Royal Ballet School matinee, 16th July 2022

[LinMM]

Lania Atkins is listed as being an Aud Jebsen dancer though don’t know whether she went through the Royal Ballet School. 
I was just trying to answer question where do Aud Jebsen students go if not into contracts with the RB afterwards. 
 

[Rob S]

5 minutes ago, capybara said:

But I don’t think that Lania was at the RBS, was she?

 

 

It would appear not, which then prompts another question about the Aud Jebsen programme I won't try to derail the thread with 😄

[capybara]

15 minutes ago, Rob S said:

 

It would appear not, which then prompts another question about the Aud Jebsen programme I won't try to derail the thread with 😄

Kevin O’Hare has said that he can fill up to 6 places if there are suitable candidates. In the first year of the scheme, which was launched late in the season, many RBS graduates already had contracts elsewhere, so he auditioned at ENBS.

There have also been two dancers in recent times who were offered RB contracts direct from the School rather than via the AJ scheme: Chisato Katsura and Joseph Sissens.

 

 

Edited July 19, 2022 by capybara

[LinMM]

I knew Lania Atkins name rang a bell!! 
She was at the Prix de Lausanne and I’d been asked to look out for her by an Australian friend. 
.She won a silver medal in the Genee awards ( now renamed I think) 

So she became an Aud Jebsen dancer from being at the Prix and I remember now being really pleased at the time as I had liked her a lot and she’s a bit of a taller dancer too. 
I’m assuming she’s still with Norwegian Ballet. 

[FionaM]

Lania Atkins IG … performing Gamzatti in with Norwegian ballet

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CeOM9ZeIvsb/?igshid=NmZiMzY2Mjc=

[LinMM]

Thanks Fiona that’s wonderful to hear! 
She’s done well then…who wouldn’t want to dance that role! 

[Emeralds]

I wasn’t able to make it for this performance but am glad it went well. I remember seeing Caspar Lench in a performance of Nutcracker as Clara’s little brother and he stole the show with his excellent dancing and acting in all his scenes! I also remember Joe Parker from performances in The Winter’s Tale as Hermione and Leontes’ son Mamillius where he was brilliant in a part with a small but significant role in the unfolding of the plot. Great to hear that both  are doing well as they progress through the school and danced in the school performance. 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Emeralds

[FLOSS]

I think that we have to recognise that not every dancer who emerges from the school is going to want to join the main company  and not every dancer however well equipped they may be technically is going to be seen as having a natural place in the company by management. There has always been a struggle for dominance between technical display and elegance and ease of movement. As an art form originating in the royal courts of Europe it should surprise no one that for much of its history elegance and ease have been mote highly valued than bravura displays of technique and that remains largely true of the aesthetic embedded in the Royal Ballet's core repertory and would be even more the case if Ashton's ballets were restored to a key position in the company's core repertory. However the tension between technical prowess generally displayed by demi-character dancers and the courtly ease and elegance of the noble who take the princely roles remains a potent source of inspiration and perhaps this will always be the case.

 

The Royal Ballet does not really have a repertory which enables dancers to indulge in displays of dancing. what it needs and looks for on the whole when recruiting new dancers is a dancer with interpretative intelligence who dances expressively and will fit into a company of "dance actors" which is how Kevin describes his company. Of course when a dancer enters the company or the apprenticeship scheme there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty how they will develop as they gain in stage experience and come to artistic maturity. Recruitment to the company depends on the existence of vacancies and with no fixed retirement age succession planning is difficult. In some seasons no one retires, or too few do so to enable every dancer whom management would like to recruit to join the company. In the years before the Aud Jebsen scheme was established a lack of vacancies meant that graduates went elsewhere for a season or two on graduation only to try to join the company in later years. 

 

At one time, beginning in the late seventies the main company was the last place that anyone with any ambition would have wanted to go unless they were already outstanding and could be sure they would be noticed or had an active advocate in de Valois or someone senior in the company heirarchy and could be pretty sure that they would be given the opportunity to dance and develop. Each year dancers full of enthusiasm appeared on the main stage at the Royal Ballet School performance were given contracts with the resident company and that was the last you really saw of them for years. Then after years of apparent neglect they were given a debut in Swan Lake by which time their love of dance and any hint of personality had been worn away by the years toiling in the ranks while the size of the artistic challenge that the ballet represented got bigger and bigger and by the time they danced their  first Odette/Odile it had become an all but insurmountable challenge. A fact that Fonteyn spoke about in a TV interview towards the end of her life in which she said that she had been lucky to have danced these major classical roles so early in her career when there was no pressure on her ro succeed and she knew she would be given further performances which would enable her ro learn from her mistakes and develop her interpretation and master roles..

 

In those days the Touring Company was a much better choice for most dancers since its size meant that every dancer would be given opportunities to dance and develop and when it came to leading roles there were no make or break debuts. Instead there were debuts well away from the national press followed by a series of further performances in the role each week during the tour which might be the best part of thirteen weeks. David Wall once commented that after some weeks of being overawed by the dancers who were now his colleagues when he first joined the resident company

he realised that he had in fact far more experience of dancing Seigfried than most of his fellow male principals had. While Kevin has a far more flexible approach to what junior dancers are permitted to dance I think that the Linbury could be used far more imaginatively for the development of the company's .dancers.

 

I recognise this is a thread devoted to the recent RBS main stage performance and here is my contribution. When the school stage Raymonda Act III it is a sign that the school has a good collection of classical dancers in the graduating year and there were no disappointments. I think it was absolutely clear why the dancer who we saw as Jean de Brienne is off to ABT rather than joining the resident company. He will be far more at home there than in Bow Street. Yondering is a lovely ballet for dance students since it tests interpretative skills rather than bravura technical prowess.

 

For me the most interesting segment was the revival of Ashton's waltz for Swan Lake. I am not sure that the first year students were really up to it. It looked too soft as if it was a piece of choreography which Ashton had created for romantic ballet rather than a classical one. The gap between the soft first year bodies and the senior soloists and young talents who used to be seen in it  was just a bit too big for me. It is a wonderful piece of choreography and in its original position  it was the first bit of serious classical choreography that you saw in the company's pre-Dowell production of the ballet. It was wonderful to see it on a bare stage since it gave the opportunity to savour Ashton's skill in creating Petipa style patterns and choreography with a personal twist. For me it is on a par with his choreography for the stars in Cinderella and for the corps in Scenes de Ballet. While I accept that first year students will not look like well tuned classical dancers I don't understand all the alterations made to the choreography. I understand  the need in the absence of a prince for one of the six men to dance the prince's choreography when he dances with the women but not why there was an unnecessary alteration to the floor plan of the waltz. Why did the stagers alter it did they think it was an error of taste to break the harmony or that the notation was wrong?  There is a filmed record of the ballet in performance which shows that as originally performed the solo created for Dowell was deliberately designed to breaks the harmony of the clockwise movement of the body of the corps, The dancer, in a lovely little solo which includes the " floor polishing" steps which de Valois taught in class,  breaks free and by moving from left to right disrupts the harmony which the audience is becoming accustomed to and for a matter of seconds should be able ro dominate the stage by his disruptive behaviour and the quality pf his movement. I really missed the sheer theatricality of that brilliantly judged disruption or what Dowell once described as an Ashton "moment of madness".

[JohnS]

Apologies for the delay in posting. Fortunately the Royal Ballet School’s Annual Performance remains fresh in the memory. Always a joy and stand out performances in Raymonda (not a favourite ballet for me) highlighted by many posters, with Grand Defile joyously bringing the curtain down. And how good to get such a sense of ensemble and collective performance across the full programme, White Lodge students in Jubilation and the Upper School throughout. 
But in large measure the performance remains so vivid because of Yondering. It’s the first time I’ve seen the ballet and it made a tremendous impression, in many ways as moving as the first time I saw Dances at a Gathering. The changing moods conjured by both ballets touch the soul - nostalgia, joy, playfulness, wistful reflection but also that sense of farewell and loss. Those sustained (final?) embraces at the start of ‘Ah, may the red rose live alway’ were heartbreaking. And the repeated refrain so evocative:
‘Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?’

I’ve looked in vain for a video clip of that finale but it’s good to have Thomas Hampson’s wonderful recordings of this and many other Stephen Foster songs readily available.

Ballet and music for me express the range of human emotions more deeply than other art forms and Yondering, performed with such distinction by the Royal Ballet Upper School students, was devastatingly poignant. Congratulations and many thanks to all.

[JohnS]

I see the Royal Ballet School is releasing a film of this year’s performance for Friends of the School. I couldn’t get the film to play but hopefully it will be available very soon (to 29 August) so I’m hoping very much there’ll be chance to see Yondering (and much else) again.

[capybara]

22 minutes ago, JohnS said:

I see the Royal Ballet School is releasing a film of this year’s performance for Friends of the School. I couldn’t get the film to play but hopefully it will be available very soon (to 29 August) so I’m hoping very much there’ll be chance to see Yondering (and much else) again.

I couldn’t the film to play either - just a message to the effect that the URL is not supported.

I hope they’ll be able to sort out the problem.

(There is a specific request to those who receive the link not to share it.)

[Lynette H]

Has anyone got the film to work ? Such a nice idea, shame that it doesn't function. 

[bangorballetboy]

9 minutes ago, Lynette H said:

Has anyone got the film to work ? Such a nice idea, shame that it doesn't function. 

 

Not me!

[capybara]

I wrote to them about the apparent problem immediately but received no acknowledgement and no action has been taken.

[JohnS]

I’ve just been in touch with Royal Ballet School Friends and a new link will be sent to all Friends pretty soon. I know what I’ll be doing this evening!

[Suffolkgal]

Just on the topic of graduates and their life after floral street, the son of a friend of mine went right through the lower and upper school but was not accepted into the company. He sings very well so has chosen to go into musical theatre and is very happy but I think it's a shame as he was a wonderful dancer. I won't name him just in case but i imagine he will have a longer and perhaps more lucrative career ...

[JohnS]

Just to say I’ve been back in touch with the Royal Ballet School and I’m hoping a new link for the film will be circulated today to Friends. I suggested extending the viewing availability so everyone has chance to enjoy the performance for a full month. Feeling very guilty that I’ve been able to see the film as on Monday I was sent a link to try.

[JohnS]

I see there’s a new email to Royal Ballet School Friends with a link to the film which works for me. Enjoy the Annual Performance to 29 August (I’m afraid the deadline hasn’t been extended).

[JohnS]

A reminder if you have access to the film of the Royal Ballet School’s Annual Performance, there are only a few days left - midnight on Bank Holiday Monday. I’ve certainly enjoyed dipping in and out of the film and keep returning to Yondering.

[Pas de Quatre]

Such a treat to have it online. I too love Yondering, in particular the "comic" pas de deux. Is there a detailed cast list anywhere, or does anyone know who these two dancers are? The other student who really caught my eye was the lead man in Raymonda, he is amazing. Hardly fair to mention just these three but I would be here all day otherwise. A lovely performance with a very high standard from all.

 

Oops - should have re-read the beginning of the thread where posters have mentioned names!

Edited August 26, 2022 by Pas de Quatre
add last sentence.

[SPD444]

On 26/08/2022 at 06:51, Pas de Quatre said:

Such a treat to have it online. I too love Yondering, in particular the "comic" pas de deux. Is there a detailed cast list anywhere, or does anyone know who these two dancers are? The other student who really caught my eye was the lead man in Raymonda, he is amazing. Hardly fair to mention just these three but I would be here all day otherwise. A lovely performance with a very high standard from all.

 

Oops - should have re-read the beginning of the thread where posters have mentioned names!

 

Go to Royal Ballet web site and click on the cast sheet and the full casting is there. It’s the one they used to provide for the performance.

[Pas de Quatre]

Thank you.