Dawnstar

12 hours ago, Fonty said:

Talking of which, did the Lorna Hill books deal with the issues regarding physique?  I have a vague memory of one girl whose legs were deemed to be the wrong shape for ballet as she reached maturity.  

Masquerade at the Wells is probably the book you're thinking of.

8 hours ago, Fonty said:

I wonder if they are catering for people who work from home, and can occasionally take a longer lunch hour.

My local Picturehouse typically starts encore screenings at 1.45pm and they finish around 5pm, depending of course on the length of the piece, so that would be a very long lunch hour! The audience is usually almost all of retired age. While I didn't actually check particularly, I didn't notice anyone other than myself at this afternoon's triple bill encore screening who looked to be under retirement age. (At least I hope I look under retirement age given I'm 38!)

Comparing seeing the 3 pieces on screen to live, I thought Different Drummer was improved by the close ups while the other two I found fairly similar. I didn't find the picture too dark, though it's always a bit darker on screen than live. The sound glitches in Danses Concertantes were still present, making Stravinsky sound rather more avant garde than he intended! After reading the reports on here about Saturday's performance, I watched the Libra Me & In Paradisum trying to work out how they could be performed minus one of the leading male dancers & couldn't work it out.

@alison Oh dear. I've just had a look at the National Rail website & there are trees down on half a dozen lines so I hope whichever your is is one of the ones that has been fixed & services have restarted rather than one of the ones that still has no trains. I'm very glad I only saw ballet at the cinema this afternoon as it doesn't look like I would have made it down this evening.

Gosh, that's unfortunate for Hirano to have to retire injured during his last performance of the season. I hope it's not a different, new injury in addition to the one he's already been nursing.

Oh dear, that sounds rather ominous. I hope everyone is alright.

2 hours ago, Rob S said:

Kevin came out and said Reece was ill this morning and advised not to dance, and the others were swapped out because of that 

I hope he'll recover by next Saturday. Partly for his own sake but also because it'd be tough on Lamb if she had to re-rehearse SL with a third partner.

7 minutes ago, alison said:

Kudos to the whole company tonight for having to perform under some extremely difficult conditions. What professionals!

Are you referring to the Different Drummer cast changes or did something happen during the performance?

I've realised that Donnelly is on the cast list for Requiem so that makes it very unlikely that the cast change is anything to do with him.

In terms of Siegfried not having as much to do as he could, apart from the ending the other part that annoys me is that he doesn't get a solo as part of the Act II pdd. I would much rather he had a solo either just before or just after Odette's & cut out the swans who occupy that space (in fact if I had a free hand with Swan Lake I'd be cutting out a lot of swans in general!). Though I assume that one is down to Tchaikovsky or Petipa or both rather than Scarlett.

8 minutes ago, capybara said:

……. who was Alice when still  ‘only’ a soloist but, IIRC, made such an impression in the role that many would have promoted her to Principal with immediate effect.

I wonder if she would have continued dancing for longer if she had become a Principal? I only ever saw her in one leading role, The Cellist, & a few smaller roles, as she was replaced on a couple of other occasions when I should have seen her in larger roles. I gather she had various injury issues.

20 minutes ago, Emeralds said:

Well spotted @Dawnstar- I must say I thought Donnelly being cast as Rothbart last night for Swan Lake was very unexpected because he would be quite worn out after a full length turn as Rothbart (who unusually is in 4 acts plus prologue whereas in other productions he's only in 3 acts, +/- prologue) to be then dancing Drum Major the following night too.

 

Maybe the cast was changed because of this, or maybe it was due to something else.

 

That said, Marcelino Sambe could also be tired out after dancing Siegfried last night- an even more tiring role! - and he's now dancing Woyzeck tonight!

I'd be very surprised if it was due to Donnelly being tired, given as you say Sambe is likely to be more tired! One of the 3 leads being either taken ill or injured seems a more likely reason for a last-minute swap, with the complex partnering requiring all 3 to be swapped. Rather surprisingly the cast changes aren't marked as such on the cast sheet, which is now up. https://static.roh.org.uk/digital/cast-sheets/MacMillan-Celebrated-Cast-Sheet-13-04-24.pdf

O'Sullivan & Takada danced Alice in the last run so will presumably be cast this time too if both have recovered from their current injuries. Choe danced the role in each of the previous runs but will presumably still be on maternity leave, given the run will evidently be early in the season (I doubt it'll get a split run as that only seems to be for the most popular ballets). The only other past Alice I can find listed is Stix-Brunnell.

5 hours ago, Sim said:

Nor do I like the ending (my preference is for them both to die, then reunite in the apotheosis for eternity, as in Dowell's version), although I think I'm getting used to it.  

Unfortunately far from getting used to it I'm the other way round. The ending is irritating me a lot more this time around than during the last run because in the meantime I've seen ENB's production, whose ending (once I got over my initial surprise at Siegfried foillowing Odette off the rock) I much preferred.

3 hours ago, capybara said:

At least, this run, the Siegfrieds don’t seem to be falling away from VR into a terrifying roll forwards which made the audience fear they would end up in the orchestra pit.

I liked the Siegfrieds that did that in the last run. At least it seemed as though he'd been knocked out by Von Rothbart with major force so there was a good reason why he was lying there for ages. When he just collapses gently to the floor at a mere wave of Von Rothbart's wing & lies there for ages I unfortunately feel it makes him look pretty pathetic.

1 hour ago, Linnzi5 said:

I took it that Siegfried was killed by VR and the two swans revived him at the end - they certainly go over to him and wave their arms over him, which I just interpreted as them restoring his life?

Gosh, that had never occurred to me. I just thought they were waking him up to tell him it's all over & he needs to go & fish Odette's dead body out of the lake!

I've just spotted that the ROH website has been changed in the last hour or so to show a complete cast swap for tonight's Different Drummer with Sambe, Hayward & Serrano replacing Ospiova, Clarke & Donnelly.

I'e only seen Alice on video so I do want to see it live but I think once or twice is likely to be sufficient, unless there's lots of extremely tempting casting. There were some scenes that I did not enjoy, and that's the actual content so I won't enjoy them any more live, especially the Duchess, Cook & sausages which I could hardly bear to watch. I wasn't keen on the Mad Hatter's tea pary either, which seems to be a highlight for many people.

I wonder if Cinderella is likely to have a Nutcrackeresque number of performances? If so then I suppose there could be quite a lot of new casts so that might make me want to see more performances. Otherwise then, as I saw 6 casts in 2022, I hope to be able to save some money!

16 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

I didn't - must have been mistaken!

Sleeping Beauty overlapped with Coppelia in 2019/20 so perhaps it's that you're thinking of rather than the Nutcracker?

@Emeralds Thanks but I don't think I want the stress of spending the next 5 days checking for returns when the odds are extremely low, given there are under 20 tickets in the entire auditorium that I'm both prepared to sit in & can afford for SL! I think I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed that Donnelly, and Braendesrod for that matter, appear in more than one SL cast.

I hope Onegin and R&J aren't in too close proximity, and certainly not overlapping, as they are highly likely to be the 2 pieces I will want to see the most casts for.

6 minutes ago, Emeralds said:

So it's very likely (though no guarantees, as injuries/illness/etc can occur) that David Donnelly and Taisuke Nakao will reprise their roles as Rothbart and Benno respectively at the 18th April evening and 27th April matinee performances.

I realise that but the Friday rush for 18th already happened today & it's highly unlikely a suitable return will appear, while 27th matinee isn't a convenient date/time for me. Also given how high the SL ticket prices are I can't keep on buying extra tickets that I haven't budgeted for. (I already added one extra performance last month when Kaneko replaced Cuthbertson.) If fuller casting had been known before the start of the run then I could have had an overall rethink of which casts to prioritise seeing.

Thanks. It's useful for knowing approximately when in the season each of them will be on. Interesting to see they're reviving the new Carmen immediately, especially considering there are a lot of performance this season & the latter part of the run currently has quite a lot of the more expensive tickets still available.

2 hours ago, Rob S said:

Oooo David Donnelly as Von Rothbart this evening!!! 
 

https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/43/swan-lake-by-liam-scarlett/cast-list/54699

Grrrr, I know I've said this before but why oh why can't the ROH give advanced casting for Von Rothbart & Benno? I would have seriously considered trying to get a ticket for this performance if I'd known Donnelly would be making his debut. As it is, I won't get to see him unless I luck in & he ends up appearing with another cast who I will be seeing. It's also almost certainly killed off my hope that he might get to do Benno, as I very much doubt anyone will get cast as Von Rothbart & Benno.

So far the new Von Rothbarts are the same as the new Gaolers so I wonder if Edmonds might do Von Rothbart too or whether his casting as Siegfried will excuse him?

@LinMM Ella Newton Severigni danced the Neopolitan in Swan Lake on 1st April, which I believe was her debut in that role. So she's starting to get featured roles. Given she looks to be one of the smaller dancers perhaps she'll get to do a Cygnet at some point in the run as well.

ETA Obviously she didn't get a cutain call for the Neopolitan but I think she is the swan in the background of this photo, if I've got my swan identification right as I do find dancers tend to look rather similar under those feathers.

1 hour ago, LinMM said:

Because I wasn’t really that drawn into Danses Concertantes …didn’t dislike but just didn’t really grab me …I started focussing on a  “guess the dancer” game. For a couple of minutes thought Caspar Lench was the one in green but then realised it wasn’t him but couldn’t get who it actually was( Zucchetti I believe)  Anyway in the interval when I got the cast list up I hadn’t got one dancer correct ….not even Gasparini who danced with such charm!!! 
It’s only 9 months since my last big optician visit but think I may need new distance glasses already🙄

For me Zuchetti looked rather like Joshua Junker when under that headdress, though I did realise who it actually was. During my first viewing of Danses Concertantes on 27th I was under the impression Nadia Mullova-Barley was Annette Buvoli until I checked the cast list again in the interval but then they are two dancers who I have a tendency to misidentify as each other on occasion even without the Danses Concertantes headdresses.

@Emeralds I did not mean that the Lead Principals should not be Lead Principals; I just find it interesting that there are currently no Principals. I'm rather surprised that Haw didn't join the company at Principal/Lead Principal level given he's dancing the lead role in everything apart from Carmen this season.

14 hours ago, Emeralds said:

English National Ballet did create a title called Lead Principal which sounds like etoile- all female Lead Principals get to dance Juliet, Odette-Odile, Aurora, Giselle, Manon and all male Lead Principals dance Siegfried, Albrecht, Florimund etc.

Though given ENB currently does not have any Principals, only Lead Principals, then it feels like their Lead Principal category is at the present time effectively the equivalent of Principal at other companies. It will be interesting to see whether the next time any First Soloists get promoted the Principal category reappears or if they will go straight to Lead Principal. (Also given there are only 2 male Lead Principals it's hardly surprising that they are dancing all the leading roles!)

14 hours ago, Roberta said:

it's a student competition though, prizes include further training / apprenticeships. Also, so young dancers can be seen. That's why the RBS doesn't enter students. It's not a professional dancer competition. 

 

Would you pay ROH prices to see the latest claimed wunderkind in their late teens with hardly any stage experience dance Siegfried?  Which female principal would be happy to partner / nursemaid? I'm not saying they won't give a credible performance or that there haven't been prodigies in the past with long careers, but it's a gamble. 

 

Too much too young isn't always the best way in the longer term.  I think Kevin O'Hare is carefully nurturing some he thinks have great potential.

Are there any high-level professional dancer competitions though? I'm not aware that there's a ballet equivalent of Cardiff Singer of the World for instance. Hence my saying I don't know of any more prestigious ballet competition than the Prix de Lausanne.

That would depend on the individual dancer. If it was someone who I'd seen in smaller roles and based on those I liked him and thought he was ready to dance leading roles then yes, I would. I can't give any RB examples because since I started following the company closely in 2018 there haven't been any dancers who have had metioric rises through the ranks to dance leading roles at a young age. However if I may give an example from another company then I was extremely impressed by Giorgi Potskishvili, graduated 2020, as Hilarion in Dutch National Ballet's recent Giselle cinecast and were the company to visit London, or were he to guest with the RB or ENB, then I would absolutely be booking to see him in any leading role he were to appear in.

14 hours ago, Emeralds said:

Marco Masciari, as Capybara said, would be an encouraging example to other competition winners - he was picked by McGregor to create a role in Dante Project at the end of his Prix de Lausanne apprentice year and another in Untitled 2023, has had featured roles as the Jester in Cinderella, Solo Echo, Nutcracker (Clara's partner, Drosselmeyer's assistant and Russian dance), Manon (Beggar Chief), and he's one of the two partners in orange in Danses Concertantes (the ballet has only 5 males so the role does stand out). He's already been promoted to First Artist amid a group of outstanding corps de ballet dancers

 

Marco probably is a phenomenon and an exception- I reckon he'd have risen equally quickly in any company.

Is it that encouraging compared to Antonio Casalhino from the following year who's already a First Soloist in Munich & Darrion Sellman from 2 years later already dancing Siegfried? The only Siegfried debutant in the RB's current SL, Sissens, is in his eight year with the company so if Masciari were to make similar progress, & the RB continue to do SL every other year, then he just might get to do Siegfried in 2 or 3 revivals time! I don't know much about the Prix de Lausanne but I gather it's one of if not the most prestigious ballet competition so I'm guessing that those winning are hoping to become Principals or similar. Is being a bigger fish in a smaller ballet company better than being a small fish in the RB? I don't know, I'm just musing out loud.