annamk

Does anyone have a spare ?

Bumping up - D34 still available.

I messaged you. D45 is yours.

Message me if interested. Anna

All tx spoken for.

D6 has gone

D7 spoken for.

£9 each. Message me.

I have 2 tickets to the sold out NFT showing of the film Bolshoi plus a Q & A with the director Valery Todorovsky. It's this Friday at 8.30 pm and the seating is unallocated. The tickets are £16 each and I could post them. Message me if interested.

£5 - it's an e-ticket, message me if interested.

Tx now gone.

D44 & D45 £5 each. E-tickets.

I enjoyed The Illustrated Farewell. The first half of the pdd for McRae/Lamb was terrifically exciting with plenty of opportunity for them to show off their tricks. The second part had to be quieter, if nothing else to give them a chance to recover, but I felt it flagged (I had an involuntary shopping list moment) and the transition to the original piece might have worked better if other dancers had been introduced earlier. I thought the second part showed off the RB dancers very well, they looked fabulous dancing the interesting Tharp choreography - I agree that Sissens and Magri stood out although I was impressed with the other five soloists too. At times there was so much going on on stage it was sometimes difficult to know where to look. The Wind - well on the positive side the music was evocative , the staging and lighting created some memorable images but the choreography could have been made by a child. What a waste of talented dancers especially Osipova thrashing around at the end for far too long. The characters were caricatures none more so than Tom Whitehead strutting around as Wirt Roddy which brings me neatly by biggest issue - why oh why, in this day and age, do male choreographers think it's still ok to depict abuse against women on stage ?

Interesting that the RB feels the need to invite 2 male guest principals ..... Bolle, talent though he was, at 42 is surely past his prime for a role like Des Grieux ?

Thank you for posting this review Angela - very interesting to read and I would never have found it myself.

I can no longer make this insight so I'm selling C9 for £17. I can leave it at the box office. PM me if interested. Anna

I've admired this small company tremendously since I first saw them at The Place a couple of years ago. They recently appeared at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh and when I read the reviews of the bill via the links http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/dance-review-richard-alston-dance-company-festival-theatre-edinburgh-1-4570266 I checked out their tour venues and off I went to Woking yesterday evening. Alston's pieces are simply terrific : the choreography is so clever, imaginative and beautiful it needs no fancy staging to embellish it. The company dance it with feeling, sensitivity and modesty, not a weak link amongst them. The standout dancer is the phenomenal Liam Riddick, who IMO is one of the most mesmerising performers around in any genre of dance. There are more dates here https://www.richardalstondance.com/performances?category[]=69&field_venue_tid=All worth catching if you can.

Phenomenal, mesmerising performances this afternoon. Poor Fernando Bufala limped off injured less than 10 minutes in and the performance was restarted 10 minutes later with Altor Arrrieta stepping in to dance with Fernando Oliveira. So good were they that you would never have guessed they weren't scheduled to dance together. Jeffrey Cirio (Hilarion) & Sarah Kundi (Myrtha) were terrific. The was my 2nd viewing this run and it feels slightly different to the first run but I can't say specifically what, if anything, might have changed. Anyway, I think it's a triumph of a production & a fantastic showcase for the company which plays to its strengths.

Really ? Plenty of new works with "failings" have been/are being revived :, Untouchable, Raven Girl, Strapless ......

It was me talking about "split jumps" and I can now understand from your comments that the jump I was referring to was not the grand jete enterlace but the "pas de ciseaux". Kim, Shklyarov and Askerov all just seemed to make a combination of double grand Jete Entrelace and/or an assemble. The pas de ciseaux seemed odd.

I know Sim - it's unusual for us to disagree Re Yermakov I was reflecting that he, Shklyarov and Stepin all gave much better accounts of themselves in their second principal performances & I wondered whether it just takes a performance to get used to the non raked RoH stage ?

I thought the matinee was the weakest of the four Bayadere performances I saw, entirely down to Chebykina's Nikya. I really don't understand why she's the young dancer who's been singled out with all the important opportunities on this tour when her dancing is so unexceptional. I mean she's really not a young Smirnova, Zakharova etc. I find her upper body, arms and hands stiff, and she doesn't seem to have the same Vaganova way of holding her head. Askerov was a Solor in the more classical mould: more subdued and less spectacular, more "correct" if you like but I find less appealing. Bstoeva was lovely, I'd like to see her dance Nikya. The evening was on a different level altogether. Kondaurova was simply divine. The gulf between her and Chebykina was as wide as the gulf of Finland and it's not about age and experience. Kondaurova moves so beautifully, head, arms, hands her movement ripples through her whole body, she's such an emotional performer I couldn't take my eyes off her and couldn't fault her. Nor was there anything to complain about with her partner : Yermakov, tall and handsome with terrific dancing and generous partnering - why didn't he get promoted to principal on this tour (or indeed the fabulous Stepin, yesterday evening' Goldrn Idol.) my only picky little complaint with Yermakov is that in Solor's final variation he throws in two split jumps that look like something out of Don Q ! Matvienko's Gamzatti was excellent and the confrontation between Nikya and Gamzatti one of the finest I've seen. An enormous Bravi (?) to the mighty corps who must be absolutely exhausted.

It's not just Shklyarov's dancing though - which was better than I've seen from him for a while - it's his total commitment on stage. It elevates the entire performance and the Mariinsky without him (which looked a distinct possibility when he announced his move to Munich a year ago) would have been much diminished.

I agree with this. Kim is technically incredible but last night it was an emotionally empty performance. Not for want of trying, but he's not a natural and personally I think he hasn't yet made it out of the method school of acting. It probably didn't help to be paired with Tereshkina who great technician that she is, can be on the chilly side emotionally. The corps were wonderful and considerably less robotic than in some of their Swan Lake performances. I enjoyed the shades trio and whilst I think Nagahisa is impressive for her 17 years I don't quite understand why she has been favoured with a soloist role so early. In some ways it was a pity to see a dancer of Zverev's ability cast as The Slave although of course his partnering was exemplary which brings me to another issue .... The rep that the company have brought this time has so few meaningful male soloist or corps roles. I wish they would acquire something like Ratmansky's Shostakovich Trilogy and bring it here so we could have the opportunity to appreciate the men as much as we have the women.

I skipped Carmen last night although everyone I spoke to said the ballet was vastly improved with Kondaurova's cast. Infra again I enjoyed very much. One thing that has bothered me, and I'm sure one of the critics mentioned too, it is that there's too much splayed leg. It's funny but in the comparatively few years since it's been made I have the distinct feeling that's become less acceptable or is it just me ? Paquita was pretty flat. I don't think Parish will have been happy with his performance on this last opportunity of the tour to show the audience why he was promoted to principal rank : sadly we got untidy solos, average partnering and damp stage presence. His partner didn't give him much to go on though, Matvienko rattled through the choreography with ease but she didn't smile once either at us or him.