SwissBalletFan Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 (edited) "I hope they put in on in the cinema allowed to be watched by outsiders, as I will not be applying for a visa to watch it in person." Gosh SwissBalletFan - does that mean that it will be a bit like the rest of us popping over to Geneva or Zurich to see the ballet or the opera there? Oh dear, oh dear. David, I am not quite sure you got my point... in 2018 people living in Switzerland may also need visas/arrangement to travel into the EU to other countries due to the vote against the free movement of people in the EU. (although this was more to protect the high unemployment and retirement benefits). So it could be either way. As it stands today both of our countries are part of agreement for free movement in the EU,(actually Switzerland is in the Schengen area so actually easier currently), in the future, it could be rather different, so it has nothing to do with anyone currently visiting Switzerland which is also part of the Economic Union. The UK has voted to be outside of the Economic Union, and not to allow free movement of people. Reading the current stand of the EU leadership, I think a visa is the least of your worries. I think the 'oh dear' is unnecessary. Back to Swan Lake ideas... Edited October 16, 2016 by SwissBalletFan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 (edited) Back to Swan Lake ideas... OK ------- For me the biggest problem in all the various productions of Swan Lake that I have seen centres round the unexplored role of Rothbart and the failure to recognize how he is at the very core of the story. In all fairy tales there is the dark side. Just as Cinderella is ultimately about child abuse so Swan Lake is about this vile predator who preys on young women. We don’t know how or why Odile came to be ensnared (though one production I have seen uses the opening orchestral prelude to enact her abduction) or Rothbart’s intentions or what use he makes of her and the other women he abducts. These are places it seems we don’t want to go. We only know that she is utterly in his power and that she deliberately destroys herself to escape his toils. This is where the greatness of Tchaikovsky’s music lies. He understood the dark places of the soul only too well. Dowell created Rothbart as a brooding presence, very effective with a dancer actor like Gary Avis who can command a stage by his very stillness and I appreciate that but in the main productions rely on Odette to reflect her father’s evil nature, leaving him as a two-dimensional figure whose motives are unclear. Every dramatist knows that a play requires an effective baddie. I felt that Scarlett proved his skills as a dramatist in Frankenstein, for example in the way he switches our sympathies from Frankenstein himself to his creature, as Frankenstein stands silently by while the girl he knows to be innocent is hung for his creature’s crime. So …. I am wondering whether Scarlett may find ways to re-balance the work with new insights into the Rothbart role and his relationship to those he has ensnared, ie. the WHY behind the tragic love story? Edited October 16, 2016 by David 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aileen Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 Can we please move away from Brexit in this thread. It is a very serious matter and, whether you are for it or against it, it has created (or, alternatively, exposed) very deep divisions in the UK which will, I fear, take years to heal. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bangorballetboy Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 British and Modern...? How about The Queen making an appearance on stage, saying that she owns all of the swans and then eating them all? Or as it is in 2017/18, why not celebrate the status of the UK as a wonderful and successful country in its own right? Maybe Theresa May could also appear, putting the flags of swans from which country they are from? Or how about all foreign swans being stopped from landing in the lake and being turned back to where they come from? Come on guys, this is the biggest decision the UK has faced in years, so why not a Swan Lake that acknowledges that? No need for worrying about refugees plights or Kalashnikovs. I hope they put in on in the cinema allowed to be watched by outsiders, as I will not be applying for a visa to watch it in person. I apologise if this sounds political or OTT, this is the reality being discussed for the UK. It might be reality, but this is a board about dance so I'd appreciate it if you didn't get political. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwissBalletFan Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 (edited) To be fair, ENB's Giselle very much brings the story of ballet to a migrant camp which is hugely political, and comments on the page about how brave it was etc., etc., In making a new story for Swan Lake, and given the timing, I would say that issues of today would be very relevant... if maybe too close to home. I will not mention it further in this thread, as requested, but leave the point as a valid idea. Edited October 16, 2016 by SwissBalletFan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 I love swans but I think when you see them "in the flesh" that they are very masculine creatures, which is why Matthew Bourne's swans have always made sense to me. I saw, and enjoyed, some years ago Australian Dance Theatre's deconstructed version Bird Brain. I would like to see (from a major classical company) a straightforward telling of the classic tale without extraneous characters such as a jester or tutor. I would like to see elegant but not overly fussy costumes in the court scenes and I would like to see lovely tutus. I would like to see Odette's tutu the same as the other swans and not a different colour - OK maybe a bit more bling but that is it. It could well be more convincing if Odile wore a white rather than black costume. Smaller companies often can't provide what is considered an adequate number of swans so they may get criticised for producing a conventional Swan Lake or a "different" Swan Lake. I like different Swan Lakes (including ones with bicycles!) but I believe the new RB should stay conventional and they certainly have enough swans to do this. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wulff Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 (edited) I love swans but I think when you see them "in the flesh" that they are very masculine creatures, which is why Matthew Bourne's swans have always made sense to me. I saw, and enjoyed, some years ago Australian Dance Theatre's deconstructed version Bird Brain. I would like to see (from a major classical company) a straightforward telling of the classic tale without extraneous characters such as a jester or tutor. I would like to see elegant but not overly fussy costumes in the court scenes and I would like to see lovely tutus. I would like to see Odette's tutu the same as the other swans and not a different colour - OK maybe a bit more bling but that is it. It could well be more convincing if Odile wore a white rather than black costume. Smaller companies often can't provide what is considered an adequate number of swans so they may get criticised for producing a conventional Swan Lake or a "different" Swan Lake. I like different Swan Lakes (including ones with bicycles!) but I believe the new RB should stay conventional and they certainly have enough swans to do this. It's all very well to suggest a trendy and "contemporary" version of Swan Lake, but just remember that this new production is a) going to cost a lot of money and b} will have to be around in the repertoire for quite some time in order to justify the expenditure. Nothing dates so quickly as today's "trendy" which is why I agree with Janet that a conventional production is more suitable for the RB at the ROH. Edited October 16, 2016 by Wulff 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwissBalletFan Posted October 17, 2016 Share Posted October 17, 2016 It's all very well to suggest a trendy and "contemporary" version of Swan Lake, but just remember that this new production is a) going to cost a lot of money and b} will have to be around in the repertoire for quite some time in order to justify the expenditure. Nothing dates so quickly as today's "trendy" which is why I agree with Janet that a conventional production is more suitable for the RB at the ROH. I am sure most of the public would agree. However, is then Scarlett as a generally inexperienced and not very proven the right man to deliver a traditional approach? Is the choice of choreographer not in itself an insight into what they might be expecting from the piece? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunrise Posted October 17, 2016 Share Posted October 17, 2016 I would welcome experiments for traditional ballets like SL. I don't think anything is lost by trying new ideas - especially in this day and age of recording and documenting everything, there is always the opportunity to go back and restore the choreography and designs in the future. The RB have the money and the number of dancers to do something that smaller companies may not have the opportunity to do, why not take a risk and produce something really exciting and different? I agree with the point that Shakespeare is often 'redone' and indeed rewritten (lots of youth versions out there), though to be fair productions of plays can have a limited lifespan of just a few months and I guess we will have to live with this SL for a decade or two (or waste a phenomenal amount of money re-doing a la Sleeping Beauty). I think my ideal is what Rojo is doing with Giselle, to have a new and risky version alongside the traditional one, and maybe to alternate it with seasons. I'll miss the fluffy Swan skirts of the retired production - they were so beautiful and certainly made the RB version distinctive. I would like vibrant sets and brighter lighting, not the gloom of the last production please! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loveclassics Posted October 17, 2016 Share Posted October 17, 2016 Please no Kalashnikovs! I recent watched Bayreuth's latest version of the Ring Cycle and after listening to Siegfried forging the famous sword, to see him using a machine gun to finish off Fafner was a distinct anti-climax. As others have pointed out, better lighting and costumes, no redundant jester and a leading man in lighter tights would make me quite happy. Oh and perhaps some way of distinguishing the different princesses would be helpful. If they all look the same, why bother having the ball? I don't expect ballet to be realistic but a little internal logic does help the drama. Linda 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmie Posted October 17, 2016 Share Posted October 17, 2016 ...better lighting... Oh and perhaps some way of distinguishing the different princesses would be helpful... Definitely better lighting would help. Hopefully 'they' have learnt that by now? The princesses in national dress and doing the national dances really works for me. And as well as alternative endings I'd like an extended version with all the national dances . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melody Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Oh, gosh, I hope they don't go trendy, especially if they're planning to retire the current version. It might be a bit of a restriction, but the Royal Ballet is one of the companies that's best placed to preserve the Petipa/Ivanov repertoire, and it would be hard to get it back after several years of Twenty-First Century Swan. I don't have a problem with Odile wearing a black dress, although I always thought it was misleading to refer to her as the black swan since she's human all the time (that is, as human as a daughter of von Rothbart could be) and is just mimicking Odette in her human form. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacqueline Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 (edited) Prince Siegfried is bored by the childish antics of his friends and fed up with his mother constantly pressuring him to find a bride. He wanders off and finds himself by a lake. Here he encounters a beautiful if somewhat feathery lady. He chases her round a bit until she allows him to catch her. He asks her if she has come far. Well, he is a prince! She then starts to tell him her tale of woe about a lake of tears and a magic spell which can only be broken if he promises to love her forever or something like that. His eyes glaze over as he can't seem to escape from women going on about their emotions. Being a well brought up chap though, he hears her out, wishes her luck with her quest and carries on his way. The End. All this could be done for a reasonable price and no need for a jester. Edited October 18, 2016 by Jacqueline Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assoluta Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 British and Modern...? Looks like you haven’t been over here for a long time or we have a very different idea about what does modern mean. Being different from the rest of Europe doesn't mean not modern , just different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLOSS Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 (edited) Some years ago a certain Clement Crisp bemoaned the state of the Royal Ballet and its repertory. He said that the company had abandoned most of the things which had made the company great. One of the elements he singled out was the state of the company's nineteenth century repertory which he said the company had once presented in "honourable" productions. He was criticising Dowell's directorship and in particular his stagings of the Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake I suspect not so much for their choreographic texts as their designs. Well the lopsided,sinking ship Beauty is now part of the company's history and his Swan Lake is soon to be replaced. I think that it would be unfortunate if the new production of the Petipa /Ivanov Swan Lake which will almost certainly see the light of day during the 2017-18 season or the 2018-19 season was even less of an "honourable" production than the one it replaces. My wish list is very simple:- 1) Set designs which create a suitable sense of time, place and mood which do not overwhelm the dancers and render them invisible/ Leslie Hurry's designs show that you can create atmosphere and mood without rendering the dancers invisible if you provide a light colored floor for act 3. 2) Costumes which enable the audience to see the body in movement not ones that are overly fussy, covered in gold or otherwise distracting. 3) A choreographic text which is as close to the original as humanly possible. 4) Danced at a tempo that Ivanov and Petipa would recognise so that in act 2 Odette and the corps don't look as if they are appearing in different ballets. 5) Danced in a period appropriate style. 6) It will not contain any drunken antics by Siegfried's companions or the rather creepy dance with the Tutor and the little girls,and unless the original waltz is completely irretrievable the only pieces of twentieth century choreography that it will contain will be de Valois Peasant girl solo and Ashton's Neapolitan Dance. If the original waltz has to be re-imagined because it really is not adequately notated then it will be replaced by one of Ashton's waltzes for the ballet either the pas de douze he created for the Covent garden company or the pas de six which I am told was devised for the Touring Company. 7) It goes without saying that it will not be burdened with a concept. It won't be Siegfried's drug induced dream or an exploration of von Rothbart's character. There will be no Jester. It would be ironic if the company which introduced the nineteenth century Russian classics to the West as essential elements of the classical ballet repertory and whose national and international reputation is largely based on its adherence to the works of Petipa and Ivanov should abandon them in Petipa's bicentennial year in favour of a radical "re-imagining" of Swan Lake. How many people would want to see it more than a couple of times however interesting the casts? I would hope that the cost of a new production in itself would deter anything too wild and essentially ephemeral being staged but given what Mr O'Hare has agreed to stage you can't be certain. It would be very unfortunate if, at a time when Ratmansky has done so much to enhance ABT's reputation as a classical ballet company rather than merely a collection of star dancers by staging a production of the Sleeping Beauty which endeavours to recapture period appropriate performance style and an authentic choreographic text, the Royal Ballet stages as inauthentic version of Swan Lake as can be imagined. You see I think that Petipa choreography danced at the speed he expected looks very much better than it does when the music is pulled about and and the original choreography is distorted in order to accommodate the latest fashion in performance style such as sticking your foot in your ear in arabesque. I certainly think that in Petipa's bicentennial year we ought to see as much of the originla Petipa /Ivanov text as possible. Edited October 19, 2016 by FLOSS 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fonty Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 (edited) I would hope that any new production would attempt to iron out issues that make no sense as a result of continual reworkings of a traditional text. For example, I thought the long skirts of the corps in the current RB production were rather beautiful. However, the problem was I used to get irritated when Siegfried acted as if he could not pick out his beloved from all the other swan maidens, and roamed the stage looking for her. Odette was dressed so differently, I always felt that if he couldn't see that she was the one flashing her thighs at him, then either he needed glasses or he was a complete idiot. I agree that Von Rothbart needs looking at. Much less pantomime villain, and much more attempt to make him a genuinely sinister character in ways other than giving him a strange costume. And a convincing death as well, please. Half the time he seems to collapse for no reason in a pile of feathers, making me wonder if he is suffering from terminal moulting. I think the last time I saw RB's Swan Lake, Act III in the ballroom reminded me of the market scenes in MacMillan's R & J in terms of the antics taking place on the stage. I would like to see every character behave in a manner appropriate to the situation. Things like decent lighting, staging and costumes that enable you to see what is taking place are so obvious, it is sad that we are actually having to mention it here. All in all, I would like to see a cleanly staged, classical production which is close to the original, but also attempts to display the English ballet style brilliantly. Is that too much to ask? Edited October 19, 2016 by Fonty 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwissBalletFan Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 (edited) 6) the rather creepy dance with the Tutor and the little girls,and unless the original waltz is completely irretrievable the only pieces of twentieth century choreography that it will contain will be de Valois Peasant girl solo and Ashton's Neapolitan Dance. If the original waltz has to be re-imagined because it really is not adequately notated then it will be replaced by one of Ashton's waltzes for the ballet either the pas de douze he created for the Covent garden company or the pas de six which I am told was devised for the Touring Company. It would be very unfortunate if, at a time when Ratmansky has done so much to enhance ABT's reputation as a classical ballet company rather than merely a collection of star dancers by staging a production of the Sleeping Beauty which endeavours to recapture period appropriate performance style and an authentic choreographic text, the Royal Ballet stages as inauthentic version of Swan Lake as can be imagined. You see I think that Petipa choreography danced at the speed he expected looks very much better than it does when the music is pulled about and and the original choreography is distorted in order to accommodate the latest fashion in performance style such as sticking your foot in your ear in arabesque. I certainly think that in Petipa's bicentennial year we ought to see as much of the originla Petipa /Ivanov text as possible. I think you will find tha you are describing the Swan Lake that Alexei Ratmansky recreated in Zürich. However the creepy Tutor dance was included as a part of the original notations. Edited October 19, 2016 by SwissBalletFan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoodlandGladeFairy Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 (edited) I'd also like to see a return to Leslie Hurry's design or at least some adaption. Also bring back the old Act IV chorography. And reinstate the Prince's solo at the end of Act 1. And Swans in tutus again, much better aesthetically to me. I'd like more of the fairy tale/fantasy elements emphasised, and Mediaeval, heh they should hire the costume designer from Game of Thrones, for cod-mediaeval looks... Guess its less new production ideas but rather bring back the best elements of their Swan Lake Edited October 20, 2016 by WoodlandGladeFairy 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bangorballetboy Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 Mediaeval, heh they should hire the costume designer from Game of Thrones, for cod-mediaeval looks... Topless swans? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLOSS Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 (edited) SwissBalletFan. Essentially I am asking that the text used by Dowell in his 1987 production which derived from the Stepanov notation should be retained but that the Bintley waltz should be replaced by some better choreography. As far as I am concerned it was the designs which made the production difficult to watch. I know people who have not been to a RB performance of Swan Lake at Covent Garden since 1987 for that very reason. The fact that I am describing something very close to the production which Ratmansky staged for Zurich and La Scala is because his reconstruction uses as its primary source the same notation material which Nicholai Sergeyev used when he staged the ballet for the Vic Wells company in 1934.It was that production which Dowell said he wanted to restore to the stage when he staged his production in 1987 what went wrong, apart from the waltz devised by David Bintley which we were assured, at the time, was necessary because it was not sufficiently well recorded to enable it to be.reconstructed, was the designer's decision to set the ballet at the time that it was created and to impose a Faberge themed set of designs on it. Out of interest did Ratmansky say that he only used the notation of the waltz in his reconstruction or did he say that he had to use secondary sources such production photographs and verbal descriptions of that section of the ballet in order to stage it ?. I was very fond of the production which Dowell pensioned off. It had a choreographic text which was part Petipa/Ivanov and a lot of Ashton interpolations and I believe that the original intention with this production was to restore the original score rather than the re-ordered version used by Petipa/Ivanov which is how Ashton's pas de quatre came to be created as it used music which Petipa had removed from act 1. It was very much a mid century view of Swan Lake but with all the choreography by Ashton it was outstanding.One of the great strengths of this production were the designs which I took for granted. They looked good from every seat in the house which is not sold as restricted view. At no point in the ballet did any dancer disappear into the sets or the floor. It was an example of the sort of "competent" stage design which effectively suspends the audience's disbelief; establishes mood, time and the place in which the action occurs and enables the audience to see everything that it needs to see in order to enjoy the ballet. I know that to describe Leslie Hurry's designs as "competent" sounds some what dismissive but it is intended as high praise. It is the sort of design that you take for granted until you discover that not every designer sees those elements as essential to ballet design. The sets suggested place and time but they did not overwhelm or intrude upon the performing space and they allowed the audience to see all of the choreography. The costumes were perhaps best described as "ballet medieval". They would not pass muster with an expert on medieval costume but they were sufficient to establish a period atmosphere of far away and long ago. The Sonnabend sets and costumes, by contrast, were far too period specific, far too rooted in the late nineteenth century, far to influenced by the idea of Faberge design to achieve the sort of suspension of belief that a ballet like Swan lake requires. Edited October 20, 2016 by FLOSS 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 Topless swans? Matthew Bourne? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trog Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 Topless swans? Been done already in the porno version that is available on DVD from Japan. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted October 20, 2016 Share Posted October 20, 2016 It was an example of the sort of "competent" stage design which effectively suspends the audience's disbelief; establishes mood, time and the place in which the action occurs and enables the audience to see everything that it needs to see in order to enjoy the ballet. I know that to describe Leslie Hurry's designs as "competent" sounds some what dismissive but it is intended as high praise. It is the sort of design that you take for granted until you discover that not every designer sees those elements as essential to ballet design. The sets suggested place and time but they did not overwhelm or intrude upon the performing space and they allowed the audience to see all of the choreography. Some designers should print that out in big letters and pin it to their noticeboards, sketchbooks and anything else relevant. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sim Posted October 21, 2016 Share Posted October 21, 2016 Been done already in the porno version that is available on DVD from Japan. Are you serious?!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alice Shortcake Posted October 21, 2016 Share Posted October 21, 2016 Rule 34: if a thing exists there is a porn version of it. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bangorballetboy Posted October 21, 2016 Share Posted October 21, 2016 Seems an appropriate time to watch this again 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon2 Posted October 21, 2016 Share Posted October 21, 2016 Seems an appropriate time to watch this again I thought twice before clicking the link in view of the posts earlier in the thread. Had forgotten all about that performance, thank you BBB. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted October 21, 2016 Share Posted October 21, 2016 And I thought you were linking to the acrobatic version with the dancer standing on pointe on her partner's head, BBB! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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