now voyager

In Bayadere, Solor typically does a series of double assembles in one of his variations.

As for triple tours, Daniel Camargo did a great set of them in Shrew pas at the last World Ballet Festival in Tokyo.  (Ricky Cragun was of course famous for them.)

27 minutes ago, Dawnstar said:

 

Is he supposed to be retiring altogether soon or just leaving that company? I've not seen him dance so maybe I'd better book for Manon in case it's the only chance, although I'm slightly dubious about Nunez after finding her not ideal as Juliet.

He is only retiring from ABT. He will continue to dance with La Scala and with his “Roberto Bolle and Friends” tours (as well as other engagements, like the RB in the fall).  The opportunities to see him in a full-length classic or neoclassic ballet, however, may be somewhat limited: in addition to their Onegins at La Scala this fall, he and Nunez will dance it on tour in Southern California next summer, and he’s also scheduled for La Dame aux Camellias with Zakharova in the fall of 2020.

I attended the rehearsal last night. It was Dame Monica rehearsing Mendizabal and Kish in Firebird, with Alexander Campbell presenting.

8 minutes ago, Xandra Newman said:

The beautiful Concerto - 2nd Movement - will be danced by:

Cuthbertson/Clarke

Naghdi/Hirano 

Hamilton/Bjornebrod Braendsrod

And Lamb/Edmonds, I believe.

Margot Fonteyn was 46 when I first saw her Juliet and I found her completely convincing (and utterly ravishing) as a 14-year old.

16 hours ago, Coated said:

Not impressed with the booking dates, unnecessarily tight schedule for 3 of the levels. No time to find alternative date when your originally planned dates don't work out and one of you is dead busy in your allocated 24hr window. You might even have the pleasure of fighting with a very busy, badly designed website 2 days in a row. Joy. I'm considering swapping ballet for macramé, much less hassle (I presume, never having tried the latter)

 

• Premium 2 Friends: 2 July 2019
• Premium 1 Friends: 3 July 2019
• Supporting Friends: 4 July 2019
• Friends+: 9 July 2019
• Friends and Young Friends Packages: 10 July 2019
• Friends and Young Friends: 11 July 2019
• Friends Rehearsals: 18 July 2019
• Daytime events booking for all members: 7 August 2019

I am thanking the stars that my 17 hours of flying is scheduled for the day AFTER my 24 hour booking window!  But it could easily have been otherwise, and if, heaven forbid, one has to call (say, to exchange a ticket), it’s a much smaller window (and I’d predict, with calls compressed into that shorter window, even longer wait times...)

I never saw The House, but I believe there were some schoolchildren who sent something saying how they HATED the ROH?  What with one thing after another, I find my feelings heading in that direction.

As for the RB’s new season, I am among the many dismayed by the minimal Ashton.  

I look forward to seeing the Coppélia again with the benefit of now having seen Sergei Vikharev’s gorgeous Petipa reconstruction and Pierre Lacotte’s charming French one.  I look forward even more to the fall’s triple bill, and, at the end of the season, to another chance to see Tombeaux. I did not think 24 Preludes was among Ratmansky’s best work, and am curious to see its reimagining.

(Many) years ago, the Royal Ballet had productions of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake that I loved unreservedly.  I find the current productions far less satisfactory, but hope to see one or two dancers I admire newly cast in key roles in the classical repertoire.

I’ve seen brilliant performances elsewhere in Onegin recently, but I welcome the chance to see the RB’s new generation tackle its challenges.

Manon at the beginning of next season seems to me to be too much too soon, and I don’t think I’ll be doing much pond-crossing for the other programs.

If the weather is good when you are there, do try to get out of town to see the Catherine Palace and Peterhof.

When the Mariinsky's new season's subscriptions are announced, that will give you a partial schedule for the month, but the complete schedule is unlikely to be released until about 2 months prior.  I suggest that you also take a look at the Mikhailovsky's schedule when making your plans.

4 hours ago, alison said:

Thanks for letting us know, Anna.  Was he the most obvious outstanding (as in non-promoted) principal promotion prospect?  I'm afraid I'm not very au fait with who is and who isn't a principal these days.

Yermakov has, in my opinion, long deserved this promotion, but I think there are others, most notably Stepin among the men and Novikova and Osmolkina among the women, whom I also would have promoted years ago were the decision mine to make.

For the historic stage, most of the stalls seats are relatively flat, so I would only take the first row, or the aisle seats in the side sections. The front rows of the stalls boxes and dress circle, if not too far to the sides, offer a very good view.

I am deeply grateful to the Links team for their work.  I usually look at the compilation daily, and frequently read one or two linked items, but, like some of the posters above, I read fewer published items nowadays, given what I consider to be diminished quality of some reviews (mindful of my blood pressure, I won't read Lyndsey Winship, for example), but even so, I find it invaluable to know what's out there.

Sarasota Ballet’s just-announced new season includes Ashton’s Les Rendezvous, Dante Sonata, AND full-length Romeo & Juliet!  Also MacMillan’s Las Hermanas:

https://www.sarasotaballet.org/events/2019-2020-season

Raymonda, Giselle, Swan Lake (which is indeed scheduled for February 23) and Jewels will be “live.”  The others are repeats. (The Romeo, for instance, was shown in January 2018 IIRC.)

The new Bolshoi season has not yet been announced.

Happy Birthday to Lynn!  My very first Giselle and Swan Queen (in the full-length), an amazing Juliet, a gorgeous Fairy of Beauty, a masterful Girl in Green, and a peerless Natalya Petrovna.

And, speaking of Prologue Fairies, I will never forget Ann Jenner’s.  Happy Birthday, Ann!

2 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

Now this thread has been started, may I ask a couple of questions? 1) Based on previous runs, is it likely that the RB will announce any more casting nearer the time, like they did with Don Q? 2) If you're sitting restricted view stalls circle, is either left or right better in terms of what you miss or are they about the same?

I would choose left, so as not to miss Juliet's run down the stairs in the balcony scene.

6 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

As feared, no Alexandrova or Kaptsova ;(

Prominent among the not unexpected disappointments.

The casting for the Bolshoi’s summer season at the ROH is now posted on the ROH website. Some unexpected pleasures, and a few (not unexpected) disappointments.

2 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

Please excuse ignorance, but what is PAMTGG?

In this case, ignorance may be bliss. PAMTGG was a ballet choreographed by Balanchine in the early 1970’s. Its title was an acronym for a commercial jingle then in  use by an airline then in business: “PanAm makes the going great.” Here’s a link to a review:  https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/18/archives/dance-balanchine-offers-pamtgg-work-based-on-jingle-given-by-city.html

2 hours ago, Lindsay said:

I think the difficulty with *some* Ashton works (am a huge fan of Symphonic, Rhapsody, Monotones and Fille before anyone accuses me of being a 'hater') is not that the settings or costumes are dated, it is that they are "period pieces" without sufficient heft or universality (whether through characterisation, narrative or musical choices) to strike a chord of recognition in modern viewers.  

 

I went on Tuesday, despite having been bored by Pigeons at the last revival, because I wanted to see the new Scarlett RBS piece.  That I found extremely dull and ordinary.  I remain completely baffled as to the continual commissioning of Scarlett - once you've seen the running on the spot (caucus race nicked from Wheeldon in Alice, foxes this time), and corps twirling on pointe (lab assistants in Frankenstein, random insects here) and the story told by being L-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y T-e-d-i-o-u-s-l-y acted out scene by scene, you seem to have reached the end of his very limited imagination. 

 

After that, it was a relief to get to Pigeons, which at least had a coherent dramatic structure.  Of course Ashton's choreography, particularly for the corps in the gypsy scene, stood up very strongly against Scarlett's work but I still found the piece overall far too twee and generally irritating to enjoy.   Grown women pecking around like infantile birds are not expressing a universal emotion in the way that Lise is in Fille, or the lead ballerina in Rhapsody.  Ashton's great works are in an entirely different class to Scarlett's work so far, but that doesn't mean that his whole output has to be uncritically received.

I don’t think that because someone loves 2 Pigeons, it necessarily means he/she is uncritical about the entire Ashton oeuvre. I love 2 Pigeons and many other Ashton works, and I consider Ashton one of the great choreographers of all time, but I disliked Varii Capricci ( even though I loved its original cast), and while Jazz Calendar is a lot of fun in spots, I find some of it uninspired. (For that matter, I love Balanchine, too, but PAMTGG was one of the worst ballets I’ve ever seen, and I really dislike Variations for a Door and a Sigh.)

Birthday Offering needs careful casting, which I don’t think it received in the RB’s last run— when it’s better danced (as I thought it was) by ABT than by the Royal Ballet, something’s seriously wrong.

I think Daphnis is a beautiful ballet.

3 minutes ago, Dawnstar said:

The website at  https://www.roh.org.uk/productions/a-month-in-the-country-by-frederick-ashton still isn't showing the other ballets correctly for all dates either. When I look at the first night, 4th June, on the Overview page Naghdi is the first dancer listed followed by Nunez, Osipova, Watson & Bracewell, a random jumble of names from all 3 ballets. Then when I click on the See Prices button, to try to see the casts separated out, Naghdi isn't there at all, only Watson, Arestis & Avis are listed under The Firebird.

 

5th June is even more confusing but in a different way: there are 2 casts listed under each of the 3 ballets, except for The Firebird where Naghdi is the only one listed in the title role. The 16-dancer line-up for Symphony In C would certainly be a dream cast if it were to actually happen!

 

7th June has no casts listed for Month or Symphony & no title role for Firebird. I can only guess that the website has somehow managed to list the 7th June cast members under 5th June.

 

12th June has no dancers listed for any of the 3 ballets.

 

13th June is, like 4th June, missing the title role for Firebird.

 

14th June is missing the title role for Firebird, has 2 casts for Month & 10 dancers listed under Symphony.

 

While noting the above from the individual See Prices pages, I've realised that the 5 names given for each date on the Overview keep changing as I click in & out. For instance the first night went from Naghdi, Nunez, Osipova, Watson, Bracewell to Naghdi, Nunez, Osipova, Watson, Watson & then back to the original. Cuthbertson, Hirano & Crawford are all duplicating on other dates.

 

I have no technical knowledge of websites so I don't know how it's managed to do this but didn't anyone from the ROH's website team check that everything was displaying correctly once they had added the casts to the site? They must have the correct cast lists because if you look up each performance individually by date then those cast lists are correct, e.g. 12th June has everyone listed at https://www.roh.org.uk/events/blh5n. So why are they so odd on the overview page & the See Prices sub-pages?

 

For comparison, I am signed in to the site but I don't have any sort of membership. On previous discussions of the website displaying casts wrongly, people signed in with various levels of Friends have said that they can see it correctly. That's all very well but if the ROH is trying to encourage new audiences then surely it's important to have it displaying for people who aren't signed in, or who only have a general public account, as well as for Friends.

 

Sorry, this has ended up longer than I intended but the more I looked the more errors I saw!

Welcome to the ROH's brave new world!

I also think those are Reid and Egon.  The danseur in the center photo in 1 is clearly Ricky Cragun, and Egon is in many of the surrounding ones (e.g., the jete).

He seems to be back on, according to a Tweet from  Ariane Bavalier (a French dance critic).  And he has reappeared in recent posts on dansomanie.

3 hours ago, bridiem said:

 

It would be helpful if they would supply consistent information about their performances/tickets rather than shooting the messenger. And the website still says 'limited availability' where in fact none, etc. Very irritating!

 

 

The Coliseum website seems to go both ways--I just found a few seats for a performance listed as "sold out," so for people who, like me, are looking for last-minute tickets, I would suggest checking each desired performance individually, rather than relying on the summary page.

I'm one of those people who saves programs and cast lists forever, goes back to them on occasion and so wants them to be accurate.  I'm also finding the current situation cumbersome--I've been going to the programme selling desk in the Bow St foyer, seeing no notice, asking the programme sellers if there are any changes, sometimes getting misinformed, sometimes getting the sole printout jammed in my face so that I can hurriedly try to annotate my cast sheet properly, being told sometimes rather officiously (and IMO incorrectly) that the changes are insignificant.  It seems to me that if the ROH really wants to save paper, it would save far more paper and accommodate old school viewers like myself if it were to install recycle bins (with narrow slots to accommodate only the cast sheets) near the exits.

15 minutes ago, Buddy said:

XVIII Mariinsky International Ballet Festival 2019

 

https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/festivals/fest2018_2019/

 

Second to this in order of universal significance will be Olga Smirnova’s debut as Giselle.   😊

Smirnova’s debut in the Mariinsky production of Giselle, perhaps, but certainly not in the role! She’s danced it in Moscow a few times and, if memory serves, in Vienna once or twice.