POLL: Rehearsal photos in printed programmes

[alison]

Okay, just filling in time while my computer was doing an excessively long backup, so I thought I'd play with the poll feature and see how it worked. This was prompted by my looking at my old programme for the current Royal Ballet double bill and wishing there were more photos showing how the production looked rather than the dancers rehearsing in any old day-to-day getup (which probably indicates how I'll be voting). Do vote, and comment here if you feel like it.

[Jan McNulty]

Nice one Alison!

 

I like a mixture of photographs really. Sometimes looking through programmes the performance photographs are of dancers long since gone from the company. Unless they are being used in a specific context I would prefer rehearsal or (a category you didn't mention) studio photographs of current dancers. I don't like the use of photographs from other companies where a work is being performed by "this" company for the first time (again unless it is a hisoric context).

 

Where ballets are frequently revived perhaps more rehearsal photographs of the current dancers would be nice There again, I go a lot and like to get one programme per production per season; perhaps if I was an infrequent visitor I would prefer more performance photographs. I appreciate that a constant stream of new photographs would cost the companies money.

 

Here's another thought - with the advent of internet resources, are so many photographs necessary at all? The company websites that I look at have plenty of performance photographs to admire.

 

Would people prefer cheaper/free programmes if there were fewer or no photographs at all? When I first started watching dance the London Contemporary Dance Theatre handouts were free. They contained enough information to aid enjoyment of the performance and basic headshots of the dancers.

[annamk]

I love rehearsal photos (in the studio not in costume) - it's one of the things that makes me decide whether or not to buy the programme. I often think the RB are lazy and re-hash the same articles and photos that were in the programme last time round.

[zxDaveM]

as a photographer, I'm obviously biased, but I'd love to see loads more photos in the programmes (both performance and practice clothed studio rehearsals) - and less of the rehashed old articles. New articles wouldn't hurt, that's for sure!

[Nina G.]

I agree with annamak and zxDaveM!

[Ian Macmillan]

Alison: Quelle insomniaque! But congrats on making the Poll feature work. After our recent offline exchange, I tried setting one up down in 'Test' (on the perennial issue of "Why did the chicken cross the road?") but, on pressing 'Go,' it vanished into cyberspace!

 

As to the questions, I've gone for some/not all rehearsal shots, but it's the tendency to rehash articles that bothers me most at £6 a pop.

[alison]

Ian, I wasn't the one suffering from insomnia, it was my computer that didn't want to go to bed! I'd happily have gone an hour previously. (And thanks for mentioning - I've just realised I plugged my backup hard disk into my PC about an hour ago and forgot to actually set it to run the backup!)

 

Things I've discovered so far:

- voting in the poll, as I suspected, doesn't "bump" the poll - only posting in the thread does that. So if we were going to run important polls, they might need to be pinned to the top of the page.

- you can delete your own results (don't remember seeing that one previously).

- multiple choice answers are allowed.

- setting the poll to public doesn't, as the wording suggests - as far as I can see, anyway - actually allow anyone to see what I specifically voted, just the vote results.

- you can only have up to 3 questions, with a maximum of 20 different answers for each.

 

I've got a long way to go yet before I can throw away my "L" plates!

[Beryl H]

I think audiences want to see photographs of the cast they see, so if previous photos are not available then rehearsal ones should be taken to cover all casts, I also like colour, not that difficult surely.

 

This is a good place to congratulate CG on the contents of their programmes, compared to other Companies they do provide a lot of solid information and history on the ballets, I agree they could be updated more frequently.

[Paul N]

- setting the poll to public doesn't, as the wording suggests - as far as I can see, anyway - actually allow anyone to see what I specifically voted, just the vote results.

 

Hello Alison - to the right of each of the voting options, there's a View button - when I click on those I can see the voters.

[alison]

Ouch. Okay, that *is* a little un-private, isn't it. Think we should try the privacy features, then. I mean, if it had been something potentially sensitive, like the "will you spending more or less on ballet this year" poll we had on the old site, I could understand people being upset.

 

Thanks for spotting it and pointing it out, Paul.