Dawnstar

I was looking at the Wednesday evening, so it's a bit depressing to hear most of the other performances are even more expensive!

Yes, not what I was hoping for rep wise. I think I'll be skipping this one, as only the Balanchine piece sounds like something I'd want to see.

I think of the side stalls blocks at the RAH as being more akin to the sides of the stalls circle at the ROH (for which I've been paying £70 for Cinderella) when it's an in the round staging. I certainly had a side-on view in 2019 and there were some aspects of the staging, especially the rear projections, that I just didn't see properly & didn't even realise I had missed until I saw an online stream of the proscenium version. I thought it worked better in the prosceunium version & wish ENB were doing that rather than in the round again.

I can't believe they'd not cast their only male Lead Principal as the Prince! I wonder if he'll be doing Benjamin again, as I have a feeling he did last time though I only saw him do the Prince. I had a look at the tickets & was rather horrified that the same area I paid about £40 for last time is now almost £60. Hmm, I'm going to have to think about whether I really want to see this again.

Some interesting casting there. No sign of Fernanda Oliveira, Natascha Mair or Katja Khaniukova, all of whom are senior to Precious Adams. Actually I'm surprised there are only 4 casts altogether, given the number of performances in a short space I was expecting more. Also Hawes & Arrieta get the first night for the second production running.

Wading through the ROH performance database, I can't find that Choe's danced the Lilac Fairy. I see, to my surprise, that she did do Aurora in 2014 and 2016. She's really been downgraded in recent seasons then. The likewise downgraded Melissa Hamilton looks to have had a go at the Lilac Fairy back in 2014 then not since so presumably she isn't in contention for this run either. (I wish the ROH would get a move on & get all the dancer biographies back online, as it'd make it much faster to check who's danced what.)

That had occurred to me as a possible alternative to injury! She certainly won't be back for Cinderella then.

Yes, in 2011 and 2017 according to the ROH performance database. I didn't know that until I looked it up though, after I'd spoken to her when I saw her as the Fairy Godmother & she said something that indicated that she'd danced the Lilac Fairy in the past but not recently.

Is Alison McWhinney dancing this season? There's been no mention of her doing any solo roles in any of ENB's performances so far this season, so I wondered if she was out long-term with an injury or something.

Dias rather than Stock presumably? Has she recovered from her mid-Cinderella injury yet? She didn't appear on any cast sheets for the rest of that run.

I thought Andrijschenko rose brilliantly to the challenge, Tissi not quite a much. Didn't Camargo step into Don Q rather than R&J? Same here, so I hope they announce it a reasonable time before performances. I also hope each cast does at least 2 performances, because you can bet the cast I most want to see will be on for the only performance I definitely can't make!

I'll be skipping through it on the iPlayer, as I suspect I won't want to watch at least three-quarters of the performances. I can't watch it live anyway as I'll be listening to the F1. (There's far too much on this weekend: I'm juggling watching the Coronation, the start of the Giro d'Italia & the Miami Grand Prix!)

If they got Vogel I might even be tempted to see him rather than Frola (with the high ticket prices I don't think I can afford more than one viewing).

No, they weren't, it was just Naghdi & Ball listed until the full cast list went up. The same with all the SB casts in the January-March run. Hence I'm trying to vainly guess who I might see as the Lilac Fairy on 15th!

So I can rule out Julia Roscoe. It won't be Mayara Magri, as she's in tonight's cast. It obviously won't be Claire Calvert. It probably won't be Fumi Kaneko, as I doubt she'd be put in a mid-run cast. So that leaves it between Annette Buvoli & Gina Storm-Jensen. At this rate I bet I'll be seeing Gina for the 6th time in a row!

Thanks @MaddieRose. I must say my music recognition on Thursday wasn't brilliant as I failed to recognise the Carmen music, though I knew it was something I should recognise. I can't say I noticed any significant shadows at any point in the performance. Oh, no, I meant my review ended up longer than I was expecting, not that the performance did! The performance we were at was due to end at 4.10pm and while I didn't actually check the exact time it did finish somewhere around then.

I see Berlin Staatsballett has a different choreographer's Cinderella in their rep so they presumably don't dance Wheeldon's and would Salenko necessarily want to learn an entirely new to her version for a couple of guest performances? After all, it's not like Swan Lake where Odette's choreography is fairly similar in most "traditional" productions. Bringing back Cojocaru seems to make more sense if they were to be short on leading ladies. Though being short on leading men seems to be a more likely problem for them.

Something I've just remembered I meant to ask & unfortunately I'm just too late to add to my previous post. In one of the "dancers backstage" bits between the numbers in the first half, I can't remember if it was after Swan Lake ro the Dying Swan, the male dancer unhooked the female dancer's tutu for her & there was a brief bit of music playing that sounded familiar. Was it from Manon? (If no-one can answer this now maybe someone can after the Linbury performances, which I guess will be attended by lots of forum members.)

Thanks @Jan McNulty. It ended up rather longer than I expected. Hence why I gave up part-way through late last night!

Ooh, does that mean I might finally see a Lilac Fairy other than Gina Storm-Jensen on 15th? Fingers crossed.

I quite fancy option c, though it's probably the least likely of the three. And admittedly if I go it'll probably be to a Frola performance anyway!

While I wasn't very surprised that Choe didn't get to dance the title role, I was rather surprised that she only got to do Summer & Autum and didn't even get to do the Fairy Godmother. As for ideal cast: Cinderella: Laura Morera Prince: Matthew Ball Stepsisters: Thomas Whitehead & Luca Acri Fairy Godmother: Itziar Mendizabel Jester: Liam Boswell Summer: Melissa Hamilton Winter: Gina Storm-Jensen Spring & Autumn I don't have a preference. But really I'd be happy to see any of the 6 casts I saw again as I thought all of them were very good. (I did think male Stepsisters worked better than female ones though.)

We went to the matinee in Peterborough yesterday afternoon, as I thought it'd be much easier to get tickets for Peterborough than the Linbury. Sure enough, the theatre in Peterborough was maybe a quarter full while I see the Linbury is all but sold out. I was sat in the front row of the stalls, which I wondered might be a bit close for ballet but as there's a gap of half a dozen feet or more between the stage & the front row it was fine. No orchestra, as expected, but there was a live pianist & cellist for 2 numbers. I had expected to prefer the first half, as that was the more classical half, but unfortunately the first half was spoilt by not one but two small children (not together) being very audibly & repeatedly vocal in the audience. I know I'm sensitive to sound & find it difficult to block out unwanted noises but when I compared notes with my mother in the interval she too had found it very difficult to concentrate. Fortunately the squawking small children did not return for the second half. While the programme & most of overall cast were the same as in the reviews of the first night, about half of the numbers were danced by different dancers. Unfortunately the printed cast sheets available at the theatre were completely wrong for the first half. I hope the online cast sheet is correct, as that's what I'm going by. I wasn't madly keen on the framing device but at least I was expecting it. I enjoyed Rhapsody but having seen the RB doing it in full last season I did miss the scenery (& with the gorgeous music the noisy small kids were particularly annoying). I liked the dancers, Frieda Kaden & Oscar Kempsey-Fagg, and would have liked to see them together again, but the yesterday's casting didn't have them paired again (I see they are in another cast arrangement). I enjoyed La Sylphide, which I've only seen once before again in a gala. Funnily the James in this performance, Eric Pino Cata, looks rather like the previous one I saw, ENB's Fernando Carratala Coloma. Given my front row seat, I'm glad that ballet Scotsmen do wear something under their kilts! I thought Olivia Chang Clarke was nicely mischievous as the Sylphide but I think I would have liked a bit more ethereality (is that a word?). Swan Lake was afflicted not only by the noisy kids but also volleys of coughing from the audience. I don't know how the poor dancers managed to concentrate, I certainly found it difficult to do so. I thought Mason King partnered well. I regret that the Act II pdd doesn't include solos for both characters as I would have liked to see King & Mailene Katoch do some. I wasn't keen on the double Dying Swan, especially when it started with the same wind noises that I had disliked in the male-only version at the Dance For Ukraine gala. I must have seen Ava May Llewelleyn in the RB's corps but I'm afraid I can't say I recognised her. I thought Lucy Waine and Haoliang Feng put on a good performance in Diana and Acteon but both of them did have a couple of balance problems in their solos (she with couple of pirouettes & he had to put a hand down both times he landed a jump in a kneeling position). She was very good at keeping a big smile plastered on throughout though! End of Time I was baffled by. I had no idea what it was supposed to be saying or what the context might have been. The nude unitards painted with what could have been leaves made me think of the Garden of Eden but that would be near the start of time, not the end. There seemed to be an awful lot of walking around with the man carrying or dragging the woman. I found myself comparing it to the Ashton & Bourneville & thinking that they have so many more proper ballet steps. It also had my pet peeve of feet flexed rather than pointed. Fortunately after that things looked up. I liked the way the next three numbers in the second half were linked together, with the woman in Je Ne Regrette Rien having evidently recently dumped the man in Les Bourgeois. I really enjoyed the tango (or is it Argentine tango?) style A Buenos Aires. When looking up the dancers on BRB's website afterwards I was unsurprised to find Enrique Bejarno Vidal is Mexican as he had the perfect look for a tango piece (and made me think a bit of Corrales). I was so-so on the choreography for Non Je Ne Regrette Rien, some of it was rather jerky but I liked the spins all round the stage (I don't know the correct term for that movement). I thought Riku Ito gave the best performance of the afternoon in Les Bourgeois, brilliantly acted, great stage presence & so nice to have something amusing amidst the mostly serious programme. I liked Carmen but it did feel a bit MacMillan-derivative & I did spend most of the piece wondering what the primary school group that were in the audience would be making of the quite erotic choreography! I also didn't understand why Don Jose was in 19th century shirt & breeches but Carmen was in modern-looking undies. Nisi Dominus I was even more baffled by than End of Time. I wasn't keen on the choreography, couldn't work out what the context was supposed to be, and spent most of the time wondering if the costume was supposed to resemble a farthingale & if so whether that was the right period for the music (checking Monteverdi's dates afterwards indicates it was). I really enjoyed Majisimo. It was nice to have a group piece after the rest of the programme was all pdds or solos. Among the eight dancers Rachele Pizzillo, who I'd liked as Clara in 2019, stood out for me. (And that's not just bias because I recognised her as my mother said the same afterwards before I told her that she was the dancer we'd seen as Clara.) As Maddie Rose has already said, the ending does make it rather confusing as to exactly when one should be giving the dancers applause given they drift off stage gradually. Riku Ito was last to leave & raised a laugh by picking up the prop bottle that he'd had in Les Bourgeois & miming disappointment at finding it empty! I'd definitely go & see the company again, assuming they do more tours with mixed programmes in the future. (Though whether they'll bother to come to Peterborough again with the low ticket sales.) I'll also be looking out for the dancers whenever I next see BRB again. Unfortunately I can't make it up to Birmingham for their triple bill next month, unless someone knows a way to get from the Birmingham Hippodrome to Cadogan Hall in under 2 hours!

I'm trying to write a review of this afternoon's performance but it's too late & I'm too tired so I'll try again tomorrow!

Thanks. I've checked the ROH Flickr account & found the photos. He does look more or less how I thought he did but he's evidently not as tall as I thought he was. I'm afraid I had no desire to see that triple bill even once, let alone twice!