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annamk

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Posts posted by annamk

  1. 3 hours ago, FionaE said:

    The main point is that freedom in the West is an illusion. 

     

    Many dancers from Mariinsky, Bolshoi, Mikhailovsky, Stanislavsky have been free to perform in Europe, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, South America and USA in 2023 without being forced to leave their home companies on return.  (I can provide names.  Information is public on their instagrams.).  
     

    Only Prisca has been forced to leave.  She is Austrian, trained at Vienna State ballet school and was previously a Soloist at Vienna under Legris.  She joined as a soloists in 2016 and has been a principal in Munich since 2019.  
     

    I’ve no doubt she was aware of the possibly consequences of performing alongside longterm friends and colleagues. 
     

    You may wish to reset your thinking about freedom and democracy . 

     

     

     

    @FionaE I find it hard to believe that someone who has the good fortune to live in a Western European democracy rather than the mafia kleptocracy of Russia can make comments like yours above in all seriousness. 
     

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  2. I subscribe to BRB (not a friend) and I received an email from them today with  this ....... 

     

    We're delighted to share with you some of the groundbreaking new technologies BRB is currently exploring to bring our audiences closer to the heart of our art form. 

     

    With the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies' Digital Accelerator Programme for Arts and Culture we've been creating Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) content. Over the coming months you, alongside many new audiences, will be able to experience BRB from brand-new perspectives and immerse yourself in life backstage.

    Find out more about our Virtual Stage

    w660_1445133_blacksabbathdesktopheaderimage.jpg

    Black Sabbath – The Ballet 

    Facebook Live rehearsal

     

    Join us next Wednesday (6 Sep) at 7pm BST for a Facebook Live event from their studios in Birmingham for a special one-off rehearsal of Black Sabbath - The Ballet.

       

    This is an exciting chance to discover and learn more about this highly anticipated heavy metal ballet experience.

     

    Visit our Facebook page for more

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  3. I enjoyed listening to Aaron S. Watkin talking about the ballets in Our Voices and seeing the dancers in the rehearsal process - potentially some clues to casting here. Video posted by ENB on their YT channel.  

     

     

    Afterthought - it would be amazing if ENB could stream insights on YT like the RB do now. 

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  4. Just now, Sim said:

    I am interested to see that a Junior Soloist has been cast as Albrecht with Emma Haws.  I'm afraid I haven't heard of him; is he new or has he just been under my ENB radar??  Vsevolod Maievskyi is his name.

     

    He has come to ENB from Dresden but before that he was with the Mariinsky for a few years.  He is Ukranian and he left Russia when the Russians invaded Ukraine. 

    • Thanks 3
  5. 1 hour ago, Blossom said:

    DNB are going to be performing their new Raymonda again this December (pitching it as the perfect Christmas ballet which is interesting).

    I really want to see a traditional telling of the story so am seriously contemplating a couple of days in Amsterdam.

    Any recommendations for reasonably priced hotels local to the opera house? 

    How small (and walkable) is Amsterdam? What is a must see other than Anne Frank's house and how does that work in terms of proximity to opera house area?

    Any help greatly appreciated.

     

    Editing to add: Any advice on auditorium seating would also be a help. I'd probably look at top 2 pricing tiers for this.

     

    I've stayed in Amsterdam a few times for the ballet, but not yet found a hotel really close to the Opera House within my price range. However, trams and buses are pretty frequent and I've always felt safe. I always look on booking.com for my hotel. 

    Personally, I found Amsterdam just a bit too big to happily walk everywhere but maybe when I was much younger it would have been fine.

    The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum are a must as is wandering around the beautiful canal streets. Then you must go and buy some cookies from Van Stapele. 

     

    Re seating. I've sat in the front row of the "Grand Tier" and in the aisle seats of the side block of the stalls - row 10. Both were very good views. The front row of the GT is obviously a more panoramic view, the side block of the stalls close; it depends whether you have a personal preference. 

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  6. Disappointed/baffled on 3 counts:

    electrifying partnerships come along so rarely and the Kaneko/Bracewell partnership was THE ONE since Cojocaru/Kobborg, I'm very sad that is not to be repeated;

    a pity that some of the Lescaut/Mistress casting is doubling up rather than giving opportunities to a Soloist - why not give Leo Dixon or David Donnelly a chance to show what they can do ? 

    Bolle has had a magnificent career but he is nearly 50, surely Des Grieux is a young man's role. Is there really no alternative to bringing in a guest star ? 

    • Like 12
  7. 3 minutes ago, Sophoife said:

     

    Oh, but those fandango costumes are Historic! They were designed for the 1970 Nureyev production, used in the 1972 film, and Never Shall Be Changed. They are absolutely hideous. As are the wigs.

     

    The Alice Topp was an extract only, as was the Tanowitz. I often think more contemporary pieces suffer in the extraction.

     

    As a celebration of 60 years, it's absolutely remarkable that not one second of Graeme Murphy's many, many pieces for the company was deemed worthy of being included. Nor was anything by previous Resident Choreographers such as Stanton Welch, Stephen Baynes, or Natalie Weir.

     

    In fact as a representation of the company over 60 years, it was really rather unrepresentative.

     

    The Ratmansky/Petipa, Peck, Possokhov, Inger, and Tanowitz pieces only entered the company repertoire inside the last three years.

     

    Alice Topp's piece is from 2017.

     

    The Balanchine pdd was first performed by the company in 1995.

     

    The MacMillan's company première was in 1973, last seen in full in 2011. The Nureyev is from 1970.

     

    So nothing created for the company between 1970 and 2017, and no new-to-us work between 1973 and 1995. Some rather large gaps.

     

     

     

    David Hallberg appeared before the performance started for a brief "thank you for the welcome etc" speech; one thing he said was - and I'm paraphrasing here - that the pieces selected for the gala represented Australian ballet now not what it was. 

     

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  8. 7 minutes ago, Geoff said:

     

    Yes, but we should be wary of judging things by how full the auditorium looks. The impression I get is that ROH has got much smarter at how it fills seats in the run up to a performance. They probably use some kind of mixture of:

     

    - increasing the marketing

    - offering special deals to targeted groups (like Friends in categories)

    - then pushing things out at decreasing prices

    - finishing with dumping anything left to ten pound students or even free papering for friends/family/company. 

     

    The figure which matters is how much a performance has sold for - and that is of course information we will never get.

     

    That's all true Geoff although you can get some idea of how well things have sold in the weeks before the performance, it was obvious for quite some time in the run up to the last outing for Frankenstein that it was selling really badly and that they would have to paper the house to avoid a total embarrassment. 

  9. 36 minutes ago, Sim said:

    A few observations from today's reviews (thanks Ian!):

     

     Joy Sable (Jewish Chronicle) refers to Jewels as a 'cornerstone' of Australian Ballet.  That stone set very quickly as the ballet has only been TAB's repertoire for three months!

     

     Macaulay once again has to have a dig at the Royal Ballet;

     

    Jonathan Gray didn't like it as much as everyone else seemed to.

     

    The reviews are almost universally positive, so I am very happy for Australian Ballet!  

     

     

     

    Very happy to see that Gerald Dowler is back reviewing again at Classical Source !

  10. On 02/08/2023 at 13:39, Geoff said:

    In answer to your question Alison, yes of course they have. Since we returned after lockdown I have been booking further and further away from where I would like to sit, in direct proportion to the rising prices. And I am sure I am booking fewer tickets as well.

     

    However it may well be that ROH doesn’t care if this is how we behave, or even considers this a job well done. Remember the former ROH marketing boss (who must not be criticised here but departed after her cunning plan was leaked)? She announced that she wanted to drive regulars out of the ROH to make way for Arts Council-pleasing “new audiences”, who might also be less picky about ticket prices as they would be going for the “experience”. A policy aim which around the same time was echoed by the then Chairman of the ROH, so one can assume it had broad approval from the bosses.
     

    So our changed behaviour - if indeed most of us are changing our behaviour - could be just what ROH wants, freeing up seats for people who will enjoy a special night out but probably never come back. How sad if that is so. 
     

     

    Surely they need regulars to buy multiple tickets, are there really enough new audiences to pick up all the unsold tickets ? I guess we will see this Autumn, I suspect there will be plenty of empty seats, particularly in the Amphi, no one I know would pay those prices. I hear that a lot of West End shows are really struggling to sell seats at the moment. 

     

    I am also wondering whether the price increases are partly that the RoH is just stuck between a rock and a hard place with the huge funding gap they have to fill ? 

    • Like 3
  11. I definitely bought less than in the past. All SCS so for me probably less about price and more about not very interested in the rep. If I couldn't stand I would be buying very little.

     

    3 Don Q 

    1 Dante

    3 Nuts

    No Cellist/Anemoi

     

    In the Linbury

    1 The Limit

    1 Northern Ballet

     

    I was looking at a few of the main stage ballet performances yesterday evening so before public booking opened and I was shocked at how few Amphi tickets have sold for many performances. It appeared to me as though Friends had voted on the Amphi pricing structure although of course some of the performances are still months away. 

    • Like 1
  12. 15 hours ago, Ianlond said:

    Thank you, that’s really helpful. I hope you enjoyed it! 

     

    I did enjoy it.

     

    I'm not familiar with R.B.M.E. other than to know that it was created by Cranko on his most important dancers, but I think on reflection that I'd have got much more out of it had I read this review beforehand: 

     

    https://www.seeingdance.com/stuttgart-ballet-remember-me-230727/#:~:text=The dance nestles perfectly with,ballet of so many highlights.

     

    I know Requiem from the Royal Ballet (although I asked myself after why it has been more than 10 years since they performed it) the music is so beautiful one can't fail to be captivated and of course it was beautifully danced by the Stuttgart company. 

     

    While I'm here I may as well add (although it's not the right thread) that as well as the Vogel /Badenas Onegin we also saw the performance on 21 July with Paixa/Aleman. I haven't seen this pair in Onegin before and I was really impressed. I half expected the performance to be a poor relation of the one the following night but it absolutely wasn't. A tribute to the company that they can field many fine casts. We particularly noted the young Gabriel Figueredo as Lensky - his pre-duel solo was a thing of astonishing beauty. 

     

    I think David Mead nails it here with this review https://www.seeingdance.com/stuttgart-ballet-onegin-230730/  except I'd delete the ? at the end of the first sentence int he title ! 

     

    Both reviews were in the links, I just reposted them here for convenience. 

     

     

    • Like 7
  13. 1 hour ago, Angela said:

    There was a big poster for Jason Reilly's 25th anniversary with Stuttgart Ballet at the end, flowers and some confetti, by the way.

     

    25 years ! He's an amazing artist, I hope he doesn't have plans to retire any time soon. I saw his performance as Gremin on 22nd July in the Onegin cast with Friedeman Vogel and Elisa Badenas (both of whom were completely MARVELLOUS of course) and his portrayal was full of the nuances and sensitivity that come from a lifetime of performing. I so wish I could have stayed for his performance in the title role but sadly it wasn't possible. 

     

     

    • Like 4
  14. 3 hours ago, Ianlond said:

    Hi all, I wonder if anyone can help. I’m really keen to go to Stuttgart for the ‘Remember Me’ double bill in November but have a few questions, having never booked for Stuttgart before. 
    Is the ticket system ballot, where you put in a bid before sales open? 
    Is there any point trying to get tickets for Saturday 4th (realistically the only date I can make it for) as I’m sure it will be popular? 
    How easy is it to set up a SEPA direct debit as instructed? 
    Thank you in advance for any help! Ian 

     

    The Remember Me bill had quite a few performances already in the season just finished (I saw it earlier this month) so I would be surprised if you have a problem getting tickets even for a Saturday. I was too late to get our tickets via the pre-booking (they only accept a certain number) but I had no problem buying them on line when general booking opened. I've bought tickets for Stuttgart performances both via the pre booking and online when general booking opens and I've never not been able to get tickets. If you choose to sit in the stalls it's worth being aware that the seats in the very centre are offset so you are less likely to have a problem with your view being obstructed by someone tall in front of you. I would like to have seen Remember Me from the Front row of the 1st rang rather than the stalls. The box office are very helpful if you have any queries and they reply to emails quickly. 

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