances) to get to sit in a proper theatre and see wonderful dancing and listen to great classical music. Linbury is the perfect place for this.

I just get the impression that they are very much in their own ROH bubble and don’t learn from all of the wonderful engagement programmes going on around them. They do some lovely work independently, especially with digital outreach but I imagine their content arm mostly drives fame among national and international ballet goers.

An observation from looking at the presentation made is that around 2/3 of attendees go as a one off. The other third is made up of a whole spectrum of frequency of visits.  The issue they have is that they are bringing people in once but they need to entice them to return.  I assume that most of the one offs are coming in for Nutcracker at Christmas and classics such as Swan Lake. As someone else mentioned, it's regulars who keep their ticket sales up for less well known or new productions.   So to me, it seems that their focus should be getting people to visit just one more time in a year and offering a discount on a second booking or special events like Sadlers Wells Sampled to engage to spark interest.  They could test different approaches to see what works best.

Another observation is that for all of the data analysis that Baker Richards seem to have done, there seems to be very little focus on segmenting data for analysis by life stage or socio demographic data. It seems to be mostly based on how much people spend on tickets and how they can make changes to make more money from tickets by nudging up prices.  One nudge is to get people like me who usually buy a certain seat to decide to upgrade because there's now little difference between the slightly restricted view seat I usually favoured and a non restricted view. While it might nudge me for certain productions, for others, it means I certainly downgrade. I also wonder if one off visitors (2/3 of their total audience) are choosing to buy some of these price hiked restricted view seats which are frankly rather expensive now (my favoured seat went up from £60 to £95 for Swan Lake) and demonstrate no value in exchange for a limited view.

On 05/10/2018 at 11:50, ninamargaret said:

I find it interesting that it seems that many Friends at the more exalted levels seem to grab the cheaper seats as soon as,booking for their level opens. I've frequently found that I can only get the more expensive, or very poor seats when Friends booking opens. The same complaint was made by a member of the audience I was speaking to last night.

And the Insights tickets...

And am guessing rehearsal tickets too...

Still working my way through this thread but as I have posted on Twitter in response to Dance Tabs, I always valued that UK ticket prices weren’t elitist as they are in New York for example. The arts should be accessible for everyone. 

Surely an appropriate scheme to introduce new audiences would start at a younger age, for example giving students early booking access for the cheap seats. I don’t know if they do this already, but this would surely drive longevity of support and you could hope that as they enter employment and progress in their careers that they might up the scale a bit in terms of tickets they choose to buy. 

If they really wanted to free up tickets from regular members in a more democratic/socialist manner, they could put limits on number of dates in a particular production which can be booked, freeing up more tickets for others. That wouldn’t be nice for regulars either, but it would seem fairer and it wouldn’t smack of elitism. 

I would also like to see what the long term value of these new customers turns out to be - it depends whether they are converting the right sorts of sales. This approach actually seems a bit too short term to me. They need to hook people in for the long term or they will have bigger issues to worry about in 20 years time.

Thanks Sophie Rebecca for listing all of the links - so helpful! 

Finally managed to watch the Royal Ballet's section which was so slick (barring some glitches) and am just astounded at their excellence when it comes to creating and publishing great digital content.  In constrast, given Bolshoi was not so live, it was exceptionally clunky.

Enjoying catching up on all of the other content from around the world - will it really only be up for 30 days? Great to get insight into rehearsals in particular. Really enjoyed Pacific Northwest's Dances at a Gathering rehearsal for one. 

On ‎02‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 20:31, Rob S said:

 

You may have seen the multiple uses of the phrase We've taken the decision to share the stream on Facebook in order to reach as many people as possible, on the ROH website.....every year I watch the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Youtube or Facebook (they use both) on the days that I don't go to the event in person, it works well for hours and hours a a time and throughout the day links on their FB page which followers will also pick up on their newsfeed so clips of interesting incidents which also serve as reminders that this event is on to see.

I have no idea why the ROH can't do the same or very similar unless it's down to Youtube fees

There will be tech costs for both YouTube and Facebook and it's possible that streaming on both could require additional resources (people, potentially cameras...) which would need costing too. I think I actually prefer watching the content at my leisure after the event anyway, plus avoids buffering issues. As long as they are publishing on YouTube after the event, I think they are probably making the right decision with Facebook as they genuinely do have greater opportunity to reach more people overall.

They should really publish the times as a table with one timezone (GMT or BST?) as the standard with translated times following... I am on holiday at the moment and am doubly confused about the timezones as I have to translate it to British time and then +2h!  

Unfortunately I am going to miss most of the UK broadcast as I am taking my girls to a performance of a Peter Pan ballet this afternoon which cuts right into their schedule, I hope the playback is up by this evening!

In terms of the extra content appearing for BRB and any others, I actually think this is really positive. Although it might detracts from the overall WBD viewing figures, it demonstrates that there is more appetite for the content among the specific ballet company's audience and potentially beyond. It also means that the companies are pushing themselves to go digital and bring live content to their audience, which, correct me if I am wrong, but the Royal Ballet really seems to be the worldwide market leader on.  It's amazing that only 4 years on, so many companies are keen to get involved! As a (largely digital) marketeer, I would love to see how the viewing figures grow/change across the day and where in the world people are viewing from.  

2 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

I think this is a list of the companies in addition to RB, Bolshoi and Australian Ballet who are the primary companies involved but not listed.

Thanks for clarifying. Not sure how I am going to squeeze it all in so hope it’s available to view afterwards! 

Looks like a great lineup. No Russians this year?

Speaking of empty seats, there are a few tickets which have come up this am for Marianela Nunez on 13 Dec

11 hours ago, bridiem said:

 

Programmes are clearly now aimed at either a) people with a lot of money or b) people who only go occasionally so it's a special treat situation. Regular non-rich patrons have now been priced out being able to buy a programme. I always used to buy a programme when there was a new work or new production; now, I have to rely on other sources to give me background about what I'm seeing. That is wrong. The programmes should (if necessary) be less lavish, and they should be less expensive.

There are always the online programmes which have video content which you can keep in your online library. Agreed that programmes are for new work/production or for me, something I haven't seen before. But it's possible that prices have to rise if fewer people are buying or if editorial/production costs (of the programme) are increasing. 

On ‎13‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 22:25, LinMM said:

I will look into the RAD grade 7 then ....just to follow the syllabus not do an exam......as I really love character dances and it does seem....from what people say....to be a nice dancey grade!! 

 

 

From memory, having joined a grade 7 class for 2 terms before the teens did their exam (I joined as a 36 year old just for fun then went onto grade 8 with them), one of the character exercises was particularly tricky!! It's a lovely syllabus though, Romantic style and music from La Sylphide.

2 new 'Ashton Revisited' masterclasses were announced last night on Instagram. 

28 October - Fille and Rhapsody with Carlos Acosts

24 Feb - Enigma Variations with Lesley Collier and Wayne Sleep

On 15/09/2018 at 07:37, Bruce Wall said:

The repertory for the 2019 Bolshoi sojourn in London has been announced.  There is sadly no 'Nureyev' as had - it appeared - previously been suggested.  Indeed there is no work that has not previously been seen in the British capital this time round which I must confess to finding rather sad.

 

From the 243rd season brochure https://www.bolshoi.ru/upload/medialibrary/2d3/2d3b709c85217d27ef6400752121b333.pdf

THE BOLSHOI THEATRE BALLET AND ORCHESTRA IN LONDON (Great Britain)
25 JULY – 17 AUGUST 2019 ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

REPERTORY:  Spartacus, Swan Lake, La Bayadere, The Bright Stream, Taming of the Shrew

 

Shame about Nureyev- would be happy with a live cinema screening though. Won’t be seeing Swan Lake or Bayadere but pleased with the rest.

23 hours ago, bridiem said:

See https://www.kennethmacmillan.com/mayerling which includes a detailed plot summary.

This is perfect!