FionaM

Rehearsal clips https://www.instagram.com/stories/jameskpett/3354036269849175909?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=MTg0Ynd2YjRrcXUwag==

Hardly comparable! It’s a great poster and idea for BRB and Black Sabbath to collaborate. I found the actual ballets (there are 3 separate acts) … to be fun but trite. Think ‘high school musical’.

Search “Creole Giselle” or “Dance Theatre of Harlem” Giselle on YouTube for clips of legendary Virginia Johnson in that version.

I’ve also seen only short pieces … at the Icons gala and atprevious Ballet Night’s galas. Each one has impressed me with their emotional intensity, musicality and the arc of the choreography. No idea how just two dancers will sustain this in an hour long programme. I am looking forward to it too.

@Sebastian thank you for mentioning the tempi. I completely forgot to and I was rather shocked at the time by the pace of the music. I hadn’t known it was intentional. It caused me some anxiety on behalf that the dancers. I did notice the conductor was paying close attention to all the soloists. Bravo to the dancers for dancing at this speed. 👏👏👏

News that a gala in Belgrade Serbia will be livestreamed on YouTube SATURDAY 27.4.2024 19.00 Belgrade, Serbia UTC+2 18.00 BST / UK https://www.youtube.com/live/0YNhN5D48I4?si=_CLfghXgYikJNnX3 Impressive participants and programme: Fumi Kaneko & Vadim Muntagirov (Royal Ballet) BLACK SWAN COPPELIA Anna Tsygankova & Giorgi Potskhishvili (Dutch National Ballet) TANGO by Xin Peng Wang DON QUIXOTE Shiori Kase & Gabriele Frola (English National Ballet) CORSAIRE NO MAN’S LAND by Liam Scarlett Nao Harada & Guilio Diligente (Finnish National Ballet) TALISMAN AYE solo for male dancer by Emrecan Tanis https://www.instagram.com/p/C6ItXCtIxbi/?igsh=aHVtcjZ5ZHN4dGpk Arranged by Petar Dorcevski, former first soloist and assistant artistic director with Slovenia National Ballet in Ljubljana. Trained in Belgrade, Princess Grace in Monaco, and Vienna State Schools.

Diamonds pdd with Jakob Feyferlik at Artwave gala in Taipei in May. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C58Yn3ICsL-/?igsh=M25nczMyNW9qb2xi

probably a student who got worried they’d be reported!

I was making a joke! I’m personally glad that the RB has moved away from type-casting.

@Missfrankiecat I guess the prince should stand out as different to the rest of the court, so this physical difference helps 😉 And so we return to typecasting !!! The elegant slim and long legged dancers are the Prince and the virtuoso short ones are his friend or jester. It was ever thus 🤣

Sleeping Beauty at the Bristol Hippodrome on Saturday 20/4 (evening): I’d not seen this production before. Loved it. Beautiful sumptuous sets and very French costumes. Though I found the fairies costumes to be too samey. I enjoyed having the Lilac Fairy as a character walk on part to counter Carabosse. The Lilac Fairy has a beautiful lace costume which I wished was more lilac. It seems off-white which is lit by a pale lilac spot. But this is a small gripe and may be different in each theatre. Bravo to the cast on coping with what seemed like a cramped stage (diagonals having to be foreshortened, corps de ballet waltzes looked cramped, etc) and clearly narrow wings squashing tutus on exit. I believe this theatre is known for its very limited backstage space. I had thought it was reasonable size for ballet … we’ve had the ENB Akram Khan Giselle with its huge wall without a problem. I do hope the space problems won’t deter BRB from continuing to tour here. We don’t get much good quality ballet in Bristol. One visit annually from ENB and one from BRB. And both only for 3 days since Covid. Yu Kurihara was a sparkly Aurora who interacted well with the 4 Princes. I enjoyed their individual characterisation and their more obvious admiration for her than I’ve seen in other productions. I don’t mind that more than one balance of Yu’s had minor problems. She covered well. They are a menace in my view! She clearly is a very good turner and has beautiful lines, musicality and grace with a lovely smile. I enjoyed her performance very much. Lachlan Monaghan had super high and fully completed double tours in the very difficult act 3 Prince Florimund solos. Good partnering too … which highlighted some of the less good partnering by the 4 Princes earlier. He coped well with the interminable ‘come hithers’ from Aurora and ‘not yet’ from the Lilac Fairy in the dream sequence. Eilis Small has a super aura of calm as the Lilac Fairy. I felt everything was safe in her hands. And Daria Stanciulescu was clearly having a ball letting rip as Carabosse. Bravo to both!!! A few of the soloists who caught my eye were Sofia Liñares as both a fairy and the Bluebird Princess. Olivia Chang Clarke flew across the stage en pointe in her fairy solo, and principal Miki Mizutani whose class shone through as the Fairy of Modesty. (No idea if she was covering unexpectedly. Is it usual for BRB principals to do such solos on tour? I’m looking forward to seeing the Celine Gittens and Yasiel Hodelin Bello cast later this week in London.

I’m gutted that this ballet has gone from the repertoire for now. I would very much have liked to have seen it live.

It was a lack of elegance and grace in all the swans. I disagreed re Marianela (although there was occasional flatfootedness) but I saw her point about the corps of swans. Some of this I’d say was due to the ‘busy’ and complex choreography for the corps. It needed more rehearsal to my eyes. And the swans generally needed more lightness in their action. All of which should have been addressed before first night

it is this type of response to an honest personal and individual opinion that turns forum members away and scares others from commenting. It is irrelevant what anyone’s expertise is. Any reaction is valid. I didn’t take the original comments to be rude or disrespectful. Everyone’s turn of phrase is different. Perhaps we should ask for clarification first. I took the word heavy to mean the cygnets were perhaps noisy or even thudding. They can be, the choreography and music almost requires it. The art is to transcend that. The cygnet quartet are not always successful. The disaster of the two swans I took to mean that they were not coordinated, had bad style or were poorly rehearsed. Maybe there were other problems. I will finish with a quote from an audience member friend, who is hugely experienced and well traveled to the major theatres of ballet, who said of the opening night of Swan Lake at ROH : ”Vadim is the only swan on this lake” That’s fairly damning of the staging of this production. I do hope it has improved over the run.

The RBS students are higher calibre and the RB cannot take them all. The Aud Jebsen young dancers scheme at RB is 6 only I think, and there are up to 30 graduating dancers at RBS each year. Some go abroad of course. It shouldn’t be surprising that many of the graduating group go to BRB and ENB.