Jump to content

Recommended Posts

According to interview with O'Hare in Sunday Times today, to include:

 

Revival of Carbon Life

New McGregor to Steve Reich

Revival of Strapless

New Crystal Pite

 

A main thread of the season is a celebration of McGregor's tenth anniversary as resident choreographer.

 

Acosta's Carmen is not scheduled to return.

 

 

 

Edit: the link to the official announcement is in post 48: http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/12179-royal-ballet-1617-season/?p=165589

Edited by alison
added link to official announcement
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 307
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

yay for Carbon Life - loved that. Wonder if they will bring back the same rock/pop stars, or involve some different performers. Alison Mosshart will be difficult to replace

 

New Crystal Pite should be great (just hope its not on with Strapless; I've tried to stay positive about Strapless - there were a few scenes/moments that were promising, but losing 15mins wouldn't be a huge loss, and I suppose I could always sit it out).

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm. Sounds like a potentially cheap season if they spread Strapless over two triple bills (horrible habit in my opinion). Can't say this early glimpse of the season is making me feel excited about the upcoming announcement, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

If they want to have a McGregor celebration, I really hope they opt for Woolf Works rather than Tetractys.

Edited by Coated
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully no Raven Girl either!

 

I have my fingers crossed for Mayerling and more classics/plenty of Ashton.  If it's a Wayne McGregor year then I'm not very hopeful.  In general I'm not very keen on many of the new works.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A main thread of the season is a celebration of McGregor's tenth anniversary as resident choreographer.

 

 

Has he been there 10 years?  And after all that time, the only piece he has done that I found vaguely agreeable was Woolf Works.  

 

Time for him to moving on now, isn't it?  (She said hopefully.)

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is also going to be of particular interest is whether K O'H sustains some new or newish, successful partnerships going forward.

 

Morera/Muntagirov to reprise their Fille; Nunez and Muntagirov to cement the stellar partnership they have shown us in Giselle; Naghdi and Ball to be cast together (pleeease).........

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is the announcement of the 2016-17 season due this Wednesday? What ever is announced it will only be possible to judge it when the casting for each booking period is known.

 

As far as the perennial Macmillan full length ballets are concerned Mayerling is due for its triennial revival this year and O'Hare may be torn between giving us another chance to see Watson as Rudolph and paying homage to the Bard. Whether Romeo and Juliet displaces Mayerling in the revival schedule will depend on whether he considers that performing it in the 2015-16 season and programming Ashton's Dream during the 2016-17 season is sufficient tribute. He may come to that conclusion as the company is performing The Winter's Tale during the commemorative period.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I shall just live in hope for Don Quixote, Jewels, Mayerling and Coppelia but I'll be lucky if any if those are on = Cheap season again.

I think Shakespeare has been well and truly done by all the companies this season so I hope they move on from that as it's getting to be a bore IMHO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope for Bayadere (Vadim as Solor!!!) It hasn't been done for ages. As regards Mayerling it will be interesting to see whether it is performed next season or whether they hold back until some of the younger male dancers such as Campbell and Muntagirov are a bit older. I would also love to see Onegin again. it would be great to see some of the younger dancers (Naghdi/Ball, Hayward/Campbel) getting more solo roles even if it's in short ballets. I'd love to see a Christmas double bill of Patineurs and Winter Dreams or Pigeons; some great roles for up and coming stars. Also another Ashton double or triple bill would be great. I saw Month in the Country recently with BRB. it would be good to see it again especially with Natalia as I missed her recent performances. Am depressed at the idea of modern revivals though it's better if they do them together then I'm not annoyed at a favourite slipped in with 1 or 2 ballets I'm not remotely interested in. Living 200 miles away and having to stay over in London if it's an evening performance I can't afford to experiment too much.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In 1964 when we celebrated Shakespeare's birth, apart from Aston's Dream, MacMillan created a ballet called Images of Love.  It is more than good enough to be revived and I remember the pas de trois 'two loves I have of comfort and despair' making a comeback a few years back with Edward Watson in the Nureyev part.

 

We see too little early MacMillan and this would be a golden opportunity to see a ballet that had touches of pure genius.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope for Bayadere (Vadim as Solor!!!)

 

Yes, absolutely.  In fact, we/the Company need some Classical ballets full stop - although I assume we'll be getting Beauty as well as Nutcracker.

 

In 1964 when we celebrated Shakespeare's birth, apart from Aston's Dream, MacMillan created a ballet called Images of Love.  It is more than good enough to be revived and I remember the pas de trois 'two loves I have of comfort and despair' making a comeback a few years back with Edward Watson in the Nureyev part.

 

Watson, Rojo and Putrov, I think, unless I'm confusing 2 different ballets?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Watson, Rojo and Putrov, I think, unless I'm confusing 2 different ballets?

 

That's right, I think Nureyev may only have danced the first night though.  When I saw it Christopher Gable moved over to dance Nureyev's role and Macleary took over Gable's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem about the Dream and Month, much as I admire them is that they are revived very regularly and there is plenty of excellent Ashton that does not get staged. Daphnis and Chloe was last revived in 2004 and Les Rendezvous a year later and there are works that have not been revived since the 1980's. There is plenty of good MacMillan that never sees the light of day, presumably because it does not fit with his official image as a tortured unrecognised genius who challenged the artificial boundaries placed on ballet and its subject matter. This means that reviving Solitaire and plenty of other early MacMillan is out of the question. There is plenty of Balanchine, Tudor, Massine,Robbins and Cranko that should be staged.

 

As far as being prepared to see the younger dancers even if it is in one act ballets is concerned I should be quite happy if we saw a lot more mixed bills simply because the majority of masterpieces of twentieth century ballet are one act works. Full length ballets were regarded as hopelessly old fashioned for much of the twentieth century largely because of the influence of Diaghilev and the difficulty of creating a work of that length. It is one thing to make a one act ballet without running out of ideas quite another to create a two or three act work which does not fall back on old tried formulas and padding to fill up the music. I have sat through any number of works in which the choreographer's ideas ran out long before the music was exhausted. When Ashton created Cinderella in 1948 he was bucking the trend.

 

Personally I just want to see good ballets and I don't really care how long or short they are. I would quite happily settle for the company's nineteenth century classical repertory only being used to maintain technical standards as originally intended and being limited to Giselle, Coppelia, Swan Lake, Nutcracker and La Sylphide, Nureyev's staging of Raymonda Act III and The Kingdom of the Shades with a full compliment of thirty two shade rather than retain Markarova's staging of the entire Bayadere.

 

De Valois rejected Nureyev's offer to stage Don Q for the company presumably because of its dubious post Petipa choreographic text and indifferent score. Having seen each of the productions of Don Q that have been mounted for the company none of them have really suited it. Staging more nineteenth century classics is , no doubt, good for the box office but it means less stage time is available for major twentieth century works to berevived and brand new works to be staged.

Edited by FLOSS
  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is plenty of good MacMillan that never sees the light of day, presumably because it does not fit with his official image as a tortured unrecognised genius who challenged the artificial boundaries placed on ballet and its subject matter.

Tee hee! You have made that point before FLOSS - and I appreciate it each time you make it. The MacMillan "problem" is indeed a distorting factor in RB seasons and that old image is increasingly meaningless to new audiences.

 

Perhaps there was a time when - whisper who dares - it might even have been good box office to play up a (rather artificial but nonetheless) set of dichotomies, MacMillan/Ashton, new/old, sad/happy, town/country, pepsi/coke whatever...but now? In the 21st century? In 2016, when both are long dead?

 

A point I was once able to make discreetly to current RB management is that today's audiences don't know anything of the actual history, nor care about any ancient so-called rivalry, and just want to see great ballet, which both choreographers produced in quantity. No idea if this was appreciated.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The company have, of late, tended to open the following season with one of the ballets that they have taken on their summer tour. This year they are taking Giselle and Romeo and Juliet so perhaps they will open the coming season with Romeo and Juliet after all. I don't think that there will be too many complaints if we got another chance to see Naghdi and Ball, Hayward with a Romeo other than Golding, Stix Brunell and perhaps one other making her debut as Juliet. As for the new Romeos Reece Clarke and Hay are the names that first spring to mind. Anyway if those who think that 6th April is the day when the details of the next season will be unveiled are right we have a little over forty eight hours before we all know what next season will look like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyway if those who think that 6th April is the day when the details of the next season will be unveiled are right we have a little over forty eight hours before we all know what next season will look like.

 

This date has been known for some time and has been confirmed a couple of times by ROH already.  If it's not right, there will be a large number of angry press people turning up for a non-existent press conference.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I would like to see is at least one matinee performance of every bill (full length and triple) so that those of us who don't live in London can get to see them. Also, why do the matinees have to start so early? Even for those in London it makes having lunch awkward and means a really early start to get to the ROH.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Also, why do the matinees have to start so early? Even for those in London it makes having lunch awkward and means a really early start to get to the ROH. "

 

I would have thought that given there is an evening performance of perhaps an opera or another ballet the stage crew will need time to re-set the stage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally rather like the early matinees (especially dress rehearsals, which typically begin at 11:30) - time for a lie-in first, and then you get to escape at 2:30 or 3pm, just as all the nice cafes and restaurants are nice and empty because everybody else's matinees have started at 2:30...

 

I realise I'm saying that from the point of view of somebody who lives (by London standards) quite locally, however, and can see how it might be problematic for people coming from more than a couple of hours away from a London rail terminus.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I loathe the early matinees.  Eating is problematic.  If I get a very early train, I am tired and I can't walk the dog before I go.  I tend to book a train that gets me in at 11 for a 12:30 start.  As you will all know there were issues on the track the day I was coming to see the Strapless matinee and I missed After the Rain.  

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...