Dawnstar

I did look at how front-ended the ballet booking season is & wondered if the RB had a temporary cash-flow shortage! There only seems to be one main-stage ballet in the final booking period compared to 4 in the first one. I'm fortunate that most of the operas I want to see are in the latter part of the season, which helps to spread the overall ROH cost out a bit. Can anyone give me some advice on rehearsal booking, as that I see doesn't open until next week. Given the instructions say you can only book one ticket initially but can book up to 3 more later, I'm guessing that means more tickets are released nearer the time once they know which seats are & aren't required for the production team etc. Therefore is it better to try to grab a ticket as soon as rehearsal booking opens or is it better to wait until nearer the time? Are better seats, i.e. nearer the stage, more like to appear later?

3 stops. It's about 6-7 minutes of actual tube. It's when you have to wait 10 minutes for a tube to actually turn up that things can get tight! I'd say 5 minutes' walk to Holborn but I am a fast walker. I'd've thought a maximum of 10 minutes even for very slow walkers.

I'd love that to be the case. It certainly wasn't yesterday evening. I ended up buying more more expensive tickets as the cheaper side stalls were in fairly short supply for what I wanted, especially for SB. Of course it might be that they all went first thing in the morning & if I get in on time rather than 12h late next time I might fare better.

I've just done a lot of booking (having finally succumbed & bought Friends membership - so many people posting here about booking that I was irrationally afraid ther wouldn't be any tickets left for general booking!) and, apart from having to refresh a few seating plans when they got stuck loading, the website worked well. Maybe I should try not booking as soon as it opens again in the future! I too think I now need a mortgage. I've spent so much money I'm hoping my bank doesn't block my card! I guess it should know me by now...

Thanks for the suggestion. I was going to but then succumbed to temptation & got a Friends membership followed by spending not even a small but a large fortune on tickets this evening so I had to make my own mind up! I gave up trying to decide between Manons & have just booked for Lamb/Muntagirov, Nunez/Bolle, Hayward/Campbell & Morera/Bonelli. That's in date order rather than order of preference. If I'd had to go for one it would probably have been Hayward/Campbell because I was so blown away by her Juliet.

I have to get back to Cambridge after theatregoing so I'm pretty experienced at the ROH to Kings Cross post-performance dash. The absolute fastest I've done it in is about 15 minutes but that was under favourable conditions (aisle seat, midweek night so no queue to get into tube station, tube came immediately), running was involved & I was on my own, which I find faster than trying to do it with someone else. I'd say 20-25 minutes is a more realistic timeframe. Assuming the 2h50 running time currently on the ROH website for Manon ends up being reasonably accurate then you should have a comfortable amount of time to get a train at 11pm. For the sake of your stress levels getting seats reasonably near an aisle & an exit might be a good idea. I know I find it very stressful when I'm desparate to get out to rush for a train & have to wait while people who evidently have all the time in the world decide to stand up slowly, put their coats on slowly, gradually shuffle aislewards, etc.

Would it be alright if this thread was expanded to cover the other autumn booking ballets as well? Given Manon's (relatively) low prices I am planning to try to get tickets for multiple casts for that but Sleeping Beauty and to a lesser extent Coppelia are so expensive that I think I'm going to have to limit myself to one or at most two viewings of them so would be interested in cast advice for them.

I'm very envious of the people able to take advantage of this. I bet there won't be any left by the time the general booking opens.

That's how I know of it being called The Wells. Icollect early-mid 20th century girls' books & quite a lot of my limited knowledge of ballet comes from that, Lorna HIll's other ballet series, & Mabel Esther Allen/Jean Estoril's various ballet books. I was somewhat disappointed to find that some of the ballets described are no longer in the rep, as I'd be interested in seeing them.

Oh, is the Scottish Dances about half the ballet then? I didn't realise that. I'd assumed it was just a single scene from a full-length piece.

I was looking for comments on these performances yesterday but couldn't find any so was wondering if maybe it wasn't the done thing to comment on student performances, but I guess we are allowed after all. I've not seen the RBS at Holland Park before (though I've seen quite a few operas there) but after enjoying The Cunning Little Vixen back in February my mother & I decided to give it a go. We opted for the mostly Upper School performance yesterday evening, on the assumption that with older dancers there'd be more proper pas de deux work. All the pieces were new to me so the following comments are highly inexpert! The comments are more about the pieces than the dancers, as I don't feel I know enough to judge student performers properly. If therefore thse comments are completely pointless please let me know & I'll remove them. La Valse - I thought this was lovely, although I may have spent about at much time admring the girls' costumes as the choreography. I found both rather remiscent of Apparitions at last month's Fonteyn Celebration Bottega - I found the voiceover rather baffling but once the dancing started I liked it. I found it interesting that with this Year 10 & 11 group the boys on the whole looked less mature than the girls (whereas with the Upper School dancers the genders looked evenly matched). I imagine this must make starting pas de deux work in the Lower School rather challenging. Scottish Dances - I really enjoyed this. Not having seen any Bintley before, this is now the second piece I've seen by him in 2 weeks, after Hobson's Choice last week. I have no idea what Flowers of the Forest is about but this extract made me want to see the whole piece. Simple Symphony - The day-glo neon costumes made me fear this would be ultra-modern but it was more classical than I expected. I thought the third solo couple were particularly good, especially as they had some quite challenging-looking lifts. Pulse - Not to my taste at all. I can't believe that any little girl dreaming of becoming a ballerina dreams of something like this! Mats Ek's Swan Lake extract - The Prince's solo I thought had some ugly choreography but also some that was quite expressive. At least, I thought it expressed that the Prince was having a sort of nervous breakdown but out of context I might be misinterpreting it. I presume the three "swans" (the movements were more Ugly Duckling!) are being dreamt/hallucinated by the Prince? I don't think I'm ever going to be able to hear the Cygnets' music in the same way again! Untied, Undone - I quite liked this but I don't know what it was supposed to be about. I presume it was included partly to give the boys more to do, given the girls had the corps de ballet work in Paquita. Paquita exerpt - Finally, some tutus! I've not seen the piece but I'm guessing that the part that was done comes at the end of the ballet for the happy ending. I felt there was a certain similarity with the ending of Don Quixote. Can anyone tell me whether in a complete performance the solo parts are distributed between several dancers or whether they should all be danced by one man & one woman? I was wondering if they'd shared them out to give more dancers the chance to perform & so they weren't over-taxed by the very exposing choreography (there were a few wobbles). I didn't manage to recognise many dancers from The Cunning Little Vixen but did recognise Daichi Ikarashi, who evidently specialises in jumping!

Further to one of my comments in the Hobson's Choice thread, I find it interesting that all three of the dancers being promoted to First Soloist are, I gather, effectively character dancers rather than leading role dancers, as is existing First Soloist Jonathan Payn, so with Brandon Lawrence's promotion to Principal BRB won't have any First Soloists next year who are leading role dancers. Given how many leading roles the RB male First Soloists dance, I'm wondering how BRB manages to function without a similar pool of available men. Do the Principal men solely dance all the leading roles in the classical repetoire at BRB?

I've never tried getting a package before, because I've never wanted to see enough operas in one booking period for it to work, but I've just realised that as I want to see all the ballets in the next booking period then it might be worth looking into & seeing if I can afford it, so thanks for the heads-up @JohnS. Edit: Drat, just checked the FAQs on the ROH website & neither side stalls circle nor the first two rows of the stalls are apparently available for packages. Looks like I'll be sticking to single tickets then.

I feel he should have got a credit on the cast sheet. On Friday he pretty much stole the show in the Salvation Army section!

I know they split quite a long time ago but I would have expected BRB to have had the same structure of dancers as the RB prior to the split & then to have kept it, but evidently not. Thank you for the rest of the information.

A few rather random comments & questions on last night. I've only seen BRB once before, a schools' matinee of The Nutcracker back in 1995. I find it rather amazing that two of the dancers in that performance, Jonathan Payn & Marion Tait, were also in last night's performance. I hadn't realised until I read the programme that BRB doesn't have character artists - I'd assumed they had the same structure as the RB, being an off-shoot - so Payn is a first soloist. His biography only really lists character roles but did he used to do "proper" soloist roles? I thought the piece was the most play-like ballet I've seen. It basically was a play but done in dance rather than in words. The only dancing-for-the-sake-of-dancing bit was the Salvation Army scene. I found it interesting that that short scene included more principals than the main cast did. Does Bintley usually cast everything on "suitability" rather than rank or is this piece an exception? I was very glad that I went for as far forward as I could get, row C stalls, so I could see all the acting clearly. I imagine it's a piece where you really need to be able to see facial expressions to enjoy it fully. I doubt there's much audience crossover between ballet & Mischief Theatre but I found Lachlan Monahgan as Will reminded me strongly of Dave Hearn as Max in the Goes Wrong shows (anyone know what I'm talking about?). I'm now eyeing up their Giselle in November but I wouldn't want to book before knowing the cast, which presumably they won't announce until a couple of weeks beforehand, & I suspect that a popular ballet like Giselle will already have sold out before then. I guess I'll have to wait & see. I certainly don't want to leave it another 24 years before seeing BRB again! PS When looking at the pictures of past casts in the programme I spotted Alexander Campbell as Will. I can't imagine him in the role: he seems far too good-looking & confident!

I thoroughly enjoyed it this evening. A comedy with plenty of narrative & not too much dancing for the sake of dancing is exactly to my taste! I thought the cast were excellent, especially Samara Downs & Lachlan Monaghan.

I think so but I'll get back to you properly once I've seen it! Whenever that may be.

I've not seen Giselle so I guess I'd better give it a go at least once, though I suspect that there may indeed be too much Willi dancing for my taste.

Am I the only person who doesn't like the Kingdom of the Shades? Admittedly I've not seen it live but I saw both the RB & Bolshoi livestreams this season & in both instances I found the Kingdom of the Shades the most boring part of the ballet. Maybe I just don't like white acts, as I wasn't that keen on the corps parts of Acts 2 & 4 of Swan Lake either.

I've just booked for Friday. I was holding off until nearer the time to make sure the weather forecast wasn't going to change to horribly hot, like it's going to be on Saturday. Maybe other people are likewise waiting on the weather? I've only been to Sadler's Wells twice before and both those occasions were back in 2009, so I was surprised to find it still has my details in its system!

Oh no, not again! This doesn't seem to be a healthy ballet for him at the moment!

Oh good, I was beginning to think I was the only person who was looking forward to it! Admittedly I've only seen ENB's version so the RB's production will be new to me. I haven't seen enough ballet to meaningfully contribute to this thread but out of what I have seen I suspect I may find Romeo & Juliet the most repeat-viewable, especially as it'd be worth seeing it every year just to hear the score live, quite apart from the dancing.

May I check if using surnames only is alright? Or do we have to use both first name and surname upon first mention of each dancer in a post? I pretty much always use just surnames because it is quicker than full names & I do not feel comfortable using first names as I do not know the dancers.

True, but while they get what they want - money - in return they give me what I want - opera & ballet. It's philanthropy with nothing in return that I can't afford. I suppose if I spent less money on tickets I'd have more to spare for good causes but that's never going to happen!