Yaffa

Have there been cases of girls being accepted to the major vocational ballet schools with a second toe which is slightly longer than their big toe? This for a 10 year old girl overseas, currently without a ballet teacher, whose family may be relocating to the UK.

To do something for the first time. Nice explanation at: http://www.bloomsbury-international.com/en/student-ezone/idiom-of-the-week/list-of-itioms/111-break-your-duck.html

I believe this is what happens in Russia, where Mariinsky's (Vainonen) Nutracker still has a first/second year Vaganova student as the younger Masha (Clara), and a senior girl playing the older Masha - You can see lots of rehearsals and actual performances on Youtube eg. a nice feature (though I don't understand a word) about the preparations of Polina Kongray - then a 2nd year student. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcmogfyQZgM ). They also use young children in the quite demanding Mirlitons pas de trois, which the school has often performed in other settings.

Melissa Hamilton...

Just saw on the new Paris Opera site: https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/message-to-spectators-2 Security measures have been reinforced. Screening (checking of tickets and contents of bags) will be carried out before entering our theatres and officers equipped with magnetometers will be present at each access point. We request you to arrive 30 minutes before the beginning of the performance and to present your ticket(s) or exchange voucher at the security check. Luggage and travel bags are no longer accepted at the auditorium and the cloakrooms. The theatre doors will be closed 15 minutes after the start of the performance

It can also be quite unpleasant when you move from a standing to a seated place, only to find that your standing place was actually much better. Then do you sit it out or ask everyone on the row to stand up so you can go back to where you were before? Sometimes the problem is a tall person sitting in front - but for me the worst is finding that the person in an adjacent seat has a streaming cold...

Well. this can be tricky. I've sometimes moved from a standing to a seated place, usually at the prompting of an audience member who asks why on earth I'm standing when there are seats available. But I still feel a bit uncomfortable. Once, the person sitting next to me asked if I usually take things that I haven't paid for, and launched into a lecture on how she and the other people on that row had paid good money to be sitting in an exclusive area. She turned to the man sitting next to her to back her up and he mumbled something.... I then recalled that some minutes earlier, he had been standing next to me...

Yes, I asked that on the ROH page and the reply was: Yes, the Insight event will be available on demand afterwards (although you'll miss the opportunity to discuss the rehearsal via social media with everyone else who's watching live!)

Most London transport is free (well, refundable within a month) on Mondays until 14th December - but only if you pay by Apple Pay linked to a contactless MasterCard, which means you need an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus or an Apple Watch. http://www.mastercard.co.uk/applepay-fare-free-monday.html I don't think the deal (which started last Monday) works with Ipads that support Apple Pay.

Sorry for the typo in my original post. There'll be live-streaming (not screening) of the Nutcracker rehearsal on the 25th November at 7:15 p.m. The live screening of Nutcracker itself is on 16th December. ROH has also just issued a list of cast changes and confirmations for Nutcracker. See: http://www.roh.org.uk/news/cast-changes-and-confirmations-the-nutcracker-2015

See: http://www.roh.org.uk/news/nutcracker-rehearsal-to-be-live-streamed-on-25-november-2015 Nutcracker rehearsal to be live-streamed on 25 November 2015 Watch Lauren Cuthbertson and Matthew Golding rehearsing the Christmas favourite via the Royal Opera House YouTube channel

But hopefully it will also give a boost to the services which take post-customs luggage and deliver it to a hotel or other place in a specified time window - which really makes more sense than having individual exhausted travellers drag suitcases to the theatre and then on to the hotel.

Sometimes this works well, but as someone who often arrives in London with a suitcase and on a tight budget. it can be very difficult to juggle left luggage opening hours (most at stations are not open 24 hours), tube stations without lifts/escalators, packed London buses, places that don't let you open your suitcase to retrieve/leave something and so on. I've used a wide variety of luggage storage and transport options - Probably the free/cheaper ones I prefer will now revise their practices...

Yup, Black Friday is 27th November and Cyber Monday is 30th November... moneysavingexpert.com has an interesting predictor of what deals will happen when in the UK :http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/christmas-deals-predictor/ and quite a lot of sensible advice on how to avoid purchases that you don't really need....

Oops sorry, I posted my last message in reply to an old thread with a subject line of 'intercity' journeys. Actually this deal is also valid on European routes. You can also use Tesco clubcards to pay for Megabus travel (£5 vouchers gets you 4X £2.50 codes, i.e. £10 of Megabus travel). Yaffa (with no connection to Megabus apart from being a very satisfied customer) [edited for clarity]

Megabus (discounted coach and bus travel site, now covering travel to and within several European countries) now has another free bus ticket deal on for 12th Jan to 12th Feb. Again there's just a 50p. booking fee per order (not per ticket). Even when the thought of a five hour bus ride doesn't sound ideal, Megabus can be a useful backup arrangement until something better comes along, and it lets you can change the tickets for just £1 per order (not per ticket) plus any difference in price, up to 24 hours before a journey - which can be useful for all the uncertainties in the ballet world (injuries, uncertain audition outcomes etc.) The current deal is only on their bus fares but they also have great deals on train fares (but on a very small selection of dates and routes and generally bookable only 60 days in advance). These are regular, heavily discounted tickets of Virgin and other providers. They will apparently be adding the free tickets in batches in the coming days, so it might be worth trying again if you don't find what you need. And of course check out alternative travel deals. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/cheap-coach-train-ticket-deals can be a good place to start though not everything is covered there.

Yes, and obviously it's important to be cautious and take precautions. But please also spare for a thought for the non-touts. Last year, I was trying to sell a ticket to the Ballet School Demonstrations (at face value, of course) for someone who could not make it at the last minute, and a man came up to me and launched into a tirade about how evil I was, ripping people off, I should be ashamed of myself, blah, blah, blah. He said I should be grateful that he was willing to give me half of what I was 'demanding.' And then someone else came up to me and said almost the same....

I was asked just why ballet classes typically use only a piano for accompaniment, and why recorded music is always used when there is no piano/pianist available. I recall on a Legat School summer course, Mme. Bartell would use castanets (with and without piano), and at the Paris Opera Ballet School, a folk dancing teacher uses an accordion to accompany the lower grades. But are there any classical classes accompanied by violin, flute, guitar? [edited for clarity]

I recall searching for the movie 'Etoiles' (about the Paris Opera Ballet) and being asked if I really wanted a movie about 'toilets.'

I've tried many products with different slants - from software that just checks links to full-blown link managers which also let you tag your bookmarks and then search easily within your bookmarks. For years I used Powermarks for this but it was sadly discontinued. Many Powermarks users migrated to Linkman, which also has support for Firefox. There's a free and a pro version: http://www.outertech.com/en/bookmarks-favorites.

My own searches for Vaganova (particularly if there's a typo) often give a message asking if I meant to search for a certain part of a woman's anatomy. Sometimes the search engine doesn't just ask, it assumes, and takes me to stuff I definitely did NOT want to see. This once happened in a public library along with a flashing screen warning that the library computers are for serious work, not for X-rated material...

From Xander Parish's interesting article about his day in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/dance-blog/2015/nov/03/xander-parish-mariinsky-ballet-diet-and-training-for-dancers There’s no physiotherapy department at the Mariinsky: your health is your own responsibility. I'm curious to know how this is handled in other companies and its impact on the dancers.

Sent you a PM - Yaffa

Yes I've often encountered that problem with barcodes including those on the yellow reduced stickers. Oh, and if the sticker has fallen off, then (even with a bag of potatoes) the veggies can only go to animals...

On the 8th Jan, there's also a pre-performance talk at 6:30 pm. Tickets are just £5: https://www.roh.org.uk/events/29888/tickets