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ajf

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Everything posted by ajf

  1. Sadly I am now be unable to make the performance which means that I have SCS D31 looking for a good home. Please PM me if interested.
  2. Due to a change in my jubilee picnic plans, I now have 2 spare tickets for Like Water For Chocolate for the evening performance on Saturday 4 June at 7.30pm. It is the first cast of Hayward and Sambe. The tickets are central SCS and are £9 each. Please PM me if interested.
  3. Have tried to send you a PM but I got a message saying that you could not receive messages. Perhaps you could PM me to see if that can start a conversation.
  4. I have a ticket that I sadly won’t be able to use for the Saturday evening performance of the Ashton triple. It is SCS D26 and is £7. Please PM me if interested.
  5. I have 2 central SCS tickets for sale for the Ashton triple bill on Tuesday 26th April at 7.30 pm. They are £7 each. Please PM me if interested.
  6. I have a spare ticket for the RB Ashton triple bill for the evening performance of Saturday 23 April. It is a central Stalls Circle Standing and is £7. Please PM me if interested.
  7. I have a spare ticket for the RB Ashton triple bill tomorrow, Friday 22 April, at 5 pm. It is A38 in the Stalls Circle and is £24. Please PM me if interested.
  8. This is a duplicate entry due to my pc freezing. Apologies. Ticket for the 2nd taken. Ticket for the 1st still available.
  9. I have one stalls circle standing ticket for the RB triple bill of Weathering, Solo Echo and DGV for each of Fri 1 April at 7.30pm Sat 2 April at 7.30pm Both tickets are D26 and are £7 each. Please DM me if you are interested.
  10. Sadly I will be unable to make the following performances of Swan Lake. I have one ticket for each of a very central Stalls Circle Standing (D26 or D27) which cost £11 each. Wed 9 March 7.30pm with O'Sullivan and Sambe Fri 11 March 7.30pm with Magri and Corrales Wed 16 March 7.30pm with Hayward and Bracewell. Please PM me if interested in any of the tickets.
  11. I have a ticket that I cannot use for the RB Swan Lake at the opera house on Tuesday 1 March at 7pm. The cast is Nunez and Muntagirov. it is a central SCS and is £11. Please PM me if interested.
  12. I have a central stalls circle standing ticket that I cannot use. Please PM me if you are interested.
  13. I also saw the performance on Saturday evening and agree with much of what Sheila said above. It was an enjoyable evening but given how well known the plot of Carmen is, the storyline chosen was more than a little obscure in some parts and yet telegraphed far too obviously in others. The play within a play idea, or at least dancers playing actors acting/dancing in a film, was perhaps too much for the movement to communicate. The main failing for me was the failure of the narrative in the first half to set up a strong enough set of relationships between Carmen, Don Jose and Escamillo. Therefore when the powerful final pas de deux came along to end the show, although the dancing was excellent, the strength of emotion between the duo seemed to come from nowhere. More time was spent on the relationship between Michaela and Carmen which allowed a substantial amount of dance by and between the two women. The star of the show was clearly Osipova, the quality of her movement and dramatic ability shone and it was a delight to experience this in an auditorium smaller than most of those in which I have seen her perform. I was 5 rows from the front and appreciated every nuance that she brought to the stage, particularly the shifts she demonstrated between the private and public persona of her character. Isaac Hernandez as Escamillo showed that he could dance but, given that his character had most of the storyline in the first half, he failed to convince me with his acting. He looked a ballet dancer out of water. This was not helped by having to dance around for part of the time with both holding a camera and with a clapper board slung round his neck (an example of the occasional over telegraphing by the production that reminded me of the postman's sack that Ed Watson had to deal with slung across him while trying to pirouette in the Royal Ballet's Raven Girl also wearing a postman's hat, grasping an envelope and having just jetisoned a postman's bicycle.) Sadly the clapper board made a number of reappearances throughout the evening worn both by Escamillo and by the Cameraman. I may be doing Hernandez an injustice as his character, of lead man and film director, did not seem as strongly written as others. Jason Kittelberger had much more dramatic presence, particularly in the second half where he has more to do, and I felt he was very well cast. Of the other two dancers, Hannah Ekholm made little impression as Michaela next to Osipova; while in contrast, I felt that Eryck Brahmania was outstanding in his trio of roles as Fan, Cleaner and Cameraman, and was just as important a part of the evening as the other two men. For example, he was able to strike exactly the right note in his role as a fan with his wide-eyed eagerness, exaggerated but not overacted. I enjoyed the movement quality and there were two particularly good sections for all 5 dancers together. I am not familiar with Didy Veldman's work but I would go and see more of it. The piece was just 1 hour 45 minutes long with a 20 minute interval though I felt that it could have been run straight through, possibly with even more impact. I am however, influenced both by my admiration for Ashton and his ability to shoehorn Chekov and Shakespeare plays (A Month in the Country and The Dream) into miraculously complete storytelling ballets of less than 60 minutes, and by my love for the Mats Ek Carmen set to Shchredrin's reduced Bizet score, Carmen Suite, together a marvellous 50 minutes. I appreciated the music when it more closely echoed the Bizet tunes, but that is maybe the traditionalist in me and I do have a very soft spot for the Bizet music. Most of the solos, pas de deux and group dances seemed to be to a specific BIzet extract while the remainder of the movement was to the newly composed music, which my companion enjoyed much more than I did. The set was well thought out and had long gauze panels hung at the rear of the stage which allowed characters to sometimes be seen at rest while the front stage was occupied by others. In front of the panels there were two butcher hooks that held Carmen's costume changes - a large red cape, a natty Spanish hat and a marvellously ornate ruffled short cape - as well as something that looked like flowered garlands, the point of which I am unclear. There was a long mirror on one side at the rear of the stage, at one moment smeared with mud, or somesuch, by Carmen to telegraph her dissatisfaction, though with what I am still unsure - her image, an actress having to pretend to be something, a woman having to pretend to be someone? (The removal of the mud from the mirror by two stage crew took most of the interval.) The other main prop was a sofa which was initially to the side but on one occasion moved to centre stage to sit all 5 dancers in a group number. The costumes were pared down modern dress with a hint of Spain and in general I thought worked well. The evening was well attended given that social distancing was practiced in the seating arrangements (masks were worn by all, as per the rules set by Nicola Sturgeon here in Scotland). As Scottish Ballet have just announced the early closing of their Nutcracker show due to the even stricter Covid rules that are about to come into force, this production team must be thanking their lucky stars that the timing worked out for them. It must have been an expensive undertaking to put on such a high quality show for two nights only. I would say that it was a less memorable evening than the previous piece by the team, The Mother choreographed by Arthur Pita, but as that bleak story has a mother gouging out her own eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to get her baby back from Death, it is hard for even the high drama of Carmen to compete.
  14. Ryo, I have sent you a PM. Everyone else, there is one ticket still available.
  15. I have two tickets for the insight evening on the Dante Project on Thursday 30 September, at 7:45pm in the Linbury at the opera house. The tickets are two seats together in the stalls and are £20 each. Please PM me if interested.
  16. I have a spare ticket for the RB Swan Lake at ROH on Tuesday 10 March at 7.30pm. The cast is Takada and Bonelli. It is a good SCS ticket and is £11. Please PM me if interested.
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