Royal Ballet Ashton mixed bills, June 2024

[Jan McNulty]

11 hours ago, Shade said:

I think the Dream should have been the final production of the triple bill. My husband felt the short pieces should have been the first but I suspect that may have resulted in audience members skipping it.

 

For a variety of reasons I ended up not going to see the Ashton programmes but reading the reports I was so surprised The Dream was not the final piece of the evening, which seems the obvious place for me.  One could then go out on a real high.

[zxDaveM]

45 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

For a variety of reasons I ended up not going to see the Ashton programmes but reading the reports I was so surprised The Dream was not the final piece of the evening, which seems the obvious place for me.  One could then go out on a real high.

 

perhaps they didn't want to tempt fate, as Rhapsody has a stage riser thing at the back as we see it (to form steps) which are also used in the short works. If it got stuck, they would be unable to get the Dream set on. Just a thought!

[Rina]

Looking back at old programmes, the RB did begin a triple bill with "short works" 30 years ago. It was 11 November 1994: La Valse, Birthday Offering pdd, Sylvia pdd followed by Symphonic Variations and Daphnis and Chloe - a rather fabulous programme!. For the Ashton 100 celebrations they placed Divertissements between Scenes de ballet and Daphnis. The short works were; Sleeping Beauty pdd, Thais, Devil's Holiday variation and pdd, Five Brahms Waltzes and Voices of Spring. If they replaced Rhapsody with a shorter work - Sinfonietta for example - perhaps they could have added another short work after Hamlet to lighten the mood. There are plenty of options!

[MAB]

Surely Rhapsody is musically the obvious choice for a programme closer, unless it's paired with Firebird or Rite.

[Dawnstar]

I was happy with The Dream being the middle piece for the Les Rendezvous programme, as I thought it balanced quite well having the longerst piece in the middle with shorter works either side. I was less keen on the order of the Short Works programme, as with The Dream first it did feel as though the programme peaked too soon. I would have preferred to have The Dream in the middle again (or, as I mentioned upthread, have 2 back to back performances of The Dream with different casts & skip the Short Works altogether!).

[Fonty]

2 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

I was happy with The Dream being the middle piece for the Les Rendezvous programme, as I thought it balanced quite well having the longerst piece in the middle with shorter works either side. I was less keen on the order of the Short Works programme, as with The Dream first it did feel as though the programme peaked too soon. I would have preferred to have The Dream in the middle again (or, as I mentioned upthread, have 2 back to back performances of The Dream with different casts & skip the Short Works altogether!).

 

I agree, I did feel as though the show had peaked too soon.  However, I can fully understand the issue with the scenery too, so just feel so lucky I saw a magnificent performance of the The Dream.

[Don Q Fan]

I enjoyed the final show in the Ashton run and especially the opportunity to see some (3) dancers from Sarasota Ballet.  It was very nice that KO'H came out before the start to acknowledge Barry Wordsworth's 50th anniversary conducting.  I enjoyed everything I saw - The Dream was lovely - with Yasmine Naghdi and Calvin Richardson but Valentino Zuchetti excelled as the hapless Bottom. I was especially thrilled to see Joonhyuk Jun in Rhapsody.  I am so pleased he was given the opportunity to dance that leading role.  Hopefully we will see more of him in future as he certainly seemed to hold his own and partner Francesca Hayward well too.  Natalia Osipova danced Isadora barefoot, as normal, but this allowed me to see just how her feet have suffered for the art form we all love, one foot was strapped up too so I hope it was not too painful for her to dance.  I wasn't fussed on Hamlet and Ophelia so that was probably my least favourite piece in the show, but I do hope that we will get to see more Ashton in future as it is such a big part of the heritage of the Royal ballet but I fear this may not be the case....It was lovely to see the dancers from Sarasota and I enjoyed their piece Walk to the Paradise Garden although the ending was a bit odd.

A few pics from the curtain calls:-

Yasmne Naghdi & Calvin Richardson

Valentino Zuchetti

Natalia Ospiova

Macarena Gimenez and Ricardo Graziano (Sarasota Ballet)

Cesar Corrales & Sarah Lamb

Francesca Hayward and Joonhyuk Jun

[Legseleven]

The Hamlet costume is most peculiar. Is he supposed to look as though he’s wearing pyjamas? I know this has previously been commented on but I’m intrigued - does anyone know the reasoning behind it? 

[LinMM]

Well this is probably a bit irrelevant now but a few pages back was trying to explain the quality of Anthony Dowells Oberon. 
Since then Dr.Derry has posted a video which have just seen on the Ballet/Dance info thread (under ballet/dance miscellany) of Dowell and Sibley in pas de deux from the Dream.
This does give some idea of Dowells other worldly quality in this Piece but is a delightful watch anyway and catches that effortless fairy lightness Sibley had as well.  

[Rebecca8]

On 08/06/2024 at 15:13, Jane S said:

One review mentions that Baryshnikov and Collier took a call at the end of Rhapsody - did that really happen?

Not on the 2 evenings that I was there either.  Although I'm sure I saw Collier in the audience on the first night (the night that Dowell and Sibley took a bow).

[MAB]

I had a look at some programmes from the first couple of years of The Dreams existence, it both opened and closed the evening,  An opener twinned with Song of the Earth and closer with a triple bill including Les Sylphides and Marguerite and Armand.  As M & E used to elicit more applause than its actual length, I seem to remember the safety curtain being brought down to cut short the calls so the evening could continue.  

[Jan McNulty]

Hello @Rebecca8 and welcome to the Forum!

[Emeralds]

14 hours ago, Rebecca8 said:

Not on the 2 evenings that I was there either.  Although I'm sure I saw Collier in the audience on the first night (the night that Dowell and Sibley took a bow).

It sounds like the reviewer might have misidentified Sibley and Dowell as Collier and Baryshnikov (sounds bizarre, I know, in this age of social media when up to date photos are easily available and searchable for identification, including dancers themselves posting about it). I saw Collier sitting in the B or C row in the Grand Tier  to observe the performances- she usually sits there when one (or more) of the dancers she coaches is dancing, presumably to observe, support and offer post performance notes and guidance. 

[LinMM]

I’ve seen her there too from the Balcony! 

[FLOSS]

MAB

Apologies for the delay in answering your enquiry about the designs for Les Rendezvous. As far as i can see the ones worn by SWRB in the 1979 recording were the designs used by the Vic Wells company for its 1937 production. The ballet almost certainly disappeared from the rep when Markova left the company as the roles created  for her and her partner were devised to provide a vehicle for a pair of outstanding dancers. Fonteyn was part of the pas de quatre added to the ballet in 1934 replacing a pas de six that no one could remember anything about when Vaughan asked about ii in the course of writing his book about Ashton's ballets. Fonteyn was too inexperienced to have tackled the Markova role at that point. Fonteyn made her mark as the Woman in a Balldress in Apparitions in 1936. Obviously by 1937 she was deemed ready for the lead in Les Rendezvous as in the 1937 production the cast was headed by Fonteyn and Harold Turner.

[FLOSS]

The idea of restoring Ashton to his proper place in the artistic life of the company by programming at least one long work by Ashton and an all Ashton mixed bill is very attractive but it is unlikely to happen as not only would it disrupt Kevin's deep laid plans to give the company a new repertory but it would mean removing MacMillan from  his current position as the com[any's leading twentieth century choreographer a position which he acquired soon after Ashton's death. Somehow I can't see Lady M. agreeing to the demotion and as far as the company is concerned  it would mean management would have to think about the entire programme each season rather than simply  thinking about which works to select to filli the gaps between all the works timetabled for regular revival.

[bridiem]

3 minutes ago, FLOSS said:

The idea of restoring Ashton to his proper place in the artistic life of the company by programming at least one long work by Ashton and an all Ashton mixed bill is very attractive but it is unlikely to happen as not only would it disrupt Kevin's deep laid plans to give the company a new repertory but it would mean removing MacMillan from  his current position as the com[any's leading twentieth century choreographer a position which he acquired soon after Ashton's death. Somehow I can't see Lady M. agreeing to the demotion and as far as the company is concerned  it would mean management would have to think about the entire programme each season rather than simply  thinking about which works to select to filli the gaps between all the works timetabled for regular revival.

 

I fear you are right, FLOSS, but it seems to me a very unsatisfactory and sterile way of programming. The highly formulaic approach is clear from the fact that we here on the forum are able to predict each upcoming season with quite a high degree of accuracy each year; the only questions are which works will fill the 'gaps', and even then there are only occasionally any true surprises. I suppose I would mind this approach less if it included as standard more Ashton, more Balanchine, more MacMillan one-acters, more new classical and/or neo-classical, less McGregor, less Wheeldon, less contemporary... but as it is, I do mind.

[Sim]

On 30/06/2024 at 18:17, Emeralds said:

It sounds like the reviewer might have misidentified Sibley and Dowell as Collier and Baryshnikov (sounds bizarre, I know, in this age of social media when up to date photos are easily available and searchable for identification, including dancers themselves posting about it). I saw Collier sitting in the B or C row in the Grand Tier  to observe the performances- she usually sits there when one (or more) of the dancers she coaches is dancing, presumably to observe, support and offer post performance notes and guidance. 

But surely a dance reviewer/writer should know the difference between the two couples; at the very least, know what Baryshnikov looks like without needing to check photos?  

[Jane S]

59 minutes ago, FLOSS said:

MAB

Apologies for the delay in answering your enquiry about the designs for Les Rendezvous. As far as i can see the ones worn by SWRB in the 1979 recording were the designs used by the Vic Wells company for its 1937 production. The ballet almost certainly disappeared from the rep when Markova left the company as the roles created  for her and her partner were devised to provide a vehicle for a pair of outstanding dancers. Fonteyn was part of the pas de quatre added to the ballet in 1934 replacing a pas de six that no one could remember anything about when Vaughan asked about ii in the course of writing his book about Ashton's ballets. Fonteyn was too inexperienced to have tackled the Markova role at that point. Fonteyn made her mark as the Woman in a Balldress in Apparitions in 1936. Obviously by 1937 she was deemed ready for the lead in Les Rendezvous as in the 1937 production the cast was headed by Fonteyn and Harold Turner.

 

Markova left the company in the summer of 1935 and Fonteyn actually danced the lead in Les Rendezvous later that year.

[Emeralds]

4 hours ago, Sim said:

But surely a dance reviewer/writer should know the difference between the two couples; at the very least, know what Baryshnikov looks like without needing to check photos?  

I agree completely with you, Sim. That was just the strangest error to see in a review. 

[FLOSS]

Inevitably our knowledge of the ballet repertory in general and that of the Royal Ballet in particular is dependent on what the artistic directors choose to programme. A company's entire season will reflect not only the director's personal tastes but how constrained his decisions may be by the views of board members ; agreements made long ago with rights owners and the need to cover the comp[any's   running costs. The overall effect of all of this has been to give the average ballet goer, if such a person still  exists, a very limited understanding of both Ashton and MacMillan as choreographers. In the context of the Royal Ballet's programming decisions  we get to see far too little of MacMillan the classical choreographer and next to nothing of Ashton's  demi-character ballets or his works in the expressionist idiom. 

 

To some extent the Sarasota Ballet remedied our lack of knowledge of  Ashton as an expressionist choreographer  by giving a full blooded and theatrically compelling account of Dante Sonata in the Linbury and giving main stage performances of The Walk to the Paradise Garden. In Dante Sonata the Sarasota dancers, unlike those at BRB who worked on its restoration managed to forget that Ashton is officially a classical choreographer who at all times keeps emotions within proper bounds. The effect was electric. The ballet no longer looked like an historical curiosity resuscitated out of a misplaced sense of duty and respect but a viable and compelling dance work which succeeded in attaining Tudor's ambition of expressing in dance what cannot be put into words. 

 

As far as the three short works are concerned I was pleased to see pieces which do not automatically fit Ashton's official artistic persona. I just wish that the Kevin and the  marketing department had put some real effort into selling the second main stage programme by telling  people why those works were being performed and why they are of importance to an overall understanding of Ashton's range as a choreographer.

 

I think that it is a mistake to see The Five Brahms Waltzes as the choreographer's personal tribute to Duncan. It is true that he saw her dance but the piece is, I think, a tribute to Marie Rambert , Ashton's second and most influential teacher and the person who saw and developed his potential as a choreographer. Ashton had devised a single waltz for Seymour to take to a gala to be held in Hamburg which had been well received and had led some critics to say that seeing Seymour in it had given them a real understanding of Duncan's place in the development of twentieth century dance. In 1976 Ballet Rambert celebrated its first fifty years. Five Brahms Waltzes was given at the gala. I imagine that nearly everyone in the gala audience would have known of the important part that Duncan had played in Rambert's own life in dance, taking her from giving her own Duncan style recitals in Paris, to working on the Rite of Spring with Nijinsky via study with Dalcroze in Switzerland, before being converted to classically based dance training and performance. Adding  four more waltzes to original one in which rose petals are strewn across the stage was the obvious gala gift. All that is long ago and the problem today, as w ith much of the Ashton repertory is getting the casting right. Technical accomplishment is not the be all and end all in Ashton you also need artistry and interpretative imagination. Of the three dancers cast in this piece Osipova was by far the most compelling. She gave the movement the weight it needed and managed to make the choreography for each of the waltzes appear to be her spontaneous response to the music rather than something she had taken great pains to learn. She also revealed something I had not noticed before a link between Duncan's style of dance and heroic Soviet realist style iconography. 

 

It was wonderful to see Paradise Garden again. I am not sure that i would have made MacMillan my reference point for it.It is one of those pieces in which Ashton subverts soviet ballet's more outrageous technical tricks which were originally intended to secure wild applause and makes them expressive and gives them artistic validity. I hope that this piece finds its way back into the repertory as it is a masterpiece. I am less convinced that Hamlet and Ophelia was worth bringing back from the dead but at least it's not Voices of Spring which looks more and more ragged every time it is staged with dancers who want to display their athleticism rather than dance it as a tongue in cheek tribute to Soviet style gala pieces. The problem is that Hamlet and Ophelia was made so late in Fonteyn's career that she had next to no technique left. Hayward and Bracewell made a stronger case for its revival than Lamb and Corrales managed tp do but they have the advantage of having been deeply involved in its restoration to the stage as well as being gifted expressive dancers.

 

A couple of weeks in the company of a " real choreographer" is beneficial to audiences and dancers alike. The problem is that it makes an awful lot of what is on offer next season look pretty lackluster. I can't help wondering how much of the Ashton Foundation's ambitious programme of revivals will pop up in Bow Street? I really hope that Daphnis and Chloe is on the cards for the resident company. Of course if the company is deeply involved with the Ashtonfest project it might mean that the company will all be able to dance Ashton ballets idiomatically by the time the it celebrates its centenary in 2031.

[jmhopton]

'A couple of weeks in the company of a " real choreographer" is beneficial to audiences and dancers alike. The problem is that it makes an awful lot of what is on offer next season look pretty lacklustre'. 

 

Couldn't agree more, Floss. And judging by the Forum members who say they're not attending the ROH until, Christmas or the New Year, we're not the only ones. The only ballet I'm really excited about next season is Onegin, so in that respect, the lack of earlier ballet (and the overpriced accommodation) means I'll hopefully be able to attend more than I would otherwise, though I'm still going to have to rely on some standing tickets because of the extortionate ticket prices. I might have risked a ticket for Wheeldon and Balanchine if there had been a matinee but there isn't which I think is really bad programming as many who need to stay overnight after an evening performance don't want to pay for a hotel. I'll see the Wheeldon at the cinema (if I bother at all) and might have to reluctantly pay for a Balanchine when I know casting as I adore Symphony in C. Problem is I don't like Prodigal Son and it costs me nearly £200 for transport, accommodation and a standing ticket, probably £250 for a seat and that's a huge outlay if you only like 2 thirds of a programme.

[zxDaveM]

I'm in attendance at more than I thought I would before January, mainly due to casts I'd like to see.

I'm afraid the thought of putting on matinees for those who have to travel/hotel etc would be in the realms of "not our problem" unfortunately. I'm lucky in that respect, living on the edge of London.

I'm not a Prodigal Son fan either - one of the few Balanchine ballets I don't like - so may see it once, and then again if only an interesting 'Siren' cast. Otherwise, it is book-in-the-bar time! Saying that, even if they only did Symphony in C and Serenade, it would go down as a super bill for me 🙂