I have just noticed that Danceworks has arranged for Vadim Muntagirov to give a 90-minute master class between 14:30 and 16:00 today. Dancers in London can attend the class at Danceworks's studioat 16 Balderton Street which is just off Oxford Street almost opposite Selfridge's. It will cost £18 which is not much more than a 90-minute with any other teacher in London. The rest of us can follow the class online for £9. Bookings can be made through the Danceworks website,
There is also a master class next week with Brandon Lawrence of Birmingham Royal Ballet followed by Jane Coulston of Beyond Repair Dance Company on 11 July, Alejandro Parente and Marianela Nuñez on 25 July, Alexander Campbell on 8 Aug Nathalie Harrison on 22 Aug and Claire Calvert on 5 Sept 2021.
Standard YouTube Licence Royal Ballet CoppeliaRoyal Opera House and Cinemas 10 Dec 2019 19:30
For me, this conversation between Merle Park, Darcey Bussell and Marianela Nuñez was the high point of Tuesday's live screening of Coppelia. Park was at the height of her career when I first took an interest in ballet. I saw her many times in many toles and admired her greatly. It was good to see her again after many years and even better to see her name on a cast sheet again as one of the principal coaches.
There were other interesting discussions during on Tuesday night. The conductor, Barry Wordsworth, spoke about the score. The wardrobe mistress explained how technology had transformed costume preparation and maintenance over the years. At one time the flower on a bodice had to be painted by hand. Nowadays it can be printed out by computer. Members of the corps spoke about rehearsals and how their ballet master coaxed our their best Those conversations are the one big advantage of live streaming, Even though Bussell said on Tuesday (as has been said before) that the cinema audience have the best seats in the house it is not really true. Ballet is three-dimensional and screens can only accommodate two and there can be no two-way communication between artists and audience as there is in theatre. The insights that can be gleaned from conversations and interviews.
Nuñez danced Swanilda on Tuesday and I think that is a role that suits her well. I had long admired her virtuosity in roles like Kitri but I had never seen her bring a character to life in the way she did in that performance. Coquettish and playful but also with a heart. Her facial expressions when the Burgermeister tried to reconcile her and Franz after she had caught him flirting with the robot in the window of Dr Coppelius's workshop.
The principal male role in Coppelia is not really Franz who saves his entrechats and tours en l'air to the very end but the inventor, Dr Coppelius. A lot of people think he is too much over the top but having run inventors clubs and pro bono patent clinics in the North of England for nearly 20 years I can testify that folk like Dr Coppelius really do exist. Gary Avis, a brilliant character dancer, represented him perfectly.
I have to say that I am not really sure about the morality of this ballet. It seems to celebrate elder abuse. It surely can't be right for the local toughs to rough up the old body on his way to the pub. Or for ladettes to break into his laboratory and set off his robots as they make their escape. Or indeed for Franz to climb into his premises through the window. Or, worst of all, Swanilda tearing pages out of his lab books. Never mind! The old chap is compensated at the end, albeit by the local aristocrat and not by Swanilda. And he is generous enough to raise a glass to Franz and Swanilda at their wedding,
Although Arthur Saint-Léon who created the ballet in 1870 may not have envisaged it, the interaction of humans with humanoid robots is very much a topic for our times. At two recent conferences, one on copyright last week and the other on life sciences the week before, there were no less than five presentations on artificial intelligence and whether a machine can invent things for which patents can granted or create works of art in which copyright subsists.
Returning to the ballet, Vadim Muntagirov danced Franz with his usual flair and grace. In the first act, I enjoyed Mayara Magri's peasant dance. In the dance of the hours, Claire Calvert was a delightful Aurora and Annette Buvoli an angelic Prayer. I must also congratulate Mica Bradbury, Isabella Gasparini, Hannah Grennell,Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Romany Pajdak and Leticia Stock who danced Swanilda's friends. They are on stage almost as long as Swanilda herself and their dancing is barely less demanding. At one point in the first act, they have to follow each movement of Swanilda exactly. In the transmission, Nuñez traced the start of her career in Coppelia to her first performance as one of Swanilda's friends and it is obvious why.
This was one of the Royal Opera House's better live streamings. In this show, the programme maker made much better use of Darcey Bussell. The Royal Opera transmissions are still not quite as good as the Bolshoi's and they won't be until they engage a presenter as knowledgeable and personable as Ekaterina Novikova. But it was still a good show.
Standard YouTube Licence Royal Ballet Don Quixote30 March 2019, 13:30, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Except when I was a graduate student in Los Angeles, I have visited Covent Garden several times a year, every year, since 1969. Seldom have I enjoyed a performance at the Royal Opera House more than last Saturday's matinee of Don Quixote. I had already seen that production several times in the cinema and once on television and had been somewhat underwhelmed by those transmissions (see ¡Por favor! Don Quixote streamed to Huddersfield17 Oct 2013). I think that must be because no screening comes close to communicating the colour, movement and energy of the live show.
Although Gerard Davis referred to this production by Carlos Acosta as a remake in the programme notes, it seems to be pretty much the same as other companies' versions of the ballet. The prologue begins with the dotty Don Quixote sheltering the shoplifting Sancho Panza. The rogue kits the old man out with a bedpost for a lance and a shaving bowl for a helmet. He is dubbed a knight by an imagined dulcinea and is confronted immediately by equally imaginary hooded demons. As in other versions, he meets Kitri and Don Basilio in the town square and helps them elope. On their travels, they meet gipsies. He falls ill fighting ambulatory windmills. In his delirium dreams of dryads or tree spirits. They return to the town where Kitri's suitor is partnered up, KitrI marries Don Basilio and Don Quixote and his squire slip away for more adventures. I understand that the score had been rearranged and reorchestrated by Martin Yates but I did not detect any variations even though I know the music well. Aspects of the show that impressed me particularly were the lavishness of Tim Hatley's sets and costumes and the slickness and energy of the dancing.
My enjoyment of the show was facilitated greatly by the casting of Alexander Campbell as Don Basilio. A year or so ago I read about his taking part in a scheme by the RAD and MCC to encourage kids to take up ballet and cricket. Perfectly natural in my view as I have always had a passion for the two. I think it was Arnold Haskell who observed that cricket had predisposed the British to ballet pointing out many parallels between the two. Like another of my favourites, Xander Parish, Campbell had been a promising cricketer as a boy. I had long surmised that that might be the case before I had read that article for Campbell commands the stage like a batsman at the crease. There is something about his manner - perhaps his grin - that makes it impossible not to like him. He wielded his guitar while wooing the coquettish Kitri as an extension of himself just as a batsman holds his bat. As he seized her fan in the same scene I imagined his diving for a catch. In his jumps and lifts, he is much an athlete as an artist. It may be a figment of my imagination as it may be have been years since he last played the game, but I think that his youthful cricketing prowess has contributed more than a little to his appeal as a dancer.
Campbell's Kitri was the Brazilian first soloist, Mayara Magri, She excelled in that role. I was told by a well-informed acquaintance whom I met in the interval that last Saturday's matinee had been her debut. If that was the case, her performance was all the more impressive. I mentioned her coquetry in the previous paragraph but the role also requires virtuosity and prodigious stamina. She displayed those qualities in abundance, particularly in the last act where she dances in the pub and in the final pas de deux where she performs lots of fouettés. She dazzled me with those displays.
Other artists who particularly delighted me included Itziar Mendizabal as Mercedes, Claire Calvert as the queen of the dryads. Lara Turk as the Dulcinea and, of course, Gary Avis as Don Quixote. It was also good to see Jonathan Howells as Sancho Panza. I had been looking forward to seeing Thomas Whitehead as Gamache. I am one of his fans and that is not just because he comes from Bradford. That role was danced by Benet Gartside whom I also follow. I hope that Whitehead's absence was not the result of injury or illness but, if it was, I wish him a full and speedy recovery. Valentino Zucchetti had been advertised to dance the matador and he was also indisposed through illness or injury. I wish him a full and speedy recovery too. He was replaced if my memory is correct, by Reece Clark but sadly he was also hurt and had to be replaced (I think) by Thomas Mock. Like the rest of the cast, Mock and Clark danced well. I wish Clark too a full and complete recovery. I congratulate everyone who took part in that performance.
I have been lucky enough to see two other fine performances of Don Quixote. On Christmas day of 2017, I saw Mathieu Ganio and Isabella Boylston in the ballet company of the Paris Opera (see Paris Opera Ballet's Don Quixote28 Dec 2017). I wrote:
"Spectacular choreography needs virtuoso dancers and Isabella Boylston is a virtuoso par excellence. She launches into grands jetes almost as soon as she appears on stage and hers seemed as graceful and effortless as any I have seen before. She danced Kitri who ends the show with spectacular fouettés. I have seen plenty of those from lots of Odiles but the excitement that Boylston generated with hers at the Bastille last night could not have been exceeded by Legnani herself."
A few weeks later, on 28 Feb 2019, I was delighted again by Sho Yamada and Riho Sakamoto in the lead roles in the Dutch National Ballet's performance of that work (see A Day of Superlatives - Dutch National Ballet's Don Quixote1 March 2018). I enjoyed that show a lot:
"I don't think I have ever seen a better Don Quixote even though I have seen artists like Isabella Boylston and Marianela Nuñez dance Kitri and Carlos Acosta dance Don Basilio. Above all, I don't think I have ever seen the Dutch National Ballet dance better."
Comparisons between three great performances by three great national companies would be odious. They all had strengths. For me, the Royal Ballet's were Hatley's designs and the casting of Campbell, Magri and Avis. It is enough for me to say that the Royal Ballet's Don Quixote is right up there in my esteem with the Paris Opera's and HNB's. Without wishing to be too political I had booked my ticket to Don Quixote to cheer me up for what had been scheduled to be the day after brexit. As it happened it wasn't but that has prompted me to think of parallels. Don Quixote lived in the past and looked back to a mythical golden age. In that regard, he reminds me very much of our brexiteer MPs living in the past with their notions of English exceptionalism being the modern equivalent of courtly love and chivalry. The battle with the windmills raises obvious analogies with our noble ministers battling against an intransigent commission. Cervantes intended his novel to be a satire. He would have had a field day had he been alive now.
Standard YouTube Licence Royal Ballet, Giselle, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2 April 2016
In an interview with the journalist Mark Moynihan which is transcribed in the Royal Ballet's programme notes for this season's Giselle, Sir Peter Wright said:
"When I first saw Giselle way back in the early 1940s I used to think: 'That's silly. That doesn't make sense. So when John [Cranko] asked me to do Giselle my first reaction was, 'Oh no, I couldn't do that - that poor young girl going mad'. The ballet always seemed rather inconsistent to me and sometimes downright stupid."
Until last night that had been my reaction too. I had always been troubled by the libretto (possibly for the same reason as Wright for he had been brought up as a Quaker and I have become one) as the second act is very dark, superstitious, even a little satanic, or so it had appeared to me for many years. My coping mechanism until last night had been to put the story out of my mind and concentrate on the dancing as thought it were an abstract work like Jewels or Les Sylphides.
However, Sir Peter changed his mind about Giselle and so have I. In Sir Peter's case it was only when he saw the great Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova's interpretation of the role of Giselle when the Bolshoi first came to London that he realized what an extraordinary work it could be. That is because the libretto is coded or perhaps, more accurately, on more than level. There is all the difference in the world between knowing the story of a ballet and understanding it. Sir Peter needed Ulanova to unlock the work for him and it was Lauren Cuthbertson last night who did the same for me.
I am not a newbie when it comes to ballet. I have seen Gisellemany times by several different companies with some of the world's greatest ballerinas in the title role. The best compliment that I can pay to Cuthbertson is that she unlocked the ballet for me much in the way that Ulanova appears to have done for Sir Peter. Yesterday I saw not a ballerina dancing Giselle but Giselle herself and for the first time I really understood the ballet which has far more substance than I had previously supposed. Giselle was not stupid but in love - or least infatuated - and infatuation makes fools of us all. I have seen what it has done to my friends and it is actually one of the stories on my favourite radio soaps right now as Helen ignores the danger signs that are so obvious to her friend, Kirsty - just as Giselle ignores the tampering with the petals and the other indicators that were so clear to her mum and, of course, Hilarion.
What is it about Cuthbertson's performance that was so special last night? I don't know. I had seen her several times before and admired her artistry and virtuosity. I had listened to her talk to the London Ballet Circle and even managed to meet her brielfy afterwards to say how much I enjoyed her work. It may be that her horrendous injury has made her an even greater artist (see Nowness's video London's Royal Ballet I Portrait of a Dancer: Lauren Cuthbertson) but if that were so, why? Perhaps she was in the right place at the right time to interpret Giselle for me.
One of the hitherto exasperating points of Giselle had been that Albrecht, the cad, survived the wilis but Hilarion who lost the girl also had to die. But actually that is one of the points of the ballet that Wright's production and Cuthbertson's dancing brought out last night. Nobody is beyond redemption - not even after death. Albrecht showed remorse for his treachery and Giselle forgave him and, who knows, was perhaps redeemed herself by sustaining him through his trial. There is a crucial bit of the choreography that I had missed in the past where Giselle stands before Albrecht with her hands outstretched in the form of a cross from which Myrtha and the other wilis are forced to turn away. They recover, of course, and continue their persecution until the exhausted Albrecht is saved, quite literally, by the bell.
And Hilarion? Well he was jealous and let his jealousy get the better of him which caused Giselle to stab herself (at least in Sir Peter's version). He did visit her grave but he fell asleep and ran into the woods as lights flashed and wilis darted across the stage. It was perhaps his lack of courage, his lack of resolve and his jealousy and selfishness that condemned him.
Great though Cuthbertson was last night she needed a strong partner and Federico Bonelli partnered her magnificently. "Wasn't that so beautiful!" whispered the lady next to me during a moment for applause, "he held her as if she were a feather." It was indeed beautiful and I was close to tears. I have to think long and hard in my half century of ballet going to remember a pas de deux that has moved me as much. Sibley and Dowell perhaps? But I can't for the moment think what that could have been.
A strong performance, too, from Benet Gartside as moody, sulky, vengeful and in the end irresolute, Hilarion. As I say, I had always felt sorry for the gamekeeper in the past but I had less sympathy for him in Gartside's interpretation of the role - though I still find it hard to understand why he had to die. Berthe (Giselle's mum) danced by Elizabeth McGorian was crucial to the story. Usually she is the spoil sport - Madame Simone transposed - who stops her daughter dancing but yesterday she showed she had good reason as she predicted her daughter's suicide in mime. Spine chilling performances, also, from Claire Calvert as the icy, imperious, heartless, spiteful queen of the wilis and from Elizabeth Harrod as Moyna and Meaghan Grace Hinkis as Zulme. In fact, the whole cast was great. The only reason I have not mentioned more names are the usual limitations of time and space.
Regrettably I had to leave the Opera House, Cinderella like, after the first few curtain calls to catch my train back to Yorkshire but the clapping and cheers were deafening even outside the auditorium. When the flower market was next door the stage would have been knee deep in flowers after a performance like last night's. The dancers - Cuthbertson in particular - were extraordinary and I hope this review does justice to them all.
