Jump to content

Ticket Offer for Beyond Ballets Russes


Recommended Posts

One of the dancers has informed me that Ballet News has just posted a ticket offer for ENB Programme Two at the Coliseum:

 

Top price seats are available for £10 each (!) at a limit of two per person for the rest of the performances. Offer available by telephoning the box office after 12 noon on 0871 911 0200 and quoting "Russes". Hope this helps fill the place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just re-read the post and there doesn't seem to be any limit on the number of seats plus the offer should also be available on the Coliseum website.

 

To take advantage of this exclusive offer please visit the London Coliseum website or call the London Coliseum Box office (after 12 noon on 28th March) on 0871 911 0200 0871 911 0200 and quote RUSSES (copied from Ballet News website)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sitting in my plush £10 seat last night I had quite mixed feelings, not about the programme which is excellent but about the widespread and rather desperate-seeming ticket offers.

 

I felt a bit guilty with regard to people who had booked early and payed full price and wondered if this late discounting might actually in future dissuade people from booking early in the hope that they might catch a bargain nearer the time. I am sure that the ENB marketing department and the Coliseum must have thought about this Catch-22 and weighed it up carefully and we'll never know what the break-even point is in regard to expenses versus ticket revenue. On the positive side, selling tickets at £10 is better than not selling them at all and maybe it will induce people who wouldn't normally attend ballet to give it a look, especially in these straightened times.

 

The Dress Circle was almost full last night, maybe in part due to the ticket offer, but checking now on the Coliseum website other performances are still only about half sold. I don't understand the London ballet audience. Do they really only want to see yet more of the staple classics? Of course the difficulty of filling the house for mixed bills isn't peculiar to ENB or to this programme - the Royal Ballet suffers from it too. I don't understand why theatre audiences expect to see new or unfamiliar work alongside the classic rep but ballet audiences are so much less adventurous.

 

As Irmgard has indicated, you shouldn't miss this: Apollo (arguably the greatest ballet of the 20th Century); a new, ingenious and enjoyable working of Jeux by Wayne Eagling; Anton Dolin being channelled in the gymnastic solo from Train Bleu (last night most excellently by Vadim Muntagirov); Lifar's Suite en blanc, not likely to be seen here danced by any other company and a classic in it's own way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Never mind, Jane, you can feel virtuous :). I look at it this way: I had a budget (which I actually exceeded for programme 1 because there was an offer, ahem), so the company hasn't actually lost out on my booking, although I gained a better seat for it. But seeing £10 offers is distressing.

 

John, I don't know what it is about London ballet audiences either (except that it's obviously reflected in the regions, or this bill, or a mixture of the two, would be touring there too), but I'm certainly getting a feeling that despite the many of us who attend both there's something of a disconnect between Coliseum ballet audiences and ROH ones. (And it's not only mixed bills: BRB's Coppelia didn't sell as well as many had expected either.) The RB generally manages to sell its mixed bills rather better, but probably that is due to the recognition that they don't sell as well and are therefore priced a lot more competitively - and presumably subsidised by the much higher prices for full-evening ballets. I've never been convinced that the policy of ENB performing the "in the round" productions at the Albert Hall leads to much in the way of new audiences crossing-over even to full-length works at the Coliseum, so I'm certain that they would resist trying a mixed bill, especially if it's not made up of ballets with familiar names. It is a huge problem, but not one I think they can solve by ultimately capitulating and just putting on the full-length ballets their public seems to want.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not directly related to this topic thread but...

 

I bought two £30 tickets at the Coliseum for R&J for Peter Schaufus Ballet starring Osipova and Vasiliev last year. At work the next week I discovered my work colleague had been at exactly the same event, had better seats and paid... nothing at all. How? Through being a member of Showfilmfirst. Although this advertises itself as a film club, it also gets lots of tickets to other events - opera, pop, ballet, comedy, all sorts. My friend has VIP membership (about £15 a year). You are emailed or texted details of events at short notice - often on the day of performance - and the tickets are free. I am not in Showfilmfirst myself because the short-notice thing doesn't work for me, and I don't know if there are any downsides, but there doesn't seem to be!

 

Also personally, I love the mixed bills. I prefer them to the classics...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was so upset when I found out that the tickets had been reduced to £10 as I paid £67 only last week........However, I emailed the box office & changed my ticket for the Sleeping Beauty in JANUARY...It cost £ 3.00 for the exchange. I then booked my £10 ticket online. I am very happy now :)

I have been caught out like this before & it does put you off booking early. I did think that ENB prices were very steep & they don't give discounts for pensioners, but I was desperate to see the programme.

Susan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was told many years ago that it is very expensive to be a visiting company at the Coliseum (I assume that means any company that is not ENO). I assume that has something to do with the pricing and I suppose selling off unsold seats cheaply reduces the loss, if not by very much.

 

When I started travelling to London to watch ballet in the mid-1980s LFB used to do a 3 week summer season at the Coli followed by a couple of weeks at RFH. If I remember correctly, the RFH tickets tended to be less expensive. I can't comment about the current situation but in those days there were all sorts of special offers from the outset for members of the Friends.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The other thing for us pensioners (and maybe students and others?) to remember about the Coliseum is that for almost all performances you will be able to get a concessionary standby at a substantially reduced price.

That is true, John, but living in West Sussex makes it difficult to get a standby ticket.......

Susan :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very, very short notice, I know but I have an excellent dress circle ticket going for tonight's performance - £10 only! I got two this aftenoon after reading John's comments above about Apollo, Suite en Blanc etc. I thought I could easily get one of my friends or neighbours to take the second ticket but it was too short notice for everyone. Let me know. I'm aiming to get there by 7 p.m.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Senior standby has mostly worked well for me - I check the website before setting off, but I have noticed something different on the Eifman and Schaufuss flyers - they say that over 65s tickets are 17.50 on the day of performance. I am hoping that means you can phone in the morning to be sure of a seat - has anyone found out the details of this ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I decided that I would only go to see the ENB Prog 2 if I could get a cheap ticket - so I hung on and on and on then bingo this week got the £10 deal after googling for cheap ENB tickets! Well chuffed to get my first ever bargain ticket. That is offset however by the horrendous train fare from up north! However if I had paid full price earlier I['d have got a cheaper train ticket so it is probably quits for me but it is nice to feel I got a bargain of a sort! Looking forward to seeing it now as everyone seems to like this programme.

I think that ROH fills up better because tourists tend to go there as it has more kudos to see the "Royal" Ballet at the "Royal" Opera House. At Alice the other night I think I heard as many foreign language speakers as I did English.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At Alice the other night I think I heard as many foreign language speakers as I did English.

 

That's certainly not uncommon. I've noticed a lot of French people there recently, but then it's a quick hop in Eurostar, and a lot of British ballet fans return the compliment, so to speak :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Always reminds me of seeing "Billy Elliot" at the theatre and chuckling at the baffled faces of many foreign theatregoers as they struggled to understand the show, between the dialect and the swearing! :-). At least the language of ballet is universal.

 

If you are disabled then The Coliseum has a great access scheme with excellent discounts. For me that's a Godsend as the amount of pain and associated tablets involved with travelling does distract a lot from enjoyment of the ballet, but it does mean that I can still take my dancing daughter to the ballet without too much expense (makes the pain easier to bear!). :-))

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not directly related to this topic thread but...

 

I bought two £30 tickets at the Coliseum for R&J for Peter Schaufus Ballet starring Osipova and Vasiliev last year. At work the next week I discovered my work colleague had been at exactly the same event, had better seats and paid... nothing at all. How? Through being a member of Showfilmfirst. Although this advertises itself as a film club, it also gets lots of tickets to other events - opera, pop, ballet, comedy, all sorts. My friend has VIP membership (about £15 a year). You are emailed or texted details of events at short notice - often on the day of performance - and the tickets are free. I am not in Showfilmfirst myself because the short-notice thing doesn't work for me, and I don't know if there are any downsides, but there doesn't seem to be!

 

Also personally, I love the mixed bills. I prefer them to the classics...

 

I love mixed bills, and I'm not a particularly knowledgeable ballet-goer. Also I think they're good for children who of course have shorter concentration spans.

 

We saw ENB doing Ballet Russes at Sadler's Wells a couple of years ago - my DD who was 11 at the time loved it. So we saw another mmixed bill a while later - ABT doing various things - I think that was at the Coliseum or perhaps Sadlers Wells, can't remember now.

 

Plus --- Exciting! We are going to the matinee performance of Beyond Ballet Russe tomorrow - I got the £10 tickets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...