Yaffa

People who demand to know why I STILL haven't fixed the software so that they can receive mails from Mr. X... and I have to gently explain that I have yet to find software that delivers messages that were not sent 🙂. Actually these days I often add this nice clip from Keeping up Appearances:

RBS annual matinee is always a great treat...

Top students of the major Russian ballet schools are taking part. More details at: https://tvkultura.ru/article/show/article_id/342931 . In the past I have had no problems watching the Russian TV broadcasts online.

The Paris Opera Ballet School Demonstrations (usually on three days in different December weekends) will this year be on 15th December (Sunday) and 21st and 22nd December (the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas). As usual, the performances on all three days will be the same - Usually, the younger grades are in the morning and the older grades are in the afternoon. The Demonstrations are always amazing and give an incredible insight into the School's system of training...

There's the annual Royal Ballet School matinee on 14th July at 1:30 p.m. See https://www.roh.org.uk/productions/the-royal-ballet-school-summer-performance-by-the-royal-ballet-school Public booking starts on 3rd April.

There's an interesting article about Catherine Wreford, who's preparing to dance in a new production of Romeo and Juliet with Royal Winnipeg Ballet, despite having a malignant brain tumour for 6 years. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47056874 Particularly inspiring are her comments about how her short term memory problems make dancing easier than dialogue.. and how she and her colleagues are working round this limitation: "I'm proud of myself if I can get through an audition without messing up the lines. But choreography still sticks in my head, that's a different part of my brain."...... Wreford tells directors and producers of her condition in advance, who make allowances for her needs....."When I play a bigger role, the people who hire me know the situation and send me everything way ahead of time so I can sing it and learn the lines three times a day, so it moves more from my short term memory to my long term memory," she explains.

There are more codes! If you have not bought train tickets via Skyscanner before and are making almost any train journey over £15, just download the Skyscanner app and enter the code which you can find at https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-train-tickets/ and you'll get £5 off. The offer ends on 31st December or when all the codes are used. I just helped 5 people to do this painlessly. Yaffa - with no connection to the above. Just..... sharing the information 🙂

Sadly this might also affect the annual 'Demonstrations' (ballet, not political) of the Paris Opera Ballet School. For many younger students this is a major rite of passage, their first steps on the Palais Garnier stage, with family and friends coming from afar. (There are repeat performances on 16th and 23rd December - currently sold out but very very highly recommended)...

Catching up on some threads and don't know if there is still such a thing as a very cheap ticket... but if there is, I'd like to buy one...

By the way, for another very interesting video from last year, following students at Vaganova and dancers in Russian ballet companies, see the 10 episode RT documentary, with subtitles in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT_vnGAMIRY&list=PLBRLKmBip431gks0gI63B9CddM1aVsFih

Actually the clip is beginning of a longer video interview of three students. Longer clip (in Russian) with translation by melmoth is at: https://melmoth.co/2018/11/25/vaganova-ballet-academy-documentary/

melmoth.blog just posted a beautiful wordless video of the Vaganova Academy, taken by Vitaly Bezmennikov: https://www.tumblr.com/video/tsiskaridze/180441860237/250/

Um, that's what Yaffa tries to say. I just had another embarrassing case of intending to tell people that I was 'just passing on info'... but for some reason the 'a' in 'passing' was yet again replaced by an 'i' 😀

The dates (30th May to 1st June) are also quite close to the BBC Young Dancer 2019 final (18th May) - though the BBC Young Dancer category finals are apparently in March. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07gbzxt). Indeed, interesting list of schools and companies - though notably not RBS. From the name of this new competition, I thought it might be something like the Young British Dancer of the Year... but it appears that this is a completely international competition taking place in the UK. It does sound like an exciting venture - but this (and the recent discussion of ballet competitions) really makes me miss the YBDY, a real national treasure. Yes, there was always a bit of a disagreement e.g.about the 'British' criteria for entry, but It was always such a wonderful opportunity to see the best of British ballet training in a way which I understand was well integrated into students' curriculum, instead of detracting from it. and with no over-the-top glitz... The Spring performance of students from all the leading vocational schools which took place the year after YBDY ended was also amazing. Is there any other upcoming opportunity to see the best of British ballet schools? Yaffa

A new documentary 'Class,' produced some months ago and broadcast on Russian TV last week, is now on YouTube at https://youtu.be/bz_Eg_OYZCs. I couldn't understand anything when it was originally broadcast, but it looks as though you can alter the YouTube settings so that the automatic Russian captions are translated to English. [PS From the first couple of minutes I can only get a rough idea of what's being said...]

The results of the ladies' internal concours have just been announced. From https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/news/results-of-the-competition-to-promote-the-ballet-of-the-opera-national-of-paris-1 : Premières Danseuses Mademoiselle Marion Barbeau Mademoiselle Héloïse Bourdon Sujets Mademoiselle Bianca Scudamore Coryphées Mademoiselle Victoire Anquetil Mademoiselle Naïs Duboscq

Surprisingly, there are still (Wed 7th November, half past midnight in the UK ) 2000 codes still left. Details as above. The offer has just been mentioned again in this week's moneysavingexpert.com weekly newsletter, which millions of people will read in the morning- so it's probably best to act fast if you're interested.

Maria Khoreva has just been promoted to first soloist at Mariinsky - quite a leap, though not unexpected...

Sorry for the short notice, but a code will be released at 2 p.m. today (Thurs) on the moneysavingexpert.com site for getting a £5 reduction on £15+ train tickets via the skyscanner app. Only the first 5000 uses of the code will get the discount and they'll probably all go within minutes. Details at: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-train-tickets/#needtoknow-5 To stand a chance, you're probably best downloading the app and selecting the ticket right away, then downloading and inserting the code as as soon as it goes live. Yaffa (with no connection to moneysavingexpert.com or Skyscanner - just passing on the info)

The Vaganova Prix Gala will be broadcast live tonight (Sat 20th October) at 7:30 p.m. St. Russian time, 5:30 p.m. UK time at https://mariinsky.tv/ . There's info about the competition and a list of prizewinners at https://vk.com/vaganovaprix. I'd guess that, as last time, the recording also will be available after the broadcast, but I haven't seen any announcement about that.

Haven't yet had time to read this detailed piece on ROH's data mining and plans from last year: http://www.opera-europa.org/library/documents/14475_lucy-sinclair.pdf

I haven't seen the new ROH and am trying to understand how all this is supposed to work. Say a family without any background in ballet is coming down to London and have a couple of hours to spare. What can they expect to get from visiting the ROH? Are they better checking a schedule in advance and/or coming at a certain time?

Sounds very interesting. A pity you have to be a boy to attend :-)

Thanks for this - Has the situation regarding baggage changed? Last time I was at Palais Garnier, the cloackroom was not accepting bags, and the FAQ at: https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/practical-informations/faq says: Free cloakrooms are available on various floors of both theatres. Travel bags and suitcase are not allowed.

I think Bruce is right on the ball here. Even with the unavoidable problems, closer attention to what viewers actually need at worldballetday.com could have made things so much smoother. But for me it is actually working out better to enjoy World Ballet Week rather than to shoot for World Ballet Day. When I heard that all the content would be available after the event I decided to restrict myself to one sessions on the day itself, to experience the 'live' atmosphere - and the rest of the sessions as 'rewards' for reaching certain goals each day this week. I'm finding it really doesn't bother me that I have read here about what to expect - rather it adds to the anticipation. Still I'm curious about how other people feel about 'live' feeds versus post-event recordings. Yaffa