Nobody Dances The Sleeping Beauty better than the Birmingham Royal Ballet

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Birmingham Royal Ballet The Sleeping Beauty The Lowry 7 March 2024 18:39

Every March the Birmingham Royal Ballet visits The Lowry to perform one of its full-length works.  This year the company brought Sir Peter Wright's production of The Sleeping Beauty.  I had been looking forward to it very much.  I have seen many performances of that ballet by different companies over the years but none has danced it better than the Birmingham Royal Ballet.   It is not surprising that Sir Peter has been commissioned to create versions of that work for the Dutch National Ballet and the Hungarian Ballet.

I attended the evening performance on 7 March 2024.   As I had expected, the dancing, drama, music, sets and costumes were outstanding but I do have one criticism.   A performance of The Sleeping Beauty normally lasts three and a half hours with intervals between each of the Acts and between the Prologue and Act I.  Those intervals are there for a purpose.   They allow the audience to reflect on the dancing that they have just seen and, unless they already know the ballet backwards, prepare for the next Act by consulting the synopsis.  Intervals also provide opportunities to look out for friends and acquaintances, take a comfort break, grab some refreshments or just stretch pairs of legs.  The show that I attended was telescoped into 2 hours and 50 minutes with just 2 breaks of 15 minutes each.  Acts I and II, which are supposed to span 100 years in the story, were juxtaposed with just a 3-minute pause between them.  Those intervals were just not long enough to absorb and appreciate fully the cascade of colour, sound and movement.       

Happily, there was still plenty to enjoy.  The Sleeping Beauty is a contest between good and evil represented by the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse.  I know that Aurora and Florimund are supposed to be the leads and that their roles are always performed by principals but I have always found them two-dimensional.  The success of the ballet hinges on the performance of those two fairies.  If they fall flat then the ballet is nothing more than an endless string of divertissements,

By far the more interesting fairy is Carabosse as she arrives on a black conveyance surrounded by petty monsters on a peel of thunder following a flash of lightning.  In some productions, Carabosse is danced by a man but I sense an extra frisson when the role is danced by a woman.   The best Carabosse that I have ever seen was the great Dutch ballerina Igone de Jongh but Daria Stanciulescu was pretty good too. I felt her rage as she peevishly plucked the last remaining hair from Catalabutte's pate, 

But evil does not win completely because Carabosse's curse is mitigated by the Lilac Fairy.  She was danced by Eilis Small.  She has a demanding role because she is the only character that appears in every scene of the show.  She guides Florimund through the thicket to Aurora's bed, projecting goodness and calm, banishing Carabosse in a puff of smoke on the way. 

Though their characters may not be as interesting as Carabosse's or Lilac's,  Aurora and Florimund have the best choreography.   The grand pas de deux at their wedding requires considerable virtuosity.  Momoko Hirata and Max Maslen performed those lead roles with flair.   Perhaps the most demanding part of Aurora's role is the rose adagio in Act I where she has to pass gracefully between four suitors.   The sequence requires considerable poise and concentration but Hirata almost made it look easy.

The only parts of the choreography of The Sleeping Beauty that I have ever tried to learn are the fairy variations in the Prologue.  Each is very short but none is easy.  Isabella Howard, Rasanna Ely, Rachele Pizzillo, Reina Fuchigami, Sofia Liñares and Yu Kurihara danced the fairies of beauty, honour, modesty, song, temperament and joy respectively.  I learnt a lot from them.  They were a joy to watch.

Liñares and Pizzillo joined Enrique Bejarano Vidal and Shuailun Wu in the pas de quatre for Aurora's wedding.  I loved Gus Payne's cheeky Puss-in-Boots and Isabella Howard's coquettish White Cat. I must congratulate Riku Itu and Yaoqian Shang on their Bluebird pas de deux.  Itu started his career at Northern Ballet and it was good to see him again.  Tessa Hogge and Callum Findlay-White were an amusing Little Red Riding Hood and Woolf.

This production has been in the company's repertoire for nearly 40 years but it seems as fresh as ever. Philip Prowse's sets and costumes continue to awe.  Touches like the scattering of the stage with gold confetti continue to delight.  So, too, does the Royal Ballet Sinfonia. On 7 March it was conducted by  Paul Murphy.

The Sleeping Beauty itself occupies a special place in the history of British ballet as it was the first work to be performed by the Sadler's Wells Ballet at the Royal Opera House after the Second World War.  That show took place on 20 Feb 1946.  However, according to the Manchester Guardian review of that performance of 21 Feb 1946, it was not the first time that the company performed The Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden.  The company danced The Sleeping Beauty there at a special performance for the state visit of the President of France in March 1939.   

As this review will appear early on Easter Day, I wish all my readers who observe the festival a Happy Easter and everyone in the UK a happy bank holiday weekend.

The Nutcracker #3 - The Royal Ballet Screening

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The Royal Ballet The Nutcracker 17 Dec 2019 19:39 Screened to cinemas worldwide

Yesterday I discussed the screening of the Bolshoi's version of The Nutcracker on 15 Dec 2019 in The Nutcracker #2 - The Bolshoi Screening.  Two days later the Bolshoi's screening, the Royal Opera House screened a recording of the Royal Ballet's version of The Nutcracker.  For the reasons that I explained yesterday the twp productions are very different.  The Bolshoi's records Marie's transition into womanhood while the Royal Ballet's is a fantasy with more than a little in common with Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Lookingglass.  

The Royal Ballet's production was created by Sir Peter Wright who took a bow at the end of the show.  The recording was made in 2016 which coincided with Sir Peter's 90th birthday.  In Sir Peter's version, the nutcracker is  Drosselmeyer's nephew who is imprisoned in wood.  He can come back to life only through the love of a young woman.  This is an adaptation of ETA Hoffmann's story of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and it is a detail that most versions of the ballet overlook.  This makes Drosselmeyer a much less sinister and more likeable character than in the Bolshoi's or most other versions of the ballet.  Sir Peter's ballet opens in Drosselmeyer's workshop as he wraps up his present for Clara.  The workshop is also where the show ends as the nephew - restored to human form -  embraces his uncle.

Sir Peter's ballet requires two ballerinas, namely the young girl known as Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy, and two premiers danseurs nobles, that is to say, the nutcracker and the Sugar Plum Fairy's prince or cavalier.  There are also meaty roles for the mouse king, Harlequin and Columbine in the first act and the soloists in each of the divertissements of the second.  The climax of the production is the pas de deux of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her beau.  Probably, the most famous dance of the whole ballet is the Sugar Plum Fairy's solo to the slightly otherworldly sounds of the celesta.

In the recording, Drosselmeyer was danced by the company's principal character artist, Gary Avis whom I once had the pleasure of meeting at the London Ballet Circle's 70th-anniversary celebrations.  I can report that he is as gracious in real life as he is graceful on stage.  Clara was danced by Francesca Hayward who was perfect in the role.  Her nutcracker was Alexander Campbell who, like Xander Parish, shares my passion for cricket as well as dance. The Sugar Plum Fairy was danced by Lauren Cuthbertson, my dancer of the year in 2016. and she was partnered by Federico Bonelli, another favourite.  With an orchestra was conducted by Maestro Gruzin it is hard to think of a  stronger cast by any company anywhere in the world.  The sets, costumes and technical effects match the choreography and dancing.  It is a sumptuous production.

On Sunday I shall see Sir Peter Wright's production for the Birmingham Royal Ballet at the Royal Albert Hall.  That will be the last Nutcracker that I shall see this season and indeed the last ballet of this year.  The version that is staged at the Hippodrome is my favourite version of The Nutcracker. If the Hippodrome version can be scaled up for the Royal Albert's stage I suspect Birmingham Royal Ballet's will be my favourite Nutcracker for this year.

The Dutch National Ballet's "The Sleeping Beauty" - I have waited nearly 50 years for this show

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The Dutch National Ballet The Sleeping Beauty, Stopera, Amsterdam 17 Dec 2017, 14:00

It's funny how some performances stand out in one's memory over the years.  The performance of The Sleeping Beauty by the Royal Ballet on 22 July 1972 was one of those. Dame Margot Fonteyn danced Aurora and Rudolf Nureyev Florimund.  It was a glorious evening and I saw the show when I was at a high point of my life, shortly after graduating from St Andrews and just before I was due to take up a scholarship to UCLA.

I've seen many excellent performances of The Sleeping Beauty since then by Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Hungarian National Ballet and lots of other companies including the Royal Ballet. None has come close to that show on 22 July 1972. It was for me the gold standard. At least not until last Sunday. Now, over 46 years after that remarkable performance by Fonteyn and Nureyev, I have seen its peer.

The matinee that I attended on Sunday afternoon had been staged by Sir Peter Wright, It is a production that I had seen several times before and know very well, Although the music, choreography and designs appeared to be the same as those I had seen before, Sunday's show had a freshness, an energy, a je ne sais quoi that somehow distinguished it from all previous performances of that ballet since 1972. The reason why it was so good is that HNB is one of the world's great companies and very special as Sir Peter noted in a YouTube clip to promote a previous revival (see Sir Peter Wright has wonderful words for the company (Dutch National Ballet) HNB 6 Dec 2010). In fact, when a gentleman in the seat next to me asked how it compared with London I replied that for my money HNB was the best company in Europe if not the world.

HNB has some brilliant dancers. Aurelia was danced on Sunday by Maia Makhateli. Although she trained in Georgia and the USA she seemed to dance very much in the English way displaying a pleasing line and considerable virtuosity but without exaggeration or gratuitous theatricality. Her rose adage was superb and readers can see her performing it in Maia Makhateli Sleeping Beauty Rose Adagio 28 Oct 2016 YouTube. It is the best I can remember. I should add that Ms Makhateli is as charming off stage as she is impressive on it for when I asked her to sign a card to my contributor, Helen McDonough, in a signing session after the show she knew exactly to whom I was referring.

Ms Makhateli was partnered gallantly by Daniel Camargo. He is a very powerful but also very graceful dancer and he can also project emotion and feeling as well as any voice actor. In those regards he reminds me very much of Nureyev at the same age.  Sunday's performance was the first time I had seen him in a major role and I was impressed,  His rise to principal in Stuttgart over just a few years was meteoric. Although he is still quite young, he has already achieved a lot.  His potential must be considerable.

As Perrault's tale is essentially a struggle between good and evil, the most important characters are perhaps the lilac fairy and Carabosse.  Erica Horwood was a delightful lilac fairy but the prima ballerina, Igone de Jongh, was the best Carabosse I have ever seen, Both appeared with their attendants and Carabossse's were particularly creepy. The other fairies, Jessica Xuan, Suzanna Kaic, Yuanyuan Zhang, Naira Agvannean, Aya Okumura and Maria Chugai, danced exquisitely There were strong solo performances in the final act. I particularly liked Young Gyu Choi's and his partner Suzanna Kaic as the bluebirds and Clotilde Tran-Phat and Daniel Montero Real as the white cat and Puss'n Boots. Everyone in the cast danced well but this overlong review would resemble a telephone directory if I gave every artist the credit he or she deserves.

The Stopera's enormous stage displayed Philip Prowse's gorgeous costume and set designs to optimum advantage.

It was thrilling to sit in centre of the second row of the stalls just a few feet behind the celebrated conductor Boris Gruzin. It was tantamount to being in the orchestra pit. Indeed, it was almost like being on stage.

The Sleeping Beauty will run to New Year's Day but, sadly, almost every performance is fully booked. However, Birmingham Royal Ballet's version, also produced by Sir Peter Wright and also very good, is about to go on tour.  It will visit Southampton between 31 Jan and 3 Feb, Birmingham between 13 and 24 Feb, Greater Manchester between 28 Feb and 3 March, Cardiff between 14 and 17 March and Plymouth between 21 and 24 March.

Finally, I must apologize to readers for the long and embarrassing delay since my last post in November. I have made made copious notes of Rambert's Ghost Dances at the Alhambra, Northern Ballet's The Little Mermaid in Sheffield, Birmingham Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker in Birmingham and the Russian State Ballet and Opera House's Romeo and Juliet in Harrogate not to forget the preview of Sharon Watson's Windrush, cinema relays of the Bolshoi's Le Corsaire and the Royal Ballet's Alice in Wonderland and The Nutcracker, Martin Dutton's inspiring Nutcracker intensive, great classes at Pineapple and Huddersfield and the Arts Council's seminar on grant applications. I will try to get these out to you by the end of the year.

The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker in the Merrie City

Wakefield from Sandal Castle

Author Tim Green
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Source Wikipedia

The Royal Ballet, The Nutcracker, streamed to cinemas 8 Dec 2016

Immediately after watching the preview of Calyx and mingling with the artists and guests on 8 Dec 2016 I galloped down to Leeds central station, jeté on to a train to Wakefield Kirkgate where I had left my car the previous day for a dash down to London to give a talk on IP Planning for Brexit and chasséd  on over to Cineworld which was streaming the Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker live from Covent Garden. I arrived at the cinema at 17:29 and presented my driving licence as proof of my antiquity to claim an old age pensioner's concessionary ticket for the show.

"You're too late, love" said the man at the ice cream concession dourly. "Picture started about 'half an 'hour ago. You'll have to come back tomorrow."

Would you believe that Wakefield, originally called Waca's Field, was once known as the "Merrie City"? No neither would I. Never believe everything in Wikipedia. On the other hand, having observed the young folks of Wakefield on the Saturday night pub crawl that the proprietor of the Springfield Beauty Salon once told me was known locally as the "Westgate Run", I would not be at all surprised to learn that its name derives from "Whackers' Field."

"It's not on, tomorrow", I protested. "It's not a picture but a ballet screening. And the only thing that I am likely to have missed is Darcy Bussell's patter, twitter hashtags and trailers for forthcoming shows."

"Oh well suit tha'sane, love", said the jolly ice cream vendor as he took my money

I entered the auditorium just as the orchestra was striking up the first notes.

According to the trailer on the Royal Ballet's website,

"The Royal Ballet celebrates Peter Wright’s 90th birthday with his much-loved production of this beautiful classical ballet, danced to Tchaikovsky’s magnificent score."

Sir Peter Wright is amazing. I met him briefly at the cast party after the Hungarian Ballet had premiered his version of The Sleeping Beauty at Budapest Opera House (see My Trip to Hungary 21 April 2016). He moved about the stage like a 20-year old as the cast took curtain call after curtain call and then gave an excellent impromptu speech to the cast, guests and production crew. In our brief conversation, he asked me where I came from and what I did for a living. To my great surprise, he had remembered that information for he introduced me at our next meeting which was the London Ballet Circle's 70th-anniversary celebration to a lady whom I shan't identify with a son who is reading law in Manchester (see 70 Years of the London Ballet Circle 10 May 2016).

As I said in The Good Nutcracker Guide 31 Oct 2016 we are spoilt for choice for versions of The Nutcracker this year but my first choice is the Royal Ballet's. If you can't make it to Amsterdam to see Ted Brandsen's Coppelia then Sir Peter Wright's Nutcracker really is the next best thing. Having said that, Birmingham's is pretty good, Wayne Eagling's is not bad if you don't mind the transposition of the Stahlbaums to the banks of the Thames and the rodent king's reappearance in Act II (see Cracking 14 Dec 2013). As for the other Christmas shows, Christopher Hampson and Scottish Ballet can do no wrong in my book (see Scottish Ballet's Hansel and Gretel 23 Dec 2013 and the last Act of Northern Ballet's Beauty and the Beast impressed me when I saw it in 2011 (see Jane Lambert Ballet and Intellectual Property - my Excuse for reviewing "Beauty and the Beast" 31 Dec 2011 IP Yorkshire).

There seem to have been a few changes to the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker since the last time I saw it.  There is a new Chinese dance in the divertissements in Act II and the sets and costumes seem a bit fresher. Francesca Hayward was a beautiful Clara. I like versions where Clara (or, if you prefer, Marie) has something to do but I never want her to morph into the Sugar Plum. It's quite a demanding role because (a bit like Juliet) she has to persuade her audience that she is still a young girl but the dancing requires the skills and expertise of a principal. She was partnered admirably by Alexander Campbell as the Nutcracker. Two of my all time favourite dancers, Lauren Cuthbertson and Federico Bonelli dazzled us in the final pas de deux. I should mention in passing that there is a young man from Novara who reminds me very much of Bonelli with the Dutch National Ballet as well as a young woman from Bologna with more than a little of Ferri's flair. And my favourite of the show? Well, how could it be anyone other than Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer? He was also at the London Ballet Circle's 70th where I was able to tell him how much I had enjoyed his work when I shook his hand.

I have learned from experience that the best is the enemy of the good. Having seen Brandsen's Coppelia it is probably not a good idea for me to see any of the other Christmas shows just yet. In any case, the Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker was sold out weeks ago. But I will be well over that when Scottish Ballet bring Hansel and Gretel to Newcastle in February.

My Last Three Pictures from Budapest: Peter Wright's The Sleeping Beauty

Dimitry Timofeev and Aliya Tankpaveva

Photo Atilla Nagy
(c) Hungarian National Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduction licensed by the Company

All good things must come to an end and I have finally come to the end of my stock of photos of the Hungarian National Ballet's opening night of Sir Peter Wright's The Sleeping Beauty at the Budapest Opera House on Sunday 17 April 2016.   As you can see I have left some of the best till last.  My thanks to Mr. György Jávorszky, the company's press officer and to the photographer Atilla Nagy.

The Sleeping Beauty

Photo Atilla Nagy
(c) Hungarian National Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduction licensed by the Company

You will find my review of the ballet and a short video at Sir Peter Wright's The Sleeping Beauty in Budapest 23 April 2016.

The other photos are at:

• 3 May 2016 The Hungarian National Ballet's Sleeping Beauty: Aurora's Wedding;
• 4 May 2016  Budapest Bluebird; and
• 11 May 2016 Budapest Prologue.

The Sleeping Beauty

Photo Atilla Nagy
(c) Hungarian National Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduction licensed by the Company

You may also wish to read my article on the background to the ballet (The Hungarian National Ballet's Sleeping Beauty 24 Feb 2016) and my account of the cast party (My Trip to Hungary 21 April 2016) and watch the delightful video of the Puss in Boots divertiseement.

Budapest Prologue

Prologue

Photo Atilla Nagy
(c) Hungarian National Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduction licensed by the Company

Sir Peter Wright reminded us of our glorious evening in Budapest when we watched his production of The Sleeping Beauty for the Hungarian National Ballet at the London Ballet Circle's 70th birthday celebration on Monday (see 70 Years of the London Ballet Circle 10 May 2016).   Here are some more photos which were sent to me by Mr György Jávorszky of the Hungarian State Opera House.

Fairies

Photo Atilla Nagy
(c) 2016 Hungarian National Ballet: All rights reserved
Reproduction kindly licensed by the company

Carabosse

Photo Atilla Nagy
(c) 2016 Hungarian National Ballet: All rights reserved
Reproduction kindly licensed by the company

The Hungarian National Ballet's Sleeping Beauty: Aurora's Wedding

Aurora's Wedding

Photo: Attila Nagy
(c) 2016 Hungarian National Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company

On the 17 April 2016 I attended the première of the Hungarian National Ballet's production of The Sleeping Beauty  at the State Opera House in Budapest which I reviewed in Sir Peter Wright's The Sleeping Beauty in Budapest 23 April 2016.

I have just received from Mr György Jávorszky, International Communications Project Manager of the Hungarian State Opera, ten beautiful photographs of the ballet which were taken by Mr Attila Nagy with permission to reproduce them in my blog. Over the next few days I shall show them all.

I start with the final scene of Aurora's wedding. If you look closely you will see tiny fragments of gold tinsel falling onto the stage.  I picked up one of those bits of tinsel and brought it back to England as a reminder of that delightful performance.

Why I Still Go to Class - Despite Everything

LAMDA Poem - Stage Three - Ballet Lesson Wildcats Academy (Wildcats Theatre School)

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"Aren't you a bit too old for this ballet malarkey?" ask my chums from time to time. After seeing an overweight, lumbering hippo in black trying to do temps levés and balancé turns at least half a second behind everyone else in the Romeo and Juliet intensive (see Romeo and Juliet Intensive - the awful proof as the camera does not lie 21 April 2016) I could understand their point.  For a few days I was absolutely pole axed by those pictures. I chickened out at the last moment of two classes that I normally attend out of pure embarrassment.

It did not take long to realize that there is no need to be embarrassed in class because everyone is too preoccupied with their own exercises to have time or energy to take an interest in anybody else's. However, that is a reason for not avoiding class rather than a positive reason for going to class.

I think I go to class for four reasons even though it can be tiring, sometimes painful and always takes up a lot of time. 

The main reason is that  I have learned more about ballet from the classes that I have taken over the last three years than I had picked up in a lifetime of watching performances from the stalls. I am far too old and far too fat and feeble ever to learn pointe and I cannot do most of the turns and jumps but I can do at least some of the steps and know how it feels to do them. More importantly I have - albeit fleetingly and imperfectly - felt the music flow through my body and to express the music which is an experience I think every dancer must know. It is a glorious sensation which makes all the pain and effort worthwhile.

Closely related to that is the excitement one gets just before a show as one finds one's position on stage in the dark. Then the music strikes up and the dancers go. It is actually very like the feeling I get when I go into court. I wrote about it the first time I did a show in The Time of My Life 28 June 2014. Strange though it may seem, I like advocacy too.

That leads me into my third reason which is that it helps me to do my job. Advocacy like dancing is a young person's game. It requires enormous explosions of energy in a very short time. It requires mastery of a lot of facts. It requires anticipation of what is to come. Exactly the qualities needed for ballet. That point arose when I met Sir Peter Wright in Budapest two weeks ago (see My Trip to Hungary 21 April 2016).

"Ballet keeps you mentally alert as well as physically fit" observed Sir Peter.

"I know" I replied. "I can speak from experience. It helps me do my job better."

"Oh!" exclaimed Sir Peter looking bemused. "And what kind of job might that be?"

"I'm a barrister. I have to be as nimble in my thoughts as you in your body and I have found the two go together."

The look of bemusement disappeared. He knew exactly what I meant.

So when my clerk remonstrates out of exasperation: "Nobody pays you to be a ballerina, do they miss" that will be my reply in future.

Finally, I have found a great esprit de corps in every ballet class I have done. Through class I have met some really nice people and made some very good friends, particularly in my Over 55 class. There are some splendid women who have led very impressive lives in that class.  After we have pivoted precariously and thumped about doing sautes I like nothing better than sitting down with them in Café 164 or the tables by the lift at Quarry Hill to listen to their stories as well as their opinions - always interesting and original, occasionally provocative and sometimes brilliant - on just about everything.

So although ballet takes up a lot of time - although I am like Mma Ramotswe of "traditional build" - I shall still turn up in Manchester, Leeds or Huddersfield a couple of times a  week and, occasionally, Danceworks or Pineapple or, indeed, even Budapest for my fix however ridiculous I may look.

Sir Peter Wright's The Sleeping Beauty in Budapest

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Hungarian National Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Budapest Opera House, 17 April 2016

Last Sunday I attended the opening night of Sir Peter Wright's production of The Sleeping Beauty for the Hungarian National Ballet at the Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest. I came to Budapest as a member of the London Ballet Circle of which Sir Peter is patron. Towards the end of last year the Circle newsletter carried a news item about this production together with an invitation from Sir Peter for members to join him on the first night. The newsletter arrived just before the departure of my friend Mel Wong to take up an offer of training and employment in Hungary. I told her about Sir Peter's invitation and asked her whether she would like me to visit her to which she said she would.

I arrived on Saturday evening and spent much of Sunday with Mel taking a class with her teacher Imre Andrási followed by a sumptuous lunch and the performance of The Sleeping Beauty at the Opera House in the evening (see My Trip to Hungary 21 April 2016). I did not know much about the Hungarian National Ballet before my visit and I wrote just about everything I could find out about it in The Hungarian National Ballet's Sleeping Beauty 24 Feb 2016. Having seen one of its performances and having met its director and several of its dancers and other staff at the cast party after the show I am very impressed. I asked some of them whether the company had any plans to visit the UK. I was told that it had not but that they would very much like to dance here. One of the dancers I met was British although he had trained abroad. I think they would do very well here. In the meantime, I hope that this and my other articles will encourage British and other foreign ballet goers to visit Budapest and see the company for themselves.

The Budapest Opera House is a very beautiful late 19th century building which must have been erected during the reign of Francis Joseph I (1848 - 1916) when Hungary was part of the Dual Monarchy or Austro-Hungarian Empire. As you can see from this photograph the auditorium is sumptuously decorated with a magnificent ceiling and chandelier as indeed are the other rooms. However, it is not a large theatre. It seats 1,300 spectators which is slightly smaller than the capacity of the Leeds Grand Theatre built a few years earlier and just over half that of Covent Garden. Mel and I had seats in the centre of the fifth row of the stalls and so had a perfect view of the stage.

The ballet was very much the same as the Birmingham Royal Ballet's which I had last seen at the Lowry on 27 Sept 2013 (see The Sleeping Beauty - a Review and why the Ballet is important 27 Sept 2013). Sir Peter had brought Denis Bonner and Miyako Yoshida to help him with the choreography. The sets and costumes had been designed by Philip Prowse, the lighting by Peter Teigen and technical support was provided by Doug Nicholson.

Dimitry Timofeev and Aliya Tankpaveva
Budapest Opera House, 17 April 2016

Photographer Gita Mistry
(c) 2016 Team Terpsichore: all rights reserved 

The dancers and musicians, however, came from the company.

Aurora was danced by Aliya Tanykpayeva who appears in the photo to the left. According to the Hungarian National Ballet's website Tankpaveva trained at the Almaty National Ballet Academy in Kazakhstan and danced in the Almaty State Ballet for a number of years before joining the Imperial Russian Ballet Company (which despite its name appears to be based in New Zealand) and the ballet companies of the Vienna State Opera and the Zurich Opera and the Hungarian National Ballet. There appears to be a rather good documentary on her entitled Алия Таныкпаева. Жизнь на кончиках пальцев but, unfortunately, it is not dubbed or subtitled.

Tankpaveva's partner on stage was Dmitry Timofeev who also appears in the photograph. According to his entry in Network Dance (now a little out of date) he is Russian. He was born on 14 July 1989 and trained at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St Petersburg. Before joining the Hungarian National Ballet Timofeev danced with the Israeli Ballet and the Croatian National Theatre.

Tankpaveva and Timofeev danced well together. They are clearly very talented dancers but they danced the leading roles differently from the way I remembered Elisha Willis and Jamie Bond at the Lowry three years ago. Both Tankpaveva and Timofeev were impressive - particularly Timofeev in his jumps - but the roles - especially Aurora's - require acting as well as virtuosity. It was hard to imagine Tankpaveva as a 16 year old Act II (or Act 1 if you count her birth as a prologue) or the mix of emotions upon being woken up from a 100 year sleep by the love of her life which I have seen in other Auroras. But Tankpaveva, who was utterly charming, fitted the role in every other respect very well indeed.

Danielle Gould
17 April 2016

Photographer  Gita Mistry
(c) 2016 Team Terpsichore

As for the other major roles, the Lilac Fairy was danced by Zsuzsanna Papp, Carabosse by Karina Sarkissova and Bluebird by Maksym Kovtun who also doubled as Puss in Boots. In that latter role he was partnered by the young Canadian dancer Danielle Gould who danced the white cat. It is not an easy character role particularly with a heavy cat mask. She has to be both human and feline: flirtatiousness at one moment, they playful slapping her partner at the next. It is one of my favourite divertissements of any ballet and she danced it well winning the hearts of the audience. Having been trained at the National Ballet School of Canada and the John Cranko Academy it is clear that this young woman is going places. She has very kindly agreed to supply material for a feature of her which will appear very soon.

Audiences seem to applaud differently in Budapest than in London. When they like something they fall into a slow hand clap which is disconcerting to English ears as we tend to regard it as a sign of boredom rather than pleasure. There were plenty of shouts of "bravo" and "brava" throughout the performance, particularly after something spectacular. At the curtain call Karina Sarkissova called on István Dénes to take a bow and he in turn brought the orchestra to their feet. Then someone called on the director who in turn invited Sir Peter himself to take a bow.

Sir Peter was magnificent. He is not a young man. According to the Royal Opera House's website this Christmas's production of The Nutcracker will celebrate his 90th birthday but nobody would have guessed that by looking at him on stage. He bowed. He clapped his artists. He joined in the reverence. He took several curtain calls and I couldn't help but rise to my feet in admiration for the man.

To make him and us from the London Ballet Circle feel at home someone in a box to the right of the stage was raining bouquets of flowers on the dancers. Not quite as spontaneous as in Covent Garden for the chap seemed to be wearing a badge and the flowers were bound but a flower throw none the less.

It was a great night not least because I was lucky enough to be invited back stage with my compatriots to meet Sir Peter and members of the company which I have mentioned in more detail in My Trip to Hungary 21 April 2016. I missed a lot of good things in England, not least the chance to shake hands with Deborah Bull, Robert Parker, Dominic North and Sarah Kundi at Chantry Dance's studio naming ceremony (see What's in a Name 22 April 2916), and I can't be sure that I will ever get another. But even if I don't this visit to Hungary will have been worth it.