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Dawnstar

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Everything posted by Dawnstar

  1. Dawnstar
    I agree with right for Giselle. Left for Swan Lake (though 2 important moments aren't visible from either side). Not sure about R&J as I hate having to miss anything in that. I've never got to grips with using binoculars so always want to sit close enough to see the acting with the naked eye (and my eyes are very short sighted). I'm not interested in seeing an overview of the corps & the patterns they make. If I could afford it I'd always sit in the front row of the stalls. Sadly with the price rises I'm not sure I'll ever again be able to afford to sit there.
  2. Dawnstar
    To be honest I would have preferred either Morera or Lamb to have got another go at the role, as I would have liked to have seen both of them & I'm never going to get to do so now. Naghdi's got probably another decade of career to go & seems to have danced almost everything apart from Manon (which she will surely do next season) so I would have been happy if she had waited until the next Onegin run to do Tatiana.
  3. Dawnstar
    When the Bolshoi last came I skipped their Swan Lake & Don Quixote in favour of seeing Spartacus & The Bright Stream, given the two former I can see UK companies doing but the two latter I can't. (I find it hard to imagine the RB doing Spartacus.) So I'd definitely prefer visiting companies bring ballets that we can't otherwise see in the UK. Though I don't mind that Australian Ballet's bringing Jewels as I've not seen two thirds of that before.
  4. Dawnstar
    I've started making a mental list, which I probably need to getting round to writing down, of which side of the auditorium is best for the restricted view side stalls circle seats for different productions, as it doesn't look like I'm ever again going to be able to afford to sit in unrestricted view seats. So far for this season's productions I'd go for left for Mayerling and Cinderella, right for Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker is about even.
  5. Dawnstar
    Were you in C91? I tried out its opposite number C22 for a Swan Lake last season & decided that even though it's significantly cheaper than the rest of the seats in that area the view is so bad that it's not worth the saving.
  6. Dawnstar
    After reading Morera's interview yesterday, I found myself thinking about Melissa Hamilton's stint at the Dresden Ballet some years ago. I remember reading about it at the time & being a bit baffled that a dancer would choose to dance with a smaller ballet company rather than one of the largest companies in the world. That was before I started watching the RB regularly & realised how few of the main roles she is allowed to dance, when it then made total sense. I wonder if Morera ever considered doing something similar so she could dance some of the roles the RB wouldn't let her do, especially Aurora & Odette/Odile given that almost every ballet company has those pieces in their rep. Morera does seem pretty weddd to the RB though. Am I right in thinking that she doesn't do masses of international gala or guesting appearances, compared to some of the RB Principals? Or did she used to do more of that & has wound it down in recent years when approaching retirement?
  7. Dawnstar
    Checking the ROH database indicates that since 2007 when she became a Principal there have been somewhere in the region of 150 performances of R&J. Surely they could have let her do at least one of those! It's not as if it's a rarely-done piece that only a few dancers get to do. That she's still asking to do it just once & still isn't allowed to is almost unbelievable. Though admittedly it'd be frustrating for those of us who want to see her do it if she never did it in the UK then did a single performance in Japan!
  8. Dawnstar
    That's a rather heartbreaking interview. Not just the section on Scarlett but also all the roles that she's never been allowed to do or got dropped from. I cannot understand why she's never been allowed to do Juliet, which she would surely have been amazing as, whereas other Principals are allowed to dance everything, whether suited to roles or not.
  9. Dawnstar
    Also a pretty good description of modern ice skating! (Replace lifts with jumps for the singles competitions.)
  10. Dawnstar
    She hasn't been on any of the Cinderella cast lists since. I've been checking because of wondering if she was okay. Sadly that presumably means that she isn't. Hope she recovers soon.
  11. Dawnstar
    The first time I tried to give a dancer flowers I failed to get a card to go with them so she wouldn't have known who they were from due to my incompetence! I didn't have time to go to the stage door after that performance so had to explain when I bumped into her in the ROH a few weeks later. The night before last was only my 3rd attempt at flower giving & I evidently haven't got the organisation right yet! I suppose the way to do it without stressful rushing around just before the performance is to put in an order with a florist but that's too expensive for me (I gather Bloomsbury Flowers start at around £50-60).
  12. Dawnstar
    When I spoke to her afterwards I did say that those flowers were from me, though obviously I didn't bore her with the full assembly details. I probably spent too long thanking her for all her previous performances that I've seen as it was. I did get slightly teary. For the second time that evening, having already gone a bit during the Act II pdd when I had an aaahhh-last-time-seeing-her-in-a-classical-role moment. I hope everyone there this evening enjoys seeing her final full-length classical performance.
  13. Dawnstar
    (This post is probably irrelevant to anyone but me so everyone else feel free to skip it.) I'd like to praise the ROH stage door keepers for being incredibly tolerant & helpful to me yesterday evening. I wanted to give Laura Morera some flowers as an overall thank you for her performances I've seen over the last 5 seasons & decided doing so at Cinderella would be better than waiting to her last performance, where she'll have vast amounts. I tried several shops & stalls but larger bouquets were either too expensive for me or I wasn't keen on them, so I ended up buying 4 small bouquets in Tesco plus a sheet of wrapping paper. By this time it was quarter past seven & I didn't have time to go elsewhere to find somewhere suitable for some flower re-wrapping. The stage door keepers very kindly let me use a small table in the lobby, didn't look horrified as I ripped cellophane off 4 bouquets while trying not to scatter leaves, and let me have some sellotape to hold together the, well, flower arrangement would be too polite a term, more a flower bundle. Frankly I wouldn't have been surprised if the stage management had taken a look at the result & either sent it straight to her dressing room or consigned it to the nearest bin! Instead, to my amazement & pleasure, not only did my bouquet make it on stage but it was the one given to her to hold! (PS In case anyone's interested, I made it home at 2.50am last night.)
  14. Dawnstar
    I agree that Whitehead managed to make the bossy Stepsister nicest out of the dancers in the role. As this production is the first time I've seen Cinderella, I'm not entirely sure if this is a good or a bad thing, i.e. how unpleasant or not the character was originally meant to be. I was somewhat reminded of Coppelia, when I unexpectedly (having previously mostly seen him play villains) found Whitehead's Dr Coppelius the most sympathetic & touching of those I saw. Continuing on the bossy Stepsister, while Richardson was somewhat drag queen-ish in his portrayl it wasn't as much as I'd feared he might be & I enjoyed his performance. It is somewhat surreal to see a Nutcracker Prince and an SB Prince prancing about the stage in frocks though! Richardson did the Act II fall particularly wholesalely - perhaps because he's a good deal the youngest in the role - and threw another one in at the curtain calls! (The next photo I have after this is just a blur of purple net crawling through the gap in the curtains!)
  15. Dawnstar
    At least other UK opera companies have done the operetta relatively recently - I loved Opera North's in 2018 - even if the ROH haven't so it's been possible to see it, unlike the ballet
  16. Dawnstar
    There are going to be more RMT dates? Groan. I find it doesn't seem to make any difference which of the unions is on strike: my trains back from London give up at about 5.30pm on all strike days, making theatregoing impossible.
  17. Dawnstar
    I thought it was only Aslef going on strike now & a deal had been struck with RMT but I've just discovered that's not the case. Couldn't they at least have both gone on strike on the same day? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65407844
  18. Dawnstar
    Yes, lovely to meet you for the first time @J_New and @Nogoat & @Mummykool and then to meet@Sophoife at the stage door. I won't tag in those I've met before but nice to see them again too. As for whether it was worth it, I've only just got on a bus at Stevenage which is due to take nearly 2 hours to get to Cambridge so I'll get back to you on that...!!
  19. Dawnstar
    It's looking like about 3am. What's particularly annoying is I went to this one rather than either her debut or her last to avoid rail replacement buses both weekends. I now may as well have gone on Saturday, when the bus stint would have been shorter & my train ticket would have been cheaper.
  20. Dawnstar
    @Sophoife Sadly not. @jmhopton Yes, I wasn't interested in going until I found out it would be her last. I'm hoping to get a cheap Friday rush ticket as I don't want to pay much when I will probably skip at least one of the other parts, possibly even both.
  21. Dawnstar
    I'm very glad Laura Morera was on this evening & that I loved her in the role. I'm now stuck in rail replacement bus hell, after missing the last direct train because Covent Garden tube was temporarily closed, so at least I'm suffering for a good performance! I'm also starting to wonder if the railway has something against me seeing Morera as I had a terrible journey home after seeing her as Giselle too!
  22. Dawnstar
    I think the triple bill ending this season presents that dilemma to some people, myself included. I said on the predictions thread that if Melissa Hamilton didn't get a public performance as Manon I'd complain to Kevin O'Hare in person. This evening I tried to pre-empt any need to complain by putting in a request when I saw him at the stage door!
  23. Dawnstar
    Am I the only person who didn't mind Frankenstein? Not that I loved it but I thought it was fine. If it was revived again I'd consider seeing it again, if it was a good cast. I feel as though every one else hates it though! The only other Scarlett pieces I've seen are The Cunning Little Vixen, which I really enjoyed, Asphodel Meadows & an extract from No Man's Land.
  24. Dawnstar
    And Morera is safely on tonight's cast list! https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/40/cinderella-by-frederick-ashton/cast-list/51649
  25. Dawnstar
    I hope your flight was on time. I would have been terrified of delays. In fact even though I'm only coming from Cambridge I've decided to get a train half an hour earlier than usual just in case, as the other train line is screwed up.
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