Oh, for a crystal ball ...

[alison]

Hindsight's a great thing, isn't it?  I was musing on this earlier today, when it struck me it must apply to dance and ballet as well.  If you had known then what you know now, what would you have done differently in terms of dance-going/dance-doing?

 

My list certainly includes the following:

 

- get into Mark Morris earlier than I did

 

- if I'd known that London Festival Ballet's "Napoli" was the only chance I'd get to see the full ballet in 25 years, I'd probably have gone and seen that again.  Ditto their "La Sylphide"

 

- started going to the Royal Ballet earlier than I did.  I spent years picking up the booking leaflets in the local library and thinking "this sounds good.  If only I could afford it."  I never actually turned to the ticket price page (top seats £33, standbys a tenner, standing possibly 65 p) to find out that I *could* perfectly well have afforded it!

 

More to follow when I have more time to navel-gaze

[Two Pigeons]

I wish I'd seen Fonteyn and Nureyev at the festival they did at (I think) the Festival Hall in 1979.

 

I wish I'd see Pliestskya when she appeared at a London gala in around 1989.

 

I wish I'd seen the original casts of Nicholas Nickleby and Les Miserables at the RSC.

 

I wish that I had not stopped watching ballet between 2003 and 2007 so I missed seeing a lot of Robert Parker.