English National Ballet - change of leadership discussion

[LinMM]

Thankyou Angela for your extremely informative reply. Knowing the history of a Company and what has gone before etc gives you much more clarity on the merits of any particular Director in place  and I don’t know the German Companies well enough to get a picture of this. I’ve been sort of assuming that Stuttgart Berlin Hamburg and Munich are considered the ones to go for ....if a dancer that is. 
Do people in Germany travel a lot to watch other companies other than their nearest one on the whole? 

So it really is looking increasingly like Rojo is going to be very hard to replace at ENB. 
 

[Angela]

3 hours ago, LinMM said:

I’ve been sort of assuming that Stuttgart Berlin Hamburg and Munich are considered the ones to go for ....if a dancer that is. 

 

Yes, there's also Dresden with a mixed rep of traditional classics and modern works (and a beautiful opera house). And Ballett am Rhein at Düsseldorf, also smaller companies like Dortmund, Nuremberg, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Hannover etc, who have around 20 to 30 dancers. They have few or no classics, but they do ballet.

 

3 hours ago, LinMM said:

Do people in Germany travel a lot to watch other companies other than their nearest one on the whole? 

 

It depends on the town, I guess, but there's a smaller or bigger amount of folks who love to travel in each of the ballet towns - they want to see the newest Neumeier premiere or a certain dancer in another town. Stuttgart and Munich are not that far apart, I can go by car and return in the night. The pandemic killed most of the travelling, I fear. Wouldn't it be great if they all streamed their premieres live?

 

[Sabine0308]

12 hours ago, Angela said:

 .. He is definitely not a director who discovers choreographers or makes them enter new territory...

 

You forgot Kaydanovskiy? He created "Cecil Hotel" and "Schneesturm".

[FionaM]

1 hour ago, Sabine0308 said:

You forgot Kaydanovskiy? He created "Cecil Hotel" and "Schneesturm".

Indeed!

 

And there also at least two annual triple bills mostly of new choreography … Paradigma, A Jour, Today is Tomorrow, Passages.   (Some are new pieces and new choreographers to Munich eg Scarlett, Maliphant.  Most are new choreography). 

 

I agree Zelensky may not be the most innovative director … he picks good ideas from elsewhere.  Same could be said of Kevin O’Hare.

Edited January 17, 2022 by FionaE

[Angela]

9 hours ago, FionaE said:

Same could be said of Kevin O’Hare.

Yes, but not of Tamara Rojo. So whoever put her into that place will hopefully want another innovative director, not a mere curator of the classics. I like the idea that the Royal Ballet is the keeper of the flame and the ENB tends towards a bit more modern things. It's a risk to make a new Raymonda, a new Giselle - it's so easy to buy a well-known Coppelia, a well-known Cinderella. Of course a director works for the audience in his town and should be eager to please them, but even then he/she might have a vision for his/her art form.

 

[LinMM]

I do like innovative works and some new modern pieces etc but I think my fear would be if the Director is not at least based in the classics then the whole Company could go down the Contemporary route. I think this is unlikely to happen just at present to be honest but although I enjoy good Contemporary work such as the Rambert etc I don’t want the Royal ( much as I like them) to be the only large Ballet Company. 
I think you put it rather well Angela in your post above. 

[Jan McNulty]

6 hours ago, LinMM said:

I do like innovative works and some new modern pieces etc but I think my fear would be if the Director is not at least based in the classics then the whole Company could go down the Contemporary route. I think this is unlikely to happen just at present to be honest but although I enjoy good Contemporary work such as the Rambert etc I don’t want the Royal ( much as I like them) to be the only large Ballet Company. 
I think you put it rather well Angela in your post above. 

Which rather rubs out BRB, NB & SB who all work in the classical style!

[FLOSS]

 

 

I can't help thinking that a significant shift of focus which threatened to turn the company into a contemporary one would lead to all sorts of additional problems for ENB over and above those it already faces as a result of covid. A company 

 which receives ACE funding does so on the basis of the type of performances it gives and where in the country it gives them. Unless I am very much  mistaken I would think that it would be very difficult for the Board  and its new director to change the company's artistic direction of travel overnight without the ACE agreeing to it; an evaluation of the company's proposed size and repertory  and a reevaluation of the basis on which the company is funded.  While  ACE may be very keen on contemporary dance, for all sorts of reasons including the fact that it is cheaper to run a small contemporary company than one of the size required to stage classical ballets, the transition would take several seasons and it would not clear its covid debt. I am not convinced that the ACE would be happy to write off the debt of such a large arts institution at the present time.

 

As far as Rojo's legacy is concerned if past experience is anything to go by then you can be pretty sure that any changes which Rojo has made to expand ENB's range of repertory and the choreographic styles which the company performs will not outlive her departure for any length of time.The last director who was as interested as Rojo has been in expanding the company's artistic horizons was Schaufuss and he has left no lasting memorial in terms of permanent additions to the company's core repertory. Indeed you might almost argue that with the exception of a handful of core works ENB is a company which under most directors operates as if in a state of artistic amnesia with no clear sense of having an artistic identity of its own other than it tours and is not the Royal Ballet.

 

 

I am not entirely sure that I would try to determine whether ABT or ENB is the more prestigious company of the two.I think that they are each unique institutions which are best understood today within their own national artistic ecosystems. Although LFB no doubt owed its existence to its founders' experience of working in the US, ABT does not have to define itself as not being NYCB but it has on occasions seemed as if LFB/ENB's main claim to having a sense of its own unique artistic identity has been that it tours and it was not the company dancing at Covent Garden. What ENB or its artistic identity is, at any one time has always had far more to do with who the director is,and what their tastes are, than anything else. In this it is more like Rambert than either of the Royal companies or ABT. The one exception so far to the general sense of stability and permanence  in Bow Street has been Stretton's directorship when his neglect of the company's core repertory and his programme choices suggested that he thought that  his task was to turn the company into ABT on Thames.We have yet to see what the effect of the change of director will have on BRB's repertory and style. But at ENB there are no new brooms only new directors each of whom plots their own artistic course and either runs into trouble at some point or completes their contractual term.

 

ENB has until now been a company seemingly without much sense of its own history, few directors choose to revisit their predecessor's triumphs or seem to be aware of them, and of course unlike the Royal, Rambert or ABT the company has never had a house choreographer, let alone one of genius. As a result ENB is essentially a tabula rasa as hardly any of its ten directors have managed to leave anything remotely resembling a permanent mark on its repertory, its style or its artistic vision.  Once the new director accepts that its basic nineteenth century repertory is what keeps ENB afloat financially and that as far as the Board is concerned the Nureyev Romeo and Juliet is irreplaceable, they seem to have considerable artistic freedom as to what they choose to stage. Director's either leave a lasting mark with their programming choices and their acquisitions or they don't and most don't. Grey collected Diaghilev  repertory which had either never entered the Royal Ballet's repertory or was being neglected there. In the seventies London audiences got to see works like Parade, Le Tricorne and Le Beau Danube. Some works found a semi-permanent home in the company's repertory others did not.For years if you attended an ENB mixed bill it either ended with Etudes which was always danced idiomatically and extremely well or Fokine's orientalist romp Scherezade. When Schauffus was in charge he had some spectacular artistic successes staging his well regarded version of La Sylphide which he danced with Evdokimova and persuading Ashton to revive his Romeo and Juliet, but he went early and nothing remains of his time there.

 

As to what comes next that will almost certainly depend far more on the company's finances and the candidates' financial acumen than any artistic vision or aspirations they have.The financial challenges that the company faces as a result of covid are likely to dominate the director's programmes for several seasons and limit the implementation of any ambitious plans they may have for additions to the repertory and new commissions. When it comes to the Board's choice of Rojo's successor the chances are that it won't be anyone that any of us have mentioned. I hope that it is someone who retains some of Rojo's restorations and additions to the repertory. What do I want ? I would like to see a director who manages in de Valois'words to live in the present, honour the past and  welcome the future. In the context of ENB that would mean a director who recognised and celebrated the strong affinity the company has always had with the Romantic ballet whether we are talking about  Skeaping's Giselle or its evocation in Markova's Les Sylphides. He or she would understands the need to treat twentieth century choreography with respect and sees the benefit of ensuring that its core repertory included some outstanding examples works from this time. Ideally the works, or the bulk of them, would  not be shared with the Royal Ballet. My suggestion would be that bpth Lander's Etudes and Lifar's Suite en Blanc/ Noir et Blanc remain part of the company's active repertory along with Night Shadow/ Sonambula which it once danced and perhaps that Balanchine's Serenade,Concerto Barocco and Mozartiana, Tudor's Pillar of Fire and  Graham's Appalchian Spring should enter its repertory.

 

I hope that my suggestions are not interpreted as an exercise in nostalgia because they are not intended to be that. We

see any number of new works in London which show remarkably little sense of theatre,structure or the need for variety, simplicity and brevity. My hope would be that exposure to, and familiarity with a number of great twentieth century ballets might  have an impact on young impressionable would be dance makers in the way that Petipa clearly did on Balanchine and Ashton. Perhaps the knowledge that Balanchine did not see himself as an inspired creator but as a craftsman might help the young aspirant choreographer of today when they take their first steps as a creative artist. One or two people have seemed  to be more concerned that the new director should commission female choreographers than anything else. I would just like to see commissions going to people with talent regardless of their sexual orientation.

 

The apparent lack of solid choreographic talent never ceases to amaze me especially when compared with the number of choreographers whom Rambert managed to discover during the early part of her career. The list include two of the great choreographers of the last century Ashton and Tudor and several whose works were of importance to Rambert's company and might still be if they were revivable. The list from the early years of her company includes Gore, Staff and Howard with Bruce and Morrice being of importance in the contemporary phase of her company. I think it might be helpful to accept that Rambert given her character was almost certainly far more interventionist than we might imagine and that in some cases the "discovery" may have been far more of an active process on her part than we might expect in the development of a creative artist. But then perhaps what any young inexperienced choreographer needs is a second more objective pair of eyes in the rehearsal room with them. Ashton  said that Fedorovitch encouraged him to simplify his ideas to give them focus while Tudor was more than willing to say that his partner, the dancer Hugh Laing,had helped him avoid any number of mistakes, by pointing out unnecessary repetition and where editing was required. Perhaps what I should really hope for is a new director who recognises this need and does something to meet it and by doing so encourages creativity within the ranks of the company. I will finish by saying that ENB should not tackle The Song of the Earth again if it can't afford good singers.

 

 

[Lizbie1]

20 minutes ago, FLOSS said:

 

One or two people have seemed  to be more concerned that the new director should commission female choreographers than anything else. I would just like to see commissions going to people with talent regardless of their sexual orientation.

 

 

FLOSS I'm not sure that you meant to say "sexual orientation"?

 

I wouldn't mind the large majority of commissions going to men if they were better at their job. As it is, I'm made to remember Beecham's words: "Why do we have to have all these third-rate foreign conductors around, when we have so many second-rate ones of our own?”

[LinMM]

Yes sorry Janet my comment was a bit London centric!! I meant I would like the choice of two classical companies to choose from down here in the deep southern recesses of UK!!!
On the other hand if there was only one Company in London I might be more inclined to travel much more often to see the wonderful BRB NB and SB!! 

[maryrosesatonapin]

20 hours ago, FLOSS said:

hardly any of its ten directors have managed to leave anything remotely resembling a permanent mark on its repertory, its style or its artistic vision.

I agree with most of what you say, Floss, but dare I hope that Rojo will be an exception to this?  Her Raymonda has had terrific reviews.  Surely they will at least revive that regularly?

[Lizbie1]

I can't see them voluntarily dropping the Khan Giselle in a hurry either.

[Bruce Wall]

27 minutes ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

I agree with most of what you say, Floss, but dare I hope that Rojo will be an exception to this?  Her Raymonda has had terrific reviews.  Surely they will at least revive that regularly?

 

I am fearing this may not be the case - in terms of Raymonda at least - given the lack of ticket sales - even with the reduced London run - which sadly is not, I think, hugely encouraging.  Would that it could be otherwise.  The only other commitment for it (announced at this point in any regard) is the week in Southampton and that is, certainly in part, because the Mayflower was a fiscal contributor to the production's original construct.  

 

 

Edited January 19, 2022 by Bruce Wall

[capybara]

Isn’t it the case that regional theatres have a huge backlog of shows and that, therefore, tour bookings are hard to secure?

[LACAD]

I don’t think the company can quickly let go of Rojo’s legacy. Many in the ballet world have pointed out how she has elevated the company, and her directorial choices have been much admired. In the age of the Internet as well people around the world now have knowledge and even thanks to the on demand service; direct access to the repertoire. ENB can’t afford to lose steam.

[capybara]

7 minutes ago, LACAD said:

 ENB can’t afford to lose steam.

 

Agree but, however good the new Director is, it will be very difficult to maintain momentum. Ballet staff will inevitably change and dancers may consider it the time to make a career move.

[Lizbie1]

I'm actually more worried about Jeffrey Cirio following her to SFB.

[capybara]

1 hour ago, Lizbie1 said:

I'm actually more worried about Jeffrey Cirio following her to SFB.

As I was implying 😉 but reluctant to mention names.

But there will doubtless be up and coming dancers as well who will be tempted (to look) elsewhere.

[fromthebalcony]

3 hours ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

I agree with most of what you say, Floss, but dare I hope that Rojo will be an exception to this?  Her Raymonda has had terrific reviews.  Surely they will at least revive that regularly?

They have not all been terrific. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/arts/dance/raymonda-english-national-ballet-tamara-rojo.html

[LinMM]

Well I was worried about McCormick following Tamara to SF because apparently he comes from there so could be tempting for him. He’s a real standout dancer like Cirio for me so hopefully they won’t both go!!! 
 

Edited January 19, 2022 by LinMM

[FionaM]

There are amazing dancers at SFB already … there may not be room for new hires.  Take a look https://www.sfballet.org/the-company/artists/dancers/principals/

 

They have 22 (!) principals and that doesn’t include Isaac yet. 

 

Although no doubt there will be differences of opinion and some SFB dancers might see this as a time to move on.   
 

I would not worry, there are plenty of really good dancers ready to step into gaps created.  

[fromthebalcony]

On 31/01/2022 at 12:14, FionaE said:

There are amazing dancers at SFB already … there may not be room for new hires.  Take a look https://www.sfballet.org/the-company/artists/dancers/principals/

 

They have 22 (!) principals and that doesn’t include Isaac yet. 

 

Although no doubt there will be differences of opinion and some SFB dancers might see this as a time to move on.   
 

I would not worry, there are plenty of really good dancers ready to step into gaps created.  

Some of those dancers are nearing the end of their careers ... Yuan Yuan Tan, Sarah Van Patten, Tiit Helimets and most likely Luke Ingham. And then there are a few who have entered the 35-40 year old age range - Frances Chung, Misa Kuranaga, and I believe Ulrik Birkkjaer. I wonder about Aaron Robison and Madison Keesler who left ENB. Will they stay on? 

[FionaM]

26 minutes ago, fromthebalcony said:

Some of those dancers are nearing the end of their careers ... Yuan Yuan Tan, Sarah Van Patten, Tiit Helimets and most likely Luke Ingham. And then there are a few who have entered the 35-40 year old age range - Frances Chung, Misa Kuranaga, and I believe Ulrik Birkkjaer. I wonder about Aaron Robison and Madison Keesler who left ENB. Will they stay on? 

thank you for that info.  I did think (erroneously that) Yuan Yuan Tan was already retired.  
 

Tamara herself continued dancing major roles well into her 40s so I think the dancers who want to should be able to argue for it.  
 

I wondered if Aaron Robison came to ENB for a year on loan so to speak  (others will know better) in a similar way that the RB’s Melissa Hamilton went to Dresden for two years.  
 

I assume a few of the senior SFB dancers might have applied for the AD role themselves.  They might find it difficult to stay on. 
 

There will be changes for sure.  

[Sharon]

Floss-"When Schauffus was in charge he had some spectacular artistic successes staging his well regarded version of La Sylphide which he danced with Evdokimova and persuading Ashton to revive his Romeo and Juliet", 

for me the ballet that I enjoyed most under Schuafuss was "L'Arlessienne". I remember being utterly mesmerised watching this ballet. The performance of Schaufuss and the gorgeous Mirielle Bourgeuis and that wonderful music was unforgettable.  I would love to see ENB dance this again. 

 

[alison]

Patrick Armand and Bourgeois for me - but yes, I really liked that one, too.

[Josette]

On 16/01/2022 at 14:55, oncnp said:

 

Per reports at Companies House

 

Although she is not mentioned by name in their accounts, for the period ending 31 Mar 2019 (before it all hit the fan) there was one person in the £250K-259,999K emolument (salary and benefits in kind) bracket at the ENB. 

 

For the period ending 25 Aug 2019, Kevin O'Hare's total emolument was £201,332. 

 

and just to add that per The San Fransico Ballet Association's tax filings for 2020

 

Helgi Tomasson (Artistic Director & Principal Choreographer)

$805,868

  (total compensation - not sure what it includes)

 

 

 

 

I suspect that Helgi Tomasson’s total compensation includes royalties for his works, given the reference to him as Principal Choreographer. 

[Sharon]

On 02/02/2022 at 00:16, alison said:

Patrick Armand and Bourgeois for me - but yes, I really liked that one, too.

Ooo yes how could I forget him?!

Bit tbh he was fab in everything....

[alison]

Pretty much

[FionaM]

I’m interested in what happens to Julian MacKay at San Francisco when Tamara and Isaac join.  Would she be accommodating of his external projects? 
 

I’m assuming Isaac will continue with his Mexican projects.   
 

going to be very interesting! 
 

 

[FionaM]

Laurent Hilaire?

[capybara]

5 minutes ago, FionaE said:

Laurent Hilaire?

 

I thought that too but Laurent will be aged 60 in November and he might prefer not to take on another company. But, then, there is Neumeier..........!!!!!

 

[FionaM]

2 hours ago, capybara said:

 

I thought that too but Laurent will be aged 60 in November and he might prefer not to take on another company. But, then, there is Neumeier..........!!!!!

 

 

age 83!!!

 

… and then there’s the empty post to fill at Stanislavsky.  Presumably many waiting Russians.  But not many with the prior credentials that Laurent Hilaire had … ‘deputy’ AD at Paris Opera .  

[capybara]

44 minutes ago, FionaE said:

age 83!!!

 

😆 That was what I was implying.

Some Directors carry on for ever!