Metamorphosis

Last night I went to the extraordinary "Metamorphosis Titian 2012" at the Royal Ballet.  Three new pieces, all with amazing design, wonderful new music, and great dancing.  Fab-u-lous! Several of my favourite dancers going flat out with utter genius.  A farewell role almost worthy of her for Tamara Rojo (unless she makes a come-back or does guest spots - you won't hear complaints from me if she does either or both!) as an imperiously beautiful, invulnerable-yet-fragile goddess, battling Ed Watson even as she reached out to him...  A well-deserved chance for the marvelous Melissa Hamilton to be a goddess, too; a glacial, sphinx-like one, curling and uncurling her feet like a lioness's claws.  Wonderful conjunctions and twistings-together of different choreographers' styles; Brandstrup + MacGregor making a particularly juicy combination.  A giant dancing machine like Epstein's Rock Drill come to life, whirring and stabbing at Carlos Acosta as he leaped and stretched himself out before it.  I could go on (and on...) but you get the idea.

Cracking good stuff, and a fine end to the RB season.  Since it was broadcast to the Big Screens as well, I can even hope they might release it as a dvd some day...

Wrote on the tube there and back, and in the intervals, and at Patisserie Valerie while I ate my salad. Would have written more when I got home, but was too tired - so went to bed and then couldn't sleep, wired with images of Acosta and the Machine, Ed and the Goddess, and all the colours and reflections and shapes and sensualities and dangers of three really terrific new ballets in one evening..

Not by bread alone...

It’s a long time since I wrote.  I had a lovely fortnight off; chilled out at my mum’s, then swam and sketched for a week in Kefalonia.  I came back to work tanned and refreshed, straight into a cloudburst at Gatwick.  That was just two weeks ago.  Work has been steadily busy ever since, which is good (I hate being bored).   

My cultural life since then has consisted of three mixed evenings out.  The first was to a concert that was a bit of a curate’s egg – a beautiful, lump-in-the-throat producing performance of The Enigma Variations, followed by Brahms’ Violin Concerto played by a Very Famous Soloist who I rapidly began to want to slap.  I’m sorry, but being a “character” does not entitle you to add extra percussion (sometimes off the beat, to add insult to injury) by jumping heavily up and down in fake exuberance as you play.  I love the Brahms concerto dearly, and the last person I heard playing it was Christian Tetzlaff, who is a musical demi-god in my book; I don’t want to see it turned into a self-indulgent party turn.

The second was last Friday, to a Hollywood blockbuster of the “lets trash New York with CGI” variety, and the last was last night, to “The Prince of the Pagodas” at Covent Garden.  “Prince of the Pagodas” was interesting stuff.  I gather the plot has been tweaked a bit, the intention being to make it a scrap more comprehensible; not very successful, I’m sorry to say.  Britten’s score veers between very beautiful and very weird, and so does the choreography.  But the orchestra and the excellent cast were putting their all into things, and I cannot fault the performance.  I’m just not sure it was worth reviving in the first place.  Marianela Nuñez was a radiant Princess Belle-Rose, Nehemiah Kish a handsome, gentle, gentlemanly Prince and Tamara Rojo a splendidly contemptuous Princess Belle-Épine, flashing her magnificent eyes and slashing high kicks at everyone.  The four evil kings who team up with Belle-Épine were terrific, the daft but saintly Fool bounced like the requisite rubber ball, and all the numerous bit parts were well done too.

But I’m afraid the blockbuster movie was a lot more fun. 

There are times when you want perfectly-cooked fresh food and top class wine, followed by superbly-played Mozart, and there are times when you want popcorn and a large chocolate milkshake, and lots of hunky men slinging each other about the place, and explosions.  “The Avengers Assemble” has the hunks and the explosions, a plot that is surprisingly easy to follow given its complexity, a script that is well-constructed, intelligent and genuinely witty, and a very good cast.  It was a perfect Friday-night movie, and I shall probably buy the dvd when it comes out, to add to my collection of things like “Aeon Flux”, “V for Vendetta” and the “Star Trek” reboot, for those “popcorn-needed” evenings.  Come to think of it, of course, although those are all popcorn movies they are, like “Avengers Assemble”, blessed with better than average scripts and good actors (okay, and eye candy). 

I’ll grant you that some of the Avengers are, to be polite, more limited as actors than others.  Captain America and Thor are big manly lunks of muscle, and they do “decent” and “honourable” and “heroic” to a tee, but I’m not sure either of them would do “Hamlet”.  Tom Hiddleston, enjoying himself playing the villain, would be a dream Hamlet, on the other hand (& is my dream Gabriel Yeats).  Robert Downey Jnr., Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and Samuel L Jackson are all eminently watchable, in pretty much everything they appear in, whether they are paying their mortgages doing junk or acting their socks off in something intelligent.  They can all carry a movie on their own, and any of them would be worth seeing this for.   Yes, that’s right, I’m not being silly; this really is a superhero movie worth seeing for the acting. 

That brings me to Hawkeye, Jeremy Renner, who was new to me, and steals every scene he is in.  Even when he isn’t doing anything, one’s eyes stray to him; he’s so hot he burns.  I haven’t been able to muster myself to see “The Hurt Locker” (I have a vivid imagination, and don’t want to see the subject matter made any more real than my imagination already can); so I had no idea what this chap was capable of, or even what he looked like.  Indeed, I admit that I was vaguely expecting a handsome, high-cheekboned scenery-chewer, trying wildly to capitalise on having been flavour-of-the-month a couple of years ago.  Mr Renner however is the exact opposite; a middle-sized guy with nice eyes, who looks as if he might be part hobbit, and does bottled-in intensity so well he could almost be British.  He’s terrific. 

So, not for the first time, I have the great Joss Whedon (who wrote and directed this) to thank for a good evening’s entertainment.  Thank you, Mr Whedon; more, please!

I came home from this so fired up that the Muse popped in and has been hanging out with me ever since.  A new story!  I’m about 25 pages in, and it’s feeling good.

A sad departure...

As a self-confessed balletomane, I suppose I have to say something about last week’s startling news,  Sergei Polunin’s exit from the Royal Ballet – and, judging by the latest story in the Daily Telegraph, even possibly from dancing altogether (the Telegraph isn’t my regular news source, incidentally! - far too centre-right for me, but their arts coverage is usually good). 

I have to admit I am not as overwhelmed by the loss of Mr Polunin as some.  Yes, he is a very showy technician.  Cor blimey, what a jump.  Cor BLIMEY, what entrechats...  And yes, he has a splendidly haughty, princely stage presence, and he is fantastically good-looking (provided you like cheekbones).  But I’m afraid I had rather got him labelled in my mind as not-fully-formed, because for my money he didn’t always seem terribly engaged dramatically.  There are some more disengaged chaps around, but there are also chaps at the RB I’d much rather see. 

When I saw a little while ago that it was going to be Mr Polunin dancing in “Marguerite and Armand” with Tamara Rojo I was a bit worried.  Ms Rojo is not only a phenomenal technician, she also acts with every breath in her body, and it is a real pain when one sees her paired with a bloke who looks blankly at her and doesn’t engage at all.  I can think of one young man, who shall remain nameless, going through the motions with perfect, bland accomplishment while at his side Ms Rojo emitted passion down to her fingernails.  

Luckily in “Marguerite and Armand” Mr Polunin came out of his shell and gave a tremendous performance, totally spot-on dramatically as well as technically.  For the first time I could really see why some of the papers had been acclaiming him as the next Really Huge Big Star.   He had a real chemistry with Ms Rojo and the performance was very, very good.  But Ms Rojo was the real star, even then. 

I know I’m not an expert and I’ve obviously been missing some extra fillip of terrificness in those jumps, entrechats etc.  But my main feeling is more one of sadness for Mr Polunin.  It’s such a waste, that a talented young man who could have been a Big Star (even if he wasn’t really one yet) has apparently flipped slightly and chucked in one of the very top jobs in his profession.  It seems a real shame, and no-one should have to be so stressed by their work that they reach that stage.  Who knows what went on behind the scenes? – certainly not me.  But I hope he gets his life sorted out.  If he truly doesn’t want to go on in the dance world, I hope he finds something else to do, something to which he is genuinely committed.  As it is, it just looks as though Mr Polunin was the “short-twitch muscle” equivalent of Ed no.1; not so much blessed as blessed-and-cursed by his enormous potential.

And in the meantime while we wait to see what the poor lad decides to do next, at least in the world of ballet everyone is used to sudden cast changes and to stepping in at short notice to fill a gap.  Anyone who had booked to see Mr Polunin as Oberon in Ashton’s “The Dream”, opening tonight, will get Steven McRae instead, and one can hardly feel short-changed by that (I had booked to see Mr McRae anyway, but then for my money he already is a Star – I’d pay good money to watch him stand at the side of the stage and look thoughtful).

Not much to report on my own account at the moment.  My head cold is coming out (cue loud sneeze) and my first day in the new job has gone quietly.  Now I’m off home to eat curry and try to finish Fairy Story number 2.  All the main characters are now under enchantments of one kind or another, and I have a big confrontation scene to write as they face off with the twin sorcerers who are responsible.  Eee, should be fun!

A long post; January already, and the Immies for 2011

Thursday already.  Heck, January already.  Hey, it’s 2012...

It was, as I had hoped, a very peaceful Christmas and a quiet New Year (apart from the massive firework display down the road and the madly barking neighbourhood dogs this set off).  Walking and relaxing with my family, doing a massive jigsaw, seeing a few friends, sleeping ten hours a night, eating too many Pringles...  Sometimes it’s good for one just to do very little and simply rest, body and mind.

And now it is January again.  Happy New Year, everyone.  The weather has been all over the place today; one minute we have had sun falling across the grass of Kew Green and bare trees shining against a chilly blue sky, then next moment the skies turn black and rain lashes down in curtains.  It seemed quite sensible to think of new beginnings and new resolutions without irony, each time the fresh-washed sun reappeared; but those periodic bursts of wintry rain make me want to hide my head and go to sleep underground instead.

I’ve had a couple of odd encounters over the last week.  At a New Year’s party I thought I saw an old school-mate across the room – she was a tough lass in her youth, so I’ll call her Tuffisa.  Tuffisa hardly seemed to have changed at all in almost thirty years; still the same curly black hair, girlish figure, casual clothes and determined expression.  I wondered if she would remember me, and was hesitating whether to go over and say “hi” when beside me someone said “Oh, Imogen, Tuffisa Jones is here, do come and say hi” – and led me across to a totally different woman.  The real Tuffisa had changed beyond recognition; she is now blonde, elegant, gracious and decidedly voluptuous (not that I can talk!).  The weird bit came when she introduced me to her partner, since she was the woman I had thought was Tuffisa herself.   She turned out to be really nice, and it was good to see Tuffy again after such a very long time; but it did give me a funny turn to start with.  Is it odd of me to have been spooked by an old friend’s new partner looking so like the adolescent appearance of the old friend? 

Then on Tuesday night I was at the wonderful “Slava’s Snow Show” (SEE THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T- IT’S BRILLIANT!!) and two rows in front of me was a chap with whom I could have sworn I used to do amateur drama, back in the day.  He seemed to be with his family, and I used to have a terrific crush on him when he was single, so in the circumstances I didn’t like to butt in.  The last time I had seen him was while I was a student, when he was a tall, handsome Malcolm in “Macbeth”, and I was doing costumes.  When I thought about it I realised this must have been nearly fifteen years ago, and that gave me a funny feeling, too.  It just doesn’t feel that long.

The moral of this (other than “Hi, ‘Malcolm’, if you’re reading this!”) is Tempus Fugit.  Time flies, so have fun, do things that interest you, and don’t let life just slip away. 

In the which spirit, I have decided to try and do something creative every day during 2012.  I’m hoping that by making my definition of “creative” as open as possible I can avoid the usual backsliding and collapse of New Year’s Resolutions.  After all, do something creative covers a pretty wide remit.  So far I have made notes, written a bit more of a story, and made more notes about something else.  Even if all I do is make notes, I’ll still achieve something if I make a few every single day...  That’s the idea, anyway.

The other big thing I like to do in January is to think about the highlights of the past year. So here is my list of “Immies” for last year:

The Imogen Awards 2011

Best concerts:

“Infernal Dance”, the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Bartok season, was everything one could wish -  thrilling and revelatory; the Violin concerto no 2 with Christian Tetzlaff, Yefim Bronfmann showing off in the Piano concertos, the delicious “Wooden Prince” Suite, the complete “Miraculous Mandarin”, a marvellous performance of “Contrasts”...  The whole thing concluded with a gobsmacking “Bluebeard”.  Marvellous!

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/bartok/

Prom 32 – Christian Tetzlaff (again – oh swoon) playing the Brahms concerto superbly, followed by the extraordinary “Das Klagende Lied” with the BBCSO under Edward Gardner.

Prom 41 – the BBCSO again, under Mark Wigglesworth, in a lovely programme, mainly of Britten, ending with a life-enhancingly energetic “Spring Symphony”.

Best exhibition:

Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Dulwich Picture Gallery.  No contest!  This runs for a couple more days, finishing at the end of this weekend, so if you like powerful dynamic landscape painting, hurry down to Dulwich...

Best dance:

I have been seeing a lot of ballet this year.  I’m not quite sure why, but for me it is perhaps the most consistently thrilling of all the performed arts.  This year was particularly good:

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Christopher Wheeldon for the Royal Ballet.  This was simply gorgeous, and tremendous fun!

“Metamorphosis” by Arthur Pita at the Linbury Studio Theatre.  An extraordinary new piece; deeply terrifying and deeply moving.

The ENB “Black and White” mixed bill was excellent, especially the revival of “Suite en Blanc”.  At the risk of sounding daft I am going to say it - the moment the curtain goes up on that panorama of dancers is practically worth the ticket price on its own.

The many “Manons” of the Royal Ballet!  I saw four performances in total over the year – three in the summer and another one in the autumn.  All were excellent, and it was marvellous to have a chance to see the subtle differences of interpretation between performers.

The Royal Ballet’s mixed bills were excellent this year: Asphodel Meadows/Enigma Variations/Gloria and the one that included Ashton’s “Rhapsody” both epitomised everything that is going right for the RB at the moment; ravishing beauty, emotional truth, and technical mastery at every level, from the principals right down to the newest members of the corps. 

Best World Music

Ealing Global Festival.  What a great day out this local mini-WOMAD is every year!

Best opera

La Bohème at the ENO.  I caught one of the last performances of the run; it’s a lovely production with great sets and naturalistic direction.  Elizabeth Llewellyn was a revelation; she certainly ought to wind up as a very big star indeed.  She has a glorious voice and she can act.  She’s also very beautiful.  A perfect Mimí in a perfectly-judged production.

“Pelléas et Mélisande” at the Barbican (concert performance).  No staging at all, just excellent singers lined up in front of an excellent orchestra, all led by an excellent conductor.  Favourite Baritone was an intense, passionate Pelléas and Laurent Naouri a magnificent and tragic Golaud.

Best individual performers:

1)      Ballet:

Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo in Swan Lake, for a partnership of regal scale and brilliance.  La Rojo was even better in the beautiful in “Marguerite and Armand”, a real cry-into-your-lap performance.

Steven McRae; passionate and doomed in “The Rite of Spring”, febrile and anguished as Prince Siegfried in “Swan Lake”, or just showing off his bravura chops in “Rhapsody”; every little thing he does is magic...

Edward Watson, astonishing in “Metamorphosis”.

The lovely Hikaru Kobayashi getting a chance to shine, and seizing it with both hands, as Princess Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty”.

2)      Opera:

Elizabeth Llewellyn in “La Bohème” at the ENO – see above.

Kristine Opolais in “Madame Butterfly” at the Royal Opera was terrific and had me crying my eyes out.

Stuart Skelton, John Tomlinson and Iain Paterson, all deeply moving in “Parsifal”.

3)      Concert:

This has been rather a year for virtuosos:

Nikolai Lugansky’s fabulous solo recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, playing Chopin, Brahms and Liszt.

Christian Tetzlaff playing Brahms at the Proms and Bartok at the Festival Hall.

Gil Shaham restoring the Bruch violin concerto no 1 from saccharine to stunner in Prom 62.

Stephen Hough playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto no 1 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer.

And last but not least

The ever-magnificent Sarah Connolly, heart-breaking in “Das Lied von der Erde” at the Festival Hall last February.  Worth missing part of The DipGeek’s birthday party for (and I do not say that lightly, as The DipGeek throws a good party).

May 2012 be as good, culturally and in other ways! 

Another Friday

It's Friday, it's gone five o'clock, and I am about to start a week of annual leave.  A week of fresh Cornish air, fresh Cornish fish, strong Cornish cider and scary Cornish clifftop paths!  Possibly even all at the same time...

I've been ridiculously busy at work, and haven't even written the ghost of a shadow of a review of the new "Eugene Onegin" at the ENO, or of the excellent Royal Ballet triple bill I saw with my Mum last weekend, or even I think of the previous RB mixed bill - the one with the stunning revival of "Marguerite and Armand" and cry-your-eyes-out "Requiem".  The more recent one continued in the emotion-wrenching range, with "Asphodel Meadows", "Enigma Variations" and MacMillan's "Gloria".  Magnificent. I am getting a veritable feast of dancing so far this autumn.  At this late date I don't think I can single out individuals; besides, the whole company are at the top of their game.  Okay, perhaps a special mention for the wonderful Marguerite of Tamara Rojo.  And Ed Watson's tragic, tortured soldier in Gloria.  And - no, I mustn't, I could be hear all night otherwise.

"Eugene Onegin" although not quite to the "magnificent" line was fairly close; Amanda Echalaz a rivetting, passionate Tatyana, Toby Spence a gorgeous (& gorgeous-voiced!) Lensky.  There were some odd directorial decisions (the Larin estate certainly had a very beautiful barn, but I never got why Tatyana slept in it rather than in, well, a bedroom.  Like normal people.) and a rather wooden Onegin let the side down a bit.  Some fabulously beautiful sets and very well-directed crowd scenes compensated, but Echalaz's thrilling performance is the biggest reason to see this - she is definitely a star in the making.

And now I have nothing to do except finish my packing, drink a beer with my (rather piece-meal, night-before-holiday, using-up-oddments-in-a-curry) supper, and get an early night.  Tomorrow morning, to Paddington, and the train west...

Alice in wonderful-land

Last night I went to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Christopher Wheeldon’s new two-act ballet at the Royal Opera House. It was something like the third performance – but then, they are only doing six. My mum is gnashing her teeth, as there were no matinees, and she would have loved to see it. Now I’ll be going to see her this weekend and I’m afraid I’ll ratchet her frustration up a notch - because she’s bound to ask how “Alice” went, and I’ll have to be honest. “Alice” is brilliant.

It’s mad, too, of course, but then “Alice in Wonderland” ought to be. It's very funny and great fun. It has amazing design and staging, looks stunning, and manages to graft a moderately logical story onto Carroll’s original tale without crippling it in the process. And it is packed with lovely, expressive, true classical dance. Mr Wheeldon can feel very, very proud of himself; he’s given the Company an out-and-out winner. This should stay in the repertoire for a long time, or I’ll eat my hat.

The design is a major element, it’s true, possibly more so than in an older, more established piece. It’s hard to imagine the Cheshire Cat sequences, for example, being done with other designs – but then, if it is a success and supposing another company wants to acquire it into their repertoire in ten years time, Mr Wheeldon will still be a young fella then, and can tweak things if necessary to accommodate a different designer’s vision. In the meantime, well, Covent Garden has the technical facilities to do something that requires complicated sets, multiple drop curtains, forward and back projections, marionettes and butoh-style puppetry and so forth, so why shouldn’t they use what they’ve got? Just as they have the means, in casting terms, to fill the stage to the brim with dancers (looking at the curtain call I was thinking “good grief, am I dreaming or is practically everyone in the Company on stage right now?”) and to field performers of the calibre of Sarah Lamb, Federico Bonelli and Tamara Rojo as the second cast…

I don’t want to just write a string of superlatives (I think I do too much of that as it is), so I’ll shut up now and finish by saying, if you possibly can, get a day ticket for one of the three remaining performances next week. You won’t regret it.

Some kind of wonderful...

I was at the ballet last night. It was a triple bill, with two pieces I’d seen before, one of which (Christopher Wheeldon’s “Electric Counterpoint”) I love and the other of which (Mats Ek’s “Carmen”) worked a lot better for me on the second viewing. The third piece was new, and terrific; Liam Scarlett’s “Asphodel meadows”. One of those occasions when you come out of the auditorium thinking “Wow!” because your expectations have been so greatly exceeded. “Asphodel meadows” is full of images of love and loss, yearning and rejection, grief and death but also of life being held to and entered into with joy (being danced to Poulenc’s gorgeous, jazzy, haunting Double Piano Concerto is a plus, too). On this evidence, Mr Scarlett will go far.

His work is deceptively simple; lyrical, nuanced, emotionally truthful and visually delicate. Traditional in layout and content, it is profoundly not deracinated, but draws on tradition and moves forward in its company without either sneering at it or cringing to it (oh dear, please excuse that ugly metaphor).

I suppose it's partly the result of five years at Art School, but I am deeply suspicious of iconoclasm. So often it seems to me that the iconoclast has nothing else to say beyond their challenge to convention; they are relying on the deification of the rebel in contemporary culture to make their name and swing their fame. But challenge without content is ultimately meaningless, and is dependent on an acceptance of the (crass and false) notion that the past must, by its very nature, be no good.

Mr Scarlett takes the harder but infinitely better path, not denying the worth of his antecedents but developing his work from the roots of what has come before, unafraid to be himself and to use his own ideas and language, as these grow out of that rootstock. With young choreographers like him and Wheeldon around, contemporary ballet can look to a future both secure and deeply exciting.

As regards the other two pieces, I’m still a bit distracted by the recorded voices in “Electric Counterpoint” (Ed Watson doesn’t like his hands? Silly him. He has very nice hands) but the dancing is simply thrilling. “Carmen” remains a bonkers, but surprisingly effective, distillation/revision of the Carmen story. Interestingly, it is a good contrast to Liam Scarlett’s work, illustrating almost exactly the point I was trying to make about tradition and iconoclasm. The least interesting parts of “Carmen” are the most deliberately challenging elements; all the shouting (boring idea), the image of Carmen pulling a red silk ribbon out of Escamillo’s crotch, the comically overt sexuality (all those men rolling around the floor playing with their giant cigars – oh please [not, I hasten to add, that I’d object to Gary Avis rolling on my floor playing with his giant cigar] – it’s just so childishly obvious as a theatrical metaphor). But on the topic of José’s violence and his neuroses, Carmen’s passionate wilfulness, Micaela’s mixture of possessiveness and idealistic romanticism, it hits the spot. And the cast were top notch. Tamara Rojo just is Carmen, Thomas Whitehead’s José is appropriately scary, and it’s good to see the lovely Bennet Gartside getting to show off his bravura chops as Escamillo – and to wear gold lurex, which probably also doesn’t come his way every day.

In the foyer on the way out I saw Edward Watson talking to Christopher Wheeldon. I’m afraid I did a double-take and grinned at them both like an idiot. Mr Wheeldon noticed (he got that “oh sh*t do I know this woman?” expression for a second), so I hurried off before I embarrassed myself any further.

It reminded me of the thing I’m always touched by about great performing artists. They do their thing, and knock my socks off, and then they shower and put on street clothes, go and get a bite to eat and go home on the tube, and feed the cat, or take the dog to the post box for a late-night pee; and so to bed, just like anyone. Yet up they get in the morning and go to work, and prepare to knock my socks off again. What can it be like, to have that sort of talent, and for that astonishing ability to be just part of one’s normal life, the way working at Kew is part of my normal life these days?

This morning I had to queue for ten minutes to vote. I’ve never queued before, and nor had any of the other people in the line – we were all talking about how unexpected it was (in between cooing over a very sweet dog who was accompanying his mistress and heaving huge theatrical sighs while he waited). Everyone said things like “This time it might matter” and “I want to make a point” and “I think this could be an important election”. I find this pleasing. I realise thirty ordinary Chiswick citizens is hardly a representative section of society, but they all seemed to be quite fired up about people-power. If nothing else, this sort of feeling may mean a slightly better turn-out than in recent years.

The results, of course, are in the hands of god. As is the question of whether I get a Greek holiday this year, what with volcanoes and general strikes and all… We live in interesting times.

Friday evening

Whoof, Friday already, thank goodness…

I’m on a list of volunteers for a clinical trial at the moment and am drinking a pot of sickly-sweet orange-flavouring-flavoured liquid each morning before breakfast – it’s a new health drink, supposedly intended to reduce hunger pangs and cravings between meals. Which it does, for me, by dint of giving me vile indigestion. I’m having trouble stomaching food at all, I feel so dreadful; I’m blown up with gas, am unable to help periodically belching like a marine, and am permanently uncomfortable with heartburn. If I’m in the control group, gods help me…

But I get two days off at the weekend. Thank goodness.

Let’s talk about something else.

Last night I was at the Royal Ballet; a triple bill, and a mixed bag. I’m a big fan of Zenaida Yanowsky, and “Seven Deadly Sins” was made on her; she’s just come back to work after a few months off, post-baby, and I was glad to see her in action again, but frankly I’m not that impressed with the ballet. It looked an awful lot to me like one deadly sin (guess which) in seven semi-differentiated forms. A very good cast, but basically uninvolving, and less-than-inspired choreography with far too many splayed legs.

The second piece was Mats Ek’s “Carmen” which was weird. Effective, but weird. A completely, deeply bizarre piece of work, a very peculiar set, thoroughly strange costumes, and very in-your-face, I-have-to-be-different choreography; but, in the end, powerful and convincing. Tamara Rojo was born to play Carmen, Lauren Cuthbertson was severe, snakily sinuous and creepy in the Micaëla role, and the blokes were all good. Oddly enough, though, the highlight of the piece was a terrific solo for a woman mourning the officer murdered by José, danced with riveting passion by a young lass called (I think) Melissa Hamilton.

Finally, and fabulously, Christopher Wheeldon’s “DGV - Dance à Grande Vitesse”. This was a real wow, a knockout, glorious piece of beautiful, exciting, almost totally non-narrative dancing, with a dazzling score by Michael Nyman. The corps were on the top of their game, and the octet of soloists I saw was to die for. Eric Underwood and Sergei Polunin are two bright young up-and-comings with great futures ahead of them. Leanne Benjamin was as wonderful as ever; Edward Watson was athletic and intense as usual and a joy to watch. Mara Galeazzi and Lauren Cuthbertson were also both excellent. For me the cream of the crop was young Ms Hamilton again, breathtakingly good in a big rôle full of twisting stretches and difficult balances, originally made for Darcey Bussell, and the marvellous Gary Avis partnering her with his usual excellent and attentive care. I’ve never understood why he isn’t a huge star; he’s tall and powerful but possessed of tremendous natural grace, has both strength and tenderness as a partner, can act, and is, in a quirky sort of way, very good looking, with strong facial bones and large eyes, and a sudden broad smile full of delight – a smile which came out rather a lot last night. This particular duet he and Melissa Hamilton danced was simply gorgeous. “DGV” lifted the evening from hit-and-miss to solid hit, and Mr Avis and Ms Hamilton lifted “DGV” from hit into absolute stunner.