Jamesrhblack

"A deviant?"

 

Surely, it's a nightmare memory of Rasputin helping the child to walk with Anna (thinking of herself as Anastasia) then rejecting that memory, hence the throw to the wings.

 

Yes, it's an unsettling image but perspective please.

A truly haunting evening. It's a long journey from East Sussex to Southampton, four hours by train, and involves an overnight stay too but I'm very glad I made the effort.

 

Akram Khan's Dust moved me to tears the two times I saw it, and in recollection too, and at the interval I wondered if I'd out too much emotional anticipation in to this evening.

 

Although there were some thrilling visual moments, I particularly enjoyed the dancers becoming the mechanics of the loom, I wasn't convinced that the relationship between Giselle and Albrecht was presented with enough commitment for us to invest in. Her madness and death seemed to come from nowhere and I was both non plussed and non committed after Act One.

 

Conversely, Act Two really drew me in: my Giselle pre-conceptions (and it was the first classical ballet I really loved, listening to my aunts' Ace of Clubs LP of the ROH / Irvine version and then the Monte Carlo / Bonynge version endlessly as well as it being my first ROH visit with Sibley and Macleary) were swiftly forgotten.

 

Myrtha, having exchanged an act of jumping for bourréeing, was, with her cohorts, chilling, Giselle being reborn to a living death truly chilling, and Hilarion re-enacting Giselle's death truly unsettling. I really liked the references to the traditional choreography (mirroring those in the music): the "cow hops," Albrecht just missing Giselle as she moves past and the raised hand in the pas de deux.

 

Perhaps I missed the emotional release of the traditional version but it's important not just to watch with new eyes but to learn how to watch too.

 

Of the commitment shown by the cast (superb corps with Rojo, Streeter - almost as moving as they were in Dust and another wonderful May - ish / September pairing, Corrales and Quaegebeur) there can be no question, nor of the excellence of the design and stage craft with the orchestra absolutely committed) there can be no question.

 

This one will undoubtedly resonate and grow in recollection.

Ok, I have tried very hard to be civil but I strongly resent the implication from Jamesrhblack and MAB that I am projecting this issue out of my imagination.

 

I know from real life conversations, and from other posts here that I was not the only person to find this disturbing. I also have huge problems with much of the ideology pushed by the "safe spaces" movement, and would strongly defend freedom of artistic expression(see my posts on Judas Tree, The Invitation and Turn of the Screw above). However, it does not follow that anything done with child performers on a stage must automatically be acceptable. There is a limit. That limit for me was crossed by this choreography.

 

Jamesrhblack has not been able to come up with a convincing argument as to why the choreography was necessary to the ballet, or indeed appropriate, so he has decided, ad hominem, to attribute the problem to my dirty mind.

Lindsay, apologies if you felt I was implying a "dirty mind." That was absolutely not my intention and I am sorry if it came across in that way.

 

As I have written, I would not advocate advantage being taken of a performer, child or adult. Different people will react in different ways to what is presented and perhaps I will feel differently after I have revisited Anastasia in performance next month.

 

However, my recollection of this moment in the ballet (which is indeed an unsettling image even in memory) is far more to do with an evocation of Rasputin physically manoeuvring Alexei in a way that read to me of his using his influence over the child to gain control physically and emotionally. The sudden discarding is shocking too. An earlier poster has also referred to how this moment is a nightmare version of Rasputin helping Alexei to walk again from a previous act.

 

However, given that the scene is set in a madhouse and dealing with the memories of a woman who believes she is Anastasia (and is processing those memories) we should not be surprised to see some unnerving images.

 

I appreciate that MacMillan was a probing, even provocative choreographer, and not all his work reads to me, but I don't believe he was an irresponsible one. I guess one positive out of these exchanges is that we are at least addressing our responses to choreography and theatrical invention rather than just comparing performances.

 

I've probably written more than enough now but would like to reiterate Lindsay that nothing personally adverse to you was intended.

Indeed Vanartus.

 

Art holds up a mirror to life; sometimes our own interpretations may say more about ourselves than the artistic creator intended. Indeed, I found in my own professional stage career that directors were far from reluctant to have a sense of ambiguity about their intentions rather than dictating a response.

 

Some Art will be uncomfortable. Certainly, although I'd never advocate harm to performers, I'd be very reluctant to see a "safe place" erected around the ballet stage (such as the nonsense seemingly increasingly perpetrated in universities with students protected from confronting issues that might not meet with their own criteria).

As Pulcinella points out, the role was originally danced by a small female adult.

 

However, whilst the moment is manipulative and uncomfortable, it doesn't read sexually to me. That is your interpretation Lindsay.

 

As a matter of interest, would you propound that a boy soprano and (as increasingly occurs now) a child soprano should not be cast as Miles and Flora in Britten's The Turn of the Screw which is undoubtedly about sexual abuse?

I've not yet seen this revival but remember that moment being uncomfortable to watch last time round. However, isn't it the point that it is a representation (graphic and exaggerated through nightmare) of Rasputin's manipulation of the Romanovs through his seeming ability to control Alexei's haemophilia. It's not comfortable to watch but nor should it be. The situation will have been explained to the child taking the role and cleared with his teachers, the ballet staff and the chaperone department and, from my experience as a child working, admittedly as a singer, in an adult environment meany years ago, I don't think you should under estimate the emotional maturity and understanding of children working at a young age in a sophisticated "adult" world. I'm not condoning child exploitation: rather, guarding investing the emotional reaction to a theatrical situation with a sense of it taking place in a "real" situation. I'm not sure I've expressed myself as clearly as I wish on this but hope many will understand what I'm trying to write.

Perfect summary! Act III brilliant and Osipova thrilling. For me, Acts I and II add nothing at all and are unbelievably tedious. Beautiful sets and costumes, but nothing else. Dull choreography, mainly dull music (and I love Tchaikovsky!), and almost nothing happens. Also a problem with the gunshots in Act II - i.e. no gunshots - so it was a silent revolution and frankly just looked silly. I thought maybe the person with the gun had been as bored as me and had fallen asleep. I must also say that I found the big pas de deux in Act II really quite horrible - awkward, difficult, unmusical, unilluminating, and unattractive. Bonelli struggled with it and even Nunez didn't look comfortable. With much of the choreography in this Act I found myself thinking that MacMillan must really not like his dancers.

 

And, given that we now know that Anna A was not Anastasia, the full-length work makes no sense anyway. Act III still works superbly as a study of someone who thinks they are Anastasia; but since she isn't, why do we need Anastasia's back story in such tedious detail in Acts I and II? What would be more interesting would be to see Anna A's back story. The ballet is - or should be - about her, not about Anastasia. It's a study of loss of identity, confusion, fear etc, and the Russian/Imperial aspects are riveting and very well integrated. And the music works excellently too. Acts I and II are entirely superfluous, and would be even if they were better than they are.

 

I also found myself really questioning why the RB have revived this as a three-acter. The quality of Acts I and II are so far below MacMillan at his best that it's quite inexplicable. Whereas Act III is powerful, original and fascinating as well as providing a great vehicle for a lead female.

It was interesting to hear Lauren Cuthbertson discussing Anna Anderson's claim when i caught up on iPlayer. Her feeling was that at the time the ballet was created there were many, including MacMillan, who felt, or hoped, that she was indeed Anastasia and that whatever DNA has since proved the last act has to be played with Anna firmly believing in her identity, which she seems to have done, or at least maintained (there are one or two claims of her muttering darkly things along the lines of "who I am and who I claim to be" and of her failing a lie detetctor test late in life). Many of the supporters of Anna Anderson made mention of the "memories" she had of Tsarist Russia and felt that these were incompatible with any imposter. Again, later evidence suggests that these "memories" were very much built upon conversations held and books scoured as her "claim" emerged and that Anderson was often passive in her acquiescence of her proclaimed identity, leaving it to supporters to do much of the public work in pushing for recognition.

 

This is a slightly convoluted background to my own stance that Acts 1 and 2 do enhance the impact of Act 3, whether in presenting an idealised world shattered by revolution, from which Anna Anderson emerged, the nostalgia for a lost world that enabled those claims to find a remarkably secure footing in the public imagination, and to suggest the untroubled past to which an injured Polish factory worker (for such it seems was Anna Anderson, her identity as Franziska Schankowska proven by the DNA tests) in her desperation to escape the grim reality of her own existence reached out. Somebody above questioned the bed moving: I'd always taken that as an indication that the bed is where Anderson feels safe and that in her mind it becomes linked with the ship from the first act (whether Anastasia's memory or Anderson's appropriation if it) thus framing the action and linking start with finish. If I recall correctly, one of the survival stories, had the Romanovs saved from the cellar with doubles executed in their place and the entire family living out the rest of their lives on a yacht in the Gulf of Finland.

 

For those who feel that the ballet is now irrelevant, given that Anderson's claim has been disproved (although she still has adherents who believe that there was something manufactured about the DNA testing), I would suggest that it is also about more than an historical figure. It is surely also about memory, identity, loss of identity, and that yearning for a past that can never be ours, however much we long for it, a highly appropriate theatrical image, given how much many of us as audience members invest in watching a world that is not ours on stage in which we nevertheless see our own lives and aspirations reflected. How many little girls watch their first Sleeping Beauty and dance the ballet at home, convinced, in their own minds, that they are also a princess. Anna Anderson became that princess in her own mind and later life, even if, after initial fêtings and luxury, the fairy tale scarcely lived up to an ever more grim reality.

Well, Saturday evening was utter enchantment. I too topped and tailed the Fille run and have to say (write) that for sheer joy and tenderness, Marquez and Campbell rather outshone Morera (who had seemed a little subdued) and Muntagirov. Marquez's sheer exuberance in this role is absolutely captivating and if we might think it rather remarkable that a South American seems to have found her fullest expression in what might be thought a quintessentially English role, let us not forget Sir Frederick Ashton's South American upbringing. I'd agree her shoes were occasionally noisy but she then turned that too dazzling effect in the sequence of prancing steps across the diagonal at the end of the Essler pas de deux. She has not always been a favourite dancer but in this role I'd put her up there with fondest memories of Lesley Collier and Ann Jenner. Her sheer impudence, her temper, her glow, her technical assurance that never here became an end in itself and, of course, her exquisitely tender and nuanced partnership with Alexander Campbell moved me greatly at the time and brings a slight dampness to the gills in recollection even as I type this. He is, of course, an absolute favourite dancer of mine, and it was marvellous to see the new assurance of his stage manner: he has already grown in to his principal status and as partner, technician and dance actor, I'd have said it was more or less flawless. There can be something very magical in these May / September pairings (remember Collier and Mukhademov or, more recently, Yanowsky and Clarke) and I wish very much that they had had further opportunities to dance together. Bennet Gartside was a delightful Simone, not overdoing the drag act, and clogging with delightful vitality, as well as establishing an affectionate on stage relationship with Lise, whilst Luca Acri brought some of the pathos to Alain that I felt missing on the first night. There were no exaggerated wiggles and the sense that here was a shy boy who knew what he ought to do but couldn't quite manage to do it was very touching. A flower show, some tears, some elation: nobody can say goodbye quite like the ballet. Does anybody know if Marquez is intending to dance elsewhere or was this indeed her last on stage outing?

At the risk of getting scythed down (again  !!), I have already talked about Muntagirov in this context. However, and given that Hirano, Ball, Clarke etc are likely to be Hungarian Officers, I do feel that opportunities have been missed to cast (and thus stretch) other dancers. Maybe there should have been more performances but, in places, there has been a tendency to go for people who have essayed the roles before.  In addition to Muntagirov as Rudolf and Nunez as Mary, i would have wanted to cast (for example) Calvert as Larisch; O'Sullivan as Stephanie; and Acri, Sambe and Yudes as Bratfisch.

 

I am not brave enough or foolish enough to share my disbelief fully. Suffice it to say that I find it puzzling that Lamb has both of the main female roles, astonishing that Nunez has gone back to dancing Mitzi Caspar and disappointing that Campbell, now a Principal, remains as Bratfisch. Some of that may have something to do with filming, of course.

 

[Edited to add that this is in response to David's question (immediately above but now on the previous page) which I omitted to quote.]

Of course, Bratfisch and Mitzi were both created by Principal Dancers, Graham Fletcher and Laura Connor...

I thought Kaneko was injured?

 

Oh no, not again. I hadn't heard about that ...

Slightly surprised that Kaneko, Kish and Clarke are not cast in anything...

At the risk of getting scythed down (again !!), I have already talked about Muntagirov in this context. However, and given that Hirano, Ball, Clarke etc are likely to be Hungarian Officers, I do feel that opportunities have been missed to cast (and thus stretch) other dancers. Maybe there should have been more performances but, in places, there has been a tendency to go for people who have essayed the roles before. In addition to Muntagirov as Rudolf and Nunez as Mary, i would have wanted to cast (for example) Calvert as Larisch; O'Sullivan as Stephanie; and Acri, Sambe and Yudes as Bratfisch.

 

I am not brave enough or foolish enough to share my disbelief fully. Suffice it to say that I find it puzzling that Lamb has both of the main female roles, astonishing that Nunez has gone back to dancing Mitzi Caspar and disappointing that Campbell, now a Principal, remains as Bratfisch. Some of that may have something to do with filming, of course.

 

[Edited to add that this is in response to David's question (immediately above but now on the previous page) which I omitted to quote.]

I like Nuñez enormously (who doesn't) but I can't envisage her height and maturity working well for Vetsera (ideal, surely for Larisch, except that that was choreographed for a small dancer) and although Campbell is one of my absolute favourite dancers I'd think his lack of inches would complicate the partnering, albeit he coped extraordinarily well with Mendizabal in Pigeons.

PS I remember reading that MacMillan was keen on Vetsera/Larisch exchange of roles, I think he had that in mind for Seymour and Park but I don't think it ever happened...

No, although Park did dance Vetsera. Others to have danced both include Alfreda Thorogood. Jennifer Penney, Lesley Collier and Mara Galeazzi (famously, once switching roles between matinee and evening shows). In 2013, she was cast only as Vetsera before retirement. Morera has been saying in at least two Dance Insight videos that she has been around a long time. Let us hope that her withdrawal from Larisch this time isn't following precedent. Were Rosato and Conley the only two to dance both Larisch and Elizabeth?

Some exciting surprises in the Mayerling casting. Didn't see McRae coming as Rudolf, especially with Lamb as Vetsera, but Morera as Vetsera is less unexpected as she was dancing the final pas de deux with Acosta at the RAH. Delighted that Cowley will get Larisch (she's a really luscious dancer) although a little surprised that neither Morera nor Nunez now cast. Hurrah for Yanowsky and Campbell. Very pleased that one of my artists will be singing Katharina Schratt ????

I find it so sad that Alexander wasn't around 10 years ago to partner Marquez. They are so good together and a wonderful partnership might have developed. Someone mentioned 'chivalrous' above. I like to think that he would have treated her with respect, and appreciated her artistry and her talent. And vice versa, of course.

Absolutely. I have such fond memories of their first Don Q where her evident pride in his achievement, as well as her enjoyment in dancing with him, was absolutely clear, and I am sorry, with no disrespect intended to Yuhui Choe, that they did not dance Pigeons together.

The sunrise is still done through the lighting. The backdrop is a blue sky with white clouds. I checked this tonight.

I thought this was a reference to "Red in the morning, Shepherd's warming" and a presage of the storm that disrupts the Maypole dance....

In answer to,Blossom above....yes I really liked Osipova as Lise too.

 

I think the problem is I haven't seen her do it with the right partner yet for this ballet.

 

I didn't see her this time round but last.

 

I feel that it's so important the two leads really gel together in this ballet which is one of the reasons why Hayward and Sambe were so successful just recently. It was somehow the two of them together which made it happen.

 

Although I can't quite imagine Polunin in the role of Colas .....you never know!! Perhaps the two,of them together??

 

Many years ago Baryshnikov made a slightly more of the technical side in this ballet but was still absolutely charming in this role. I can still see him with the ribbon in his mouth pretending to be a horse!! He was really terrific honestly. I've been trying to remember who was his Lise......anybody remember .....could have been Collier....another delight!

 

I saw him with Ann Jenner. It's a blissful memory and the speed of those two in the coda of the Essler pas de deux indelibly branded on my mind's eye :-)

I was having an unexpectedly intense ballet conversation over dinner last night and the lady with whom I was talking propounded some interesting observations. The Cockerel is a symbol of fertility, the Maypole is part of a fertility rite, ribbons keep people together but can also entangle them, Lise becomes the maypole and then moves towards a marriage in her Act 2 mime which is probably consummated before the final pas de deux. I've read similar observations elsewhere concerning the butter churn and the one handed lift.

 

Fille works at many levels, most enduring art does, and I wonder if it is these deeper levels, not necessarily identified but perhaps sensed, that have kept it in the repertoire. If it were just charming, I think it might have faded by now.

 

Of course, although notionally set in France, it also seems a hymn to the Suffolk countryside that Ashton loved so much: for me, there is something almost heart stopping when the drop curtain goes up on the harvest scene with the synthesis of man/woman and nature through the working of the land that sustains them.

[Morera was certainly faultless but she did not excite me. I found her lacking in energy and the essential pertness which I can imagine Lise needs. She was effortlessly outdazzled by Muntagirov"

I rather agree with you, penelopesimpson. The joie de vivre with which Muntagirov danced the role meant that I couldn't take my eyes off him, and if Morera was taking the subtle approach, it was too subtle in comparison to her partner. It was very sweet, but it highlighted to me their age difference, not something that I would normally think about.

 

There is a rather grudging review of Morera in today's links from the Sunday Express. Having also been a little less impressed than I'd hoped after the first might and reading penelopesimpson and cavycapers, I am trying to determine what might be amiss and wonder if it is to do with the injury she suffered last season and also, ungallantly, a matter of seniority. On the Insights Evenings for both Frankenstein and Anastasia she comments on the fact that she has been around for a long time (or words to that effect) and I wonder if the slightly muted impression is a combination of these two factors. Injury takes longer to heal in a more mature dancer and, sadly, technique and stamina seem often to fade just as an artist's interpretative insight is maturing most fully.

Now, interestingly, that's what I *don't* like about that interpretation - which has crept in in recent years, unfortunately, to my eyes, because it never used to happen. I find it totally inappropriate to the character and the period - it's way too 21st-century in the demands it makes. Yes, she needs to hold out the arm, but a bit more modestly, rather than demanding "AGAIN!". IMO.

Nor me. It seems evidence of a coarsening of tone that has crept in, other symptoms of which concerned me on the first night.

The Two Pigeons Blu Ray has arrived and, as anticipated, it is Kaneko not Morera, despite the listing on the ROH website.

It was broadcast on 3.00pm Christmas Day 1969 by the BBC. 

 

FULL CAST: http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3311511be3634273b918fd863992d802

 

I can recall almost nothing of this (I was five years old at the time) beyond being allowed to watch with my parents who thought I'd get bored but sat entranced throughout it and then demanded to go to ballet class (which didn't happen for nearly a year) although a trip was expedited to Nutcracker at the RFH and I do remember asking my father as we walked out of the matinee if they would ever do it again and when he replied"This evening" asking if we could go back in. The following year, there was a matinee of Giselle. It was Sibley's London debut in the role and my most abiding memory of that is the sheer number of flowers on stage afterwards.

Good to be back at the ROH for Fille and I enjoyed the evening very much although not unconditionally. There seemed some tension in Act 1, understandably as it was the first night of the ballet season, and even some unwonted overplaying which turned to coarseness. Alain's bottom wiggling with the flute is simply crass (and it's not what Alexander Grant did originally as can be seen on the original cast recording now available) and some of Thomas' groping of Widow Simone was heavy handed indeed, literally. I was surprised to see the normally fastidious Gary Avis indulging in this. The problem with such exaggerations is that they distort the tone of the ballet. Yes, its touch is light but its emotions (not just between Lise and Colas) run deep at times and if an audience is conditioned only to see comedy even such tender moments as Lise's little bourrees en l'air as Colas lifts her through the farmhouse door raise an unwanted laugh. That Alain is genuinely hurt by the denouement is shown very clearly in the extraordinarily twisted forwards and back lunges that Ashton choreographs as Lise and Colas plead with Simone; it's not just funny.

 

Something seemed to go awry on two of the big lifts too, one in the first scene in a dismount and a second in the Essler coda which didn't happen at all. Nevertheless, after the interval things seemed much more settled and here the affectionate relationship established between Laura Morera's feisty Lise and Thomas Whitehead's pleasingly unguyed Simone achieved moments of real intimacy adding resonance to the emotional truth of the evening. There was a lovely moment in the first act when in mutual frustration they struck the same pose in mirror form on the bench. This Lise was indeed her mother's daughter.

 

I was pleased to see Morera in a leading role again. She can certainly bend and the neatness and detail of her placement and the sincerity of her acting are always a real pleasure to watch. Her frustration, boredom, then almost rapturous tenderness in the Act 2 mime scene were absolutely beautiful and her embarrassment on being discovered read true as well. For me, she did not, on this occasion, match the sheer technical exhilaration and brilliance that I recall from Collier, Jenner, Marquez and Nunez but her partnership with Muntagirov had true sincerity and connection. I imagine it would be hard for any Lise to dominate dance wise against the wonderful Muntagirov whose effortless virtuosity allied to long limbed lyricism and a joyously natural stage personality seemed to glow ever more brightly as the evening progresssed. Previous preferred Colases (Baryshnikov, Campbell, Jeffries, Mukhamedov, Wall) have been more compact physically: indeed, I don't think I've ever seen such a tall and 'leggy' dancer in the role but his technical command is absolute, his stage manner winning.

 

I'm anticipating a greater emotional frisson at Marquez's farewell (nobody can say goodbye like a ballet audience and her partnership with Campbell, rather like Collier's with Mukhamedov, is one of those that I'm truly sorry not to have seen able to be developed further), but for all the niggles, it was a lovely evening from the red in the morning, whose warning comes true in the storm that interrupts the harvest festivities, to the singing exit and Alain's delight in finding his umbrella, and the orchestra seemed on notably positive form under Barry Wordsworth's always affectionate, sympathetic baton.

The only additional change I spotted is that Howells is no longer listed as a soloist. 

 

It states on his Assistant Ballet Master page that he retired as a dancer in 2016. Sander Blommaert has also left.

Morera is listed as the Gipsy Girl on the ROH DVD / Blu Ray release of Pigeons. It was Kaneko in the cinema surely...