Sophie_B

Hello, I am still looking for a Nutcracker SCS ticket, please do contact me if anyone finds themselves with a spare one Many thanks, Sophie

Hi all just to say that I’ve also been asking for a SCS ticket since Tuesday (see Sim’s post below), so do let me know if you have one as well please 😊

Thank you Sim 😅

Once Sim has sorted their ticket, I would also like to get in the queue in case anyone else is selling…

Hi Thelittleswans, I have DM'd you with info on 2x tickets I'm selling for this performance!

Same here!

Oh yes I meant the fugue bit which I read up on afterwards, apparently it’s in the Mary Skeaping version too which I also haven’t seen. Of course it’s been mentioned on the forum too, but I only read that after. Interesting thought about it relating to the time it’s supposedly set in, though don’t the costumes usually make it medieval even? I liked it and the choreography, even if it was jarring - it sort of made sense for the spirit world to have their own dance with music that may have been considered more “sophisticated” than the peasant dances. I shall now have to go on a forum deep dive because no doubt it was covered here last time ENB did Skeaping!

A utterly gorgeous performance tonight. I really really liked Cojocaru and Trusch last night but tonight I was blown away by Shevchenko / Olshanskyi and the whole company. Well deserved standing ovation where I was sitting, even before the flags came out. One of those nights where everything just seemed to “gel”. I also enjoyed the production / choreography more on second viewing, now that I knew what to expect (I liked it yesterday too but I did have a few moments like “wait that sounds like Bach? / woah that music is fast”).

Thanks for all these experiences. It took AGES for the confirmation emails to arrive and for it to show up in events but it did all appear, and apart from that the system seemed to cooperate. Personally one of my more dramatic ticket purchases since I'm in the US for work. Set an alarm for 3am (!!) to book tickets... Despite the internet in my accommodation being extremely patchy I managed to get all the ones I wanted, between 3G on my phone and intermittent computer internet. A miracle really

Rob I’m afraid I’ve just nabbed this ticket, but I now have a lower slips one row A to sell for that date if you’re interested

Oh, I do know that, but not that many AD's were also featured in teen movies so he got a few extra stares from fellow audience members I think Hurray! Thanks for the good news updates

It was on YouTube as part of their digital performance "Winter Festival" in early 2021 but I think it was only online for a month or so, sorry.

This is technically a performances seen post but yes!! So good. What a treat to see these young dancers some of whom look set to be the stars of the future for the mere price of £15 in the stalls https://static.roh.org.uk/digital/cast-sheets/Next-Generation-2022/ABT-10-06-22.pdf details of cast and pieces Dancers - wow! Kotomi Yamada (who has moved into the main company on an apprentice contract already - very unsurprising having seen her dance!), Jake Roxander, Yuma Matsuura (RBS grad) and Madison Brown were strongly featured, and rightly so since they were all brilliant, both technically and in terms of stage charisma. Kyra Coco also stood out, and some nice moments from Tillie Glatz and Elisabeth Beyer. Madison Brown (recently promoted into StuCo from ABT school) was front and centre of a lot of pieces including Grand Pas Classique and frankly I find it totally unbelievable that she is only 17. To be that good that young! I really enjoyed seeing some American choreography, too - haven't seen it performed much. "Stars and Stripes" was a fun opening that also looked technically very difficult, and I really enjoyed the Tharp piece "Known by Heart". I also really liked the solo piece Lora, La Follia variations had some fun moments, and by the end I was definitely in the mood to embrace For what is it all worth? which I saw streamed at some point during lockdown, too. I found it amusing that one of my friends decided that while he enjoyed all the dancing overall, as a British person he just couldn't deal with the "cringeworthy earnestness" coupled with "High School Musical American-ness" of For what is it all worth. The only choreography I didn't love was "Children's Song Dance" which went on a little too long and seemed to only be designed to let lots of people be on stage at the same time. Since we were talking about celebrity spotting at LWFC: Sasha Radetsky was in the audience, also Daria Klimentova.

Thank you!! My friend was wondering that at the premiere and I've forwarded her the explanation. I have started reading the book but not sure I can finish in time for my next and final viewing of the ballet on Wednesday. I've owned the book for 10 years just never got round to reading it. Maybe Wheeldon can do War and Peace next since that's a big book I've never had the motivation to get through

I think it's good to discuss difficult issues in ballet, but as Lindsay also said above, I'm unhappy with the idea that "my Insert National Origin friend said it's ok so it's not an issue" cancels out all other arguments, and the issues were all invented by people who enjoy being offended "on behalf of others". Nobody speaks for a whole culture, but obviously these arguments in broad strokes originated with groups from South Asia and other places, have been expressed by non-white Europeans and Americans for many years, and have been repeated specifically for ballet by dancers of (South) Asian backgrounds (for quotes, see for instance https://pointemagazine.com/la-bayadere-orientalist-stereotypes/ ) The idea that white? Europeans? cannot have an opinion about racist stereotypes or legacies of colonialism seems nonsensical to me - surely these issues affect the societies we all live in in all sorts of ways! And I wouldn't dream of assuming that everybody on this forum is White / Christian, if that were currently the case I would want that to change quite urgently, and I'd be looking to see if there is anything in the art form that is offputting to more diverse audiences. Yes, the idea that the Left has declared a War on Christmas is entirely imaginary, but surely issues can't just be solved by Non-White or Non-Christian people "accepting Western culture". At that point, it's all the same rhetoric as the one the Bolshoi people use to defend blackface: "this is our art, it's always been this way, there are no problems with it, it cannot be changed and if anyone is offended they should just not watch it". And let's not forget how recently it was that the idea of a certain "traditional look" of "ballet as it's always been" kept Black people esp. women out of the big companies! I think the Pennsylvania Ballet Bayadere of 2019 gave rise to really interesting nuanced discussions (I personally might have liked them to go a bit further, but I like the thoughtful approach). I enjoyed this piece by the scholar of Indian dance they consulted with https://philadelphiadance.org/dancejournal/2020/03/15/la-bayadere-and-the-footprint-of-the-indian-temple-dancer/ Also some of the reviews published at the time as food for thought

Hi Peanut68, I'm very sorry for your loss. Are these tickets for ABT still available?

Thank you Lindsay, that is exactly what I meant. For the record, I quite like postmodernism but am not a faithful Said disciple or anything (let's face it, he made a Big Argument quite a long time ago and lots of people poked valid holes in it since). But I do think he's a useful starting point for the idea that Europeans tended to conflate a lot of "the East" into one exotic "Other", which is crystal clear in many visual arts of the time. I was commenting more from general knowledge of representations of "the exotic" in Western culture and from colonial histories, where lots of exciting stuff has been written since Said but frankly it can get a bit jargony. Directly related to ballet, a quick Google brought up two recent MA dissertations (ie not quite peer reviewed articles), which as Lindsay said rely largely on Said and other postcolonial / postmodern scholars but may be of interest - sorry if this was the one you also linked Lindsay, I couldn't open your link Barnes, Racialized Visions of “The Other”: Histories of Orientalism Behind La Bayadére https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6bk77x4 Gendron, De-Orientalizing Classical Ballet in the Twenty-First Century https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=stu_theses

I am by no means an expert so I won't try and go into too much detail and there are a lot of ifs and buts as to how colonial power actually "works". But as far as I understand, the figure of the temple dancer was roughly based on the Indian tradition of devadasi, which the British seem to have misunderstood, equated with prostitution, and eventually outlawed. This was part of a whole range of social reform movements throughout the 19th century which superficially studied, misunderstood and reshaped Indian traditions to fit British perceptions of what culture, education, or religion was acceptable. To be clear - I'm not saying that the ballet's stereotypes were specifically put there by a British person past or present. I'm saying that because Britain colonised India from the late 18th century onwards, this skewed colonialist lens (on what India was and who Indians were) influenced European perceptions of the subcontinent more generally. Petipa was by all accounts highly impressed by Indian culture and dancing and did not set out to wilfully denigrate the culture - he was just strongly influenced by the stereotypes and misunderstandings swirling around at the time. I totally get the perspective that a ballet made in a different continent about Western stereotypes would be quite funny rather than harmful. BUT, if that continent had at the time also maintained an exploitative colonial presence in Europe that suppressed and altered traditions, rated white Europeans as second class humans and built an unequal economic system that meant the other continent were benefitting from the raw materials and work of Europe, I might feel differently.

Thank you as ever for the great photos Rob! I forgot to mention that my "celebrity spotting" yesterday was Kevin O'Hare catching up with Federico Bonelli over refreshments from the cafe in the interval. (Unless I'm much mistaken. I tried very hard not to stare too much

Thank you Lizbie for your comments above - American Dirt is a really interesting comparison, but I think slightly different. The outcry about American Dirt was that it was a white woman inventing a story about Mexicans which, surprise surprise, was about drug barons. Like Water is a balletic adaptation of a pre-existing novel with permission of the author that recreates specific characters on stage. I think it is clear from the costumes, but also the choreography that care has been taken to situate it in a specific historical and cultural context. For instance, I note in the Guardian review of LWFC that the reviewer thought it was clever of Wheeldon to represent marriage with ribbons, and sure it works but the starting point is clearly the Mexican wedding tradition of binding bride and groom together with a ribbon / rope. At no point does the musical suggest that Mexicans in general are somehow a bunch of people who have sexual fantasies when they eat a quail dish. There may well be those who believe it should have been done by someone with a Mexican background or incorporated more specifically Mexican music rather than "general Latin American influence in an abstract modern score" but it is really up to the author who she gives those rights to and realistically there are only so many companies / choreographers who have the clout to find financial backing for and pull off a major new 3 act production. I realise there are stages of the cultural appropriation debate but mostly, it comes down to respect, doesn't it? Others have pointed out that many ballets including Swan Lake "national dances" also romanticise / essentialise nationalities, which we may want to let go a little bit more easily because historically these countries have mostly been part of Europe rather than being oppressed by it. But I think even the programme for Scarlett's Swan Lake said something about him doing research on the folk dances of those countries to modernise it a bit. I don't think any of this compares to La Bayadere. I know there are some who would just like to be rid of it, I'm not one of them because I LOVE much of the choreography. We can't keep the ballet without acknowledging its Orientalist origins, but I feel like they could at least tweak it further to take the edge off the most offensive bits? The story is steeped in British colonial perceptions of "temple dancers", general 19th century European stereotypes of "lusty Orientals", it conflates Hinduism, Buddhism and no doubt a bunch of other cultural / religious practices, the costumes make ostensibly Indian characters look like Egyptian? Turkish? belly dancers, the fakirs who are supposed to be holy men crawl around on the floor as if they were less-than-human. I have a soft spot for the ridiculous stuffed tiger in the ROH production but come on, can we find other visual ways to tell the audience that they are not in Europe? Nobody expects it to be a documentary, but it's as if we decided to set a story in "the West" where an abbott decides to harass a nun, they all wear Native American costumes ("but make it sexy") and in the final scene they all end up at a synagogue where a torah comes to life and performs a merry dance. Frankly I'd be surprised if ROH revives it in its current form given the work they've clearly been doing behind the scenes since 2020. I'm sorry if this is going a bit off topic from the original article, but I just caught up on this discussion and thought it raised some really interesting questions!

Such a great performance! I was sad not to get to see Akane Takada in Swan Lake, so very happy to see her in this. Such an expressive actress and delicate, beautiful dancer, and a great partnership with Alexander Campbell. I'm not sure all the smaller roles reached the heights of last Thursday's first cast, but overall a thoroughly enjoyable performance. I did have (much) better seats than last week, so was able to appreciate some of the nuances better. For instance, I didn't realise that in the first part of Tita and Pedro's PDD in the laundry room, they don't actually ever touch, I really liked what that added to the tension.

I realise we're no longer strictly on the Swan Lake topic here, but did you see them trialling a Netflix-style streaming service this past winter? I replied to the mailing list asking for beta-testers and gave my two cents at the end. It was a little cumbersome because I found it annoying to set up the link between laptop and TV, and if I'm just going to watch something on my laptop then it's probably while cooking or something, so not fully paying attention. The choice of pieces was a bit limited (obviously only one recording / cast per ballet, and I'd already seen most of those streamed or owned the DVD) but it would have potential for those who are curious to see recordings of multiple casts, or an on demand pay as you go streaming library. Not sure about the monthly subscription model unless there is tons of content.

I really enjoyed it as an overall performance, between music, dance, set, costumes, lighting... The first night had truly luxury casting, everyone really fantastic, I only wish Mayara Magri's role had had a bit more dancing. It'll be a tough ask for other casts to come close tbh, but I'm looking forward to seeing how they interpret it. Overall, I find the modern story ballets a little annoying sometimes because too much time is spent on exposition and driving the story forward and too little on "ballet dancing". I did have that feeling at times yesterday, but I guess it's just what you have to do if you want to faithfully translate a fairly complex book onto the stage. Like other commenters, I think the flow between "story" and "exploring emotions" was overall not quite there. It was like there wasn't time to let the action stop for long enough to let the characters fully sink into the emotions? And yes, the last PDD was perhaps the first time that that really happened. Other memorable bits were Anna Rose O'Sullivan / Gertrudis's showgirl scene (yes, it was OTT and obvious and I was laughing out loud by the end, but frankly if they're going to do "sex" on stage I vastly prefer this to a MacMillan rape scene), Cesar Corrales as whirlwind dashing soldier, several scenes where literal ghosts of the pasts appear (Laura Morera being particularly great of course but also Christina Arestis), and Joseph Sissens also really seemed to be having FUN in the wedding scene in the corps. The more subtle scenes, like the two leads finding each other in the laundry room, were also quite beautiful and their dancing and acting was spectacular throughout, but in my memory the choreography of those is drowned out by the bigger and bolder scenes. Repeat viewing might well change my mind. I actually enjoyed the big set pieces of wedding and revolutionaries (with the music for the wedding reminiscent of Westside Story's Mambo, as my companion remarked) - it may not have been as technically demanding as a classical ballet corps dance, but it was really joyful. I've only seen Alice and Winter's Tale once each, streamed, so I'm not familiar enough with those ballets to find LWFC repetitive but the echoes were certainly quite obvious to me (the tree and Elena's ghost). I loved the costumes in the beginning - calaveras that turn into... were they meant to be Fates? Hovering above the wedding feast especially? Reminded me of Goya's Atropos somehow. All the costumes were great (though period-appropriate long skirts meant you could barely see feet at times from the amphi), though I didn't like the "lust" corps costumes in Gertrudis's scene.

Hi I would love the 6 June one if still available? Please feel free to DM me to sort out payment etc

I agree that this whole speculation thing is getting out of hand, so I won't add anything to that discussion, but just to note that Marianna Tsembenhoi the Aud Jebsen Young Dancer is Ukrainian and may well be dancing in the corps that night.