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Oh no. Our Romeos seem to be cursed this run! Maybe next time they present this ballet, it should be at the very beginning of the season....had that been the case this year, we would have had Reece, William and Cesar!! Not that we aren't having Cesar now.....I hope!! Wishing Reece well very soon. I must look on YouTube for this Tomfej chappie as I have never heard of him.

Although the temptation to see Jason Reilly in the role again is hard to resist....as is the temptation to see Friedemann Vogel dance it!

I will delete Katherine’s separate post about the livestream as it is now superfluous. Thanks for the information, Katherine.

Not at all, Bruce. Continuity is much appreciated, as is all the information you give us about what is happening outside the UK, especially Stateside. So please keep it coming, as well as your thoughts on what you see.

Way to go Mandy!!

Errrrrr.....not at those prices!! 😲 I am sure it will be a lovely occasion.

Hmmm....lots of stuff by Yuka Oishi. A friend of mine recently saw Natalia Osipova in a piece of Oishi's called Ave Maria (in New York). In the programme notes, Oishi said "Despite the music, this is not a religious piece". However, Osipova was in a long white dress, apparently doing choreography with religious connotations. Not sure how you can have a hymn of praise to the Holy Mother, name the piece after it, and it NOT be perceived as religious...but as I didn't see it myself, I can't comment. I won't be going to the Palladium, but will look forward to hearing from those who do.

The million dollar question....but I glean from social media that they are friends so maybe that’s added incentive.

I agree with you, Fonty. I am lucky enough to have seen Cuthbertson/Nunez/Lamb dance many, many times over the years, and as I can’t afford to see everything I made the choice to skip all three of them this time and watch the new Romeos and Juliets. So far, it has paid off in spades.

If you tap/double click on the picture it will take you to the Twitter post that shows the whole photo with details.

I understand posters above wanting to see Naghdi/Ball as Olga/Lensky again. I wouldn't mind that either, but not sure we would get Principals cast in those roles at the moment, when there are so many wonderful Soloists/First Soloists who could beautifully fill those roles. But who knows? I know Principals have danced them in the past, and I have seen a good few of them, but I think now with the RB being in such a great place across the board I don't know if it's necessary to cast Principals here. Unless of course they especially want to be cast! I saw Alina dance Tatiana when she was 23. Together with Kobborg, they were the most unforgettable performances of these roles that I am ever likely to see. They just ripped me apart. What was so astonishing was that I was equally bowled over each time they did the ballet as the years went by. I so wish the RB had released their cinema broadcast to the public on DVD or whatever other contraption. It really needs to be out there and available to anyone who loves, or even likes, ballet. On the more 'mature' end of the dancing scale, I would love love love to see Laura Morera and Federico Bonelli reprise these roles. Laura brings her usual intelligence and depth to Tatiana, and Federico is a dark, brooding Onegin. I loved them together in this ballet (as well as in many others, of course).

I am hoping Naghdi/Ball will move up one from Olga/Lensky to Tatiana/Onegin, and O'Sullivan/Sambe moving into Olga/Lensky. I would never have considered Sambe a Lensky before Saturday's tour de force as Romeo, but now my mind is totally changed.

Thanks Bruce. I have corrected it.

So sorry you missed it, Alison. I hope your injury improves soon.

So am I. A well deserved promotion.

But don’t forget Cheryl was in the Royal Ballet....🤣

For some people, the number 13 is unlucky. For all people in the ROH yesterday afternoon, it was a very lucky number indeed. We were as lucky as heck to have chosen to attend a very, very special performance. It marked the official debuts of rising young stars Anna-Rose O'Sullivan and Marcelino Sambe in the title roles of Romeo and Juliet. It also featured debuts from Luca Acri as Mercutio and Teo Dubreuil as Benvolio. Where to start, when the afternoon was (for me) as perfect a performance as you could ever expect to get? Anna-Rose bounded onto the stage full of the joys of spring; so utterly convincing as an excited young girl, meeting a handsome young boy (a very sensitively portrayed Paris by Thomas Mock) for the first time. She was shy, demure, but coy at the same time. She was curious, but wanted him out so she could continue to play with her Nurse, who quickly put paid to any further fun of that kind. When she first encounters Romeo, you could almost feel the breath being sucked out of her lungs. His excitement, and hers, was thick in the air, and they did little to hide it from the other guests because they were simply unable to. Their joy was so real that during the ballroom pdd when Juliet has finally managed to get rid of everyone (I loved the impatience with which she pushed the Nurse out of the room, and how she was almost hopping up and down waiting for Tybalt and Paris to go “come on, come on, leave already” just like teenagers do when they can't wait for their parents to leave) the feeling of tears rolling down my cheeks took me by surprise. I have never cried in that bit! I was already feeling devastated by the cruel blows that Fate was going to visit upon them because the contrast between that and their happiness was too sad to bear. I loved how, after Tybalt discovers Romeo's identity and Lord Capulet allows him to stay, Romeo and Juliet, on different ends of the line during the dance, steal glances at each other and giggle. How many of us can remember when we were young teenagers being told off by our parents, and as soon as they leave the room, bursting out into laughter? This is what it was like. Their balcony pdd was danced with such passion, such abandon, such believability, that the tears started again. What on earth was happening to me? I have seen this ballet more times than I can remember, and yet this was like I was seeing it for the first time. Act 3 finally did me in altogether. Here Anna-Rose really excelled. Her journey from that giddy young girl to the despairing young woman was clearly portrayed and devastatingly felt, by her and by us. Such expressive eyes, used to perfection all through the ballet. I could just feel the burden of grief she carried on her shoulders when she said farewell to Romeo, and her disgust and anger at having to even be touched by Paris. She still carried some of the teenage rebellion in how her anger was channeled in her defiance of her father (Gary Avis, giving another wonderful acting masterclass) and her rejection of the Nurse. This Juliet was angry with what was happening to her and to her love....why couldn't everyone else see how happy she was? Her mother certainly could, and Elizabeth McGorian's Lady Capulet was sympathetic to her daughter: maybe she too knows how it feels to marry for political/dynastic reasons but to love someone else. Before Juliet visits Friar Laurence and then takes the potion, we must be made to feel her fear of what was going to happen, and here I found myself once again welling up. The things you do for love. Finally, when Juliet found Romeo dead on the floor, terror, despair and utter horror is what came through from Anna-Rose's silent scream...one of the loudest I have ever heard. This feisty young woman had no hesitation; she strode over to Romeo's fallen knife and fatally injured herself. The determination with which she dragged herself over the bed was so real; we were willing her to reach him as she literally clawed her way over to him. I could almost hear her fingernails scratching the marble. As she just managed to kiss his hand before dying, that final gesture of love just did me in. I seriously can't explain the last time (if ever) this ballet did this to me. I don't have the words, just the memory of those feelings. This was in no small part due to Sambe's portrayal of Romeo. Yes, both he and Anna-Rose are wonderful technical dancers. But MacMillan requires more, so much more. Sambe also delivered the 'more' in spades. He was so romantic, passionate and attentive. When he first met Juliet he just couldn't wipe the smiles off his face. His joy on receiving her letter almost lifted me up to the heavens. His despair when he finds Juliet apparently dead was like a knife being driven through my heart, and then twisted. His refusal to believe it was so very sad; he wouldn't stop trying to shake her and wake her. When he failed, he did the one thing he wanted to do, and that was join her. It was very clear that he didn't want to live even five more minutes without his love. An incredibly moving, heartfelt and heart-wrenching performance from him. The partnership between Sambe and O'Sullivan was already clear to me a couple of years ago when they danced Bluebird together. I remarked then how well they went together, and expressed hope that it would continue. Well it doesn't get much better than yesterday for any partnership. They felt so close to each other, they fit well physically, they both danced like angels and they had true passion, trust and empathy for each other. For some reason Mr O'Hare seems to be against allowing established and steady partnerships to develop at the Royal Ballet (unless you are Nunez/Muntagirov). To me, this is inexplicable when there is so much potential for them at the moment. Having said this, I really hope that he gives these two the chance to create something very special in and for the company. They were great representatives in NYC a few months ago, and I strongly feel this partnership should be nurtured and encouraged. Luca Acri gave a wonderful account of Mercutio; danced with brio, interpreted with real feeling. The use of his eyes in his death scene was very moving, especially when he took his final look at Romeo. So much was said there. As with Romeo, here is a young, happy-go-lucky boy who was the victim of Fate, stupidity and arrogance, and the contrast between his early self and his dying self was deeply felt. Teo Dubreuil, whom I have been noticing a lot this year, was a beautiful Benvolio, with lovely lines, a handsome, expressive face and a good jump. I can see him as a future Romeo. The whole cast was a great frame for the two central performances, and they all deserve plaudits. I am just sad that it will now probably be at least two years before we can see Sambe and O'Sullivan reprise these roles. I spoke to Marcelino a couple of days after their school performance of R&J and asked him how it had gone, and if he was happy with it. He was thrilled, and he said to me “you will see, Anna-Rose IS Juliet.” How right he was, and I would add that he IS Romeo. So many congratulations to them both.

I was left weeping, wrung out and blown away by this afternoon’s matinee. I feel privileged to have been there. What a partnership, and what incredible artists in their own right. More later, after I recover. Wow, just wow.

So is ACE going to be the harbinger of relevance now? I can decide what's relevant to me. What does relevance even mean in the context of art? I hope that once they have decided how they are going to determine what is relevant to an audience, they share their philosophy with us.

As no-one has started a thread on this, I thought I would. I am very interested to hear peoples' opinions. It was certainly an eclectic evening, and one where it is interesting to see what kind of things the younger generation consider important enough to convey through dance. Some of the themes are eternal ones, such as love and lust, Man's relationship to nature and to the universe, etc. Others are a bit more contemporary, such as our competition with AI, and other spacey-seeming things that I just didn't get. The music was very varied as well; some of it not much more than sounds, some of it quite nice, especially the sung piece that Hamburg Ballett used, and the sung piece used by Dutch National Ballet in their first piece. I also liked the music in Kit Holder's piece for Birmingham Royal Ballet. I'm afraid I can't be more specific about the music or the dancers because if you want this information you have to buy a programme.... I can't say that there is any ballet that I saw over the course of the evening that I would go out of my way to see again. There were some that I really enjoyed, such as DNB's Sand, choreograhed by Milena Sidorova, Interchangeable Text for ABT Studio Company, choreographed by Gemma Bond (ex-RB), BRB's Stems, choreographed by Kit Holder, and National Ballet of Canada's Grey Verses, if only for the pleasure of seeing Donald Thom back on an ROH stage (choreographer Brendan Saye). The Royal Ballet gave a chance to two young dancers, Joshua Junker (Canto de Ossanha) and Hannah Grennell (Zohar). Both works were pleasant and well danced. I wasn't sure what to make of Norwegian National Ballet's for:jake, danced by its choreographers Samantha Lynch and Douwe Dekkers. It was danced to a soundtrack of a little boy called Jake opening his birthday presents with (I assume) his parents and having a great time. I spent the whole piece worrying that something had happened to the little boy, so couldn't relax. I am still not sure, but it was a weird experience for me. Without question, my total and utter dud of the night was Jack, choreographed by Drew Jacoby for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. It was like Star Trek on acid: bits of what looked liked tin foil stuck to the sides of the four (male) dancers' heads, brightly-coloured Day-Glo shirts with black tights/leggings...each dancer in his own square of light....after 30 seconds I was hoping that they would all be beamed up. When they weren't, I looked upwards in supplication to gods of Zog and prayed that I would get beamed up instead. When I wasn't, the realisation that this was 12 minutes of my life that I was never going to get back made me bitter and twisted. I say 12 minutes; my friend said 'that went on about an hour too long' and that's just how I felt. My view is that it is a laudable exercise to invite young(ish) choreographers and dancers from various ballet companies around the world to create a piece for this showcase evening at the Linbury. Although these things are always a bit hit and miss, I hope it's something that becomes a regular fixture.

Although if you turn Z the other way it looks like an N.....!!!

Ah. Every time I have seen it the breast has been exposed, but I am glad the dancer has the choice.

Yes, there is always an exposed breast. Makes it wild and feral, almost Amazonian.

I also noticed this (from the stalls) on opening night.

Certain bits of the male anatomy...many times over! 😱🤪😄