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Well, last week I saw Macmillan's R&J in Karlsruhe. This week it's Cranko's R&J in Stuttgart. Twice. I'll leave comments on the technical apects of the performances to more capable commentators than me. But I am constantly asked which I prefer. I don't. Both are wonderful works, and I love both of them, but I think that Macmillan really gets what it is to be 16, 17, 18 and absolutely, dilariously head over heels in love with a girl who similarly loves you. Think the balcony scene. Cranko is way too restrained. On the other hand, Cranko gets devastation, loss and grief. Act 3 is heart-rending. Is there anything in Cranko's life which explains this understanding? Macmillan Act 3, particularly in the tomb, too often descends into bathos and 'look at me.' In my opinion. The Stuttgart presentations were superb, especially David Moore as Romeo, and the following night Hyo-Jung Kang as Juliet. Now I have to wait till the end of next month for Queensland Ballet's presentation of the Macmillan version!

I suspect the answer to this is going to be "no", but my daughter is reading Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" and hasn't yet been able to see a performance of Cranko's ballet. She was away when RB last performed it in 2015 (?) and too young for it prior to that. I know the Tchaikovsky opera is widely available on DVD but apart from excerpts of and interviews about the ballet on Youtube, there doesn't seem to be a recording of the full ballet available anywhere. Nor does the RB or any other company seem likely to stage the ballet in the UK this year or next. Am I remembering correctly that there isn't a DVD of the full ballet in existence?

I will go on Friday (Feb 1st) to this performance and will write a little review afterwards. Since I missed a balletco member last time, although we both were at the same "Nutcracker" 😉 I would like to know if another forum member is coming on Friday as well? Would be nice to say Hello.

hey everyone, do you have info about the John Cranko Ballet School in Stuttgart?my dd is 16 years old and she would like to apply there. Has anyone studying there? Can you give me some feedbacks please. thank you

Just seen Arcadia in the BRB triple n Brum. I loved it! More later! Got to find existing review thread...

Any company would have been proud of yesterday's double bill. As it was performed largely by dancers who do not yet make their living from dance it was all the more remarkable. Note my terminology. I did not say "amateur" deliberately. There was nothing amateurish about the show. Everything was polished. Not just the dancing (which was perhaps not so surprising since several members of the cast were either at, had been to, or were on their way to, top ballet schools) but the direction, stage management, sets, costumes, lighting - even the glossy programmes. All the more impressive when it is considered that the production was completed in a year on a limited budget and much of the set painting and costume making would have been done by the members themselves. There were two one act ballets yesterday evening - Annette Potter's Pineapple Poll based on John Cranko's choreography and a new ballet by Christopher Marney called Carnival of the Animals. The works complemented each other perfectly for Marney has much in common with Cranko. Pineapple Poll was created early in Cranko's career and while Marney has created a string of successful ballets for Ballet Black, Ballet Central and others it has to to be remembered that he is still a very young man. If, as I fervently hope, he lives to a ripe old age and his career maintains its present trajectory Carnival will be regarded as an "early Marney". I can foresee school and university teachers yet unborn setting essay questions like "Pineapple Poll and Carnival - compare and contrast" to the grandchildren of yesterday's corps de ballet. For those who do not know the Cranko ballet there is a good synopsis in Wikipedia. There are five key roles: Pineapple Poll, Jasper the pot boy, Captain Belaye, Blanche his bride and her aunt, Mrs Dimple. Jasper falls in love with Poll but she has eyes only for the captain. She steals on board his ship with her friends to attract his attention but he has eyes only for Blanche and she is so disappointed when the captain leads Blanche and Mrs Dimple on board HMS Hot Cross Bun. However when Jasper enlists as a midshipman Poll finally takes an interest in him and the ballet ends happily with Mrs Dimple representing Britannia. With music selected and arranged from the works of Sir Arthur Sullivan it was a great patriotic romp. Captain Belaye was portrayed majestically by Andrew Potter. Readers of last year's review of The Nutcracker will remember that he was Drosselmeyer. Jasper was danced by Stephen Quildan whom Jessica Wilson has interviewed recently in Dance Direct (see Stephen Quildan – Educating Experiences 13 March 2015). He displayed great virtuosity - I couldn't help clapping one particularly difficult jump even though I shouldn't have done - but also he expressed loving, longing, disappointment and despair so eloquently. Scarlett Mann was a delightful Poll - coquettish, determined, devious but still delightful whether selling trinkets on the quayside or marshalling the crew of the Hot Cross Bun. Also attractive was Megan McLatchie as Blanche. However, for me the star of the show was Marion Pettet as Mrs Dimple - and Britannia. Last year she was Frau Stahlbaum. A wonderful actor as well as an accomplished dancer and a great chair of the Chelmsford Ballet Company. The Carnival of the Animals was written by Saint-Saëns which is best known for The Swan. That piece upon which Fokine created The Dying Swan for Anna Pavlova never fails to move me even when I hear it on a DVD player or over the radio. There are many reasons for that - some personal - to which I alluded in my review of Northern Ballet's Sapphire gala last week (see Sapphire 16 March 2015). Last Saturday Javier Torres presented a new interpretation of Saint-Saëns's music and last night we got another. A pas de deux between Quildan and Jasmine Wallis which was also lovely. Typical Marney. But I am getting ahead of myself. Marney did not create a new version of The Carnival of the Animals. He made a ballet about a company that was about to dance The Carnival of the Animals. A young stage hand longed to dance - perhaps because of his longing for its principal dancer performed beautifully by Wallis. But when he tried to lift her - dainty though she is - he found that pas de deux work was not quite as easy as it looked. According to Tim Tubbs's programme notes the ballet was set in the 1930s - the heroic early days of the English ballet after Diaghilev had died but before the Second World War when endless touring by the Vic-Wells Ballet won the hearts of the nation to this originally foreign art form. There were a few animals - foxes perhaps - and a yapping lap dog quite invisible to all but the dancers but clearly another dog like Bif which could do ballet - but the main characters were people. Quildan the stage hand, Wallis his sweetheart and principal dancer and Pettet her mother. Again, Pettet stole the show for me as the bossy, fussy but affectionate mother but she was not the only star. Quildan with a foot in a bucket one moment and fumbling the ballerina the next - showed that he can amuse an audience as well as amaze it. Wallis was an adorable ballerina. Everybody in that show danced well. Jessica Wilson (the blogger who interviewed Wilson and danced Harlequin last year) and Jenni Stafford as the ballerina's friends, Georgia Otley and Amelia Wallis (Clara in last year's show) as playful school kids, Hannah Cotgrove, McLatchie again and Carly Parry as the domestics and Mann, April Goulding and Darci Willsher as the company's dancers. It must have been such a thrill for them to work with a dancer of the calibre of Marney and one which each and every one of them richly deserved. I loved The Nutcracker but this double bill was even better. "What are you doing next year?" I asked Marion Pettet when I congratulated her after the show. "Not sure" was the answer. I suggested La Sylphide at first because ir is a ballet in a British setting which should be danced by a British company. But then I remembered their wonderful young women dancers (some of whom I have mentioned above) which is the company's strength. Wouldn't they be splendid in the entry of the shades in La Bayadère?

To get the ball rolling on this production, the cast for the General Rehearsal today was: Osipova; Golding; Naghdi; Ball and Gartside. Their first of three shows is, of course, next Friday (30th).

I'm starting a different thread for this question, since I want to take it beyond the Royal Ballet's dancers, but I'm getting quite curious about Onegin's Act I, Scene 1 solo (the one where he spends much of it with the back of one hand to his forehead) - and maybe the action that surrounds it - and differing interpretations. My original impression of it was that Onegin was just very much self-absorbed, and enmired (is that a word?) in his own ennui, but some recent dancers seem to have expanded it rather beyond that - or was I wrong in the first place? I haven't seen many casts in the current RB revival yet, so may expand on this later when I've had a chance to think it over more. What's your take on the solo, and what do you think it's expressing? *Does* it vary significantly between dancers?

The Royal Ballet's latest run of Onegin began tonight, with Alina Cojocaru as Tatiana and Jason Reilly from Stuttgart replacing an injured Johan Kobborg as Onegin. Thoughts here, please.

Starting a different thread for this one, as I'm hoping for a more international overview. When looking back at my cast sheets for Onegin at the Royal Ballet at the weekend, I was surprised to note just how many recent Tatianas started off as Olgas and then have "graduated" to Tatiana (apart from Cojocaru, who actually danced both in the same run, which turned out to be rather unfortunate and hasn't been repeated since). It's happened too, to a slight extent, with the RB's Onegins: Bonelli started off as Lensky, and now Hristov is to make his debut as Onegin after several seasons as Lensky. I don't remember the same thing happening with London Festival Ballet's admittedly rather more restricted runs, so I'm wondering, is this actually common too with the other companies which perform Onegin, or is it more Royal Ballet-specific? I suppose it must help what you might call "remote casting" if you're already familiar with the dancers.