Melissa Hamilton in "Manon"; wow...

Isn't a "Manon" a kind of chocolate?  Something with praline and whipped cream enrobed in fine belgian choc?  Delicious.

"Manon" the story is not exactly delicious; it's bittersweet even at its happiest moments, and deeply tragic by the end.  At the moment the Royal Ballet are doing MacMillan's magnificent version and I've been twice, sad balletomane that I am.

I went with the DipGeek, a planned outing; we saw Laura Morera and Nehemiah Kish, innocent and unhappy as the lovers, and Riccardo Cervera as an insouciant Lescaut.  But then on Monday I managed to get a returned ticket, to see one of my current dance idols, Melissa Hamilton, making her debut in the lead.

So if I am a sad balletomane? - so what.  This was something not to be missed.  And boy, do we have a Manon here!  I know I'm one of her fangirls, but Ms Hamilton simply seized the part with both hands and made it her own.  I was completely blown away.

She was going absolutely flat-out, technically - not a foot wrong, not a risk fudged - while dramatically, emotionally, this was as subtle and truthful an interpretation as I've ever seen.  Her performance was alive with flickering feelings, right to her fingertips.  She brought out little nuances, like the way the innocent girl, arriving in Paris in a pell-mell hurtle of excitement, cannot resist trying to show off her pretty new frock to her brother - only to realise within minutes that next to the glittery finery of the local whores she looks provincial and frumpy.  And bang! she goes, like the kid she is, straight from unthinking happiness to frustrated dissatisfaction.

This was a very young Manon, in love but also very much swept up with being in love, and visibly steeling herself to the touch of Monsieur GM with his creepy fetishes and bullying dominance.  Right through Act One there was a vividly real sense of someone trying to keep abreast of things, trying to make decisions on the spur of the moment, trying to stay ahead without really knowing what she's doing.  Circumstances keep changing, complications keep arriving, and she is too un-worldy-wise to realise she cannot have it all, despite the deepening mess, until it is horribly, painfully too late.  By the end we were going full-on for raw danger; the famous flips and plunging lifts of the last pas de deux were taken right to the line, as they need to be, to give the last scene the utter desperation it needs.  Seriously; it needs to be scary, that scene, and it was.  I haven't seen a Manon come that close to dashing her brains out on the stage for a while...

She had an excellent Lescaut in Bennet Gartside, who I didn't know would be dancing this role until I opened my cast sheet; that was a nice surprise to arrive to.  He's matured into a terrific actor and still has the dancing chops to pull off a superbly naturalistic, tumbling drunk scene, making all those horrendous off-balance leaps look easy - and phenomenally real.  If anyone in the company is going to step into Gary Avis' shoes in time, Mr Gartside might be the one to do it.

Mr Avis was excelling himself as usual (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) as an utterly repellent Monsieur GM.  I wouldn't ever have expected to say this as a compliment, but he was rape culture personified.  Through great chunks of the brothel scene my eyes kept straying from the merrymaking of the whores and their clients, to watch the interactions between him and Manon.  This was a real relationship, subtle and full of tension, a constantly-shifting unadmitted power struggle going on.  One got a very clear sense of what has happened to Manon in the last few weeks, and a real premonition of what might have happened in the succeeding months, if she hadn't taken another spur-of-the-moment gamble and tried to have it all.

I would have liked to see Miss Hamilton paired with a more emotionally responsive Des Grieux.  Matthew Golding certainly seems to be a strong, safe partner (& my god, you need one with some of the lifts in "Manon") but his acting was a bit one-dimensional for my tastes.  Mr Kish, a couple of weeks before, brought a low-key sincerity and an air of innocent, well-intentioned sweetness to this foolish young man; one watched his characterisation and thought "By gum, Des Grieux is an idiot" but one also felt for him desperately.  I didn't really feel for Mr Golding, and that's a pity. 

But by and large it was a tremendous performance.  As usual all the bit parts were beautifully done.  As usual Gary Avis acted his socks off.  And as usual Miss Hamilton left me stunned, by her wonderful dancing and her heartfelt dramatic instincts. 

The rest of my week has been busy at work and I am tending to flop at home.  I'm still very tired.  I've just been for a drink after work with the Press Office team, followed by pizza and salad 'cos it's Friday.  My internet connection at home seems to be okay tonight, after being distinctly off-colour lately.  And I have kitten-sitting duties this weekend.  So things aren't too bad at all, all things considered.  And now I am going to bed.

Busy day

This morning I had the chance to get out of the office (unusual, lately) and model for a press launch photoshoot.  One of the other models was very beautiful and had a very beautiful three year old with her, so I should imagine most of the press coverage will feature them.  But if your paper has a shot of a lot of feet, mine might be one of the pairs featured.  Chipped blue nail varnish, if so (o, the shame).  We were demonstrating the Barefoot Trail.

For your information, and rather to my surprise, the Barefoot Trail does exactly what it's meant to do; I came away feeling relaxed and revived, and as if I had been close to nature for a short time.  All from wandering about barefoot on assorted surfaces such as wet grass, logs, pine cones and sand.  The New Age Fluffy Stuff won over my cynicism, hands (or rather feet) down.  It was glorious.  If muddy.

In the afternoon my boss and I had a long meeting with someone from Finance, someone from Visitor Services, and The Man With The Answers, to talk about hitches and glitches in the new ticketing system.  Most of the aforementioned hitches and glitches, if I'm honest, are in our handling of the system, not inherant in the thing itself.  It was a hugely constructive meeting, the kind I wish all meetings could be.  Although we only got through about 20% of the things we needed to sort out, we did have really thorough discussions about those things, and make real progress on them.  I suppose we just need to have more meetings, and slowly work through the remaining 80% of the issues with the same thoroughness.

Halfway through this meeting the weather turned on its flipside and began to pour with rain, then hail, and then thunder as well.  The office we were in is in an attic and the rain and hail were pounding on the roof and bouncing into the open windows.  The Man With The Answers sat smiling in his usual unflappable & Buddha-like way - until I said "Answers, I'm getting worried about your books" (which were on the windowsill behind him) - at which point he suddenly reacted with alacrity.  Good chap; I am sure even Gautama Buddha preferred to keep his books dry.  Keep your powder and your books dry, eh?

He appears to be reading a playscript, which is intriguing (I would know the Faber & Faber Drama livery anywhere).  But being nosy about other folks' reading can seem tremendously rude, so I bottled it and didn't ask.  Now I'm just curious (equals nosy). 

Then it was back to the office, and then to the leaving drinks for a colleague who is moving on to pastures new.  This last happened to coincide with the Grand Re-Opening of a local bar (sheer chance, but it meant we got two free drinks each and a lot of slightly random free tapas).  So by the time I left, early, to go and vote, I was full of food and drink, and decidedly relaxed.

Trotted to my local polling station (the infant school over the railway line) clutching my poll card.  Even at well after nine pm there was a steady trickle of people.  I handed my card over and said, maybe a tad too brightly, "I hope it's okay to vote when you've had a couple of pints, I've been at a colleague's leaving do."

Polling officer:  Dearie, if you're here and you can make a cross with a pencil, you can vote.

So I voted.  I'm not sure whether I should be cheered or depressed by the discovery I'm allowed to vote even if half-cut.  I've decided to be pleased about it.

Like many good Lefties I sometimes have those moments of wondering if there's any point in casting my vote.  Parliamentary democracy has its flaws, goodness knows, and ours is as messed-up as the rest in many ways..

But so many people across the world even today never have had and never will have the chance to make that cross on a ballot paper, to try and add a drop of influence to the vat.  Most of my ancestors didn't have the vote - none of the men, to my knowledge, until 1918, except possibly the Hyders in Bristol, and certainly none of the women until 1928 (property qualifications are intended to exclude the peasantry, after all, and I come from very solid working class stock!).  I would be utterly ashamed of myself if I didn't go out and vote. 

Now home, sobering up, and writing this.

Last night I was at the ballet; two lovely non-narrative pieces and a gritty, grim, bleak story ballet about the spirit of Jack the Ripper haunting London and inspiring Walter Sickert and a friend of his to commit the Camden Town Murders.  "Sveet Violence" said the German woman in the row behind mine, carefully reading her programme aloud to her neighbour.  Well, quite; I couldn't have put it better myself.  Actually the title is "Sweet Violets", but anyway...  It's choreographically terrific.  Also grim, grimgrimgrim, also grisly and dismal.  Beautifully danced, though, of course (Lauren Cuthbertson in particular was superb as the second woman to be murdered).  But it was a relief to go from that to "DGV" with its superb score, high energy and rich, resonant optimism.  Graphic violence and murder in pointe shoes may be very impressive; but hope and love and human connection carry the more meaning, for me, cockeyed optimist that I am.

Well, I dunno...

It's been all fun and games...

Monday evening was fun; "The Winter's Tale" makes a terrific ballet, although the "game of two halves" tendency of the play was if anything emphasised by the transformation to a purely visual medium.  More of that anon.

Thinking of anons, I seem to have pissed-off my anon from the weekend.  Sorry, cryptic outside-over-there person!  Not knowing who you are kind of throws me, because you clearly know who I am.  Try and put yourself in my shoes, and consider how discombobulating that feels.  I'm happy you seem to have liked my poem & I'm touched that you responded positivly to it.  But I have to be honest; it was written as a response to seeing someone I know walk by looking tired and low.  One particular person.  Now you seem to be taking it personally, and I don't know if you're that person or not;  Again, significant discombobulation here.  I hate not knowing things; makes me feel really inadequate...

So, I'm sorry if I didn't react the way you wanted.  It's probably good for me to feel inadequate, though.  Challenging.

A good few things are challenging just now.  The new ticketing and database system continues to be challenging, bless its digital cotton socks.  We had server issues for large parts of yesterday, which was certainly bl**dy challenging, and reminded me just how painfully dependent we all are on computers these days.  Today we had a fire alarm, and it wasn't a drill.  In fact it turned out to be a complete mystery; so everyone was kept outside the office for a good thirty or forty minutes while it was investigated.  Thirty-forty minutes I could really have used in the office...

At least it was a pleasant afternoon.  There was patchy sun, a fresh mild breeze, goldfinches singing in the trees and big, blowsy golden peonies in bloom.  Compared with some fire alarms I have known, that was okay, I have to say.

Worst fire alarm I've ever been in was a time when I was modelling for an evening class.  In November.  As the saying goes, less said about that, the better.

Then when we were allowed back into the building I got sabotaged in my attempts to do a simple job by the fact I couldn't get it done because something wasn't doing what I expected it to.  Couldn't crack it for the life of me.  Had to email The Man With The Answers about fifteen times in a row, which was both challenging and plain bl**dy embarrassing.  I dislike bothering busy people.  That inadequacy thing, again; I feel I ought to be able to fix my own sodding problems. 

And then when The Man had fixed that problem, I got a different problem and had to give up on the whole thing.  As it was I didn't leave work till six pm.  Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Back to "Winter's Tale".

Firstly; what a cast, what a staging, what amazing choreography!  Between Sicilia and Bohemia the whole physical language changes; so that the first is angular, frontal and formal, full of clenched fists, Graham-technique feet and gripping hands, and the second is all flowing lines and chain dances, leaping and springing and lightness of movement and gesture.

The storytelling is marvellously clear (& scrapping Autolycus makes for a sharper and more fairy-tale-like plot, which works better in ballet).  The homoerotic quality of Leontes' and Polixenes' love for one another is pointed up gently but not over-emphasised - so that one can see Leontes' rage and jealousy are as much over his friend - and first love - as over his wife and second love - but it wasn't egged to the point (which I've seen done on stage) of implying he's never really cared about Hermione in the first place and has only  made a marriage of convenience for the sake of getting an heir.  I loved the way it's shown that, his madness once over, Leontes is practically a broken man; dependent on Paulina, almost helpless at her behest and physically literally in her hands.  The parallels between Leontes' jealousy in the first half and Polixenes rage in the second were brought out perfectly, too.  It's that sort of thing that storytelling through physical language can sometimes do almost better than words.

But ooh, I'm on dangerous territory there; inferring that Shakespeare's words could be bettered if removed is hardly a good line to take!  I can see that argument taking me swiftly off the edge of a precipice if I try to follow it.

I guess it just shows yet again the infinite variability and flexibility of the stories and characters he gave us, though, that they can be retold and reborn even without the text itself, and still come absolutely true...

All the cast are pitch-perfect (though the programme note that says something like "Leontes remarks on Florizels ressemblance to Polixenes" had us all giggling naughtily - ah yes, the ginger tom takes one look at his dark-haired friend's extremely ginger son and that's what he thinks?).  The six principals were all excellent as were rest of the cast, right down the batting order.  In particular Edward Watson's Leontes was terrifying in his insanity, bending and writhing like a sea-creature or a giant multi-jointed invertebrate; and then tragic in his grief, weak and broken in spirit in the aftermath.

I'm always happy to see Gary Avis given a decent role, and as Perdita's adoptive father he gets to be both a solid dancer, leading off folk dances and proving he can still partner most of the fellows off the map, and also a gentle and truthful actor.  Valentino Zucchetti was a stunning Clown; please, someone, anyone, give this chap more to do, and stretch him, let him get his teeth into more and more.  He has an astonishingly elastic jump, tremendous footwork, and a frisky, charming, insouciant stage presence.  I can't wait for the day they give him Lescaut to do...

The whole Bohemia scene is simply lovely; where everything in Sicilia was trammelled and tight, and love could only be expressed with small gestures and taking care not to overstep the marks of good manners, suddenly here we get the happy innocent tenderness of young love, the affectionate sibling joshing between Perdita and Clown, the solid loving paternal strength of the father shepherd and all the cheerful flirting and falling-for and delighting of the festival crowd.  Every gesture is suddenly wide-open and free, the lifts are big, the footwork bounding and stomping and joyously natural. 

And it looks tremendous, too.  The designs are gorgeous; clean plain colours, plus sober black, grey and white, in Sicilia, and rich tapestried patterns everywhere in Bohemia, where hems are embroidered or fringed, fabrics brocaded, cushions painted and everything imaginable decorated.

Joby Talbot's score is further evidence that he's become the ballet composer who should be at the top of every list today.  It's less gallumphing than his "Alice" score, richer and subtler and more shimmering; it reminded me of Prokofiev's "Cinderella" and Henze's "Ondine", and one really can't give much higher praise than that.

Problems?  The animatronic baby is bl**dy creepy (one almost couldn't blame Leontes for being freaked out by it) and the bear pursuing Ben Gartside's kind-hearted Antigonus is a bit odd; not as theatrically effective as I'd hoped Covent Garden, with the resources at its disposal, could rustle up.  Darcy Bussell, presenting from backstage (I love backstage stuff!) was wearing a garment with a collar apparently studded with jelly-tots; very distracting...  But that's about all I can find to nitpick over.  The final scenes had me in tears.  The lovers' plea to Leontes; his humbling himself to help them and his reconcilliation with Polixenes; the little touch of the father shepherd being greeted honourably by the kings... Paulina's recognition scene was simple and perfect (my goodness can Zenaida Yanowsky act when she's given the chance) and then Hermione's restoration and duet with Leontes, and the reunion with her daughter, were sad and painful and noble; emotional truth at its clearest.   

Fab-u-lous. 

And now I must go to bed, and be ready for another little wrestle with my new database and ticketing system tomorrow.  I want to learn to drive this thing properly.  I will not be defeated by my tools.

Should I wind down?

Should I wind this blog down?

I hardly ever post anything on it any more.  My evenings of late have mostly been spent either getting on with some creative writing, or messing about chatting to people on tumblr and posting my photogaphs there (& making dirty jokes about fanciable actors >ahem< sorry folks, I'm only human).  And work is so hectic at present that in my lunch break I want to flee and sit outside in the fresh air, not sit blogging at my desk and hoping no-one makes an issue of the fact I've taken a break from working while I eat my lunch.

More of all of that anon.

I'll start by answering my own question, though.  Although I'm fairly sure very few people read this blog (apart from robots in Russia trawling for Russian opera singers' names) I don't think I will wind it down after all.  In very large part, because there seems to be too much winding down going on around me and to consciously decide to add to it myself depresses me in a vague unquantifiable way I can't explain.  It feels too much like going with the flow, when this particular flow is one I want to fight.  I do not want to wind down.  I shall not go gentle into that good night.

I am aware of my body getting plumper and slower, and it being harder to fight that progression into middle-aged spread and torpitude.  I am aware that the tipping point has been passed for some of the things I've always wanted to do; I doubt very much, now, that I shall ever direct a play, or see one I have written performed.  I know I will never be a successful artist, or run that cafe I used to talk about, and I wonder if I will ever get to bum around Greece writing "The Modern Pausanias"...  I am painfully aware that my brain isn't quite what it was, either; tiredness and tension don't help, of course, on that front.  But if I went to live in another country nowadays, the way I blithely did fifteen years ago, I wonder if I'd pick the language up as easily as I picked up Spanish, back then in 1999?

But I remind myself, I am tired and tense; and have been badly depressed, this winter.  As per usual; but still hard going for all it is a familiar pattern.

It's been a rough six months, and there's no sign of that easing up for the foreseeable future.  I was thoroughly ill twice in the autumn, with a horrendous fluey cold followed by a bout of gastroenteritis that had me off work for a fortnight.  All sorts of things since then have been tiring and stressful, too.

There's a massive staff restructure going on at work that will mean roles being lost, and that in turn may mean facing the propect of being out of work.  I hope it doesn't mean that for me; my job makes money, so I'm possibly safer than some, but no-one is really safe when these things happen.  I understand the operational thinking behind it, and it does make sense, sadly; but that doesn't make it any less alarming to contemplate.

At present we're in the throes of implementing a new ticketing and customer relations management database system; damned hard work, let me tell you.  I had no idea how flipping complicated these big organisation-wide projects were to bring in.  In my particular area we are just beginning to make some real headway and I can believe now that in time this will all work, and do what it's meant to do; and it will be tremendous when that happens.  A good visible sign of this progress is that the long email I stayed late at the office tonight to write, detailing the latest list I've made of queries, issues and general peculiarities, was mostly detailing non-urgent things this time - the previous three or four have all been about things that were vital and that needed to be sorted out NOW!  I have complete faith in the person who I know will be doing most of the sorting-out, who is one of the most capable people I've ever had the pleasure of working with.  But I also know he has a lot on his shoulders at the moment.  I'd prefer not to add to that if possible, so I'm even more glad that the queries on my list are now relatively minor ones.  Man deserves a break.

Heck, Man deserves a ruddy medal.  In my humble opinion.  But that's another story.

Paul, my lovely boss, left us ten days ago to go to pastures new, working for a marketing company that has been running less than two years and is apparently going to all sorts of exciting places.  He deserves every success and I hope he finds it; he's been a fantastic manager and I shall miss him.  But I could also thump him, because he's left me at the busiest time of the year for my regular job, with all the extra workload from the new database implementation, and until his replacement is fully run-in I can't ask for too much support from him.  Apart from anything else, he won't know the job or the people well enough to do much.  But meanwhile I am terrified of getting behind and feel as though I'm juggling cats.

I come out of the office at the end of the day and walk home, and tell myself to put it behind me.  I have a cup of tea and a proper meal (I am determined not to fall-back on cook-chill meals, so am making sure I buy real raw ingredients and cook them; I know I need the real nutrition just now).  Then I write, or mess about, as mentioned above.  I've been doing a lot of writing; my Western is progressing nicely and looks to be going to end up at well over 100,000 words.  And every now and then I go out.

On Monday night I was out; at, guess what, the ballet.  Seeing the Royal Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty" for the umpteenth time (well, fourth, or fifth possibly? - it's a gorgeous production, anyway, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty).  There were some problems in the pit at the beginning - someone needed to have a quick word with some of the brass section, who were all over the shop - but on stage it was sheer heaven.  One of my favourite dancers, Hikaru Kobayashi, was dancing Aurora.  I've seen her in the role before - I made a beeline for this performance precisely to see her in action again.  She has beautiful feet and a lovely luxurious sense of space and scale.  She's one of those dancers who can make it look as though she has all the time in the world, although she has exactly the same number of bars of music, and beats in a bar, as anyone else would.  And she can act.  It was simply lovely to see her dancing a leading role opposite her husband, too; no need to worry about onstage chemistry between this prince and his beloved... 

There was more chemistry between Princess Florine and her Bluebird; Melissa Hamilton being wonderful (as usual) and Fernando Montano (ditto) ; flawless virtuosity from both and a sort of sparkling sexiness that made one really feel this was a fairytale indeed.  And between the King and Queen (Gary Avis and Genesia Rosato) not only chemistry but also a series of object lessons in telling, simple, spot-on mime, using the set conventional gestures and the chances to add one's own elements of expression alike superbly.  Not to mention demonstrating wonderfully how to manage a long trailing cloak with aplomb.  Christina Arestis was a splendid, beautiful, evil Carabosse and I think every fairy was a standout (though the lilac fairy was rather more of an implaccable spirit of justice than the personyification of goodness that I'm used to seeing).

I wish sometimes at the theatre that it were possible to make notes as the evening went on; but of course it would be the most horrible bad manners.  Only one finds oneself afterwards thinking "There were so many great moments last night, and now it's all one wonderful happy blur...".

But a wonderful happy blur is by no means a bad thing.

I shall have to stop writing; for now.  But not forever.  There is still too much to tell, too much to do, too much to say.  Even if I'm more erratic, more chaotic, I cannot stop now.

Catch-up, Pt 2: Mayerling 2013 – what a way to go!

One of the most extraordinary things I’ve seen this summer was the retirement performance of Johan Kobborg, quitting the stage with a bang (in every sense) in “Mayerling”. 

I hadn’t made any special plans to be at his farewell.  I’d been meaning for ages to see if I could catch him in action next time the Royal Ballet revived this phenomenally dark and powerful piece, as I’d heard he was a really tremendous interpreter of the lead role of Crown Prince Rudolf.  So; they brought it back this summer, and I booked a ticket; then a very short time beforehand – I think it was no more than a week or two – he announced his retirement, and his onstage and off-stage partner Alina Cojocaru announced she too was leaving the company – and this particular performance was to be their last appearance at Covent Garden.

Getting a seat for a beloved dancer’s farewell can be pretty tricky; getting a seat for two of them leaving at once would I imagine be proportionately harder still.  But I had managed it, by sheer random luck.  Even without that, I would be glad I’d been there anyway, since it was a terrific performance and both leads were on absolutely smashing form (as God knows they need to be – on top of this being a very demanding ballet, some of the lifts in Rudolf’s series of big pas de deux look bloody dangerous to me).  The added poignancy of ending with a long, long sequence of increasingly emotional curtain calls just added to an already dramatic atmosphere.  All in all it was a memorable evening.

And as for Mr Kobborg – well, to be able to retire at 40, and go out dancing this role, possibly the toughest thing in the repertoire for a male dancer (physically and I would guess also psychologically) this well, well, that’s an impressive way to go.  Not sliding off quietly into the shadows, half-unnoticed, but going with a full-on, explosively physical, high-drama thump to the guts to everyone in the audience.  I think that’s called stopping while you’re at the top; good on you, man!

I gather there are wheels within wheels in the background to this story (if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor!).  I suppose that’s inevitable sometimes in any large organisation.  Being as I am easily as much of a balletomane now as I was as a little girl, I hope very much that any problems behind the scenes at the company can be resolved sensibly and without ill-will on anyone’s part, since all I want is to go on getting lashings of top-class ballet in London.  I’m not going to look online to see who’s been washing whose dirty linen in public! 

So long as things don’t reach levels of animosity of Bolshoi proportions I’m fairly hopeful...  I don’t really want to know the nitty-gritty of company politics, I’m afraid; I feel it’s rather like wanting to know the ins-and-outs of an actor’s personal relationships.  There’s a reason why it’s called a “private” life, after all.

Just let them do the work, and do it well; just give them the means to go on doing that.  I don’t mind who’s shagging who, or any other personal matters, for dancers, for singers, for actors, or indeed for the people who invent new flavours for Ben & Jerry’s.  I don’t want to know if there are managerial disagreements, or who is misbehaving or exceeding their remit, or anything, and while I’m sorry for anyone who’s losing out or feels hard-done-by (and I’d much rather they didn’t feel that way, simply because no-one likes to), nonetheless, unless it’s ruining their work  I don’t actually mind if I don’t know about it.  

Is that blinkered of me? - or, perhaps, cold and uncaring?  Perhaps it is.  It’s the work I admire them for, these performers.  Okay, I admit occasionally the eye candy aspect comes into it! – but basically it’s the work I love them for, and it’s the work that I want to see going on, long after any individual performer's career winds down; handed-down in good shape, revivified with each new generation.   

Knowing that people are airing their grievances in public leaves me feeling I'm expected to take sides.  And I can never know the whole story, since the most I’d ever see would be twitter messages and the like.  So I don’t want to be called upon to make that judgement.

I don’t want to see established company principals, most of them real heroes and heroines of mine, departing in umbrage, or sticking around but feeling underused and resentful.  That would be simply awful.  I also don’t want to see talented dancers lower down the company feeling under-used, or over-used and taken for granted, for that matter - that would be awful, too.  I’m human, I can feel sympathy for anyone having a rough time at work.  But for me the bottom line is that I want to be able to go on going into the West End and seeing tremendous performances by great dancers in wonderful rep.   So long as the RB (and not forgetting the also-excellent ENB) can continue to supply that, I’m happy. 

I’ve also missed the goodbyes of Mara Galeazzi and Leanne Benjamin.  Big sighs of regret for both of them, as I shall miss them.  I did at least get to see Ms Benjamin one last time, as she was doing a stint with Carlos Acosta’s latest summer venture at the Coliseum last week, Classical Collection; a lovely mixture of high-classical and high-dramatic excerpts, and a cracking cast giving it their all.  So at least the last thing I saw the wonderful Ms Benjamin in was the almost unbearably-lovely “Pie Jesu” from Macmillan’s “Requiem”.  >Sob< - but again, that’s a good way to go.

And as one chapter closes (& Ms Benjamin's chapter has been not only glorious but also splendidly long!) another is near the beginning; and that is right, that is as it should be.  That same evening of excerpts brought me the chance to see Melissa Hamilton dancing the "Dying Swan"; and I honestly don't think I shall ever forget that sight.  By gum, that lass has IT, and in spadefuls.  Oomph, stage presence, pizzazz, grace, command, call it what you will.  I've been a fan of hers for some years now and last week she bouréed her way still further into my heart, and left me crying like a silly kid into my binoculars.  So, so beautiful...

The Metamorphosis, Linbury Studio Theatre, ROH, London

I saw the revival of this last night and it is one of the most brilliant pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.

It has actually got better since the first run; which is astonishing, considering the first run was already brilliant.  Edward Watson’s performance as Gregor Samsa is unbelievable - almost literally unbelievable; I do not know how he physically does some of the things he does. Choreographer and director Arthur Pita takes Kafka’s story and shows it as a metaphor for terminal illness, suicidal depression, mental breakdown, PTSD - the agonised destruction of a human being… It’s utterly harrowing, so be warned, if you are going, take tissues.

I believe I'm right in saying that tonight is the last night of the run.  If you can beg, borrow or steal a ticket, go!

Immies for last year

I realise with embarrassment that I never got round to doing my personal arts awards for last year.  Oops.  Not as though anyone is likely to have been waiting for them, but still!  It's the awards time of year, and here are mine.  I can't give you a parade of evening-dressed stars shivering in the rain, but that's probably just as well, for them if not for me.

So: here are the winners of the Immies for 2012.

Performances of the year:

Concert: Britten “War Requiem”; Philharmonia Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, in the Festival Hall back in March.  I don’t always like Maazel’s conducting, he often strikes me as terribly cool and measured, but with the War Requiem to play with, and my favourite orchestra and chorus, and a top-notch trio of soloists, he really got fired up and let rip, and the result was a truly fabulous performance.  Especial honours to brilliant Mark Padmore (still having trouble believing this chap was at school with my brother Steve), the heart-rending tenor soloist.  

Operas:  “Der Rosenkavalier”, ENO at the Coliseum.  “Peter Grimes”, ENO at the Proms.  Impossible to slip a sheet of paper between these two for quality of performance; conducting, playing and cast were all first class.  It was fascinating to see how the ENO “Peter Grimes” actually got even better when done as a concert performance rather than a fully-staged production – a real indicator of the strength of the performances and the commitment of all concerned.

Stage play: Nick Payne “Constellations” at the Duke of York’s Theatre.  An extraordinary piece of work; funny, moving and deeply thought-provoking – and a tour de force for the cast.

Exhibition: David Hockney at the Royal Academy.  Marvellous, inspirational stuff.

Dance: The Royal Ballet revivals of Ashton’s “The Dream” and “A Month in the Country” and Wayne McGregor’s “Infra”.  Such a total contrast that I cannot pick between them.

Performers of the year:

Opera: Stuart Skelton in the ENO “Peter Grimes” prom, see above; Otto Maidi in the Cape Town Opera production of “Porgy and Bess”.

Stage: Rafe Spall in “Constellations” – an object lesson in how to make a thoroughly ordinary guy into a credible romantic hero.

Dance: Zenaida Yanowsky in “A Month in the Country”.  Luxuriously gorgeous in her abandonment, in duets with first Gary Avis and then Rupert Pennefather, and heart-breaking in her final moments of desolation.  She was also a superb Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake” in the autumn; no mere princess here but a true Swan Queen, regal, mythic and tragic.

"Onegin"s and observations

 

I saw the ballet "Onegin" last week, and the opera “Eugene Onegin” last night.  What a joy the first was; and sadly, what a muddle the second...

It's one of my favourite ballets, and I've burbled about it before.  This was one of those performances when the principals are hugging one another by the end, with that air that suggests they know this was a good 'un.  They were simply out of their skins (and I was crying into my binoculars).  

Well, and it’s also one of my favourite operas; after all, this is such a classic story of unrequited love, loss and regret – things most of us have experienced at some point in our lives; and then, in the opera you get some of Tchaikovsky’s most fabulously rich and heartfelt music. But where Cranko’s ballet is a perfect distillation of a perfect story (and was perfectly performed by a perfect cast), this new production of the opera just couldn’t seem to find its balance.  It was as if the director just couldn't make his mind up: Straightforward realism, or wholehearted expressionism? - oh, f*ck it, I can't decide; I'll bodge the two together and see what I get...

The answer, of course, is that, rather as in carpentry, bodging the two together produces a mismatched piece of furniture that won't stand up straight and collapses when you put any weight on it.

I went, because my Favourite Baritone was singing Onegin and it’s a role I’ve wanted to hear him in for some time.  He was, as I had hoped, excellent.  More of this anon (to my delight he made it worth going to, all on his own.  Top bloke).  I had heard of the Tatyana, Krassimira Stoyanova (I think I’ve spelled that right), and she was okay, though not great; Amanda Echalaz could give her a run for her money, and is better-looking and a better actress, too (though I have a feeling she may be a bit on the tall side for Mr Keenlyside, who is after all only my height!).   I had also heard of the Lensky, Pavol Breslik, who was excellent, and rather ornamental in a baby-faced way.  

I had heard of the director, Kasper Holten, because he’s the new director of the Royal Opera as a whole.  On the evidence of this, that’s a bit of an oh-dear...

The production had some strengths; it looked good and the crowd scenes were well-shaped (there was no milling about on group exits, something which always gets my goat, and the formal dances in the penultimate scene looked good and were cleverly used to emphasise Onegin’s sense of disconnection from his surroundings).  On balance I felt the use of stage doubles for the young Tatyana and Onegin was a booboo, as it was terribly distracting and got in the way more often than not; but it did have a few benefits.   It emphasised their sense of grief and regret, and in particular Tatyana’s compassion for her idiotic younger self.  And, by setting the bulk of the story firmly as memories rather than “now”, it served to bring out the way that for each of the two principal characters, the memories are different.  For Tatyana, the crucial moments of that summer were her falling in love with, and being rejected by, Onegin, and for him the crucial moments were his argument and subsequent duel with Lensky, and the latter’s death.  

If you think about your own "lost love and regret" type stories, and imagine a situation where you could find out how the other party or parties involved viewed them, there's a pretty good chance the results would be similar; that something absolutely central to you would be tangential to them, and vice versa.  It was effective, and psychologically acute.

The tiny touch of having Onegin try to screw up the courage to kill himself after the duel and not having the nerve was brilliant, too.  It served beautifully to illuminate the very unusual way that Onegin himself had been directed as an essentially sympathetic character.  Think about it.  Have you ever seen a Eugene Onegin you actually felt for?  Usually he's either a cold bastard, or a bit of a cypher.  This one was credibly foolish, and a coward, but not such a crud as all that; and it was made quietly but effectively clear that his rejection of Tatyana was due not to dislike or even indifference, but to panic; a knee-jerk reaction to her having forced his hand by writing to him. 

I have to say, though, Mr Holten was very lucky in his Onegin.  I can't think of many baritones who could have pulled it off.  But Simon Keenlyside, with his nervous intensity and battered good looks, and huge, quiet stage presence, could and did.  I have no idea if his Russian was remotely idiomatic, but that husky catch in his voice, that I have always loved, served him well, too, and at one point he hit a high pianissimo that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  

I just wish he'd had a more coherant production around him.  It didn't seem fair.  The last production I saw, at ENO, was also a mixture of "That idea worked" and "That idea didn't", and had a cracking good Tatyana in Amanda Echalaz and a bland, blank Onegin whose name I can't even remember.  This one had a cracking good Onegin and a fair Tatyana, and was a similar curate's egg as a production.   Grr.

Now, a fusion of the two, that might have been interesting.  But that sort of thing doesn't happen. So I'm glad I saw the ballet again, and done so superbly, too.  The two final pas de deux - between Tatyana and her husband, gravely loving and trusting of one another, a distillation of everything one would hope married love could be for a lass with such a rocky start to her emotional life; and the frenzy of the farewell between her and Onegin, hurling themselves into one another's arms and tearing themselves apart repeatedly - were both absolutely mind-blowing.  Hurrahs, deservedly, at the curtain call, for Gary Avis's gentlemanly, strong Prince Gremin, Federico Bonelli's powerful and sexy Onegin, and above all for Laura Morera who, for me, simply is Tatyana.

Meanwhile and moving laterally and onto other things entirely, I have some observations on the 5:2 diet, which I have been following since the autumn.  It's the longest I've ever kept on a diet, and it's proving an interesting experience.

It’s surprisingly easy to keep to, and if I slip (or have a week’s holiday) I find it’s easy to get back into.  It doesn’t seem to have, for me at least, the guilt issues associated with most diets and most attempts to reform one’s eating habits.  And it seems to be working; albeit not quite as I had anticipated.

I feel great.  I feel healthier and more active, and more energetic.  I am walking more briskly, running up stairs, hurrying across the Gardens running errands. I'm coming home and getting stuck into some writing, or some typing up, or a bit of each, instead of slummocking in front of the tele.  I feel physically and mentally good.

At the end of each fast day my body feels light and clear, as though I’ve cleansed myself inside.  I don’t feel hungry, except for perhaps the last half hour before my plate of salad in the evening.  I don’t feel deprived, unless I watch a particularly popcorn-y movie in the evening.  I sleep well and I don’t wake up hungry, either.

My “skinny” jeans are now comfortable jeans, my “comfortable” jeans now need a belt; and the belt I use with them now needs to be done up on the third hole instead of the first one.  A blouse I couldn’t get buttoned over my bosom last summer is now wearable again; close-fitting tee shirts look okay on me instead of showing off my bra bulges; and I can wear all my rings a finger along from where I could wear them five months ago.

But - according to the scales I’ve only lost five pounds. 

I find this very odd indeed, but I’m not complaining.  Feeling healthier and changing shape mean a lot more to me than the number on the dial.  And yes, I did check the scales; they’re working fine.  It’s not them, it’s me. 

I’m still no sylph, nor am I likely ever to be one.  But it’s good to feel energetic and ready for spring, instead of wanting to crawl under a stone and hibernate.