OnePigeon

45 minutes ago, alison said:

I think a lot of people might be hoping for Kaneko and Bracewell there.

Yes indeed, I am one of them!

Music and dance are intrinsically linked for me: you need to breathe the music in and dance it out, to slightly misquote Edward Watson.  If there’s nothing to really dance out then you’re missing the vital component of the art form and that’s why so many of us can’t find an emotional connection to this work. There’s a blandness and  a slightly shallow feeling to it, for me, so that I can’t get to the depths of the emotion and be transported on the journey and the emotional turmoil of the characters in the way that Manon, R&J or Onegin, to name a few, plunge you into their world and mesmerise you. 

Sorry to hear that @Linnzi5, it’s so frustrating when you get ill and have to miss out on performances.  I returned my tickets in favour of attending a concert with one of my favourite musicians who rarely comes to these shores and I’m pleased to report I didn’t hear one bum note all evening !🤣 I was dreading reading all the superlative reviews for Swan Lake, but I was so happy with the performance I did see with Vadim and Marianela and so thrilled with my concert, that I can live with my decision.  
 

I would be prepared to place heavy bets on Fumi and Vadim dancing Romeo and Juliet together.

3 hours ago, San Perregrino said:

I dont believe that Friday Rush tickets are priced any cheaper than regular tickets? 
Similarly standing tickets are cheap because they come without a seat (and generally but always with some kind of restricted view).

Friday Rush tickets are usually offered in the cheaper seating areas.  My point is that they use Friday Rush and the cheap standing tickets as positive examples of how they offer tickets in a range of prices which demonstrate how even those less well off can still attend, which they do up to a point, but realistically there are not many of them and the point is that all other ticket prices are far too high.

It’s just a tick box exercise in inclusivity, so they run the young ROH scheme, school matinees, Friday Rush for those of us able to access our accounts at 1pm (not me, I’m at work earning my not very high wage) and those very cheap standing tickets they like to mention.  Then there are the NHS and other chosen organisations that they possibly/allegedly give discounted tickets to on some occasions, possibly.  They welcome a new audience by encouraging social media influencers and programme some works that might engage a different audience and it’s tick that box, job done.  Meanwhile, many of us find ourselves feeling increasingly priced out. 
 

The arts is in a difficult position at the moment and I do have a lot of sympathy for the ROH:  it must be a nightmare with funding being slashed, ACE dictating so much of your programming decisions and now paying back the COVID loan, but pricing out and alienating your key audience is really not the way forward.

Just as well I don’t plan on seeing any of them at those prices!  It’s a good deal more than Nutcracker was last year, and that was bad enough.
 

I am imagining the prices for Onegin and R&J might be at least as high as MaddAdam (the stalls prices look similar to Manon), but let’s just pray they aren’t as high as Alice as I was going to save up for a stalls seat, but there’s no way I can,or would, pay such prices.

He’s an RB Associate dancer and a very promising talent.

It’s a lot to do with the music for me that makes it so soulless - it just gives me nothing except a mild irritation.  I haven’t bothered booking for this, I’ve seen it on the stream and enjoyed it to some extent, but not enough to fork out for those prices.  The cast I was most keen to see were also only dancing Monday - Wednesday and I just can’t come up to London at that point in the week when I have to go to work.
 

I know they performed Cinderella in December 2003/Jan 2004 too as I saw it on New Years Eve 2003, so it appears they performed it two Christmases running, but it looks like they were performing Swan Lake too, so at least it gave more variety.  Swan Lake appears to have been performed at the end of December and then throughout January 2005 and again throughout May and June of 2005, so there was a lot of SL.

From a quick look at the database it looks like Cojocaru/Kobborg were the only pairing who danced both SL and Cinderella together, though I’m happy to be corrected.  Tamara Rojo was in Swan Lake with Carlos Acosta and Cinderella with Jonathan Cope (who also partnered Darcey Bussell in Cinderella) and then there was Leanne Benjamin dancing both roles but with different partners as well (Bonelli in SL and Samodurov in Cinderella), whilst Miyako Yoshida and Federico Bonelli were partnered in Cinderella.

I remember lots from this season and could weep for the amount I didn’t see!  I saw Acosta and Nunez in Fille and it is one of my defining moments in ballet viewing.  If I’d only known that we would be so starved of the kind of works I grew to love in those years of the early 2000s 20 years later, I would have blown my budget back then and seen them all.

It’s actually scandalous and an ominous precedent that there is no classical work scheduled at all.  I’m glad there aren’t any of the big Tchaikovsky ballets this time round as I think they need a rest, but there are so many other ballets they could, and should, have done. I can’t see how this makes any economic sense, especially with this irritating new direction of splitting seasons in half.  I would be interested to know the reasons why they are programming in this way.

The good news is that I won’t be overstretching my budget at the ballet and once the Ashtons have been performed, will probably only be seeing BRB Fille until the end of the year.  I have no interest in Alice, Cinderella is way to soon to revive, can’t stand McGregor and the contemporary mixed bill and Mad Hatters Tea Party sounds like my idea of dance Hades.  I do appreciate them noticing that I can’t afford to carry on my ballet habit, so thank you Kevin (and Aaron over at ENB) for keeping me away for most of the season.

Can anyone shed some light on the Wheeldon in May?  I assume they are short works and An American in Paris is a short ballet set to the music, as opposed to the actual stage show, but to be honest, at this point nothing would surprise me.

Having said that, hooray for Onegin!  My ballet prayers were answered.  It will be my first live Onegin and I can’t wait to find out the casting.   I’m so glad to see there is a Balanchine triple and am keen to see certain dancers in R&J as I haven’t seen it since Rojo and Acosta blew me away all those years ago.  

16 hours ago, San Perregrino said:

Well, I saw London Tide at the NT last night. An ‘adaptation’ of Dicken’s ‘Our Mutual Friend’, this version has been given a woke ending along the same lines as ENB’s Raymonda.

Much as Raymonda abandons a man she might love, instead leaving to ‘find herself and her destiny’, in London Tide, Lizzie Hexham doesn’t marry the man she thinks she might love but instead heads out to ‘find herself and her destiny’.

Can we expect the same for Ballet Shoes or some gender swapping of the characters perhaps? 

A bit like the awful My Fair Lady revival at the Coliseum a few years back where Eliza rejects Higgins and walks off on her own.  I know she doesn’t end up with Higgins in Pygmalion, but this wasn’t Pygmalion and I left feeling so deflated - and I say this as someone who much prefers Freddie to Higgins, largely because of the gorgeous Jeremy Brett and because if anyone sang On the Street Where you Live about me I would fall at their feet 🤣.

Why do we think Onegin is going to be performed?  Is it due to the displays?  I have a nasty feeling it’s not going to happen if they’re doing R&J 😬.  So far that’s a pretty disappointing season for me as I have no wish to Cinderella again so soon and I’m not bothered about Alice, but I am pleased to see R&J as I haven’t seen it for a long time and really want to catch William Bracewell as Romeo.  Not too much longer to wait now (and then I can really have a good whinge.  Probably.)

1 hour ago, LinMM said:

I mentioned Beryl Grey DVDfan because there was a suggestion that it was a new ( current trend) for younger dancers to be offered main roles so soon after graduation but just pointing out this was more common in the past and am sure school leaving age played a part. 
When I started school in the 50’s  the leaving age was 14 but 16 by the time I eventually left( at 18) 
It’s now 18 officially I think. 

It’s still 16, but you have to be in some kind of educational setting/traineeship up to the age of 18, so maybe doing a vocational course and apprenticeship, or studying A-levels at college or a school sixth form.

Yes indeed!  They’ll be better acquainted with the Capital than me.  I wonder if they’ll fly home and back - probably cheaper than paying to stay in London, though I hate to think about the jet lag.

I believe it’s only three dancers for Walk to the Paradise Garden, so it may only require some members to stay in London.

I logged on, got in quickly and the same thing kept happening to me @alison.  I checked again a few hours later and managed to get one ticket, though I wanted two, then an hour after that I got another (better) ticket.  It means my son will have to sit on his own, but he assured me it is worth it!   He’s also claimed the better seat 😆😬.  I’m so thrilled as this was the cast I wanted to see the most, but it had sold out by the time I was home from work the day booking opened.

I went to a local comprehensive primary and secondary school in a very unglamorous part of a Greater London borough in the 80s/90s. We had a school orchestra at primary school and I can still recall playing Pomp and Circumstance (our poor parents!) and a choir that performed Benjamin Britten songs and performed with other schools in London at the RAH.   We had an assembly where each term each class performed a little play for the rest of the school.  I wrote a story that the teacher turned into a play and I got to star in it.  We used to enter assembly to a piece of classical music which the teacher would then inform us about.  Our borough had a music department and building where you hired your instruments and they also had an orchestra and other opportunities for musical students.  At secondary school we also had an orchestra, a drama studio and lots of opportunities for creative writing and art.  With hindsight, I believe we had a head teacher who really valued the arts and ensured we all had a creative education, but the fact he was allowed to make this choice is what is so different from now.
 

I work in Primary education and have a child currently going through the system.  I have to say the opportunities for children to be creative is dire - even their creative writing is prescriptive, with certain sentence structures being dictated and the enforcement of strict planning before writing is allowed to happen.  Their music lessons, if they happen at all, are currently based on a bought in scheme which seems to favour (bad) pop music.  The arts/humanities subjects are squeezed in in the afternoons and occur once a week each.  The government’s obsession with English, Maths and STEM and the subsequent testing and constant threat of OFSTED is destroying the education system and most teaching staff have had enough.  

Hirano was indeed in the Two Pigeons as he’s in the filmed version with Cuthbertson/Muntagirov/Keneko.

Casting still isn’t on the website yet either so that won’t help ticket sales get off to a flying start.  I don’t think the duplicate programming helps either - most people will only choose one of the triples to attend.  Hopefully they will sell well over time though, or alternatively, maybe we’ll be getting in a miff about some people being emailed with a discount code come May 😉.

Thanks so much for the casting @Jamesrhblack.  I was holding off booking until casting had been announced after having to swap my Macmillan tickets, so I’m really pleased it’s not been a long wait.   Now I just have to decide which casts to see - it’s so hard to get dates and preferred partnerships to align.  

I approached this mixed bill with some trepidation after the late and seemingly odd casting announcement, the discount controversy, the mixed reviews here regarding DD and then the last minute cast changes, on top of having a gruelling week at work and very much wishing I was tucked up in my PJs rather than schlepping up to London.  However, it was very much worth the trip and I thought every piece was wonderful in its own way.  
 

DC was joyous and fun and after my initial discombobulation with the male outfits (Oh Vadim, what have they done to you? 😆) I was able to enjoy the stylisation of the set design and costumes.  The choreography was interesting and playful, at times putting me in mind of Balanchine and 1950s musicals: it was somehow of its time and yet so fresh it could have been choreographed yesterday.  What an amazing debut piece and one can well see why De Valois gave him the opportunities she did.

I was almost dreading DD expecting it to be hideous and unrelentingly miserable.  I found it to be incredibly powerful and thought provoking and there was so much to unpack during and after it.  I thought the cast last night were incredible and Reece Clarke really impressed me with his portrayal of Woyzeck.  I know Macmillan can be too dark for many, but I always find his choreography and vision so strong and interesting, with moments of pure beauty added in, that I always find his work powerful and thought provoking.
 

Requiem was a balm to the soul after the trauma of DD and was the perfect choice to complement the other works.  It felt like we had entered a celestial realm with the stark white background, the white costumes and the beautiful flowing choreography, all blending with the beautiful voices raised in harmonious prayer.  I am not religious, but this was akin to a religious experience through the power of art taking us to another realm.  William Bracewell looked like Michaelangelo had carved him out of marble - as if David had come to life and was dancing before us.  
 

After not enjoying most of the NYCB mixed bill the other weekend, I was so relieved that every single piece in this was involving and a real showcase of the incredible varied talents of Macmillan and the RB dancers.

I think my problem with the entire influencer promotion is the shallow, artificial and egocentric aspect to it.  Why would you wear a tutu to the ROH when you’re not a dancer?  They’re there to be seen, to show off their amazing lifestyles and not to actually promote the art form, but to promote themselves.  How often do you see glamorous young people there pouting for their selfies - they look ridiculous and it’s everything I abhor about the vapid, narcissistic society we live in right now.  It’s so unhealthy for people to be so wrapped up in their looks and outward appearance.  
 

I heard some young women on the train the other day bemoaning their lives because some influencer has their dream life, all the products they wish they could own, a gorgeous boyfriend and spends her weekends doing amazing things.  It’s a horrible, sad artifice and it has serious repercussions for people, especially if they’re emotionally vulnerable and it worries me greatly.   Put your phones away, stop thinking about yourselves and actually engage with the world and the art you have paid/been given a ticket for.  The more businesses and society engage with this form of narcissistic self publicity, the more it becomes viewed as totally normal.  It’s damaging to young people and I’m not ok with it.

Thanks @Emeralds, I shall offer my prayers up to the ballet gods then.