OnePigeon

I thoroughly recommend Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington’s residence. If you like Austen and the Regency era, it is a wonderful and evocative place to visit. https://www.wellingtoncollection.co.uk If you wander down Piccadilly and around Mayfair you can see where the Georgian aristocrats lived and socialised. London’s oldest bookshop is Hatchards on Piccadilly, very near to The Ritz and Fortnum and Mason, which is well worth a look at. The National Portrait Gallery has many photographic portraits of famous dancers and is located very near to The Coliseum. For cultural events it’s always worth checking out The Barbican, who house the LSO, and The Southbank Centre. The BFI (British Film Institute) has a Ginger Rogers season showing at the moment. https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk I love musicals, but am a real purist (love Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers, Porter etc done traditionally) and have found very few productions passing muster lately, but if you’re open to more modern productions then have a look and take the plunge.

Well if they’re not munching popcorn they’ll probably be scrolling through their phone with the light catching your eye and distracting you. When I went to the Nutcracker at the Coliseum in December, we had several people in front of us fidgeting and sitting forward, blocking out our view and the girl next to us came in stinking of perfume and proceeded to put her earphones on and scroll through her phone the whole way through the performance. I fear we might be in the minority in finding this annoying though, a bit like how I’m driven to stressful distraction by people playing their loud music on the train, when other people appear completely nonplussed . I’ve been going to the theatre since I was 4 years old and am working class, but funnily enough I was taught how to behave around other people and I also have an attention span longer than a gnat, so that I can watch a whole performance without thinking about my mobile phone or my filling up my stomach.

I also came across a video of her dancing the Gloriana pas de deux with Wayne Eagling on YouTube the other day. Her legs were just stunning in it.

She went first to the Marquis de Cuevas ballet company and then joined Cranko in Stuttgart after that. She worked a lot with Macmillan and I presume she came over to London to dance some of his work, though I could be wrong as he obviously worked in Germany too.

They were in the same class at the Royal Ballet, were they not? What an incredible generation of dancers they were! They were contemporaries so they both made their mark as great dance actresses at the same time, but obviously as most of us are British based and many were able to see Seymour dance more than they got to see Marcia Haydee once she moved to Stuttgart, and given that this is a thread in tribute to Seymour, I think it’s understandable that the praise and superlatives are focused on her. Any footage of Marcia Haydee I’ve seen shows an incredible dancer though - if only I had been lucky enough to be able to see them both dance. Interesting that they both originated the roles of Juliet for their respective companies, though obviously we know it didn’t turn out so well for poor Lynn Seymour.

I used to treat myself to my favourite MacMillan or Ashton and sit in the side area of the stalls for £70 around the early to mid 2000s. Having moved away and no longer working in London, on top of having young children, I have only just started attending again and am horrified how much the prices have gone up, but then it’s the same with the theatre. The only real way for me to go now is with Friday Rush offers, but I can only ever get amphitheatre seats that way and it does impact on how immersed I feel in the production when I am so far away. I do fear they’re only going to increase and never come back down. I’m grateful to be able to go at all theses days though, and there hasn’t been anything programmed that I haven’t seen or am desperate to see, but if they resurrect something on my wish list I might have to sell a kidney to get a good seat.

Such sad news. I never got to see her dance live, unfortunately, but loved her autobiography and have scoured the internet for footage of her dancing. She and Gable looked like a very special, golden partnership from the photos I’ve seen and from how she wrote about them in her book. I recently saw some footage of Peter Wright leading a ballet class for a BBC programme in 1964 and Lynn Seymour is featured doing her barre work with her incredible supple upper body and perfectly arched feet. He sets the ballerinas (Georgina Parkinson, Marion Lane, Merle Park and Doreen Wells) a little brain teaser which they drop out of one by one with much mirth by the male dancers watching(Anthony Dowell, Christopher Gable, David Drew, Derek Rencher and Bryan Lawrence). It would be wonderful if it could be shown in full. A posthumous celebration of her incredible body of work would be a wonderful tribute, though I wish she could have known, and hope she did know, how loved and revered she was by so many.

I was at the Swan Lake dress rehearsal and also listened to an interview where Hayward stated that she didn’t feel ready for Swan Lake at that time and the lockdown did her a favour in that respect, as when she did I finally get to dance it she felt much more confident. Corrales was very impressive, but she was clearly struggling. I’m glad she finally managed to conquer it

If I was a ballerina he would be my partner of choice too. He’s a very special dancer and always has a lovely naturalness and warmth about him whenever I’ve seen him interviewed or coached. I haven’t had the chance to see him live yet, but I hope to rectify that soon.

I so admire all of the dancers who manage to carry the pigeon in on their arm and dance. I’m not great with birds (I blame Hitchcock) and wonder if any of them feel slightly freaked out, as I would.

Yes, aiming the event at age 3-10 seems quite a strange target age group to me. I have very strong concerns about this current trend to push sexuality and gender focussed events onto young children - seems like a kind of grooming to me under the umbrella of inclusivity. As a parent and educator to this age group, they are really still very sexually innocent, if they are allowed to be. Anyhow, just my opinion, don’t wish to get flamed or cause offence.

Georg Solti?

I’m so jealous! I’ve been intrigued by Gable for years, ever since I realised that the actor in Slipper and the Rose that I’d loved since childhood was a former principal with the RB - I couldn’t believe it when I realised just who he was and what a career he’d had, albeit sadly brief. It’s such a shame there is hardly any footage of his ballet career. I love the photos Keith Money took of him, he was such a beautiful man. I love watching Dowell as Nijinsky tangoing with Nureyev in Ken Russell’s Valentino film and I adore his Meditation from Thais with Antoinette Sibley - and didn’t he also design the costumes? Sadly, I wasn’t even born when these amazing dancers were in their prime, but thank goodness for YouTube.

It’s all about what you’re aesthetically drawn to at the end of the day and how the piece speaks to your soul. Personally, I’m generally drawn to lyricism, grace and beauty, though I’m not averse to being challenged. I think Macmillan, for example, was an interesting choreographer because he could present disturbing themes and challenging choreography, but still within the tradition of more classical ballet. I find the the small, jerky movements and body popping too frantic from what I’ve seen of Goecke’s work: the dancer will hit a beautiful line and then be back to looking like they’re having a fit. I find what I’ve seen to be quite stressful viewing and would not be remotely tempted to go and see a live performance. This is just my opinion, however, based on my taste. His work is clearly well crafted, if you like that style, and technically challenging and danced incredibly well.

I Was a Dancer by Jacques D’amboise is worth reading. It could have done with some editing, but he had an amazing career with NYCB and Balanchine, plus a foray into musical films. He had some interesting anecdotes, though I’d love to know some of the stuff he chose to leave out. I also enjoyed Lynn Seymour’s autobiography. I’m fascinated by that period of the RB and she had a very interesting career. I also have Judith Mackrell’s Bloomsbury Ballerina ready to read which is about Lydia Lopokova, ballerina with the Ballet Russes and later the wife of John Maynard Keynes.

Are there not any bins around in that area? I don’t know how anyone could put a bag of excrement in their pocket. It’s just all so gross.

I see what the critic meant now, having watched those clips. I appreciate the skills and artistry of the dancers, but I can only view so much body twitching and despair without wanting to tear my eyeballs out. To each their own, we all see things differently, but smearing dog faeces in a critic’s face is completely inexcusable. I do feel for artists when they are lambasted by critics, or damned with faint praise, as is often the case these days, it is crushing for these people who are often highly sensitive. I’m not sure there is a simple solution though - if you offer your artistic endeavours to the public, people will have opinions. An artist has to find a way to navigate their way through the process as it is inevitable that some people will not like their work. Clearly this critic is not a fan of Goecke’s work, as is her prerogative. Clive Barnes was consistently critical of Macmillan’s work and tenure at the RB, clearly preferring Ashton, but obviously MacMillan never committed an assault on Barnes.

I wasn’t specifically referring to ballet programmes with regards to the BBC. I understand there are copyright issues and quality issues which are probably too expensive to restore, not to mention the years of them wiping film so it could be used again. However, there are some plays and programmes that could be made available, but have only been released in the USA on DVD and not here: a Maggie Smith boxset which includes A Merchant of Venice in which Christopher Gable co-stars (keeping this on a ballet track), for example, which has a US only release. How amazing for you to have worked on some of those programmes. I was reading about Steps into Ballet, the children’s show Macmillan was involved with in the 50s. What a wonderful, creative period it was.

It’s the same with the BBC - they’re sitting on a treasure trove of programmes that never see the light of day, aren’t available to stream, or buy on DVD. Everything is about pushing the new or repeating the same few things. There is a lack of valuing and celebrating the wealth of their heritage, as also seems to be the case with the RB. The RB seem to have their sacred cow production (money spinners) and ignore vast swathes of their great history. Seeing some Massine, Cranko, De Valois, Nijinska or lesser staged Ashton and MacMillans would be truly incredible. It would also be amazing if we could one day get access to the RB archives and see what that Golden Age of Ballet restoration project has managed to restore. I would pay a lot of money to see more than a few seconds of Gable and Seymour dancing the Two Pigeons (I won’t even dream of ever seeing any of their Romeo and Juliet).

I think you’ve inferred a few sweeping assumptions about what I actually wrote and my criticism of the ROH and their pricing. I have never assumed that all young professionals are wealthy or privileged or from affluent backgrounds and nowhere did I state this. My illustration, as an example, was that a young professional 20 something - a lawyer, for example - who lives in London is probably more able to afford tickets than a person on a minimum wage who lives outside the M25 and has to pay another £30 to get into London etc. There was no schools programme or outreach scheme when I was younger and certainly no discount, but housing has been overpriced for a long time and certainly affected me and my generation. I don’t wish to get into a cost of living crisis generation game olympics, I think anyone who isn’t super wealthy is being clobbered left right and centre and I’m not sure what the climate crisis and wars have to do with ticket prices for the RB? I don’t think young people are living in a societal vacuum, so I think we’re all affected by these things, especially those of us with young families. My point was that the only ticketing discount schemes the ROH offer is for young people and this doesn’t even include children. I don’t think this is fair and pointed out other organisations that have some schemes to help those on low incomes, although the young person scheme seems to be run by most organisations and whilst this is very nice for the young people, there are lots of other people struggling out there who get nothing and can’t afford these rising ticket prices, so we have to just suck it up and not go because we’re no longer under 30 and not wanted - as if that fact wasn’t depressing enough already!😆 The point is that we shouldn’t even need these discount schemes. The arts should be accessible to all and prices should be a broad enough spectrum that people can attend at a price point suitable for them - not being asked to stump up £170 or £70 for a restricted view. They need more philanthropist donors for this to happen, not fewer.

It’s not so much that I fear there will be empty auditoriums, it’s that those of us who are passionate about the ballet or opera and whose lives are massively enhanced by attending live performances are getting pushed out of attending, especially at the RB. Other companies or arts organisations, whist not perfect, at least have some offers available, such as cheaper tickets for children, or wild card tickets. The Tate and other places offer discounts to those on Universal or pension credit. The ROH only seem to value attracting young people. I was attending the RB most of all in my 20s as this was the time I had some disposable income, no dependents and lived in London. I resent the fact that a young professional in their 20s can go to the ROH at a discount whilst someone less than affluent, let alone a struggling single parent or pensioner, has to just go without. If they decide to get rid of lucrative sponsors then we can guarantee that we will be priced out even further.

I despair of what’s happening to the Arts sector. The people heading these institutions all seem to be of one mindset and it’s incredibly damaging, with a staunch uniformity of thought and political opinion that is not allowed to be challenged, despite the utter hypocrisy that is staring most people in the face. How on earth they think dropping a major sponsor in this climate of arts cuts and austerity is a good idea, I just can’t understand. Not taking money from a fossil fuel company seems like pure political gesturing and does nothing to actually help the environment. Let’s hope they have an even bigger sponsor waiting in the wings to give them lots of funding so the seat prices can be reduced and people on lower incomes can actually afford to come and see their productions....I won’t hold my breath.

Same here with it being instantly sold out. I’m desperate to take my child, so really need a non school night, but starting to think it will never happen. I’m completely priced out of seeing the Royal Ballet these days and am not willing to spend £70 on a restricted view seat. I feel so sad that I used to sit in the stalls for not much more watching the likes of Carlos Acosta, Darcey Bussell, Sylvia Guillem, Irek Mukhamadov and Tamara Rojo etc.

With regards to the photo of Astaire with Fonteyn and Nureyev, I just came across this video.

Here is a good comparison of the Liza variations from Who Cares? Sean Lavery is first, followed by Baryshnikov. I love Baryshnikov’s musicality and how he’s really dancing to the music and filling out each bar, rather than just performing his choreographed steps, as I feel some of the later dancers are doing. I love the little Fred Astaire tap moment with the tie adjustment. I would also point you in the direction of Viviana Durante’s interpretation of The Man I Love, if you haven’t already seen it - it’s just beautiful. It’s a shame Astaire didn’t want to work on On Your Toes - perhaps we would have got a Balanchine and Astaire collaboration. Imagine that! I was fortunate enough to see Adam Cooper, Sarah Wildor and Irek Mukhamadov perform it in London many years ago, though it was Cooper’s choreography, not Balanchine’s.