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Dawnstar

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Everything posted by Dawnstar

  1. Dawnstar
    I think that's an excellent idea & wish all Manons would do the same, as I have yet to see a dancer who looks good in Manon's final wig in curtain call photos. Likewise I thought it was a great pity Laura Morera had to do her farewell curtain calls in the very similar & equally unflattering Anastasia Act III wig.
  2. Dawnstar
    Is this clearer when seeing the production live? When I watched the TV broadcast in 2021 everyone just seemed to have rather random whiteish smears with little clouds of chalk visibly coming off dancers. I found Inferno pretty confusing all round. On the cast sheets the titles of some of the sections sound really interesting - "The Pope's Adagio", "Pavan Of The Souls In Limbo", "Stations Of The Cross" - but when watching it for me it was all just a bunch of difficult to recognise dancers in greyish unitards doing similar-looking choreography. (I have abandoned hope that I will ever "get" McGregor!)
  3. Dawnstar
    The ROH has now announced Mock's imminent departure.
  4. Dawnstar
    If BRB cast the Lilac Fairy in the way the RB do, i.e. usually taller dancers, then perhaps she could be on course to do that role.
  5. Dawnstar
    Are you sure your email didn't have anything about cast changes because I would assume that's the same email I received (at 15.44) & the cast change info is a small paragraph lurking about three-quarters of the way down. I would probably have overlooked it if I hadn't been looking out for it.
  6. Dawnstar
    An email has just arrived from ENB which mentions there are Nutcracker cast changes but it just gives a link to the website rather than specifying what changes have happened. Also the info is rather buried among a bunch of other news, info & advertising. I don't know if they've sent/will send separate cast change emails to ticket holders with more detailed information.
  7. Dawnstar
    Comparing the casting now on ENB's website with that on the first page of this thread it looks like not only has Frola been replaced by Erik Woolhouse but also Fernando Carratala Coloma has been replaced by Daniel McCormick, and Ken Saruhashi and Edvinas Jakonis have swapped partners. So there must presumably be more issues than just Frola being injured to required that many Nephew changes. While I will be very disappointed if Frola can't recover in time for Giselle, I believe this is the first time he's been injured, or at least injured enough to have to miss performances, since 2018 so he's done pretty well at ENB up until now. (Certainly better than Corrales, who I gather he effectively replaced, has done at the RB in the same time period.)
  8. Dawnstar
    Oh dear, that doesn't bode well. I'm not seeing The Nutcracker but had booked to see him in Giselle.
  9. Dawnstar
    She seems to be getting on very quickly. Didn't she only join the company about 3 years ago? That's certainly faster than if she'd joined the RB.
  10. Dawnstar
    I'd be very interested to know who this is, as it feels like the recent promotions to Principal have been greeted with a general feeling of "About time too" rather than "Hmm, maybe a bit soon". Personally the only Principal promotion that came perhaps a bit sooner than I was expecting was Magri & that was just because I thought maybe she'd be expected to get a few more of the big classics under her belt before promotion (admittedly were it not for covid she would have done Swan Lake 2 years earlier). I was very much hoping that she'd make Principal at some point. I agree that the casting almost every Principal in every role has on occasion not worked out, though I suppose in some cases it's difficult to know if someone is going to work in a role or not until they've actually performed it. And even then opinions may differ as to whether or not it has worked!
  11. Dawnstar
    I don't recall seeing him on either any of the cast lists or the stage for Don Q. I started wondering part-way through the run where he was & assumed he must be off injured. (I hope he's not left as well as the other absentee I'd been wondering about, Tomas Mock, as the RB needs some dancers to do the smaller character roles!) Isn't that performances rather than roles? I find it hard to believe that any dancer could notch up over 500 different roles even if they had a career the length of Elizabeth McGorian or Michael Coleman!
  12. Dawnstar
    I've not seen it done at the RB but when Cojocaru did it at Sadler's Wells in 2020 I believe the costumes & sets were borrowed from the RB. Checking my curtain call photos from then, there are indeed men in those costumes (sorry, not a very good photo). I don't think anyone was wigged other than Kobborg & that was presumably more because he was playing an older character than for a specifically "period" look, though admittedly his shaven head would otherwise have stood out as being very much not of the period.
  13. Dawnstar
    I wouldn't dignify it with the term analysis! It was just a suggestion of a possible reason. If that really is the case then it is quite depressing, given every RB Principal apart from Clarke & Corrales is already 29 or over!
  14. Dawnstar
    Am I right in thinking that the last Principal by 21 was Polunin? Given that didn't exactly work out, to put it politely, I wonder if that made the RB have a re-think about very rapid promotions of very young dancers to Principal? At the moment the dancers who are getting opportunities to take on lead roles all seem to be mid-late 20s. I'd add Richardson, Sasaki & Dias to Sissens in that category, though whether they make it to Principal or get stuck at First Soloist level remains to be seen. Given all 6 of the current female First Soloists are mid 30s or older there will presumably be vacancies at that level fairly soon due to retirements.
  15. Dawnstar
    Musing on what might be the ideal number of Principals for a company? At the moment it feels like the RB has too many - ten women, nine men - while ENB seems rather under-Principaled, certainly on the male side, with only two men & five women.
  16. Dawnstar
    That may be possible for Othello the play but is a lot harder to do for Otello the opera. Given how difficult the role is, there aren't many tenors of any skin colour who can sing it well enough so companies can't just always go & easily hire a black tenor. The current favoured solution seems to be to have the tenor not made up in any way & presumably the audience are supposed to just imagine that he's a different race to all the rest of the characters even if he's not. (Side note: I discovered recently that the farce Lend Me A Tenor, which involves mistaken identity due to 2 characters being in costume & make up as Otello, has been re-written to change the opera being performed to Pagliacci so the characters would be in clown make up instead.)
  17. Dawnstar
    @Emeralds Your post has just made me look up the trailer. I don't think it's Rachele Pizzillio as Clara in it though, it looks like Sofia Linares to me. I think Pizzillio may make a very brief appearance in the Spanish dance, though it's hard to be certain when it's so brief. Seeing the trailer does make me want to see the production again but the trains are too uncertain at the moment for me be willing to risk a longer journey.
  18. Dawnstar
    I share this preference & for the same reasons. However in general I'll book for when the dancers I want to see are performing, whenever in the run that is. (Though I can't entirely do that this year, as I have no trains to London from Christmas to New Year.)
  19. Dawnstar
    Apologies, I must have misread when I was checking biographies earlier. Biologically possible but not really how the characters are presented in the RB's production. I agree, he would have been one of my suggestions for potential Drosselmeyers. The other one would be Calvin Richardson. I know he's doing the Prince but then he combined Espada & Gamache in Don Q.
  20. Dawnstar
    I'm sorry to hear that.
  21. Dawnstar
    While I'm not seeing The Dante Project, I've just had a look at tonight's cast sheet & it's good to see Tomas Mock & Olivia Cowley on it as, unless I missed something, neither of them appeared in the Don Q run.
  22. Dawnstar
    I'd love to know how they selected O'Brien, as he sems an atypical choice for the role in the RB's production in terms of age & rank. As far as I can find, the last new RB Drosselmeyer was Whitehead in 2015, who would have been about 40 at the time & a First Soloist. The ROH database gives Gartside debuting in 2012, when he would have been mid-30s & a First Soloist; Avis in 2005, again mid-30s and the year he became a Principal Character Artist; Saunders in 1999, again mid-30s and already a Principal Character Artist. So what has made the RB casting team this time go for a First Artist who's only about 25? If O'Brien does replace Gartside then he'll make his debut with a Nephew, Zuchetti, who's about a decade older than him!
  23. Dawnstar
    That's what I feel for Swan Lake. The Manon prices feel remarkably affordable compared to the astronomical SL ones! So for Manon I'll probably see around 5 casts, which will cover everyone I particularly want to see, whereas SL I don't feel I can see more than 2 or 3, which will not cover everyone I want to see & will make it very difficult to decide between pairings, especially as the casting for the June block probably won't be available until after booking for the March-May block has opened.
  24. Dawnstar
    Perhaps he needs more time to recover as all that cape swirling probably wouldn't be good for the shoulders. I did think when the casting was announced that only 3 Drosselmeyers for the entire run might be cutting things a bit tight in terms of not allowing for injuries or seasonal illnesses.
  25. Dawnstar
    Oh dear, watching the Insight livestream makes me want to go & book tickets for a dozen Nutcrackers! Which I certainly can't afford to do. I was already hoping to be able to catch Marianna Tsembenhoi in January & I now really want to see Giacomo Rovero as well but unfortunately his only public performance is the week when I have no trains. I wonder if Aidan O'Brian could be replacing Bennet Gartside, as Gartside has been missing so far this season. If so then I'll get to see him. I'm now going to be back to checking the ROH website daily for possible Nutcracker cast change announcements. Also it feels as though Gary Avis could narrate & perform an entire one-man Nutcracker, as he seems to know every moment of the choreography for every single character!
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