Symphonic Variations

[The Sitter In]

On Radio 3 now with Katie Derham saying Aston’s ballet is a masterpiece.

When for goodness sake will the RB perform it?

Instead we get XXX and YYY (insert the ballets of your choice)

[alison]

Quite.  At least she was encouraging people to look the ballet up.

[Ondine]

It was performed not so long ago?  I recall a cine broadcast?

 

 

 

[bridiem]

That was in June 2017.

[Fonty]

1 minute ago, bridiem said:

That was in June 2017.

 You beat me to it!  I was just looking it up.

[Ondine]

1 minute ago, bridiem said:

That was in June 2017.

 

Not so terribly long ago.  ('Pure Cecchetti ' as it has been described... and it is.)

 

You'll have to hum for this. A gem from the BFI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest oncnp]

Currently on ROH stream and DVD

[Rob S]

Katie Derham hosted the RB clip show on the telly at Christmas a few years back that featured SV

[Fonty]

It is an absolute gem, one of my all time favourite ballets.  The fact that it hasn't been danced for 6 years is tragic as far as I am concerned.

 

[annamk]

12 minutes ago, Fonty said:

The fact that it hasn't been danced for 6 years is tragic as far as I am concerned

 

 

It would somehow be less tragic if other masterpieces had been on offer instead, but oh no ........ 

[Pulcinella]

It was interesting that Jonathan Payn said that Symphonic Variations would suit Rosanna Ely, whom he was interviewing yesterday for the Friends, who is making her debut as Clara in the Nutcracker. The last time BRB performed Symphonic was 2011 even longer ago than the Royal. Will they ever perform it again? I really hope so but I have my doubts.

[Fonty]

Interesting looking at the first Youtube clip with music.  It is a ballet where there really is no place to hide.  I noticed that the two ladies were not perfectly matched.  Also, I seem to remember that one of the original Symphonic dancers (Shearer?) said they couldn't walk afterwards, it was so hard.  I know that the second clip is from the dress rehearsal for the ballet.  I hope the film has been speeded up, it looks way faster than any performance I have seen live.  

[Guest oncnp]

On 09/11/2023 at 12:51, Ondine said:

It was performed not so long ago?  I recall a cine broadcast?

 

 

Thank you.

 

Which led me to this Why Symphonic Variations is one of 20th century ballet's greatest challenges (The Royal Ballet) - YouTube

 

[MAB]

2 hours ago, Fonty said:

I hope the film has been speeded up, it looks way faster than any performance I have seen live.  

 

All recordings and concert performances I've heard have been sinificantly faster.

[Ondine]

14 hours ago, Pulcinella said:

he last time BRB performed Symphonic was 2011 even longer ago than the Royal. Will they ever perform it again? I really hope so but I have my doubts.

 

Forum member (and Cecchetti expert)  @Susan Lucas was one of those who danced Symphonic Variations with BRB. It would be interesting to have some recollections / revelations on how much stamina it requires!

 

Photo here!

 

https://danceworks.com/susan-lucas/

 

 

Edited November 11, 2023 by Ondine

[OnePigeon]

There are a few different performances with different casts on YouTube, though none of them official unfortunately.  I love the 1977 version with Wall/Eagling/Coleman and Park/Penney/Jenner though it’s very grainy footage. It would be great to see it revived soon as, despite being a huge fan, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it live.

[Bruce Wall]

I think that - were situations other than they clearly are - SV would be to the current Royal Companies much as Serenade is to NYCB.  

[LinMM]

Could this be one for Northern Ballet to revive perhaps? 
I’ve only seen it once but not from a good seat so I’d like to see again. 
I have childhood memories of studying pictures of Fonteyn in this ballet in William Chappell’s lovely little book. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by LinMM

[Fonty]

On 11/11/2023 at 12:57, Ondine said:

 

Forum member (and Cecchetti expert)  @Susan Lucas was one of those who danced Symphonic Variations with BRB. It would be interesting to have some recollections / revelations on how much stamina it requires!

 

 

 

If I recall correctly, it was the static poses they hold while not dancing that caused them problems?

[Ondine]

4 minutes ago, Fonty said:

t was the static poses they hold while not dancing that caused them problems?

 

 I think the fact they are on stage and performing the entire piece.  It's relentless! See the Henry Danton interview above.

[FLOSS]

 

 

I have always understood that it is the fact that the six dancers remain on stage for the entire duration of Symphonic Variations  combined with the fact that there are points during performance when all six dancers are required to perform as an ensemble rather  than as soloists which is what makes the work so challenging to perform. It is an extraordinary work and it is a real challenge for everyone on stage because of the level of concentration required of the performers. Sibley is on record as saying that in comparison with the choreography for the side girls the Fonteyn role is a piece of cake. I assume that this is because while the central role created on Fonteyn seems like an expression of serenity the choreography made on Shearer and May  contains quirky odd counts which must appear serenely straightforward.

 

You might have thought that by now the artistic director of the Royal Ballet might feel in a position to draw up a list of say twenty or twenty five works created for the company by its first three choreographer directors or acquired for it by them that deserve to be described as twentieth century classics because of their quality and their continuing importance to the development of dance. Ashton's Symphonic Variations, Scenes de Ballet, Fille, Cinderella, Daphnis and Chloe, The Dream, Month,Monotones and Enigma Variations would be on my list as would MacMillan's true masterpiece The Song of the Earth. Among the acquisitions I would include Nijinska's Les Noces, Balanchine's Apollo, Serenade, Ballet Imperial , Symphony in C and the Four Temperaments as well as Fokine's Firebird and perhaps controversially Petrushka. Fokine's use of the corps de  ballet in the crowd scenes in the latter work is an object lesson in the depiction of socially differentiated groups and individual members of a crowd.

 

The works on the list would be treated as essential core repertory and regardless of the cost of staging them  and the objection that one act works do not sell they would be revived on a fairly regular basis so that they remain part of the company's active collective memory as its dancers and audiences experience them in performance rather than reading about them and searching for clips of them on You tube.

 

I don't think any of us know whether Kevin was appointed as a safe pair of hands or as a moderniser. His public statements and his own commissioning and programming policies make it clear that he sees himself as a moderniser whose overriding ambition is to restore the company's reputation as a creative force and to provide its dancers with a new  repertory. While he is a product of the RBS, danced for BRB and worked as an administrator for the company he now runs I don't get the feeling that he is particularly attached to the company's twentieth century repertory whether in the form of the works which his predecessors created for it or those they went out of their way to acquire for it.

 

Of course Kevin's apparent indifference to the company's historic twentieth century repertory may simply be a reaction to the number of significant anniversaries marked during Mason's directorship but it seems to go deeper than that.., However hard an artistic director tries to hide his or her personal taste when it comes to repertory choices his or her likes, interests and dislikes soon manifest themselves in what gets staged. In addition there is always the question with an outside appointment of just how interested and committed they will be to works of which they have no personal experience  as either  performer or audience member. Although Kevin is a product of the RBS, dancing with SWRB/BRB exposed him  to different versions of the classics from those on show at Covent Garden as well as a different range of one act works. Finally he is faced with the purely practical problem of covering  the company's operating costs. This must add to the temptation to follow the economic model which the company has employed to achieve solvency since the nineties when the company came close to being disbanded.If you want to know the reason for the narrowing of the repertory then I think that it was the company's near death experience at this time which made it ultra cautious in its programming  policy.

 

Now I happen to believe that it is perfectly possible to accommodate new work and productions in the schedule if you are prepared to revise and tweak  what has become the no thought required programming of twenty plus performances of the annual Nutcracker the annual MacMillan dram ballet and one or more of de Valois' nineteenth century classics. But given the financial crisis which is affecting everyone and the abject failure of the marketing department to sell tickets or set sensible ticket prices I think it unlikely that the  ROH Board will be inclined to support what it will see as an unduly adventurous programming policy when it comes to scheduling twentieth century classics. I just hope that the Ashton programmes at the end of the season buck the trend; sell well and cause questions to be asked about the company's current dull and overly predictable  programming policy

  

 

[Ondine]

I do wonder to what extent the cine relays influence the theatre programming.

 

I have no idea how much the RB / ROH makes from these, and of course the filming is the basis for the online paid for content and the DVD sales.

 

 

[Ondine]

5 hours ago, FLOSS said:

Ashton's Symphonic Variations

 

While searching for something else I came across this.

 

Note on the 18th June 1947 there was a QUADRUPLE bill which included Symphonic Variations, and it's interesting to see all the other works danced by the company (then the Sadler's Wells Ballet) in the post war years.

 

https://www.theatricalia.co.uk/13dance/royal.htm

 

This is the triple bill it premiered with, in 1946: Ashton's Les Patineurs and Robert Helpmann's Adam Zero.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_Variations_(ballet)

 

 

 

 

 

[Jane S]

I was puzzled by the Symphonic Variations programme you linked to, and wondered if the Symphonic Interlude it mentions was an additional orchestral piece rather than another ballet - so looked on eBay and found this one, which clearly shows an extra bit of music, rather than an interval, between SV and Facade - and I also found another which had an extra bit of Stravinsky played before Scenes de Ballet and one which had an extra bit of Meyerbeer before Les Patineurs.

 

It presumably had something to do with the lengths of intervals or the overall length of the programme but seems quite random from such a small sample! Anyone remember this happening more recently?

[Ondine]

2 hours ago, Jane S said:

was puzzled by the Symphonic Variations programme you linked to, and wondered if the Symphonic Interlude it mentions was an additional orchestral piece rather than another ballet - so looked on eBay and found this one, which clearly shows an extra bit of music, rather than an interval, between SV and Facade - and I also found another which had an extra bit of Stravinsky played before Scenes de Ballet and one which had an extra bit of Meyerbeer before Les Patineurs.

 

It presumably had something to do with the lengths of intervals or the overall length of the programme but seems quite random from such a small sample! Anyone remember this happening more recently?

 

That one puzzled me also and I was going to delve and didn't get round to it, so thanks for that!  Interesting isn't it? Also Giselle with another ballet. It is possible Giselle then wasn't as long as it is now, but I do feel a night at the ballet may have been better value for money then!

[Odyssey]

One of the first ballets I saw was Monotones 1 & 2 with Giselle back in the 60s performed by the Royal Ballet on tour. I am pretty sure it wasn’t a shortened version. I don’t think RB have ever danced anything but a full version. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Odyssey

[Ian Macmillan]

One of those involved on stage back then assures me that their Giselle was not shortened. 

[Mary]

Intervals were shorter then....................

[Pas de Quatre]

I remember feeling very short changed the first time I saw Giselle without an opening ballet, late 1960s. Someone correct me if I am mistaken, but I don't think they had the music for Peasant Pas de Deux in those days either as the pas de deux, or reworked as other choreography.

[Odyssey]

This thread has made me have a look at a stack of old cast sheets I have kept. I found a triple bill from 1988 at Bham Hippodrome when RB  used to do regional tours . Still Life at the Penguin Cafe , Symphonic Variations and The Concert.. That stuck me as an interesting mixed programme that would easily appeal to both seasoned ballet goers and newbies.  

[MAB]

I vividly remeber Giselle as part of of double bill.  Not just more value for money but extra opportunities for dancers to perform for their audience.  Agree that intervals were far shorter back in the day.

[Ondine]

We are getting way off topic but this fits here re Giselle,  I see updated in August 2023:

 

https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/giselle-questions-answers

 

So I'll add this which IS about Symphonic Variations, and is much more succinct (with photo of original cast):

 

https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/oyg6ku6ehrut9zwxykms59by2e7iwn

 

 

 

[alison]

This was interesting: "And yet Anthony Dowell regularly performed another ballet in a Symphonic Variations triple bill"

 

Reminds me of a time in about 2004/2005 (sometime before he was promoted to Principal, anyway) when I think Edward Watson did Symphonic and then came back for the fourth movement of Symphony in C (admittedly replacing someone else, I think, rather than a scheduled performance).  Or am I confusing Symphonic with The Dream, or something?