Miyako Yoshida trained at the Royal Ballet School and spent most of her career dancing in the United Kingdom, first with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and later the Royal Ballet. She rose quickly to principal and has won all sorts of awards, including the Order of the British Empire. She is now Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Japan, which she will bring to London between 24 and 27 July 2025.
The company will perform Giselleat Covent Garden. It will be Yorshida's own production with designs by Dick Bird and lighting by Rick Fisher. Judging by the YouTube video of Yoshida's rehearsal, audiences are in for a treat. The National Ballet is located in the recently opened New National Theatre in Tokyo, which it shares with the National Opera and the National Theatre of Japan. There are 75 dancers in the company, which enables them to perform everything from The Nutcrackerto Kaori Ito's Robot, l'amour éternel.
The company has its own ballet school, which offers a two-year full-time course to prepare students for a professional career. The school also offers a two-year preparatory course for younger students. Details of the curriculum and profiles of some of the students appear on the ballet school webpage.
The National Ballet is not the only company in Japan; The Tokyo Ballet and the K-Ballet are also prominent companies. According to Wikipedia, ballet was introduced into Japan by the Italian ballet master Giovanni Vittorio Rossi in 1912. Rossi trained several Japanese pupils, some of whom entertained troops and factory workers during the Sino-Japanese War, much in the way that Vic-Wells, Rambert and other companies did here (see Yukiyo Hoshino Use of Dance to Spread Propaganda during the Sino-Japanese WarAthens Journal of History Vol 1 Issue 3 pp 191 - 198).
I am sad to learn of the death of Lynn Seymour. I never met her or had any dealings with her but I saw her several times on the stage of Covent Garden when she would have been at the height of her career. I saw her in many roles but the one that I remember best is Juliet. Kenneth Macmillan created that role for her. While I have seen many other Juliets I always associate that role with her and none other.
Although she would have been in her early thirties when I first saw, her she could shed the years to become the excited teenager looking forward to her first grown-up ball. I could sense her excitement at meeting Romeo on the balcony, her conflicting passions on learning of the death of Tybalt at the hands of that same Romeo, her despair on being forced to marry Paris and her apprehension on taking Friar Lawrence's potion, Seymour's performance is still the yardstick by which I measure every other Juliet
As there have been many obituaries I won't add another. Jane Pritchard's for The Guardian is as good as any other. There is also a tribute to her on the Royal Opera House's website.,
At the end of July and the first few days of August 1970. American Ballet Theatre visited the Royal Opera House. They brought such great names as Cynthia Gregory, Sallie Wilson, Han Enelaar and Erik Bruhn. But the greatest of all was Carla Fracci. I saw her at the height of her career in her greatest role one balmy August night nearly 51 years ago.
Although I was only 21 at the time I had already seen several productions of Giselle by the Royal Ballet and other companies. And I have seen countless productions since then. Many of these have been good and some have been great such as Lauren Cuthvertson's of 2 April 2016 (see Cuthbertson's Giselle 3 April 2016). None of them has equalled Fracci's performance that evening in August. I can't remember who was her Albrecht. I think it must have been Bruhn but I didn't pay him or for that matter, any other dancer much attention because Fracci commanded the stage in a way that I had never seen before or since. Every detail of every scene from her exit from the cottage in Act I to her descent into her grave in Act II is recorded in my memory as though it were a film.
When I saw that performance of Giselle I was a Young Friend of Covent Garden. As such I received 2 sheets of ticket vouchers every month that enabled me to sit in the L to Ps of the amphitheatre stalls for just a few shillings. I think I visited the House just about every night. I remember a very rich and varied programme that included Swan Lake and Giselle but also Balanchine, de Mille and Tudor. But nothing stuck in my memory like Fracci's Giselle. She literally took my breath away. For her acting which you can see in this clip as well as her virtuosity.
I never saw Fracci again after that tour. I think the company returned in 1977 to celebrate the Queen's silver jubilee but I don't remember Fracci. An army of obituarists and biographers have charted her career since her death 4 days ago. It would have been necessary to refer to their work to write one of my own. In this blog, I try to be original. There is happily a lot of video footage of Fracci at the height of her career which I am gratefully working through now, Misquoting Nero, qualis artifex obiit.
Although I knew what to expect and saw a very different interpretation with Thiago Soares in the title role, Itziar Mendizabal as Tatiana, David Donnelly as Lensky and Meaghan Grace Hinkis as Olga, I was as thrilled second time around as I had been the first time I saw the ballet.
As before, it was the choreography that thrilled me. In my 2015 review, I described John Cranko as my favourite choreographer of all time and so he remains. I said: "Cranko understood and interpreted music in a way that produces a fluency that is instantly recognizable but hard to describe". But that was not all. I added: "He was also a great storyteller with a sense of humour." Not so much humour perhaps as in The Taming of the Shrew which remains my favourite work by Cranko but there is a great story of which many of us in the English speaking world would otherwise have been unaware.
Soares's Onegin was very different from Golding's. I had described Goldring's portrayal as "steely, amoral but ultimately foolish" but I saw complexities in Onegin's character that I had missed before. I believe that he was conflicted and he had certainly matured between his duel with Lensky and his reacquaintance with Tatiana in St Petersburg. Maybe I would have picked that up from seeing the ballet again but I am not sure. Soares has the ability to communicate mood and maybe even thought.
I also learnt something new about Tatiana from Mendizabal. With Osipova I sensed revenge in the last act but Mendizabal seemed much more conflicted. It was if she still had feelings for Onegin despite the way he had humiliated her at her party and the quite unnecessary duel with Lemsky. She must have known that running away with him would have ruined her. She would have thought that if he was capable of dropping her once he could do it again. She had a good husband. All that anyone could want. And yet, She was tempted. Happily, she listened to her head rather than her heart and sent Onegin packing. Some ballets do have a happy ending.
Grace Hinkis was a great Olga and Donnelly a loyal but headstrong Lensky. Watching the run-up to the duel was like watching a video of a train crash in slow motion. A bit like the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Mercution picks a fight with Tybalt that possibly end well.
There are some steps for the corps that must require lots of rehearsing. For instance, the folk dance towards the end of Act I with the girls' jetés on the arms of their partners who march off stage but do not run.
Jurgen Rose's set designs, particularly of the outdoor scenes and especially the venue for the duel, impressed me as much as they did the first time I saw them. The first rays of dawn were a triumph of lighting design. The costumes were gorgeous. I am not a big fan of rearranging music that was never intended for dance I make an exception for Kurt-Heinz Stoltze's score.
I had expected the matinee to be eclipsed by English National Ballet's gala at the Coliseum which I saw a few hours later but, if anything, it was the other way round. Onegin is a great classical ballet created in our own time which is why so many leading companies around the world stage it.
Bolshoi Ballet Spartacus 10 Aug 2019 14:00 Royal Opera House
Ever since I saw a streaming of the ballet from Moscow nearly 6 years ago I have longed to see it on stage. I have had a long wait because few if any Western companies seem to perform the work and certainly no British ones. This year, however, the Bolshoi included Spartacus in its London season so I traipsed down to London yesterday to see it. The ticket in the centre of row G of the stalls wasn't cheap. Neither was the rail fare. The rail network was all over the place as a result of the high winds and the aftermath of Friday's power outage. Nevertheless, I can think of no better use of my time or a better way to spend my money. I have been going to the ballet for nearly 60 years and see about 50 shows a year. Rarely have I been more excited by a performance than I was yesterday by the Bolshoi's performance of Spartacus,
As I summarized the plot and discussed the background to the ballet in Spartacus - Streamed Direct to Wakefield21 Oct 2013, I need not repeat them here. There is, in any case, a full synopsis on the Bolshoi's website and even a video of a performance of the whole ballet adapted for the screen featuring the incoming director of Birmingham Royal Ballet on YouTube. The show that I saw yesterday featured Igor Tsvirko and Ruslan Skvortsov as Spartacus and Crassus and Margarita Shrayner and Ekaterina Krysanova as Phrygia and Aegina.
I had already seen Tsvirko on screen in the peasant pas de deux in Giselle (see The Bolshoi does the Business - Giselle streamed from Moscow12 Oct 2015), the jester in Swan Lake (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Bradford25 Jan 2015), Count Pepinelli in Marco Spada (seeMarco Spada Streamed from Moscow 31 March 2014) and the jester in A Legend of Love (see The Bolshoi's "A Legend of Love" streamed from Moscow27 Oct 2014). Magnificent though he was on screen he is so much more impressive in person. His strength and endurance are amazing, Spartacus is a long ballet and he is on stage for most of the show. There were frequent bursts of applause as he demonstrated that strength such as hoisting Shrayner into the air with one hand as though she were a feather.
The last time the Bolshoi came to London I saw Skvortsov dance Siegfried in Swan Lake (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden31 July 2016). Although I thought that the Bolshoi has better shows and other companies have better Swan Lakes I enjoyed Skvortsov's performance very much. I listed Skvortsov as one of the outstanding male dancers of 2016. I had also noticed him in the screenings of A Hero of Our Time, The Bright Streamand The Golden Age. Intensely good looking, his was the first face that appears on stage from the centre of a testudo stamping his feet and brandishing a fasces. Another dancer of prodigious strength and agility.
I cannot recall watching Shrayner dance before but she is beautiful. She has a face that communicates emotion like few others. One of my friends who knows Spartacus well described it as a man's ballet. That is true because both the gladiators and legionnaires as well as the leading artists perform spectacular feats of endurance attracting ripples of applause throughout the show. But it is also a ballet about two strong women and Phrygia's role is by far the more dignified and graceful, The one bit of the ballet that the British public knows well is the theme from the Onedin Line largely because the show was never off our TV screens when I was young. That is, of course, Phrygia's solo and pas de deux with Spartacus and I could not help rooting for a tissue as she danced that piece.
I was already a big fan of Krysanova before yesterday's matinee. I loved her performance as Kathrona in Jean-Christophe Maillot's The Taming of the Shrew which is now one of my all-time favourite ballets (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew4 Aug 2016). She was a great Kitri in Don Quixote which I saw on screen in April 2016. Katharina and Kitri are heroines but Aegina is very different. There is a telling scene immediately after the legions goosestep off to slay the slaves when Aegina appears goosestepping like the soldiers. She had just lifted the defeated Crassus out of his despair after losing his fight with Spartacus, given him back his sword and filled him with a desire for vengeance. I admire her all the more for that.
When you watch a show from the amphitheatre as I did when I was a Young Friend the auditorium seems cavernous. When you sit a few rows from the orchestra the House is intimate. You feel the audience around you. When an audience fires up as it did yesterday there can be no experience in the theatre more thrilling. Yesterday, the audience was boiling. That brought out the best in the artists - the musicians under Pavel Klinichev as well as the dancers. It was a performance that I think I shall remember for the rest of my life.
PS I said that I was no British company had ever performed Spartacus but Sarah Lambert has sent me this footage of a rehearsal by Jenna Roberts & Iain Mackay of Birmingham Royal Ballet which suggests that I may be wrong. At least bits of it appear to have been performed in Symphony Hall and Northampton.
Standard YouTube Licence The Royal Ballet The Nutcracker 1 Jan 2018 19:00 Royal Opera House
Even though it is a silly story not greatly enhanced by Sir Peter Wright's prologue and epilogue The Nutcracker never fails to draw the crowds. Particularly in the United Kingdom at Christmas where there are usually several competing productions to choose from. For many it is their introduction to ballet and the experience is magical. The score is enchanting, the sets are beguiling and the dancing is breathtaking. Particularly the final pas de deux by the sugar plum and her cavalier.
My lifetime love of ballet was kindled when I was taken as a child to Royal Festival Hall to see the London Festival Ballet's production. I hope to have sparked a similar love in my 7 year old grandson manqué by taking him to see the Royal Ballet's at Covent Garden on New Year's Day. I ignited a similar spark in his mother when I first took her to her to Covent Garden shortly after she had arrived in this country nearly 30 years ago. To make the evening particularly memorable, I entertained the child and his mother to dinner in the amphitheatre restaurant. The advantage of dining in the restaurant is the guaranteed table for the interval where one can reflect on the show in comfort.
The magic seemed to work for the boy was entranced. "How did they do that?" he whispered to me as Drosselmeyer's workshop morphed into the street where the Stahlbaums lived. "Clever lighting and set design" I explained during a break for applause. All the way from Bow Street to Lincoln's Inn Fields where I had parked my car, he skipped, jumped and rotated in imitation of the dancers he had seen on stage.
We saw an excellent cast. Clara was danced by Leticia Stock who charmed the audience in every scene of the show. She was partnered by Tristan Dyer as the Nutcracker. They were guided through the kingdom of the sweets by Thomas Whitehead as Drosselmeyer who comes from my part of the world. On the previous occasions that I had seen this ballet, Drosselmeyer had been danced by Gary Avis whom I admire greatly. Whitehead delighted me just as Avis would have done. The sugar plum was danced by Fumi Kaneko and William Bracewell was her prince. Bracewell had been one of my favourite dancers at the Birmingham Royal Ballet and it was good to welcome him to his new company. Both Kaneko and Stock received flowers at the curtain call, a gesture that was appreciated with thunderous applause.
I enjoyed all the divertissements though I was confused by some of the costumes. The headgear worn by the Russians seemed more Hungarian than Russian to me and save for the castanets in the music it was hard to spot anything specifically Spanish when the boy whispered "What sort of dance was that?" However, he now knows what a mirliton. He also spotted Drosselmeyer's trick of transforming a red rose into a white one just before the dance of the flowers. "Would it have been the other way round had Drosselmeyer been danced by a Lancastrian and not a Yorkshireman?" I mused.
Finally, I should say a word for the corps. They were magnificent whether as flowers, snowflakes, mice, toy soldiers or guests at Mr and Mrs Stahlbaum's Christmas party. I felt a surge of pride as the first snowflake ran on stage and presented just as I had done in the Nutcracker intensive in Manchester a few weeks earlier (see KNT Nutcracker Intensive 21 Dec 2017).
I have been coming to Covent Garden regularly for nearly 50 years. The Royal Ballet rarely disappoints me. Its performance of The Nutcracker was the best possible start to the New Year and a great way to end the holiday season.
Standard YouTube Licence The Mariinsky have been in London since the 24 July but this afternoon's matinee performance of La Bayadere will be the only time I shall get to see them on this visit. I usually get to the ballet at least once a week and sometimes much more often, but, unless you count Citrus Arts' Savage Hartand Northern Ballet's preview of The Little Mermaid, today's performance of La Bayadere will be the first show that I will have attended since the Dutch National Ballet's New Movesin Amsterdam at the end of June. I have gone to a few classes but that has been just about it.
The reason I have seen and done so little ballet for the last few weeks is that I have been invited to address the Cambridge IP Law Summer School on Thursday. I don't get a fee but I do get a chance to attend the week's conference which normally costs £3,498 to hear some of the leading practitioners in my field. The topic on which I have been asked to speak is a controversial one on a jurisdiction that allows companies and other private investors to claim compensation from foreign governments in certain circumstances. There have been two big arbitration decisions on claims brought under this jurisdiction, one of which was decided just a few months ago. As I want to do a good job I have focused all my time and energies on legal research over the last 6 weeks.
La Bayadere is not performed very often in this country. Most of the versions that we see trace their origins to the Mariinsky by one route or another. One big exception is Stanton Welch's for the Houston Ballet. There was an appeal last year for funds to bring that ballet to Birmingham (see A Birmingham Bayadere24 Nov 2016). Alas, that project was scuppered when the local authority's reduced its subvention to the company (see How Nikiya must have felt when she saw a snake21 Jan 2017). I have seen the trailer for Welch's ballet and several extracts but it is the following parody that really whets my appetite for his show:
Standard YouTube Licence And I used to think Americans lacked a sense of humour.
Jane Tucker will offer another intensive on Coppelia the week after next for which I have to get back into shape quickly. I am packing my ballet bag in the hope of finding some drop in adult ballet classes in or around Cambridge next week. Do any of my readers have any suggestions? I should like to take a class in the East of England but if there are none London is not too far away.
When the Bolshoi visited Covent Garden I was in the audience for the British premiere. It was an extraordinary night and the applause exploded. Especially when Jean-Christophe Maillot appeared to take his curtain call. In Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew4 Aug 2016 I wrote:
"The Bolshoi Ballet has always been respected in this country but until last night I don't think it has ever been loved. There are many reasons for that, not least the fact that the company was seen as an instrument of Soviet soft power during the cold war coming to London as it did in the year the tanks rolled into Budapest. That may have changed with the London premiere of Jean-Christophe Maillot's The Taming of the Shrew for the audience really warmed to the show. Standing ovations are quite rare in the Royal Opera House but when Maillot appeared to take a bow several members of the audience (including yours truly) felt compelled to rise."
Cranko remains my all time favourite choreographer and Shrew had my favourite of his works but, as I said in my review, there are features of Maillot's production that I think I prefer.Cranko's work and Maillot's are very different but each has its strengths.
There have been so many fine new ballets this year. The Tempest by David Bintley, David Dawson's Swan Lake, Ted Brandsen's Mata Hariand Cathy Marston's Jane Eyrenot to mention shorter works such as Chris Marney's To Begin, Begin, Wayne McGregor's Multiverse and Carbon Life. In any other year I would have chosen any of them as my ballet of the year. But Jean-Christophe Maillot's Taming of the Shrew made a special impression on me and it would have been unjust not to recognize it.
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.
The Royal Ballet, Rhapsody and The Two Pigeons, Royal Opera House, 16 Jan 2016
A trip to Covent Garden is always something of an occasion.
First, the tickets arrive in a smart folder sponsored by Rolex, the "Official Watch". They carry a hologram and are printed on expensive paper. They look more like the title to an investment rather than a voucher for a show.
The redevelopment of the Covent Garden piazza following the relocation of the fruit and veg market to Nine Elms has transformed the neighbourhood from a place of manual labour into a playground with expensive shops and restaurants where once there were lorries, warehouses and pubs with crazy opening hours. You have to resist the lures of luxury chocolates and cashmere cardigans to reach the revolving doors and pass an equally tempting shop of Royal Opera House merchandise to reach the box office.
That box office looks and feels like the counter of a private bank with its elegantly groomed and exquisitely mannered staff. The queue for the cloakroom is divided into aisles so you never have to wait more than a few minutes to deposit or retrieve your coat and hand luggage. Instead of formidable flights of stairs from Floral Street there are lifts and escalators to whisk you to whichever part of the auditorium you are seated.
The auditorium looks and feels as it has always done with its elegant curtains and royal monogram even though it will have been renovated and redecorated many times but the bars and restaurants along the way are opulent.
I miss the old House with its all pervading smell of over ripe fruit and vegetables and unofficial flower throws. At least the London ballet crowd remain. The twos and threes of office workers straight from work in their buns and twin sets with earnest stares who never seem to age.
Also the same rituals. The short clap when the maestro appears, the ripple when the ballerina and male principal first appear on stage and at revolution 27 of Legnani's 32 fouettés in Swan Lake and sustained applause with cheers at the very end. The bewigged flunkies in their red liveries have gone but the order of precedence in which flowers are presented seems to be very much as it has always been.
As my readers will have surmised from the lack of recent updates my day job has kept me very busy lately. I had spent more or less every spare moment since the Christmas holidays preparing for a hearing which left no time for watching ballet and hardly any for class. That hearing took place on Friday and lasted the whole day. To restore my spirits I checked the Royal Opera House's website for tickets and found there were still some left for the Rhapsody, Two Pigeons double bill. One was in the middle of the amphitheatre stalls that 50 years experience of theatre going has taught me to be one of the best parts in the House.
The two ballets are by Sir Frederick Ashton but from different stages of his career. He staged the Two Pigeonsin 1961 with the late Christopher Gable and Lynn Seymour in the title roles and created Rhapsodyin 1980 as a birthday gift for the Queen Mother. Somehow I had missed both of those works when they had previously been performed so this double bill was a double first for me.
The matinee started with Rhapsody to Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The lead dancers in the first performance were Mikhail Baryshnikow and Lesley Collier so you can imagine the weight of expectations on the shoulders of their young successors. James Hay and Francesca Hayward were brilliant in those roles as were the other twelve dancers who supported them including several soloists. Rhapsody was one of Ashton's last ballets but it reminded me of many of his early works with his spectacular turns and jumps for the males and the dainty pointe work and delicate arm and hand movements. for the women. The costumes designed by William Chappell for a set created by Ashton himself were gorgeous. The dancers, orchestra and pianist richly deserved their deafening and sustained applause.
The Two Pigeonsas re-staged by Ashton to Messager's music is quite charming. It was originally created by Louis Mérante for the ballet of the Paris Opera in 1886. Ashton changed the story and Lanchbery adapted and arranged the score. Two of my all time favourite dancers, Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, were in the original performance at Covent Garden on 14 Feb 1961 and it must have been wonderful. The leads on Saturday were Alexander Campbell and Yuhui Choe. I will tell you how they got on below
There is lots of humour such as the echoing of the pigeon steps by the young girl, the dance competitions and even some slapstick such as the sudden removal of the artist's chair. A particularly delightful touch are provided by the trained pigeons, Toad, Mole and Bianca who flew past on stage and sat on the artist's shoulder right on cue. Ironically, the last show that I had seen from Covent Garden was Carlos Acosta's Carmen (see Au Revoir but not Adieu18 Nov 2015). Comparisons are odious and there is no bigger fan of Acosta on this planet than me but if the Royal Ballet wants to dance gypsies Ashton shows the way to do it.
Shortly after the performance Campbell tweeted:
Worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon than performing Two Pigeons on the ROH stage! With thanks to @balletboy09 for getting me through 😊
Now I don't agree with Janet on everything. How can I? She's a Liverpudlian and I'm a Mancunian. She likes football and I cricket. She votes one way and I another. But in our appreciation of this performance we are as one.
It will be streamed to cinemas on the 26 Jan 2016. Now if you get a chance to see it you really must.
When I was an undergraduate I practically lived at Covent Garden during the Christmas, Easter and start of the Summer vacations. The Royal Opera House sent bundles of ticket vouchers to Young Friends which could be exchanged for tickets for the upper slips or two thirds of the cost of the rows H to Q in the amphitheatre and I saw all the great stars - Fonteyn, Nureyev, Sibley, Dowell, Symour and all the other great names of the time. Those ticket vouchers enabled me to see great visiting companies such as American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi and even Dance Theatre of Harlem.
I maintained my membership of the Young Friends even when I was a graduate student in California. "You have such neat mail" my fellow students would say when About the House would arrive. And it was true, I did. It was a little reminder of home like "Ye Mucky Duck" and the "Brigadoon" at Santa Monica. I maintained my membership even after I ceased to qualify as a Young Friend at the age of 26. I kept it going even after I had moved to Yorkshire and made the acquaintance of Northern Ballet.
I let my membership lapse only when my late spouse was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. Somehow ballet no longer seemed to matter. In fact very few things did. There is nothing more distressing than watching someone you love shut down limb by limb and organ by organ. Everything in my life went to seed.
But then a month after my spouse died I noticed a postcard on a notice board advertising "Ballercise" classes. I was told that a group of mums had asked the instructor who taught their little ones ballet to lay on a class for them. I was even more overweight than I am now and quite unfit but I joined the class and stuck with it. I struggled through pliés and tendus and goodness knows what. Eventually, my teacher invited me to a real ballet class in Huddersfield which led in turn to the over 55 class at Northern Ballet and ultimately Terpsichore.
Last Saturday I collected my tickets for the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company I impulsively asked whether I could rejoin the Friends. "Certainly" they replied and remarkably the House still retained my membership records. Today my membership pack arrived and what a delight. My red membership card with the royal coat of arms, welcome letters from Susan Fisher, the new season guide, an invitation to attend the opening night of Carlos Acosta's Carmen on 26 Oct 2015 (the cheapest tickets being £1,000 per head) and the January and April copies of the Friends' magazine which appears to have superseded About the House.
The January issue has a great picture of Ed Watson and Wendy Whelan on the cover as well as news of Wayne McGregor's Homage to Virginia Woolf and an essay on the genius of Jerome Robbins. The April issue has articles on Carlos Acosta, Cuba and transition and 50 years of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. When am I going to get round to reading all of that? But does it matter for I feel as though I have come home.
Although I have rejoined the Friends because I love the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet there are actually some tangible benefits of membership which are listed on the Friends page of the Royal Opera House website. This video explains what they are. I have derived so much pleasure from performances at the House over the years. I do hope this article encourages others to join the Friends too.
The performance itself must have been wonderful. I saw Golding and Osipova in Oneginlast month and was bowled over by them. Avis, another favourite, danced Rothbart magnificently. The sets and costumes were sumptuous. The music is majestic. Although I had to miss the last season in order to have the time and money to see Northern Ballet's Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights and the Sapphire gala, I am familiar with this production and enjoy it very much. It is in fact my favourite Swan Lake though I have yet to see more than extracts from van Dantzig's.
However, it was the recording that I want to commend today. I like to think that those responsible for the HDTV transmissions have been listening to moans from people like me or at least looked at the Bolshoi transmissions and learned from them. I thoroughly enjoyed the interviews with Anthony Dowell, Jonathan Cope and Cynthia Harvey. I now know why Swan Lake is set in 19th century Russia rather than medieval Germany despite the Teutonic names of the main characters. According to Dowell that was the suggestion of the designer, Yolanda Sonnabend, who was inspired by Fabergé. Dowell spoke warmly about his conversations with Sonnabend though he thought things might have been taken a little too far when an egg appeared in her studio one day.
In the past I have criticized Bussell as a presenter but her contribution yesterday was valuable. She spoke about her coaching by Fonteyn. Fonteyn had told her always to remember than she was a woman and not a swan. Bussell referred to Acts II and III as "white" and "black" Acts referring to the colours of the ballerina's tutu - terminology I had never heard before - and she said that she like other ballerinas had never been entirely satisfied with her performance as Odette and Odile in the same performance. One was always stronger than the other.
Something of the magic of last Tuesday's performance filtered through to the audience of the Huddersfield Odeon yesterday. Everyone laughed when Osipova picked up the toy swan during her curtain call. Finally, I felt a twinge of pride when the credits mentioned additional choreography by David Bintley for Bintley was a local man. I wonder how many members of the audience picked up on that.
In IP Yorkshire, one of my other blogs, I was bemoaning Yorkshire's indifferent performance in the number of patent and trade mark applications and almost bottom of the list in registered design applications (see Jane Lambert "Well at least a Yorkshireman invented Cats' Eyes" 20 July 2014 IP Yorks). We are doing rather better in cricket which is just as well for they say that when Yorkshire's cricket is strong England is strong. But it is in ballet where Yorkshire folk are really doing well.
One of our best is Xander Parish who is with the Maryinsky Ballet in St Petersburg. Here he is dancing in the second act of Giselle. His company is coming to London soon and I have booked to see him dance the title role in Romeo and Juliet on 29 July 2014. I last saw him and his sister Demelza Parish at the Grand Opera House in York on my silver wedding anniversary on 30 July 2007 which was one of the most memorable performances of my life (see "Review: A Summer Gala of Dance and Song, Grand Opera House, York" 31 July 2007 The Press). This is a particularly precious memory because it was just before my late spouse began to show signs of fatigue that were eventually diagnosed as motor neurone disease.
As if seeing Parish on the stage again was not treat enough we all have the opportunity of meeting him at the Civil Service Club on 13-15 Great Scotland Yard at 19:30 on Monday 4 Aug 2014 for he is to be the guest of London Ballet Circle. In a reminder sent to all London Ballet Circle members Audrey Allen wrote:
"A reminder, if one is needed, that we are greatly looking forward to welcoming Xander on 4 August. Many of our members remember him and his sister, Demelza, as young students taking part in the Yorkshire Ballet Seminars, now Summer Schools, and they were awarded a special bursary in 2005 at The Royal Ballet School’s Annual Prize-Giving ceremony to honour the memory of our former Patron and President, Dame Alicia Markova. Since the Mariinsky’s London season was announced Xander has received a great deal of media attention and there have been a number of very interesting articles on his career since joining the prestigious Russian company."
This event, like most London Ballet Circle events, is open to the public. Visitors pay £8 at the door. Members of the Circle are admitted for £5. As the annual sub is only £12 it is well worth joining even if you live nowhere near London. As Audrey Allen mentioned the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School I should add that it started yesterday at Askham Bryan College and continues until the 1 Aug 2014. As you can see from the Events page members of the Circle are allowed to attend part of the programme for a modest charge.
Another exceptionally promising young Yorkshire dancer with Russian connections is Tala Lee Turton of Barnsley. Ms Turton is at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow and she will be only the ninth Briton to train there. When I attended the Tenth Anniversary Gala at Northern Ballet last month I sat next to Laraine Penson for afternoon tea (see "Coming Down to Earth Gently" 30 June 2014). Over sandwiches and scones I told her about the compliment that Christopher Marney had paid to our dancers when he spoke to the London Ballet Circle. Ms Penson thought those talks were a great idea and offered to host something similar at Quarry Hill. On Friday I asked Ms Turton whether she would like to be guest of honour at one of those talks when she is next in Yorkshire and I am delighted to report that she would.
So while we may not be doing as well as we should in patents, trade marks and registered designs our county is doing very well at the two things for which I have a passion, namely ballet and cricket. And that's quite good enough for me.
"Well they are not all Dutch, of course, and only half of them are men but, as you can see from the clip above. they can all fly."
And fly they did from the high pitch whine of Daniel Montero's gyrations in Ballet 101 to the magnificent jumps of Sho Yamada and Michaela DePrince in the pas de deux from Diana et Acteon. Yesterday was the end of a 6 month tour of the towns and cities of the Netherlands plus Vitoria and Oviedo in Spain and the Linbury in Covent Garden that started at the Stadsshouwburg in Amsterdam on 24 Nov 2013. I saw them at the start of their tour and reviewed their performance in "The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013" on 25 Nov 2013. I was amazed then but the company was even better last night.
The show in the Linbury followed very much the format that I had seen in Amsterdam. There were eight short ballets introduced by a video clip. The only difference is that the speeches in Dutch were edited out, Having seen the show before and knowing the Linbury I selected my seats carefully. The middle of row G in the Arena so that my eyes were approximately the same height as the dancers'. I calculated that these would be just about the best sets in the house.
The reason I chose my seats with such care is that I brought my sister in law and the nearest I have to a daughter to the show. They are both Sierra Leonean and I wanted them to see DePrince, a Sierra Leonean born dancer whom I had previously described as "quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while." For many years Sierra Leone was in the news for all the wrong reasons and whenever there was a report of a coup or atrocity my late spouse who had known the country in better times was driven to tears. I watched the faces of my guests as DePrince as Diana entered from the right of the stage with her bow and their joy and their pride were palpable. As she executed one amazing feat after another their pride increased like the whine of Montero's engine. Seeing their happiness - indeed our happiness -was reason enough to make the 400 mile return journey to see that show.
But DePrince is just one of 12 prodigious talents. As George Williamson said in his video introduction to Dawn Dances the dancers of the Junior Company come from all over the world and they all have different qualities. Yesterday I concentrated on some of the dancers I had missed last time. Thomas van Damme, for instance, who opened the evening with Nancy Burer in Minuet. Van Damme also danced in Hans van Manen's Kwintet an exposition of almost architectural symetry created originally for Alexandra Radius. I have always admired van Manen's work but I saw new complexities which left me wanting more. Happily I don't have long to wait as Northern Ballet will be dancing Concertante in Leeds between the 18 and 21 June,
As in Amsterdam my favourite ballet of the evening was Ernst Meisner'sSaltarello. That is the ballet that shows the dancers to their best advantage. DePrince and Yamada were magnificent in that ballet but so were Montero and Sofia Rubio Robles. Fast and spectacular it must have been such a joy to dance. It was certainly a delight to watch. The yellows and reds of the costumes flickered like flames in a hearth.
The finale was Williamson's Dawn Dances which was performed for the first time in the United Kingdom on Thursday. As with Kwintet I noticed qualities in the work that I had missed before as well as Oliver Haller's designs and Judd Greenstein's score. It is an exuberant ballet well suited to young dancers. It is a work that I could see again and again.
The Linbury is a very different theatre from the Staddshouwburg. In is smaller and more confined. The crowd were appreciative clapping and cheering in the right places but somehow the atmosphere was different from that wonderful night in November. This seemed an even better performance than in November which was rewarded by the audience rising to its feet as one. If ever a troupe of performers deserved a standing ovation it was those 12 great kids last night. It should have been easy as those at the top and sides of the auditorium were already standing. I rose but nobody else in the Arena joined me and in the end I sat down so as not to spoil the view of those behind me. Ah well! London is London. Always a bit too snooty. Now if my friend Mel had been with me it would have been different.
Porter This song is set in Covent Garden a tomato's throw from 46 Floral Street.
Coster That's the Royal Ballet School, in'it? So.......
Porter The most famous ballet school in the country if not the world
Coster So ..............
Porter Where some of the finest dancers in the world have trained.
Coster So? 'Aven't got all day.
Porter And some of the world's best teachers teach.
Coster S'pose so.
Porter And now it's open to the public.
Coster Cor blimey! Stone the crows! You mean anyone can take a class there?
Porter That's what it says on the website. New Adult Open Ballet Class: "inspiring recreational classes with piano accompaniment aimed at people with some previous experience of ballet."
Coster Who's the geezer what's teaching this course?
Coster Didn't 'e use to dance with Northern Ballet Theatre? Down in M-a-a-a-a-n-chesta?
Porter Yeah 'cept it's in Leeds and calls itself Northern Ballet nowadays.
Coster Where's Leeds?
Porter Dunno. Somewhere near Bradford I've 'eard. Manchester way. North of Birmingham.
Coster When do these classes run?
Porter Wednesdays between 12 Feb and 2 April between 19:00 and 18:30.
Coster And 'ow much do they charge?
Porter £10 per class. Less than a round of drinks in the Nag's 'Ead. And you don't get cirrhosis of the liver. neither.
Coster Is that some kind of dance move? A bit like a tour en l'air on steroids.
Porter Err not exactly.
Coster Cor! Wouldn't it be great to do one of them classes. Always fancied lifting a ballerina. But I suppose you've got to be Carlos Acosta or Lauren Cuthbertson to get in there. They do say you need "previous experience" after all. What do you reckon that means?
Why do we still watch Giselle? Except for the occasional performance of La Sylphide and La Péri we don't see much of the romantic ballets of the 1830s and 1840s probably because we no longer believe in ghoulies, ghosties and lang-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. So why is it that Giselle with its wilis has remained so popular and is in the repertoire of just about every major ballet company in the world?
I think it is because the ballet still has a lot to to say to us not about wilis or prince charming in reverse but about human relationships, shock and the imaginings of a deluded mind. Arguably it has a feminist message though I doubt that was ever in the minds of Perrot, Grisi or the audiences around the world who have filled the theatres night after night ever since it was first performed. Modern theatre goers do know what it is like to build up one's hopes unreasonably, to see them dashed suddenly, to suffer public humiliation crushingly and in a few cases extreme cases illnesses that can lead to self harm,
Everything is hunky dory for Giselle. She's the prettiest girl in her village. She attracts the hunky new kid with style who is so much more fun than nerdy old Hilarion who is in with her mum for slipping her the occasional rabbit or partridge. There she is - queen of some kind of harvest pageant the envy of all her friends - and then Hilarion spoils it all by exposing Albrecht as a two timer. Suddenly from queen of the pageant she is a laughing stock. No wonder she goes out of her mind. And her mum yapping on about the spirits of girls who die before their wedding day can't have helped.
Giselle's mad scene is the key to the ballet which forms the link between the merry making and flirting of the first part of the first act and the world of the wilis of the second. It takes a ballerina with extraordinary dramatic powers as well as great virtuosity to do it well. And she needs a credible partner with similar powers to accompany her. I have seen many versions of Giselle by many companies but I can only recall a couple of performances when I have been entirely satisfied. One of those performances was by Fonteyn with Nureyev and another by Sibley with Dowell. A third was last last Saturday night. Natalia Osipova who danced Giselle in the evening performance at the Royal Opera House on 18 Jan 2013 with Carlos Acosta has those powers. As for her partner, I would go so far as to say that Acosta, who dominates a stage like no other dancer, was the best Albrecht that I have ever seen, and that includes Nureyev.
Also impressive were Thomas Whitehead who danced Hilarion, Deidre Chapman Giselle's mum, Christina Arestis Albrecht's girlfriend, Hikaru Kobayashi queen of the wilis and Elizabeth Harrod one of her attendants. I have been following Harrod ever since I first saw her at a Yorkshire Ballet Summer School Gala and it is great to see how well she is coming on. I loved everything about Peter Wright's production and also John Macfarlane's designs.
I used to go to the Royal Opera House frequently until it was refurbished. I got out of the habit when it was closed for those works and I have only been back since though I kept up my membership of the Friends of Covent Garden for most of that time. It must be over 30 years since I was last in the amphitheatre and how that has changed with its swanky bars and restaurants. On the whole I welcome those changes but I do miss the old House with its stench of veg, the cut flowers tossed by the audience from the boxes, the liveried footmen and the ritual of the ballerina choosing her choicest bloom for her partner.
