The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker - The Best Possible Start to 2018

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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.

The Royal Ballet's Quadruple Bill - well balanced in Content, Style and Mood

Natalia Osipova in Strapless

Photo Bill Cooper
© 2017 The Royal Ballet: all rights reserved
Reproduced with kind permission of the company 

The Royal Ballet The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Tarantella, Strapless, Royal Opera House, 27 May 12:30 

Because of the terrible events of last Monday ballet did not seem all that important to me last week. I missed the launch in Doncaster of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by Daniel de Andrade for Northern Ballet altogether. It appears to have been well received so I will try to catch it at some other venue - probably Leeds between the 5 and 9 Sept. I attended class on Thursday but found it hard to put my heart into it. I very nearly let the Royal Ballet’s mixed programme go too until I realized that that was exactly the sort of despondency that terrorists try to induce. We owe it to their victims, if not ourselves, not to let them win by cowing or depressing us.

Thus I woke up early yesterday to catch the 07:51 train from Wakefield to London. That was the last train that would get me there an hour before the curtain was due to rise. The programme consisted of works by William Forsythe, George Balanchine, Christopher Wheeldon and Liam Scarlett. Scarlett’s Symphonic Dances was a new commission. I had seen Balanchine’s Tarantella before but Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and Wheeldon’s Strapless were also new to me. I am very glad that I made that trip because I saw the Royal Ballet at its best. I get the impression that dancers like mixed programmes because of their variety and also because there offer lots of opportunities for them to shine.

The afternoon began with The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. A strange name I thought. I am not sure where the vertigo came in but it was certainly thrilling not to say also exuberant and joyful. It must have been very hard work for the dancers, particularly the women as this YouTube video of the San Francisco Ballet’s performance of that work shows. The work begins with two men in mauve costumes standing in 5th. Yesterday they were Trystan Dyer and Valentino Zuchetti. They introduce themselves with slightly different solos. They are joined by three women in lime green tutus. Each of their roles is exacting as this video by Dorothée Gilbert demonstrates. Forsythe set his ballet to the final movement of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, as stirring a work as have ever heard. Mauve and green may not be an obvious colour match but it worked for this piece.

The momentum was maintained a few minutes later by the Tarantella Last year I saw Michaela DePrince and Remi Wortmeyer dance it at the Dutch National Ballet’s opening night gala in Amsterdam (see "Quite simply the most exciting dancer I have seen for quite a while" 29 Oct 2017 and the YouTube video of Wortmeyer with Maia Mahateli). The Dutch National Ballet’s performance had thrilled me then and yesterday’s performance by Alexander Campbell and Meaghen Grace Hinkis thrilled me again. The crowd loved the show too and Hinkis was presented at the curtain call with the biggest bouquet of the afternoon.

The work that I had come to see was Christopher Wheeldon’s Strapless because I had missed it first time round. It is a narrative ballet based on Deborah Davis’s John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X (see The real Madame X: the true story that inspired Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet Strapless 18 May 2017). The ballet is about the ostracism of the Parisian socialite, Amelia Gautreau, after a painting of her by John Singer Sargent showing a strap of her dress dislodged from her shoulder was exhibited at an important art show. Not a single portion of her body had been exposed but those who went to art galleries in Paris at that time knew that Madame Gautreau was conducting an illicit affair with a fashionable gynaecologist called Pozzi. They gossipped mercilessly as to how and why that strap had been dislodged.

It is not easy to base a ballet on an episode in history but Wheeldon carried it off well. A sex scene between Pozzi (Federico Bonelli) and Madame Gautreau (Natalia Osipova) was represented by a pas de deux in which the dancers removed their outer garments. It was not in the least bit smutty as the dancers remained well covered but it was still very sexy. The man who destroyed Madame Gautreau’s reputation was, of course, Sargent danced by Edward Watson. From one brief conversation with him, I formed the view that Watson was a really good bloke (see Ed Watson: more than just an outstanding dancer - a really good bloke 13 Feb 2015) but in Strapless as in A Winter’s Tale, he dances a really beastly character. Madame Gautreau implores him to withdraw the painting from the show but he ignores in the quest to advance his career. Watson portrayed Sargent’s arrogance and stubbornness superbly. This ballet has introduced me to the music of Mark-Anthony Turnage of which I shall try to hear more. I also admired Bob Crowley’s sets and costumes.

Most of the Royal Ballet’s regulars will have seen Strapless before. For them, Symphonic Dances would have been the main draw. Based on three movements of Rachmaninoff’s music the ballet is built around the leading lady who was Laura Morera yesterday. Morera, who danced the leads in Viscera and Frankenstein, is another of my very favourite dancers (see Laura Morera 25 Aug 2015). In the programme notes, there is an interview with Scarlett in which he says:

“I’ve worked consistently with Laura over the years and created so much work on her that I wouldn’t be choreographing without her.”

The ballet began with the Non Allegro. Morera appeared in a swirl of red material. She was joined by Giacomo Rovero and the ensemble. Morera was in each of the subsequent movements - alone with the ensemble in the second movement and with Matthew Ball in the third. Towards the middle of the second movement, the back of the stage began to glow red. It became a screen which for a time projected images of the dancers much in the way Darshan Singh Bhuller does in Mapping (see Rehearsals: Revealed - Darshan Singh Bhuller Mapping). Different images appear on the screen which seems to become an electrode. The ballet ends with Morera alone on stage with the descending device hovering above her and seemingly zapping her. Two colours predominated in the ballet - black and red - which, as Christopher Bruce showed in Rooster, can be a striking combination.

The quadruple bill was balanced well in mood, style and content. Judging by the snatches of conversation that I caught as I descended the stairs and the messages that have appeared on social media, the audience that spilt onto Bow Street were more than satisfied.

Jewels - The Royal Ballet at its best

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The Royal Ballet, Jewels, transmitted live to cinemas, 11 April 2017, 19:39


I once asked a distinguished panel of dance critics, dancers and the artistic director of Scottish Ballet whether a narrative ballet needed a plot (see My Thoughts on Saturday Afternoon's Panel Discussion at Northern Ballet 21 June 2015). All said no except Tobias Batley who was then a premier dancer at Northern Batley and seemed to have an interesting point to make but did not get the chance to develop it. When I asked that question I had Balanchine's Jewels in mind which actually tells a lot of stories from the history of ballet to the choreographer's life history without actually having a libretto.

Jewels is like a denial of service attack on the senses. Each of the three ballets is a feast in itself. You feel you can only take so much colour, and movement, and music in one evening - but after each act, there is more.  The only experience with which I can compare this ballet is, in fact, my first sight of real jewels. The Crown Jewels on my first trip to London. The impression that the dazzling display of light and colour made on a little five-year-old from the North in post-war Britain was very much the same as the concatenation of dancers in green, red and white create whenever I see Balanchine's masterpiece.

On Sunday I remarked that I had seen the Bolshoi at its best (see A Hero of our Time 10 April 2017). Yesterday, audiences around the world saw the Royal Ballet at its best. The company fielded Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Valeri Hristov, Laura Morera, Ryoichi Hirano, Emma Maguire, Helen Crawford and James Hay in Emeralds.  As readers know, I am one humongous fan of Morera whose hand I once had the good fortune to shake (see Laura Morera  25 Aug 2015). She always delights me but yesterday she raised my admiration to a new level.

More favourites in Rubies - Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae and Melissa Hamilton. If Emeralds was lyrical, Rubies was spectacular. One gorgeous explosion of movement after another culminating in McRae's exit in chaînés. A dynamo harnessed to McRae at that moment could have powered a fair size town. Rubies is the shortest work in the three ballets but it is the one I like best, possibly because of Stravinsky's Capriccio possibly just the New World razmataz. The energy. The fun.

Diamonds, the white act, is sublime. An homage to Petipa. Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares were majestic. Stix-Brunnell and Hay returned to join them together with Claire Calvert, Tierney Heap, Yasmine Naghdi, Nicol Edmonds, Fernando Montaño and Valentino Zucchetti. Not all Petipa's ballets end well but some of them do. Think of The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and all your other favourites rolled into one and combine it with Tchaikowsky's Polish symphony and you understand why I compared the overpowering of the senses to the overwhelming of a website by millions of messages.

I should also say something about the presentation. I was very impressed with Kristen McNally. I warmed to her the moment she opened her mouth. Proud, elegant, knowledgeable, amusing and above all, Northern. I do hope the Royal Opera House enlists her services again. It was also good to see Darcey Bussell as it always is but this time she was there in her capacity as a great ballerina escorting a member of the original cast to the jeweller's shop that inspired Balanchine. A beautiful dancer surrounded by beautiful things. That is how I like to think of her. It would be good to see more of her in scenes like that.

The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker in the Merrie City

Wakefield from Sandal Castle

Author Tim Green
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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.

Rarely have I been so impressed by a new ballet

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Screening of the Royal Ballet's Frankenstein, 18 May 2016

I always look forward to my Wednesday evening ballet class at Northern Ballet or the University of Huddersfield and I have turned down invitations to posh receptions in order to attend one or other of those classes before now. Tonight, however, I skipped class to attend the screening of Liam Scarlett's Frankenstein.   I am very glad I did for rarely have I been more excited by a new ballet. I am metaphorically kicking myself for not getting a reasonably priced ticket in the amphitheatre stalls during the Friends' booking window when I had the chance. However, I did the next best thing by watching the HDTV transmission from Covent Garden in the National Media Museum in Bradford, which happens to be the home town of Thomas Whitehead who played a key role in last night's ballet.

As Darcey Bussell noted before the screening most of us know Frankenstein from Hollywood rather than Mary Shelley's novel and fail to appreciate its themes and subtleties. Scarlett has returned to the original in creating his ballet. Very briefly, a young medical student called Victor Frankenstein, grief stricken by the death of his mother in childbirth, becomes obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. In a neurology class in the anatomy theatre a lecturer applies Galvani's experiments with frog legs to human body parts and gets a limb to twitch after a  current is applied to the nerve ends.  That was possible with frogs but not with more advanced creatures at that time but never mind. That experiment gives Victor the idea that electricity is the life force. Instead of enjoying himself womanizing in the pub like all the other medical students he experiments with stitching together body parts and charging them with electricity. Eventually he succeeds in making a functioning composite cadaver which breaks out of the laboratory and terrorizes the public.

One of its victims is Victor's little brother who is left alone blindfolded for a few minutes by his family. The monster plays with him gently at first but the boy dies of shock on seeing the monster's gruesome form. The boy's body is found by his nurse, Justine, who is accused of murdering him. The second act ends with the poor woman dangling from the gallows which to my mind is the most disturbing scene of the show. In the last act Victor marries his sweetheart, Elizabeth, but the monster shows up at their wedding knocking off first Victor's father, then his best mate Henry and finally Elizabeth. Desperate at the loss of everyone he has ever loved in his life Victor shoots himself. The last scene shows the monster cradling its creator.

This is a tremendous work making enormous demands of every single role player in the story. I suppose the greatest demands are made of the monster danced last night by Steven McRae. "McRae as a monster", I hear you cry. "He's the last dancer I would cast in that role. Ed Watson perhaps or maybe Muntagirov, but McRae is such a sweet, sensitive young man." Well let me tell you, McRae does monsters and how. The make-up and wardrobe department performed a minor miracle in dressing him with horrid gory stitch marks across his face and body. He was as horrible as anything out of Hammer Films. But this was a sensitive monster who was looking for love first from the little boy, then Elizabeth and finally his creator. Not so very far off McRae's other roles I think you will agree.

Federico Bonelli danced Victor Frankenstein. I have long been a fan of this dancer but he rose even higher in my esteem as he developed his character on stage from lost little boy, to swotty undergraduate, obsessed researcher, young master, gentle suitor and in all stages of the ballet tortured soul. The other big male role was Henry who played all round good egg from the moment he befriended Victor in medical school. Like Victor he had no time for drinking, carousing and having a nice time like all other sensibly adjusted students. He was danced last night by Alexander Campbell, and a very good job he did too.

The main female role was Elizabeth danced last night by Laura Morera who was Scarlett's muse in Viscera (see Au Revoir but not Adieu 19 Nov 2015. I am a great fan of Morera and once had the pleasure of meeting her and telling her how much I admire her work (see Laura Morera 25 Aug 2015). She is a fine actor well as a great dancer. She is a master of detail - remember her little mannerisms as she writes in Victor's commonplace book as he is about to set off for medical school - but also her mid-air rotations as Victor tosses her into the air without really looking at her. It must have been so scary for her to do those turns.

"And Thomas Woodhead? You say he danced a key role." Why yes, indeed, for he was the lecturer who demonstrated the life giving force of electricity to the students and gave Victor the idea for his research. We have all taken classes from lecturers like him. Brilliant. Sarcastic. Frightening for the callow undergraduate. I was reminded of my economic history classes at St Andrews. "Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died - not a day before time - in 1883" delivered in the cultured tones of Morningside "where sex is what the coal comes in."

A ballet like this requires a remarkable score and it was provided by Lowell Liebermann. It was a work of our times - not a pastiche - but it caught the flavour of the period where that was needed. It was one of the most beautiful new works I have ever heard and I long to listen to it again perhaps next time in the concert hall. If anyone wants to get me a present for Christmas I'll have a recording of the score as soon as soon as it comes out on DVD.

Equally impressive were John MacFarlane's designs, particularly his apparatus for generating static electricity and the electrodes for applying it to humans. This was one of the most realistic props I have ever seen on stage in any kind of show.  And the gallows scene too which would have made me throw up had I visited the Kash before the show rather than after.

There is so much to write about this production but I have a living to earn and nobody pays me to write ballet reviews.  There are still some seats available for the last three performances in London. If you can make the show then go. It will soon be staged in San Francisco.  I'd say its worth the 9 hour flight if you miss it here and I am seriously contemplating a trip there.

Liam Scarlett is a remarkable talent. First, Vicera. then No Man's Land  and now this. He is still a very young man.  Imagine what he will be doing in 20 or 30 years time.

The Winter's Tale Revisited - Some Ballets are better Second Time Round

Antigonus and the Bear from The Winter's Tale 

Author: Thomas Bragg (printmaker)
Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection

Source Wikipedia

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The Royal Ballet, The Winter's Tale, Royal Opera House, 16 April 2016

Sometimes a dish tastes better second time round. That may be because the meat has a chance to marinate. Or it may be because of a mood change. If you've set your heart on fish and chips and that's no longer on the menu nothing on earth is going to make you enjoy Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy in the same way however tasty that may be.

Theatre can be a bit like that. You see a performance one day and it washes over you. You  see the same show again some time later perhaps with a different cast and it really speaks to you. That has happened to me with Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation of The Winter's Tale.  When I saw it for the first time just over two years ago I thought it was sort of OK but nowt to write home about as we say in Yorkshire and I regret that I damned it with faint praise (see Royal Ballet "The Winter's Tale" 14 April 2014). I wrote:

"I expected so much of The Winter's Tale. I had been looking forward to it for months. A new work by Christopher Wheeldon based on Shakespeare by a fine choreographer for our national company with a stellar cast. It should have blown me off my feet. Well I quite liked the show but blown off my feet? I wasn't."

I saw it again on Monday and loved it unreservedly.

Why the change? I think the reason I didn't get The Winter's Tale the first time round was that I had just not been in the mood for it.  As I wrote at the time:

"Now I have to say that I was not in the most receptive frame of mind when I entered the Royal Opera House. I had a horrible journey down to London and I had been working late throughout the previous night. I had skipped breakfast and had only a light lunch. Consequently I was tired and hungry. Had I not paid a lot of money for my ticket I would have gone straight to bed. Moreover, the reason that I had to work through the night was that I had spent a couple of hours in Huddersfield town hall listening to the Choral's performing one of the most memorable concerts I have ever attended or am ever likely to attend. It may be that anything after that concert was going to be an anticlimax."

In fact, I began to appreciate the ballet when I saw it on screen a few days later (see The Winter's Tale - Time to eat my Hat 29 April 2014).  I enjoyed it all the more when I saw it again on on telly on Christmas day.

On Monday I was in the mood for Wheeldon's ballet even though I had been up since 04:00 our time in order to catch my flight home from Budapest after a memorable experience the night before and a hard day's work in London. It is a very satisfying work, architectural in its symmetry with recurring features such as the colour coding of the courts of Bohemia and Sicilia, the bands on stage in all three acts, the moving statues, the trees and galleons .... I could go on. There is much drama in his choreography such as Leontes's contortions to denote his jealousy in act 1 and the symbolic reconciliation of the laying on of hands in act III first by Perdita and Florizel and later by her father. That moment and also the reunion of Perdita with her parents a few moments later had me close to tears. There are moments of great joy such as the folk dancing in act II that I have always liked:

"Act II is very different. Set around a gnarled moss covered tree there is a festival with exuberant dancing accompanied by the most infectiously vibrant music. Perdita danced by Sarah Lamb and Florizel by Stephen McRae fall in love. They are spied on and discovered by Polixenes, king of Bohemia, who threatens to kill them but they set sail to Sicily with the king of Bohemia in hot pursuit. Little details like the fact that Bohenia is landlocked don't seem to have bothered Shakespeare or even Wheeldon. However there is such a thing as poetic licence and this is a case where it applies. Nevertheless, this is is the best bit of the ballet and that is possibly because it is the part that owes least to Shakespeare."

This time I loved it. Similarly, I have always  enjoyed Joby Talbot's score: "Valiant Talbot" as he is described by Nigel Bates in the programme notes. And the special effects - especially the ships and even the bear with its ghostly muzzle - were outstanding.

Did I like this cast more than the last one?  I don't think that could have been possible as I admire Cuthbertson, Lamb, McRae and Watson enormously. But Marianela Nuñez was a magnificent Hermione, Beatriz Stix-Brunell a delightful Perdita, Vadim Muntagirov a charming Florizel and Bennet Gartside reflected the torrent of emotions in Leontes's head brilliantly. Monday was the first time I had noticed Itziar Mendizabal. She danced Paulina, loyal to Hermione and Leontes, and the agent of their reunion and reconciliation which is one of the most moving scenes in any ballet. As he comes from Bradford it is always a pleasure to see Thomas Whitehead. He danced the old shepherd on Monday.

I would love to see this ballet again and I think I owe it to the dancers to see the same cast as I saw in 2014. There will be performances of the work between now and the 10 June.

The Factory begins to take shape

Manchester  Graffiti

Photo Mike Colvin

Source Wikipeda

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In his Autumn statement last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer promised a £78 million investment in a new arts centre in Manchester to be called "The Factory". I picked it up in my article  Let's bring the Royal Ballet to The Factory Manchester 11 Dec 2015. The Chancellor, whose constituency is in the Manchester city region, repeated his promise yesterday (see George Osborne’s Autumn Statement speech in full 25 Nov 2015 Financial Times).

The Autumn statement coincided with press reports of the appointment of the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design the Factory (see Rem Koolhaas wins Factory design project as Manchester goes Dutch 25 Nov 2015 The Guardian, The Factory: CGIs of Manchester's multi-million pound culture hub  released 25 Nov 2015 Manchester Evening News and OMA wins competition to design huge Manchester arts venue The Factory 25 Nov 2014 De Zeen). Work is to start on the site next year and the building should be finished by 2019.

When completed the Factory will host the Manchester International Festival which featured artists from the Paris Opera Ballet in Wayne McGregor's Tree of Codes this year. Next year it will première Akram Khan's Giselle for English National Ballet. Manchester which is visited regularly by the Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and Northern Ballet as well as smaller companies is probably the biggest audience for dance outside London.

So we now have an audience for dance and we will soon have a major venue for the performing arts in the city. All we need now is a major resident company. As I hinted last year we would welcome the Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet with open arms if it wanted to resume the negotiations for a Northern home which were terminated by the change of government last year.

Or we could build out own. Some of the building blocks are here. We have the Northern Ballet School in Oxford Road which already has its own performing company known as Manchester City Ballet. It will perform Giselle at The Dancehouse between 10 and 12 Dec 2015.  There is also the Centre for Advanced Training in Dance at The Lowry. All we need is to commitment and money.