Jump to content

TomS

Members
  • Posts

    10
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

46 Excellent

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. I was at Mayerling with Akane Takada and Ryoichi Hirano who replaced Steven last night. Their 2nd act bed room PDD, especially, was so fluid and intense. Having able to seen all combinations this season so far, pending Sambe/Hayward tonight, I would rate it among the best I’ve seen. Wow. Wow. Wow. The conducting was interesting as I was also there on Friday (Akane and Matthew) and I believe the tempo was faster last night which partially contributed to added vibrancy overall. The orchestra did the entrance of Baroness Larisch to Vetsera home in the 2nd act right this time. Yasmine’s was very convincing Baroness Larisch compared to her first appearance in my opinion, and overall, it turned out to be one of my best viewing of 7 Mayerlings so far. It’s so sad that tonight is the last day of the performances, but I hope Sambe/Hayward/Lamb would do it even better.
  2. Hi Dawnstar, I have spotted Sumina Sasaki and Bomin Kim, but not Yu Hang in addition to Mica Bradbury MoVR mentioned earlier. That makes it twelve of them. As for the male dancers, you're spot on and there was David Donnelly.
  3. It's from page 39 on June 2022 issue. It's available online, but requires a subscription or a single purchase. I have a digital-only subscription on pocketmags.com and it's 9.99 per year.
  4. Another article from Mail Online much insipred from ST and tweets. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10842239/Royal-Ballet-appoints-Principal-Wales.html
  5. I also noticed the disapearance of Gaparini in act 4 from the Cygnet team (although I was mistakingly thinking Bomin Kim was filling the role), but wondering how many would have noticed. People in this forum are incredible! When I have some chat with people sitting next to me, usually they don't even know the Principal dancers of that day. (Except for the excellent Claire Swan Lake day when there was no Principal.)
  6. I was able to attend all three Insight events. If you are familiar with the story, you may wonder how cooking and sexual scenes will be portrayed in a ballet. Well, there was a demonstration by Mr. Wheeldon and dancers where a piece of cloth was used as dough and Tita (leading role) and Nacha (house maid) knead it on the table dancing. I thought it was really a clever and beautiful presentation. There was also a presentation of an intimate scene where touching was expressed without touching. Hands were like 10cm off while feeling out the body which I also thought very symbolic and serve the purpose without actually groping the dancers. I don’t know if this was a result of an intimacy coordination. It looks like they are still working on the details, and the demonstrations were actually like trials and the making process, where they are literally trying out several ways of movements in front of us. Throughout the three days, many dancers were participating namely, Frankie, Marci, Matt, and many others mostly First Artist and above. Both Marci and Matt told us that it was quite a challenge to characterize themselves to their roles by reading the book and watching the movie, which was quite different from rehearsing a prince role in a classical piece. The staging will be minimalistic with a big backdrop of Mexican textile and many tables in one of the three acts. On the music side, Mr. Talbot, the composer, told us that he tried to make it sound as authentically Mexican as possible by using folk instruments “properly” with advice from Mexican artists including the conductor Alondra de la Parra who is a Mexican native and we’ve seen her already in Romeo and Juliet. I loved her conducting by the way. I'm looking forward to listening the music with the full orchestra and these instruments. The Linbury theatre is very small and all these were happening right in front of us. I felt like participating in the making process. It was really worth visiting. Anyway, the events will be uploaded to YouTube at some point for your enjoyment and you’ll discover a lot more than this.
  7. I saw some even threw in a double before entering into the usual 16 bars… It was the case for the first few performances I saw, so I initially wowed thinking that’s the RB style, but realised later not everyone does it. Now I think dancers are allowed to make their own fouetté unlike other parts, and that makes this part even more special.
  8. I really liked Hayward's role debut, so I managed to buy a return ticket to see how Hayward comes back, fouettes included. It was a bit unfortunate, but she is still one of my favorite Odette/Odille of seven so far. Even in Fonteyn's 1967 video with Nureyev on YouTube, she did only 14.5/16 bars of the music, so it does happen. Howver, it's a legacy for more than 100 years since Pierina Legnani did it in Swan Lake's revival with Petipa & Ivanov, and as iconic as four little swans, I must to say dancers must be ready for this when it comes to Swan Lake. Magri, Nagdhi, Nunez, Osipova and Kaneko all did well including the doubles. Kaneko did double-double, if I recall correctly. I just want to say it's a part of it just like any other parts. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, but will be happy to see good ones.
  9. I usually have similar views expressed in this forum and mostly reading simply to confirm my thoughts, but somehow I felt rather different about Hayward/Bracewell Swan Lake. I thought Hayward was so expressive in the second act and made me hooked every second. Her Odile was also quite visible how she wanted to be, so I felt really painful when her fouettes became fragile and ended short. To me that was the only downside, and really think she was fantastic otherwise. I had to say this especially after seeing all seven Odettes/Odiles in the past three weeks and had a chance to make a fair comparison in this run of Swan Lake. As for the Prince, I enjoy watching Bracewell as well. Thank you all for your views, which helped me enjoy shows even more.
  10. I've also seen both Hamilton and Sasaki as Siegfried's sisters as well as two swans. Also having seen Ashley Dean and Sae Maeda as well as Yuhui Choe and Leticia Dias paired in the same roles, I thought the intention was to bring two physically similar dancers dancing in sync. In this regard, I thought both Hamilton and Sasaki synched really well and brought us wonderful synergy in both roles. To me, their differences were secondary. Having said that, if Sasaki was on par with the First Soloist, she may be under rated. So is Leticia Dias.
×
×
  • Create New...