annamk

Sensational performances, sizzling chemistry on stage this afternoon - Bonelli & Morera were the most moving & convincing Mayerling partnership I've seen since Kobborg/Cojocaru in their prime. 

It's not an e-ticket. Message me if interested. Anna

11 hours ago, bangorballetboy said:

 

 Some of us have had the pleasure of watching Takada grow from a very technically talented dancer into a very well rounded Royal Ballet dancer who works well in a number of styles. Her promotion last summer was, IMO, thoroughly deserved.

 

Spot on !

I never used to think of myself as a fan but Takada has been outstanding in everything I've seen her dance for the last year or so (Pigeons, Giselle, Aurora, Carbon Life etc .... ) her Rubies debut last week was no less than sensational   

On 4/2/2017 at 19:15, Sim said:

I dream The Dream will have Sambe as Oberon to Hayward's Titania!  But I would also be happy with Mr Campbell...

I'd be very happy with Sambe but in the dream I dream The Dream will have Hay as Oberon to Hayward's Titania. I think he has that fey look (those eyes) which would be perfect and he's been dancing brilliantly this season. Not long ago I never thought I'd count myself a fan but strange & unexpected things can happen at the ballet. 

I agree with all the negative comments particularly - Winter's Tale & Giselle again so soon ? Age of Anxiety really ..... is there nothing better that could be revived ? 

Yes I agree with other posters that Precious Adams, Streeter and Corales were also outstanding.

Interesting to read Gerald Dowler's review of this bill in Classical Source this morning. For me, he sums up perfectly everything that I disliked about The Human Seasons and if I recall correctly he's the only reviewer to mention the "dull, unfocused musicality". This really bothered me watching it : the fact that most of the time the movement bore little relationship to what was happening in the music. It was doubly brought home seeing the live relay of Russian Seasons, maybe not Ratmansky's finest piece but the dance fits the music like a glove. In Ratmansky's case whether it's a specific commission like Russian Seasons or an existing piece of music like Shostakovich Triliogy.

I really enjoyed this programme. From where I was sitting at the back of the First Circle the dancers looked very well rehearsed in all the ballets, I particularly noticed Hernandez in the Forsythe & Van Manen because I didn't much like him in Giselle but last night he was terrific. The Bausch Sacre is absolutely mesmerising, to me it makes MacMillan's version feel dated.

 

if anyone has any info. about the not very well known dancers (to me at least) in the Tuesday evening and Saturday matinee Don Q I will be very grateful. 

IMO both those casts are worth seeing - Stepin in particular is absolutely terrific, he has technique & charisma in spades. I'd rather see him than most of the others cast in principal roles. 

If that means we won't be subject to Human Seasons again I won't be shedding any tears

But on a serious note, & assuming Dawson isn't being tongue in cheek it's a childish reaction, aren't critics allowed to voice a negative opinion ?

Ticket for 21st has gone. 20th still available.

I'm selling SCS D6 for Mon 20th and D44 for Tues 21st £5 each. They're e tickets. Message me if interested. Anna

maybe time to go back to casting a Principal. Most seem fine for the first part of the solo, but when they go to those ugly, ugly 'Italian fouettes' (I think that's what the step is) many have fallen to pieces as if they can no longer find their centre of balance. It ends up making an ugly step into a disastrous one.

I think if you're a First Soloist in a company of the standing of the RB you really ought to be able to dance the Lilac Fairy variation (acknowledging of course that everyone has an off night) after all most First Soloists are aspiring principals. If you can't cope with the choreography then maybe you shouldn't be a First Soloist ) or there's something really really wrong with the coaching. I somehow wouldn't expect Choe or Nagdhi to have a problem with it. 

To my mind the dancer who most fits your lyrical requirement is first soloist Oleysa Novikova - she's just wonderful and it's impossible to understand why she isn't a principal. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to tour much/at all. 

Of the current Mariinsky women principals and first soloists I would be very happy to see Kondaurova, Tereshkina, Vishneva, and Matvienko. I guess Vishneva is the most lyrical ? Lower down the ranks but up and coming are Batoeva and Shakirova. 

As far as the men are concerned my picks would be Kim (although he's been injured for ages so who knows whether he'll come) Shklyarov, Sergeyev, Steppin, Yermakov 

Of course these are generalisations - so much depends on the specific role and partner. 

If Shklyarov/Tereshkina dance Bayadere it would be top of my list. 

The Sleeping Beauty was created as a francophile dance extravaganza which was intended to flatter the autocrat who funded the Mariinsky theatre and its ballet company ; to show off Brianzi its latest Italian star guest ballerina,the resident company's own star dancers of every type; its corps and the skills of the theatre's machinists and its other staff. Although it was generally described as a ballet feerie by its critics, Alexandre Benois said that it was really a "ballet a grand spectacle" .. " the type of heavy ballets, whose traditions have become obsolete, and are now regarded as the belonging to the feeries or musical revues".

 

If Petipa had died in 1889 he would be remembered as the creator and stager of melodramatic dance dramas such as Esmeralda and Le Corsaire. In Sleeping Beauty he created a ballet in which the story set out in the libretto is little more than a tenuous excuse for the display of the various types of dancing which were regarded as the essential elements of ballet in late nineteenth century Russia.The ballet provides a complete compendium of all the skills which a ballet company requires. It is not a one dancer ballet,nor even a five or six dancer ballet like Manon or Romeo and Juliet are. You may have a dancer who can dance Aurora but if you have not got dancers who can do justice to the other roles including the less obvious dance ones like the King, Queen, Catalabutte, Carabosse, Gallinson without tipping over into caricature or coarseness as well as the obvious dancing roles of the Lilac Fairy,Fairy Variations, Prince, Bluebird and Princess Florine and you have not got a corps who look good in exposed choreography then you had better think of another ballet to stage.

 

I have yet to meet anyone who actually goes to Sleeping Beauty for the plot except as an excuse for the beauties of the Tchaikovsky score and the quality of the choreography throughout the ballet. There is so much to enjoy in listening to the music when it is played in a way which respects the composer's intentions and savours its historical allusions to music and dance styles of earlier generations. The sound world created by the score is extraordinary and it is a great pity that the Hunting scene no longer ends with the Farandole. But it has to be admitted that the ballet can be heavy going if a company has not got enough dancers of the right quality. There have been many occasions in the recent past when I have felt that it was quite safe to skip the RB Prologue as the casting so often produced near terminal boredom in performance.Indeed I often thought that randomly drawing names out of a hat might have produced a better allocation of roles and thus of performances of what are masterpieces of concise choreographic invention than the application of human intelligence to the task was doing.

 

In Beauty Petipa created choreography which continues to test and display the technical skills of a company and in particular those of its principal dancers,female soloists, and corps de ballet, focussing on their pointe technique, as well as testing the skills of its demi-character and character dancers.The proportion in which these elements are mixed varied from ballet to ballet. In Beauty the emphasis is on classical technique rather than acting skills. In the original production Cecchetti displayed his versatility by performing the role of Carabosse and dancing the virtuoso role of the Bluebird and Maria Petipa danced the Lilac Fairy and displayed her considerable skills as a character dancer in the role of Cinderella. No one is asked to double these roles in modern productions but staging Beauty is still the litmus test as far as a company with pretensions to be described as "classical" is concerned. If a classical company can stage this ballet and cast it with dancers who can deliver the goods in every role then it has the resources to perform anything. Sleeping Beauty is a showcase of dance the story is merely incidental.

 

I know that to describe a work as an entertainment is not to commend it because it suggests that it is light. frivolous and of little worth. I know that I should be watching ballets with stronger story lines or at least dance works with more meaty and substantial themes like "Untouchable" but if I am honest I have to say that I find so many of these "serious" works indescribably earnest, worthy and boring and often downright pretentious.Sleeping Beauty was created as an entertainment not a melodrama or a morality tale.and with music and choreography of such quality and the sort of performances we have seen during the last week I am happy to embrace my shallowness.

Yet another great post Floss.

For me also it's about the quality of the dancing in the minor as well as leading roles and which includes how the dancers embrace the character of the role.

In this run I've seen some excellent performances but sadly not yet a compelling prologue. Only a few dancers have delivered quality fairy variations, generally the Cavaliers have been hopelessly out of sync (some of them seem to be only concerned with showing off how high they can jump) and not one Lilac Fairy I've seen has been able to give a decent account of the variation (maybe the RB should change the choreography if no one can dance it well) the Carabosse portrayals have all been impressive but it's not enough to prevent overall sag.

Act 3 has similarly delivered some variable performances but because all the Aurora/Florimund I saw were executed to a high standard (Takada/Hay, Nunez/Muntagirov & Naghdi/Ball) the fact that some of the other variations were not seemed to matter less. However, when the wedding grand pas is preceded by a brilliant Florian (Sambe), and Bluebird/Florine (Hay/Takada Sambe/O'Sullivan) It's the icing on the cake.

I already commented how impressed I was with Hay's outstanding Prince in the earlier part of the run & I still consider that performance to have set a new benchmark for me. On Wednesday though the theme of an unexpectedly good Prince Desire continued when the downside of missing Cuthbertson/Clarke was compensated for by seeing Naghdi/Ball. Naghdi is an impressive classical dancer who is understandably confident in her technique, it was Ball who surprised me. He's a dancer with a presence who acts well on stage but when I saw him in the Giselle pas de six last year I worried that he would not be able to execute the wedding pas to a good standard. However in the intervening months his classical technique seems to have improved considerably. For a young soloist it was an excellent performance & better than some principal performances I've seen in that role on the Covent Garden stage.

There are some promising dancers coming up in RB & as I have no more performances I'll be interested to see how they've developed by the time of the next run. O'Sullivan/Magri for Lilac Fairy perhaps ? You never know maybe they'll re-choreograph the garland dance

£9 it's an e ticket. Message me if interested.

I'm unable to make the Naghdi/Ball performances so I'm really interested to hear what people felt were the differences between the dancers. Why do we have to think of it as a competition ?

I find that I can appreciate all three of the female dancers you mention, Lindsay, but in different ways.

 

There is one whose overall artistry has the edge for me (of course, we all see things different ways) but I do hope that we are not going to have a re-run of the 'competition' which was on here a while ago. I want to just be able to rejoice in the amazing young talent before us at the RB.

Now time to discuss the actual shows, perhaps?

 

..... great Bluebirds from O'Sullivan and Sambe (was that a debut?).

 

They were both terrific I think it was only a debut for O'Sullivan.

 

.....especially in Muntagirov's glorious Act 2 soliloquy - has anyone ever danced this better?

IMO James Hay danced it better - not something I'd have expected to say.

Nunez & Muntagirov have very different stage presence - she has a slightly overwhelming smile throughout whereas he is much more restrained, so for me I'm not entirely sure it's the perfect partnership but they both danced extremely well, as you'd expect.

Nagdhi's fairy variation was perfection & O'Sullivan impressed me very much too.

Glad you enjoyed it so much  I saw the company twice last year and the performances were among my dance highlights for 2016. It's heartening to see what can be achieved with a (presumably) modest budget. For me Alston's choreography fits the music like glove and the dancers interpret it so movingly. I was very happy that Alastair Macaulay gave them a great write up earlier this month. 

We went to the matinee on Saturday. We arrived in the Amphi bar area between 5/10 mins before the start. We wanted to check our coats in but we were told that the cloakroom was too full & only bags could be checked in. We didn't have enough time to trek back down to the basement cloakroom so we had to take them in with us - if they had said at the main entrance that the upstairs cloakroom was full we probably would have gone to the downstairs cloakroom. Plenty of other people were similarly being turned away after us. It was freezing in the Floral Hall in the intervals.

There are two fine recordings, both by Opus Arte. The more recent one has Edward Watson paired with Mara Galeazzi, available on both blu-ray and DVD; the older from 1994 on DVD only with Irek Mukhamedov, paired with Viviana Durante, Darcey Bussell and Lesley Collier. 

Thanks for that David.  I've got the Mukhamedov one but didn't realise there was one with Ed Watson.  I saw that pairing and it was fabulous so shall get DVD.

I read an interesting blog recently which compared the performances in the two videos ..... I assume it's ok to post the link here ..... 

http://poisonivywalloftext.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/mayerling-comparison.html 

I'm a friend but I only became one again recently because I wanted to book a few shows and it seemed cheaper with all the discounts listed above. I've never had a problem getting tickets for Sadlers Wells, there are plenty of cheap seats upstairs (it's not as if there are the equivalent of the RoH standing places) and shows rarely seem to sell out until near the time so I have no interest in priority booking. 

ROH Supporting Friend here, and very much not made of money... I booked weeks ago and couldn't get anything cheap for any of the Watson/Osipova Mayerlings either.  I think maybe I could have had the very ends of Stalls Circle Standing if I'd really wanted them.  But seeing as that was one of the things I'd reserved a bit more money for, I ended up booking more expensive seats.

 

I found booking for Jewels almost as problematic, to the point that I ended up without booking everything I wanted on priority booking.  I went back in at 9am this morning as general public and still didn't get any standing for the one I wanted... having been at work ever since, I missed the tip about trying again at 10am.

 

I suspect the allocation held for students has at least as much to do with this as highest-level Friends snaffling all the tickets.

Also supporting friend and my experience of standing for any of the Watson/Ospiova perfs was the same - I think only the very end standing remaining which are hopeless unless you're tall. My daughter is a student and there were no standing left for anything when she looked and all that was left in the student amphi perf were far side slips. 

A bit different to one of the balletco reviews

A bit different to my thoughts on the performance you mean .... but people will always have different views so I'm not quite sure why you needed to make a post about it.