annamk

Tissi danced Romeo this year in Ratmansky's version. 

I wondered what Tissi was doing in London ...... I don't think he has this version in his rep ? 

43 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

 

I definitely  agree that the three amigos  were great together, although I felt  their pas de trois tended to emphasise that  if anything Hay and Sambé  somewhat had the edge over Corrales.

I think when you are Romeo AND you have been off stage for many months you need to be very careful to pace yourself, rather than trying to dance full throttle from the outset. 

43 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

I feel Hayward may  have been better served by others in the Company with whom she has previously formed great partnerships - indeed Hay and Sambé  spring to mind, as well as Campbell. 

I would love to have seen James Hay as Romeo but with the MacMillan partnering I am resigned to it never happening. 

17 hours ago, Irmgard said:

.  I remember from my original viewings of MacMillan’s first scene my irritation at the ladies constantly sweeping the square with their brooms and this has not gone away!  Nureyev gives us the much more dramatic, clearly delineated Capulet servants versus Montague servants firstly exchanging insults before escalating into physical combat, and I would have loved more of this boisterousness turning to dangerous physical aggression from the townsfolk in this scene.  I missed the sense of menace that used to be the hallmark of the Dance of the Knights in MacMillan’s production.  I remember this as testosterone seething away under a very thin veneer of respectability, reflecting the violence of renaissance Italy, with weight being given to every step by the men, and then the ladies sweeping forwards in an equally aggressive manner, as if saying “we are the Capulets, mess with us at your peril”.  The steps were there, but not the intent.  In fact, I found there was a surprising casualness to most of the supporting roles, from the rather ineffectual Prince of Verona to Lord Capulet who seemed to stroll around the stage, even his exit after Juliet has refused Paris, rather than move with any sense of purpose.  (Michael Somes was never a great actor in romantic roles but I do remember his wonderful, commanding presence as Lord Capulet!).  My definitive Paris was the late, lamented Julian Hosking.  This golden-haired Adonis was a born aristocrat who radiated charm and he bestowed such loving tenderness on Juliet that, in some performances, I would wonder why she chose the Romeo on offer instead of him!  Tomas Mock started well, in the little scene before the ball, showing a genuine tenderness towards Juliet, but then seemed to retreat into himself and made little impression after that.  I am all for different interpretations of roles, but the laid-back Tybalt of Matthew Ball did not do it for me.  I did not get the feeling from him of Shakespeare’s hot-headed youth always spoiling for a fight, especially when he discovers Romeo at the ball, nor did he appear to be seething the following day when he seeks out Romeo in the town square.

 

I loved your entire review Irmgard and I was as captivated by the leads as you were. 

I was particularly interested in your comments about some of the ensemble dancing and the orchestra. I wasn't watching MacMillan's Romeo before the 1990s so I cannot compare and I have never seen Nureyev's version but I will track down some DVDs. Maestro Sutherland is a treasure !

I liked Ball's interpretation of Tybalt but I can also see that he did not appear to be seething as you say. 

34 minutes ago, Sim said:

I loved the matinee today.  What a sublime cast. 

 

Well done to a very special all-round cast who gave a luscious rendering of this ballet.  The fact that I have seen it so many times and yet can still be moved by it is a huge tribute to all the fantastic casts the RB has at the moment.  I am in awe.  

Totally agree with you Sim. 

Only a little to say ......

Corrales is an astonishingly talented young man: 22 years old, just back from a major injury, dancing one of the most demanding male roles in ballet, his first principal role in a MacMillan ballet and he has the skill and confidence not simply to dance the solos beautifully, and to partner commendably but to act out a committed, credible and deeply passionate Romeo. 

Ball is turning out to be a remarkably versatile dancer. His Tybalt was powerful and convincing. 

Sambe and Hay were both terrific and ideally matched with Corrales : the masks pd3, so often sloppy, was almost a masterclass. 

D46 no longer available. 

D46 & 47 e tickets message me in interested. 

I second Sim's recommendation for Alexander House. The restaurant there will stay open until very late so you can eat after the ballet and the food is excellent.

I suggest for taxis that you download Yandex app, it  is like Uber and we found it cheap and very reliable. 

The Mikhailovsky is a jewel box of a theatre with a lovely cafe serving delicious cakes, I highly recommend the chocolate eclairs. In Sarafanov and Lebedev they have 2 of the best male dancers in Russia so it would be an extra treat to see them. The tickets are considerably cheaper than those at the Mariinsky.

Finally, with regard to the obtaining of visas it really is worth checking the visa processing centre website for holiday closures so you can save yourself a wasted trip for example when they shut May 1st to 5th for Russian holidays   

I would love to see Vogel in this role, I hope you are going Angela and will be able to give us your impressions ! 

I’m not tall so I avoid the stalls and only go for the front row in the dress circle. I think the stalls boxes front row are generally ok but possibly you can also be unlucky if you have a tall person in front of you in the last row of the stalls.

This is for the historic stage for the new stage view is good everywhere but dress circle is much further from the stage. 

At long last Andrei Yermakov has been promoted to Principal. Congratulations to him  

31 minutes ago, Sim said:

Some gorgeous photos of  Anna Rose O’Sullivan as Juliet.  With thanks to Andrej Uspenski, who has captured the essence of an unforgettable performance.  

Wonderful photos. I was thinking about her performance again the other day and how she was completely natural  - not an iota of affectation. 

On 27/11/2017 at 16:40, Angela said:

 

Stuttgart Ballet has done Onegin more than 600 times, they should know how to dance it - the roles and portraits were passed on from the original cast, Marcia Haydée still comes here often to work with the dancers on her former roles. Everybody who learns Onegin has seen it at least 20, 30 times before, dancing in the corps or watching from the wings. They saw the great performances of their predecessors, saw different interpretations and learned from ballet masters who know everything about the steps and their motivation.

Vogel was superb, Badenes was superb, I'll keep my opinion about Amatriain to myself, but there are lots of people who admire her in the role. Alas, you're right, there were some (few) better performances at Stuttgart in the past - Sue Jin Kang and Jiri Jelinek for example, but compared to many other companies I saw, Stuttgart still has so many small details you don't see anywhere else. I never was a fan ob Kobborg's Onegin, by the way - Adam Cooper couldn't dance it technically, but he blew me away, I saw things like never before and never again. Wow, he was great.

I've finally watched this online and gosh it is absolutely superb  you can tell that this ballet is part of the company's DNA. Not only the characterisations that are so good. It's a dream to see all the tricky partnering executed so masterfully, (seamless mirror and final pdd) rather than a series of individual steps and lifts, all without breaking sweat !  Really have to try to see Vogel live in this. 

I check the links less than I used to and i hadn’t really thought why that is until now. Partly maybe that I pick some direct from Twitter links eg Dance Tabs, New York Times, partly when I want to read ENB or RB reviews I google them myself, partly I’m less interested in the off mainstream items in the links - the stuff in the bottom half. It’s a great service though and I know a lot of effort goes into it. 

21 minutes ago, Jane S said:

I thought she was astounding in the mirror pas de deux - totally fearless - and very good in the last act, but far too young in the first scene - she looked about 13.

Yes fearless is exactly it. I've not seen a mirror pdd since that has come even close to those of Cojocaru/Kobborg.

5 minutes ago, Bluebird said:

 

Alina Cojocaru danced Tatiana in November 2001 when, by my calculations, she’d only have been 20 years old.  I didn’t manage to see her then. Can someone  who saw her then let us know how well she portrayed the role?

 

edited to add that I got that information from the performance data base which can, occasionally, be inaccurate:

http://www.rohcollections.org.uk/performance.aspx?performance=5916&row=1

We were posting at the same time. I can't remember exactly whether I saw her debut, very likely since I went to everything she & Kobborg danced at that time. I certainly saw one of her early performances and as I said above she has a rare ability to do everything. Of course the unsurpassed partnership with Johan Kobborg was a major factor in the power of those performances. I found this review https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2001/nov/29/dance.artsfeatures which interestingly talks about Tatiana being a role for a mature dancer. 

7 minutes ago, Sim said:

I am hoping Naghdi/Ball will move up one from Olga/Lensky to Tatiana/Onegin, and O'Sullivan/Sambe moving into Olga/Lensky.  I would never have considered Sambe a Lensky before Saturday's tour de force as Romeo, but now my mind is totally changed.  

I hope Naghdi/Ball are still cast as Olga/Lensky this time but also O'Sullivan/Sambe. I know that Tatiana isn't really older but I generally prefer a more mature dancer in that role, although I do remember Cojocaru dancing it when she was young and being amazing but then she has this rare ability to be everything. 

Lovely photo BBB. I have none The usher came up to me twice and told me to stop taking curtain call photos - I wondered if the RoH policy has changed because it's the first time I've encountered it ........ 

Magnificent, unbelievably good performances from Sambe and O'Sullivan this afternoon. Somehow they made all the old familiar steps seem entirely fresh and different; even the parts that usually sag (most of Act 2) were livelier. His superb dancing filled the stage out of all proportion to his physical size and it was a pleasure to behold: plush, soft landings, and excellent partnering. His Romeo was ardent and passionate: the final sword fight between Romeo and Tybalt was once of the most ferocious I've seen. She blew me away. Her Juliet was completely mesmerising, nothing like a debut, full of detail, she completely inhabited the role and was absolutely heart rending. 

Thursday 11/4 LG circle standing D28

Friday 12/4 LG circle standing D22 & D23 

£5 each e-tickets message me.

On Thursday it was typical Sadlers

Wells timing, it overran finishing at least 20 mins later than advertised. 

These tickets have been taken. 

They are e-tickets, please message me. 

I went for the latter part of the Mariinsky festival and I also caught a couple of performances at the smaller Mikhailovsky Theatre.

Peter Martins was in St Petersburg to coach this performance of Jewels which was danced on the vast stage of the vast auditorium that is Mariinsky 2. Emeralds felt slightly flat, as indeed it often does, but it was interesting to see some of the newer, younger dancers with whom I’m less familiar. I’ve found Rubies the ballet that sits most awkwardly on Russian companies but Philipp Stepin and Nadezhda Batoeva were superbly playful and technically exciting. I agree with Beaux Arts above about Maria Khoreva in Diamonds, I’d say this performance did not come close to those I’ve seen from the Bolshoi’s more experienced Smirnova and Chudin both live and on screen. Unfortunately I also thought the corps de ballet looked scrappy although my impression here may have been influenced negatively by being quite close to the stage. The use of mobile phones during the performance was extraordinary - recording and constant flash photography. A couple sitting close to us couldn’t have watched more than 5 minutes of the entire performance and even made a phone call.

The following evening Don Quixote played to a full house in the historic theatre. From the off Vladimir Shklyarov and Elena Yevseyeva were determined to have a ball and their sensational performances deservedly brought the house down. It was the highlight of the week. Shklyarov has more charisma than the rest of the Mariinsky male principal roster put together and he danced as well as I’ve ever seen him do.  He and Yevseyeva, a delightful, petite and elegant First Soloist, were ideally matched and no one who held on to their ticket after Osipova’s withdrawal could have reasonably felt short changed. Although Yevseyeva began her fouettes with a minor loss of control she quickly retrieved them and went on to finish with incredible insouciance holding the border of her tutu with one hand as if to issue a challenge to the detractors on the Russian forums. Alexander Sergeev was a remarkable Espada, he’s such a refined classical dancer I wish we’d seen more of him. The Mariinsky production is one of the best and I’m afraid for me it really served to highlight the shortcomings of the RB version, in particular the over cluttered stage and the Act 3 pdd.

The following evening was the performance of Sleeping Beauty that Lauren Cuthbertson was sadly unable to dance due to illness. Her last minute replacement, Olesya Novikova, a quietly elegant dancer, inexplicably not a principal, turned in a beautiful performance. The story of Xander Parish’s ascent at the Mariinsky is a remarkable and well known one and he gave a good account of the Prince’s solos, his tours were well executed and well landed. May Nagahisa another non-vaganova trained, non-Russian seemingly destined for stardom (she has already made her debut in the title role in Giselle) danced Princess Florine with great delicacy although to my eye she looks even younger than her young years. The divine Ekaterina Kondaurova is a true Mariinsky jewel; the most supremely luxurious dancer with beautiful epaulement and a stunning back. Her Lilac fairy glowed warmly and the tricky Prologue solo was executed with outstanding control. This huge Sergeyev production looked splendid on the Mariinsky 2 stage. At just under 4 hours it’s a marathon of an evening and it is a testament to the dancers that it didn’t  feel like an endurance test.

The next evening was back again to Mariinsky 2 this time for Swan Lake. The guest Prince Siegfried was Daniel Camargo whom I had recently seen in London at the RB and I had enjoyed his warm stage presence as Fumi Kaneko’s Basil.  In St Petersburg he was sharing the stage with the current queen of the Mariinsky, Viktoria Tereshkina, and he looked far less comfortable. There were no major problems in the partnering and he delivered a reasonable black act solo but it was a chilly performance with not a shred of chemistry between them. I couldn’t help feeling that Vadim Muntagirov would have been a more suitable partner for the refined and technically superb Tereshkina.

On Sunday we were lucky that there were 2 performances at the small gem of a theatre that is the Mikhailovsky. We bought tickets not knowing the casting so we were thrilled to see Leonid Sarafanov dancing James in La Syphide. He follows in a long line of outstanding Russian male dancers and at 36 his fabulous technique is as fine as ever - IMO the Mariinsky have not filled the gaping hole created by his departure 10 years ago. The production which was lovingly and carefully danced by the entire company is as authentic and charming as the theatre itself which feels like the most appropriate venue. His Sylphide, Angelina Vorontsova, danced with such allure no wonder James fell for her.

Our final performance in the evening was Giselle. The lead couple were the charming husband and wife team of Viktor Lebedev and Anastasia Soboleva. He has a quiet stage presence but is a gorgeously plush dancer with a beautiful line, the most incredible backbends and enormous, soaring jumps. He was the star male graduate of his year (2010) at Vaganova so it is somewhat puzzling that he isn’t at the Mariinsky where the larger stage would have given the space his excellent technique demands and he would surely have enhanced the principal ranks.

The orchestras at the Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky were of the very high standard you would expect and the acoustics at Mariinsky 2 were excellent.

I still find it bizarre. Her Saturday evening London performance has been scheduled for months, so was known about when she agreed to the Mariinsky performance.  What other performance is she required in London for ? Surely she can’t be on standby to do the Saturday matinee of Don Q as well as the evening ?

Note for Hirano doubters (self included) - he acted his socks off in the friends rehearsal and his partnering of Takada's utterly convincing young Juliet was beautiful. As expected, Hay's Mercutio was quite brilliant.