Royal Ballet - Raven Girl/Symphony in C - 2013

[LinMM]

Well Raven Girl on the face of it....dark, dramatic, strong storyline....is really my kind of ballet. So was I disappointed? No I found it held my attention all the way through except that some bits were a bit strange and couldn't make sense of them in the story context.

The first comment though must be for the music.....I really loved this score sometimes very melodic sometimes like a sound wash flowing over you but always to me seemed appropriate to what was happening on stage.

The film projections which I thought might irritate me didn't that much in this as again they always seemed to be appropriate and one or two affects were really quite beautiful.

From my stalls circle seat I could see most of the dancing....including the 19th Century couple.....but only just at that point...and as one of my favourite new dancers Beatrix Stix Brunell was the female part a shame if some could not see this.....though only a minor part of what going on.

I wasn't sure who the people in the japonese looking masks were supposed to be......a sort of Greek chorus?

The other thing that felt strange to me that the Raven Girl has gone to great lengths to get her wings.....and there is a nice bit where she is finally exploring using them(difficult to do this I should imagine) and then in the next scene she is dancing with the Raven Prince without them. I can understand that they had tobe ditched or would have got in the way of the dancing(and it was a lovely pas de deux) but especially as this raven Prince appeared from nowhere it was just a bit abrupt theatrically. I saw it as now she has got her wings and become more her true self then she doesn't need them any more sort of thing. Perhaps the prince could be introduced a bit earlier...in the bit where she is exploring her wings...he, as a raven could help her and then they fly off together with the final pas de deux then following as a symbol of their freedom.

HOWEVER I haven't read the book.....so maybe this is the very next thing to do before I go,and see it again.....which I definitely will.

All the cast needless to say.....in the evening performance were brilliant.

I enjoyed the Balanchine.....even though I often don't....as am not a great fan of lots of tutus lots of people on stage and almost too much dancing!.....to take in that is. But all the dancers seemed to be enjoying themselves and gave off a lot of joy so again brilliant performances from them and nice to see some young dancers looking so good too .....Olivia Cowley (again) and Emma Maguire and her other female supporting role a dancer I didn't know may have been Fumi......not sure of second name in first movement.

[alison]

Bonelli was performing in Raven Girl?  I thought they'd announced that Watson would be doing all the performances.  Agree, though, that either way it was rather a waste of a good dancer.

 

That also reminds me that I haven't commented on Symphony in C: it's been a pleasure watching Nunez in the second movement, but I will admit to having greatly missed Rojo and Watson in the 4th at times

[Sim]

Bonelli was performing in Raven Girl?  I thought they'd announced that Watson would be doing all the performances.  Agree, though, that either way it was rather a waste of a good dancer.

 

That also reminds me that I haven't commented on Symphony in C: it's been a pleasure watching Nunez in the second movement, but I will admit to having greatly missed Rojo and Watson in the 4th at times

Bonelli was dancing in the second cast when I went a couple of weeks ago. 

[LinMM]

Fumi Kaneko is the name of the other dancer with Emma Maguire supporting in the first movement.

[aileen]

Lin, I too was wondering about the japanese masks worn by the townspeople. I think that you might be right about a Greek Chorus. I think that the idea was that to the Raven Girl the townspeople were an anonymous group weighed down by the daily grind of life and their inability to fly, in contrast to the ravens whose flight represented freedom. The movement and uniform appearance of the townspeople also had the feel of those old films (I can't think of their names) in which people are nothing more than impersonal cogs in the wheel of a giant machine in a dystopian world.

 

I suspect that the removal of the Raven Girl's wings before the final pdd was for practical rather than artistic reasons. I think that both the Raven Girl and the Raven Prince could have had scaled down wings, perhaps flattish feathers stitched onto someting like elbow length handless gloves, if you know what I mean.

 

I loved the score. I don't know why some people found it boring. There were some very interesting sounds used which created a tremendous atmosphere, and I would like to know how they were made. I assume that part of the score was pre-recorded.

[Nina G.]

Fumi Kaneko is the name of the other dancer with Emma Maguire supporting in the first movement.

According to the "Symphony in C" cast list it was Yasmine Naghdi (not Fumi Kaneko) dancing with Emma Maguire as supporting cast to Itziar Mendizabal. 

 

Emma Maguire and Yasmine Naghdi danced the 4th Movement, not 1st Movement. 

 

1st Movement supporting cast: Claire Calvert and Fumi Kaneko, together with Sarah Lamb

[Bruce Wall]

I loved the score. I don't know why some people found it boring. There were some very interesting sounds used which created a tremendous atmosphere, and I would like to know how they were made. I assume that part of the score was pre-recorded.

 

I enjoyed parts of the score as well.  I saw Raven Girl for the second time on the Saturday matinee.  (I had seen it first at the premiere, but did catch a total of four Symphony in C's.)  It did appear that there was more light in the production now .... and also there was less literal stretcher prancing in the removal of the arms segment.  (Actually that was one aspect I didn't feel needed to be cut as it at least gave a variety in terms of the overall dynamic of the choreography which otherwise had (within limits) an all-too-similar dynamic fixed to an oft all-too-strictly registered tempi.  (I could, for example, have done with a cut of the 19th Century couple ... (Let them waltz elsewhere - if at all - I for one didn't get them AT ALL) ... or a little less bike riding or letter sorting  (sorry, Ed) .... but then I assume that would make more major cuts in the score and be more difficult to patch in the short term.)  The regimentation did make things draw out.  During one of the exclusively 'electronic' sections (an attractively oblique one it must be said) I peered down from the heights of the Amphi into the pit.  The faces of the orchestra players looked distracted in boredom.  It was amusing to see them turn and and respond to each other ... One of the players looked like Nadal just before he's about to strike out in a serve... and that was in but the few seconds I happened to have a 'look see'.    Still those few seconds offered a moment of humour; a tale in and of itself of humane humanity which I feel (and I know so many others feel differently about here) that separates, say, Robbins or Ratmansky or Ashton from the McGregor's of this world.  That said, one STILL lives in hope: Chroma in its way shone ... and, at least for me, it told MORE of a narrative tale within the remit certainly of my own mind's eye .... or is it but that I simply felt it more telling ... a world more easily grasped and therefore more fully entered into; one clearly challenging and therefore able to fully entertain.  I realise they are entirely different entities ... but I do feel the ultimate goal remains the same.  Surely ALL concerns our ultimate engagement.  On that score Raven Girl for me was inconsistent.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Meunier

[bangorballetboy]

According to the "Symphony in C" cast list it was Yasmine Naghdi (not Fumi Kaneko) dancing with Emma Maguire as supporting cast to Itziar Mendizabal. 

 

Emma Maguire and Yasmine Naghdi danced the 4th Movement, not 1st Movement. 

 

1st Movement supporting cast: Claire Calvert and Fumi Kaneko, together with Sarah Lamb

 

I'm afraid you're wrong.  On Saturday (which from the context of her post is when I assume LinMM saw SinC) the side ladies in the first movement were Maguire and Kaneko with Hinkis and Naghdi in the fourth. [Calvert is injured.]

[Nina G.]

I'm afraid you're wrong.  On Saturday (which from the context of her post is when I assume LinMM saw SinC) the side ladies in the first movement were Maguire and Kaneko with Hinkis and Naghdi in the fourth. [Calvert is injured.]

Oh, ok,  I didn't know Calvert is injured. So they must have changed places and Hinkis, as a cover,took over from Emma and Emma from Claire Calvert.

Makes sense now why Emma danced 1st Movement on Saturday

[LinMM]

Yes it was sat eve saw the performance and there were a couple of cast changes......can't check right now as left my prog up in London grrr.

All the principles were great but I just noticed these younger dancers really doing brilliantly as well who I'm not so familiar with. Olivia Cowley worked hard that eve.....she had been the Raven wife in the first ballet and then had a leading side role in Symphony which she did brilliantly as well!!

 

The Gentleman sitting next to me who was obviously not a regular turned and said to his companion when the curtain calls were being taken "that's the dancer I like, I really like that dancer"

He was referring to Laura Morera.