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Birmingham Royal Ballet 2014-15 season


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I don't think any of this has been posted already (apologies if it has), but the cast sheets for BRB's Prince of the Pagodas at the London Coliseum show what they'll be performing at Sadler's Wells in the autumn, at least:

 

Beauty and the Beast, 14th-16th October

"Shadows of War" triple bill: La Fin du jour/Miracle in the Gorbals/Flowers of the Forest, 17th-18th October

 

It all sounds very tempting to me.  I was just thinking during Pagodas that I'd like to take another look at Beauty and the Beast.

 

Booking opens 12th May

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Media release: 4 April 2014 

 

BIRMINGHAM ROYAL BALLET

ANNOUNCES 2014 – 2015 SEASON

AT BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME

 

  • A re-creation by Dame Gillian Lynne of a ground-breaking work from the Company’s history: Robert Helpmann’s 1944 ballet Miracle in the Gorbals
  • Sir Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker returns for Christmas
  • David Bintley’s brand-new one-act ballet The King Dances, with a commissioned score by Stephen Montague
  • Four amazing full-length classics: Beauty and the Beast, The Nutcracker, Coppélia and Sylvia
  • Plenty of family-friendly performances, including weekend matinees, during the Company’s 25th season at Birmingham Hippodrome
  • Flexible range of ticket prices from as little as £16 with a generous choice of concessionary rates

 

Birmingham Royal Ballet announces the 2014/2015 Birmingham Hippodrome season, the 25th season at its home theatre in the Midlands. The season will celebrate the Company’s varied repertory, from the gothic fairy-tale Beauty and the Beast in the autumn through to the return of The Nutcracker for Christmas and Sylvia in the summer of 2015. Added to the mix will be two works new to Birmingham audiences; a re-creation by Dame Gillian Lynne of the ground-breaking Miracle in the Gorbals, and a new one-act ballet from Director David Bintley called The King Dances. Over the course of the season, the Company will perform four full-length classic ballets and three programmes of shorter works to include the return of Bintley’s Carmina burana, MacMillan’s La Fin du jour and a revival of George Balanchine’s earliest American creation Serenade.

 

During the 14/15 season Birmingham Royal Ballet will continue to focus on creating new works and presenting quality productions at affordable ticket prices. The Company has held most of its prices for the last few seasons and from September 2014 a flexible range of prices will enable the Company to offer tickets from as little as £16 with a generous range of concessionary rates available to many.

 

Throughout the season, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s 60 full-time dancers from across the world will be accompanied by Britain’s busiest ballet orchestra, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia. The Sinfonia under the musical directorship of Koen Kessels, with Principal Conductor Paul Murphy and Conductor Philip Ellis, plays for Birmingham Royal Ballet's wide-ranging programme in the UK and abroad.

 

The 14/15 Birmingham season begins with David Bintley’s Beauty and the Beast. In this towering gothic fairy-tale from the creator of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s smash-hit Cinderella, a cruel Prince, cursed to spend his life as a Beast, finds salvation in the heart of a beautiful girl.

 

 

Beauty and the Beast                                                     30 September – 4 October 2014

 

Caught stealing a single rose, Belle’s desperate father exchanges his life for his youngest daughter’s freedom. In his distant castle the Beast, stripped of his handsome features and his very humanity, must win her heart, or spend the rest of his life in bitter solitude.

A beautiful girl, a hideous beast, a golden ballroom full of animals, two haughty sisters and a grumpy grandmother, dance through the unfolding pages of Philip Prowse’s stunning storybook set, whilst David Bintley’s rich choreography brings to life magical transformations, wild waltzes, and a relationship between Belle and the Beast that is at first terrifying, but ultimately beautiful.

 

 

Shadows of War

La Fin du jour / Miracle in the Gorbals / Flowers of the Forest                            8 – 11 October 2014

 

Shadows of War presents three one-act ballets each touched in some way by war.

 

Kenneth MacMillan’s La Fin du jour captures the glamorous ‘la plage’ lifestyle of the depression era. A group of trendy, bright young things while away their days with swimming, golf and new-fangled aeroplanes. They studiously ignore the looming threat of war which will eventually call time on their careless enjoyment and high spirits.

 

Robert Helpmann’s (Royal Ballet dancer and the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) 1944 Miracle in the Gorbals was a great leap forward for British ballet. Set in a run-down and dangerous Glasgow suburb, it dispensed with all the frippery of traditional ballets, replacing it with a gritty realism that proved an enormous success. After the shock of a girl’s suicide, the arrival of a mysterious stranger who is able to bring her back to life creates waves among the violent inhabitants of the tenements. The choreography for this ground-breaking dance drama is being re-created by Dame Gillian Lynne (a member of the original cast), with sets and costumes by Adam Wiltshire after original set designs by Edward Burra, a leading 20th-century British artist.  

 

David Bintley’s Flowers of the Forest is a ballet in two parts. Set to music by Malcolm Arnold, ‘Four Scottish Dances’ presents a light-hearted and nostalgic ‘picture postcard’ view of Scotland, whilst ‘Scottish Ballad’ strikes a more serious note, and is danced to a folk-inspired score by the young Benjamin Britten. The composer’s pacifist views found voice in this piece, which takes its title from the famous ballad for the flower of Scottish youth slain on Flodden Field.

 

 

The Nutcracker                                                              28 November – 13 December 2014

 

Let yourself get swept up in the excitement of Christmas with one of the best-known classical ballets of all-time The Nutcracker.

 

This unparalleled, world-famous production by Sir Peter Wright, complete with sets and costumes by John Macfarlane, the designer of the Company’s stunning Cinderella, is one not to be missed!

 

What more could a young girl ask for at Christmas, than for all her dreams to come true? After sneaking downstairs at midnight to play with her new Nutcracker doll, Clara is swept up in a fantasy of toy soldiers, giant rats, snow fairies, magic and mystery. When she saves her beloved Nutcracker from the King of the Rats, she is whisked away to an enchanted land and dances the night away in his arms, meeting a host of strange and exotic characters, before she is finally transformed into a beautiful ballerina.

 

The night passes in a blur and she wakes up on Christmas morning at the foot of the Christmas tree with memories that will stay with her forever, as the memory of this amazing production will stay with everyone who sees it.

 

 

Moving Stateside

Serenade / Lyric Pieces / In the Upper Room                                18 – 21 February 2015

 

Moving Stateside presents three ballets spanning nearly a century of US creativity, from George Balanchine’s earliest American creation to one of the Company’s most recent commissions.

 

Serenade is a stunning piece of pure dance from master choreographer George Balanchine, performed to the glorious music of Tchaikovsky. Wearing romantic costumes in shades of blue, dancers move elegantly on a bare stage, set against a midnight blue background. A milestone in the history of dance, Serenade is the first original ballet Balanchine created in America.

 

Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces, commissioned for the International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012, was one of the highlights of that season and makes a welcome return. For her first piece for a major European company, award-winning American choreographer Lang used the romantic musical miniatures by Norwegian master Edvard Grieg and complemented them with a hand-picked design team with costumes by Elena Comendador and lighting by Nicole Pearce.

 

In the Upper Room features dancers in trainers and striking red pointe shoes who dominate the stage with energy, flair and finesse in this exhilarating, athletic ballet by American dance phenomenon Twyla Tharp. Philip Glass’s score builds to an emotional peak with dancing that is quick-witted and even quicker footed.

A high-octane, all-American evening!

 

 

Coppélia                                                                                  24 – 28 February 2015

 

Magic, mayhem and the original living doll.

What’s at the heart of a woman? Eccentric toymaker Dr Coppélius wants to know, and he’s planning to bring his mechanical doll, Coppélia, to life. He just needs the right spell.

When Dr Coppélius leaves Coppélia on his workshop balcony she’s soon causing quite a stir in the village. Particularly in the heart of red-blooded young lover Franz and the jealous mind of his real-life fiancée Swanilda- who’s mistaken the mannequin for a crying, talking, sleeping, walking rival. With a wild mix of abracadabra, and some mischievous maidens, comic chaos is riotously unleashed when humans and automatons collide in Dr Coppélius’s spooky toyshop.  

Sir Peter Wright’s enchanting production of this joyous and witty ballet is an ever-popular celebration of love, with a sparkling score and breath-taking choreography. Coppélia is guaranteed to lift the hearts of all the family.

 

 

The King Dances / Carmina burana                                                  17 – 20 June 2015

 

Marking Director David Bintley’s 20th year with Birmingham Royal Ballet, this programme contrasts his acclaimed Carmina burana from 1995 with his latest work The King Dances.

 

In 1653 the 14-year-old Louis XIV of France danced the role of Apollo the sun god in Le Ballet de la Nuit, and earned himself forever the soubriquet the Sun King. In The King Dances David Bintley reimagines the very beginnings of ballet, when men were quite literally, the kings of dance.

 

In Carmina burana, the first ballet Bintley created for the Company as Director, an encounter with the mind-blowing Goddess Fortuna deals three seminarians a major lesson in the fickle nature of fate.

 

Compelled to abandon their sacred studies to pursue a more sensual approach to life, forbidden pleasures and physical temptations quickly become the young men’s most eager areas of revision. Soon the young celebrants are soaring with love, passion and alcohol.

Carmina burana is a thrilling, large-scale production, danced to Carl Orff’s dramatic and emotionally charged choral music, for which the Royal Ballet Sinfonia are joined by Birmingham’s Ex Cathedra. Inspired by the satirical writings of medieval priests, Orff’s rousing choral tour de force is a feat in its own right. Bintley’s breath-taking choreography ensures an unforgettable experience that has been astonishing and delighting audiences for nearly 20 years.

 

 

Sylvia                                                                                                24 – 27 June 2015

 

The 2014/15 Birmingham Hippodrome season finishes with a humorous trip through time to learn valuable lessons in love.  

Count Guiccioli’s infidelities cause marital strife between him and his wife and threaten both their anniversary celebration and the burgeoning love between Amyntas and Sylvia, their servants. It is left to the God of love, Eros (in disguise as a gardener), to reconcile their differences as he takes them, and us, back to the age of mythical Rome in order to teach them all a lesson about Love.

David Bintley’s time-hopping comedy features music by Léo Delibes, the composer of Coppélia, and a colourful cast of Gods and Goddesses, slave girls and pirates. Tchaikovsky wrote of Delibes’ score that his own music for Swan Lake was ‘poor stuff’ in comparison.

 

ENDS

 

 

Notes:

  • BRB @ BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME 2014–15 season on-sale dates

4 April: BRB Friends’ season and individual tickets, and season tickets for previous subscribers processed from this date (post only).

22 April: New season ticket purchasers (post only).

29 April: Individual tickets BRB Friends (telephone) and Birmingham Hippodrome Friends.

30 April: On-line individual tickets, telephone and in-person individual tickets.

30 September – 4 October 2014: Beauty and the Beast

8 – 11 October 2014: Shadows of War (La Fin du jour / Miracle in the Gorbals / Flowers of the Forest)

28 November –13 December 2014: The Nutcracker

18 – 22 February 2015: Moving Stateside (Seranade | Lyric Pieces | In the Upper Room)

24 – 28 February 2015: Coppélia

17 - 20 June 2015: The King Dances | Carmina burana

24 –27 June 2015: Sylvia

  • Autumn 2014 tour dates confirmed (more information and 14/15 tour dates to follow)

The Lowry, Salford: 24 – 27 September Beauty and the Beast

Sadler’s Wells, London: 14 - 16 October Beauty and the Beast, 17 – 18 October Shadows of War

Theatre Royal Plymouth: 28 - 29 October Shadows of War,  

30 October – 1 November Beauty and the Beast

Sunderland Empire Theatre: 6 – 8 November Beauty and the Beast

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An interesting-sounding programme. I hope the £16 tickets turn out to be adult prices this time and not children's, as it seems to have been every time I've tried to book tickets at the Hippodrome.

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Well I am now well and truly cheesed off.  Subscriptions go on sale tomorrow?  Well my form hasn't arrived!

 

I've just spoken to the Hippodrome who said that they are not starting to process the forms until Monday but even if mine arrives tomorrow I will be disadvantaged by having to rely on post to get my form back late.  It's always a scramble to get the forms back in and extremely disappointing if you  then can't get the seats you want.

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I feel exactly the same. I am an existing subscriber and a friend of both BRB and the Hippodrome but no sign of a booking form. Can't say I'm overly thrilled with the season. However, I will be pleased to see Flowers again. I went to Culloden two years ago and that music kept running through my head. Britten definitely got that one right.

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I know, I tried it too.  I also did a search on the website.

 

I wonder if it is a delayed link in that will only become operational when the subscription tickets are on sale.  That sort of happened a couple of years ago when an application form was put on the website.  I happened to be in Birmingham so hadn't received my form through the post.  The Hippodrome had helpfully printed some of the forms off so I was able to complete on in the foyer.

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Not exactly making things easy for us are they. Given that it is an entirely Ashton free year I will sleep on it overnight and then decide if I am going to renew my subscription. As I get older I find myself less interested in 'exciting new work' particularly if the description includes the dreaded phrase 'specially commissioned score'. I think those are the three scariest words in ballet (along with the 'imaginative new interpretation').

Edited by Two Pigeons
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Much as I'd like to be a BRB subscriber, it's a little impractical from Toronto. But I am a Friend, and I haven't received a single communication from them, either electronic or paper, since last summer. I thought maybe I'd just been "unfriended" but I'm beginning to think everyone may be in the same boat. Have those of you who are Friends received Entrechat newsletters, and listings of Friends events at all? I just wrote the individual donors coordinator to ask what had happened. Because my "Friendship" expires next week and I haven't even had a prompt to renew it!

Just to put things in perspective though, my subscription for the National Ballet of Canada is going up to $1000 (that's about 560 pounds) for six performances next year, so at BRB's prices, I'd be more than willing to take a risk on anything, commissioned scores and all.

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Hi Katherine,

 

I had an Entrechat a couple of months ago and a reminder about my Friends' subscription about a month before it was due to expire at the end of March.  I get the enewsletters but they are not solely for Friends.

 

I didn't receive an email telling me that the forms were due to be posted but friends who are Dancers' Circle did.

 

The form won't print out properly on my printer so I am off to the local library in the morning to try there!

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Tony, thanks for keeping trying with the link.  Our postman has been today and still no sign of the form so I trotted off to the library, printed out the form, filled it in and sent it off!

 

It's now in the lap of the gods!

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No brochure/form for me either but as I was going into Birmingham anyway today I printed it off (with some difficulty) and took it into the Hippodrome. Not much help to those who don't live locally. Why do they not leave at least one week between announcing the season, sending out the brochures and opening the booking? I've never come across any other organisation that doesn't leave at least a few days before booking opens.

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We've never been to the Hippodrome, but want to see the Shadows of War programme - sounds like a wonderful chance to catch up with some ballet history, amongst other things.

 

We'd welcome any advice about where to sit. We like to be close and tend to go for SC at Covent Garden and front(ish) Stalls at the Coliseum, where the rake is so good.

 

Helpful hints??

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If you can't get on the front row of the stalls (row E for BRB) then the side block aisle seats are best as the front stalls are not hugely raked.  Otherwise I have sat on row M and further back with no problems and full visibility of detail.

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I see I'm not alone in receiving my form. I've managed to print the form off from the link above and I've sent it in. It is hard to select your seats when you print it in b/w. I don't like the new pricing scheme either. I managed to fill in the entire form with Nutcracker prices but luckily I spotted my mistake.

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When I printed mine off on Saturday I had to then keep on referring back to the screen to check.  I hope I have filled it in OK!!  I have (because I can) gone for all midweeks again this year.  You do need a degree in form filling though to work out the prices!!

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Mine also arrived this afternoon and I notice that it was labelled "TNT post" but also had another label stating "delivered by Royal Mail".  It didn't come with our other Royal Mail delivery and it made me wonder if the delay in receiving our BRB Friends' mailing was due to this unusual setup.

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