Thoughts on a man who has since produced the goods...

I have been trying to tidy up some computer files full of out of date notes, and I found this - my thoughts after the last time I got to see two different casts in the same ballet programme at Covent Garden, back in the autumn. Since it contains a bit of musing on Nehemiah Kish, the chap I saw coming out of his shell to such excellent effect last weekend, I thought I'd pop it down in here, for my own reference as much as anything. Yes, more ballet-ramblings; sorry. But it's amusing and pleasing to see I was more-or-less on the button with him.

"I also went to a second performance of the Royal Ballet Mixed Bill; sheer self indulgence on my part. I had booked it because I read in an interview with Kim Brandstrup that he was fascinated by how his new ballet was shaping up differently depending on which of the two casts were dancing – he actually said something like “it’s almost like doing two different ballets”. Then a couple of days after I had treated myself to a second ticket for a performance with the other cast, poor Alina Cojocaru injured herself and had to drop out, and Ed Watson and Leanne Benjamin stepped up to do every night. So I got a double dose of them – at which I am not complaining (complaining? – at wonderful Leanne Benjamin and gorgeous Ed Watson?!), though I would have loved to see Cojocaru and Kobborg too. The rest of the casting for the whole bill had to shift around, too; I didn’t see quite who I had expected, either time.

Still, it is sheer luxury to see two performances of the same programme, and to be able to compare casts. I went to the Saturday matinee on the 16th, and the evening show on the 30th; the second performance in the run, and the last.

To be frank, first time around I thought “La Valse” looked a bit messy. The dancing was passionate but rather untidy and the final image was spoiled by the central sextet having trouble getting going – they were still trotting briskly in a circle as the curtain fell, when they should have been whirling madly round with the girls’ feet well off the ground. This Saturday, by contrast, everything was perfect, really elegant and polished, and the dramatic undertones came across strongly.

There is something weird about “La Valse”; Ravel’s music has a tension one doesn’t expect in a waltz, and Ashton's choreography hints at this same sense of danger. The men leap in unison as if bursting with sublimated stress, and there is an increasing feeling of foreboding as the dancing grows ever wilder without quite breaking its conventions; it is as though these people are trapped in some doomed kingdom, dancing forever in their fairytale evening dress. The best image I can come up with is of the citizens of the Land of Lost-Hope, in Susanna Clarke’s marvellous “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell”… These dancers are beautiful, yes, but also haunted and haunting.

“Invitus, invitam” knocked my socks off, and Watson and Benjamin were both dazzling, both nights. It’s one of the most nuanced pieces of contemporary ballet I’ve seen, and passing straight from “La Valse” to this was a good judgement call. It’s as if the general disquiet of “La Valse” has moved into a personal level; the device of the second couple apparently running through the blocking of the piece in rehearsal clothes, their own relationship lightly sketched in around the choreography of the central couple, suggests the timelessness of this story of heartbreak and separation. The lovers in the story must part, however much they long for another outcome, and even those to whom this is just a story to enact will have their own stories also, and their own partings.

I must say, though, following this with “Winter Dreams”, with its equally sad story, does leave one feeling pretty emotionally drained by the second interval. It started to seem as if the whole evening were one long descent into a realm of loss and sorrow.

For the first “Winter Dreams” performance I saw, the leads were Tamara Rojo and Nehemiah Kish; a mismatch, basically. I don’t want to be rude about the new guy – he dances well, but he looked oddly controlled, even cautious, for someone supposedly in the throes of an overwhelming passion. He was elegant (he has lovely arms) but his acting is on the quiet side and he looked downright subdued beside Ms Rojo, who as always was acting her socks off. But I do think it was a mismatch as much as anything. The best comparison I can think of is of what would have happened if you had ever been able to put Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi on the same stage; Callas would have acted Tebaldi into the orchestra pit, given her famously-intense histrionic oomph. And yet, in the long run, Tebaldi was the better singer, and the one who had the confidence to let the drama that is inherent in the music come through, rather than imposing her own drama upon it.

So I hope it will be with Mr Kish, as he gets the feel of the House. For all I know he’s been used to a smaller auditorium with better sight lines (CG is a bit of a barn, after all), and have developed an acting style to match – he may just need to open up and relax a bit more. He’s tall, which can only be useful in a Company with some (ahem) less-than-tall fellas, he’s got a pleasant quirky face (& a splendidly long nose), and he did a lovely job in the second cast of “La Valse”, partnering Lauren Cuthbertson beautifully, so I’m prepared to give him a chance and see how he shapes up as he settles in.

The other parts were well cast and well danced, especially Jonathan Cope as the unhappy Kulygin, and Itziar Mendizabel as Olga. I saw Cope again on the 30th, and he was even more nuanced and subtle second time around. His solos were almost painful to watch, so perfectly did they express pain. It’s a joy to see him in action again – dare one hope for more of him on stage again?

The Masha and Vershinin on the 30th were Marianela Nuñez and Carlos Acosta. Wow, is Ms Nuñez shaping up into a deeply wonderful dancer! I first saw her in action ages ago as one of Swanilda’s friends in “Coppelia” - a charming girl with a huge beaming smile; then as Lise in “La Fille Mal Gardée” – another charming smiling girl; then as the Lilac Fairy – a beautiful embodiment of warmth and goodness (and pretty charming and smiley, too). Then in “Serenade” she appeared as the girl who arrives late; somehow without ever actually acting (after all, it is a non-narrative ballet) she conveyed a sense of the loneliness of someone who always “arrives too late”, who is perpetually on the outside with no real idea of why. Her delicate and graceful dancing was deeply moving, infused with a beautiful, subtle melancholy. I think she is learning the immensely difficult art of acting within the movement – as certain great opera singers (to extend the earlier Callas v Tebaldi metaphor a little) act within the music – trusting the material to give her the drama, instead of thrusting her own upon it. The results are proving magical; her Masha was utterly heartrending – I found her far more affecting than Rojo, heresy though that may be to say. Acosta, working beside her, was also full of feeling. I keep reading critics saying he ain’t what he used to be – after all, he must be all of thirty-eight – but he still seems pretty splendid to me.

Thank goodness, though, that the bill finished up with some delightfully crisp, sparkly Balanchine; no painful emotions here, just fun and games, the ballet equivalent of downing a glass of fine champagne. After all that heartfelt feeling one really needed it, and I came out humming the Tchaikovsky music happily."

Hectic, but with ballet and more ballet...

Well, it’s been a hectic couple of weeks since I got back from my holiday. Work is at a busy time of the year and our department as a whole is still very short-staffed, although my team is slightly less stretched now that someone has come back from a long period of sick leave. The new computers are still causing hiccoughs assorted; every time I think I’ve got the hang of things I am brought up against another baffling change to the simple “how you do this” issues, with the result that I still feel like a cat chasing my tail a lot of the time. Fire-fighting the illogicality of Windows 7 is a big draw on one’s time and energy.

I haven’t been completely without fun, though. I’ve had a lovely trip to the Wetland Centre, some ballet outings and concerts to go to, plus a trip to the cinema (“Thor”, totally daft but entertaining; nice to see Tom Hiddleston, one of my ideal Gabriel Yeatses, getting a good high profile job, too) and a highly enjoyable birthday party – the sort where intelligent people talk about intelligent things and laugh a lot over a few pints. I’ve been trying to keep on top of the garden, not an easy task in this drought. And I’ve started the tricky and rather emotionally-draining business of giving “Ramundi’s sisters” a third revision. >sigh< It needs to be done, but it’s a job that gets slightly more sticky with each turn around the block.

My ballet outings were all very enjoyable. The latest Triple Bill at the Royal Ballet was a lovely package, except for being too short – none of the three pieces was particularly long, and the first came in at under twenty minutes. Even with longer than average intervals to pad it out, I was home soon after ten pm; but it was a good enough evening that I didn’t feel short-changed. “Ballo della Regina” was the “please sir, I want some more” opener, with Lauren Cuthbertson in lovely, shiny, smiley form as the lead ballerina, skipping through some fiendish footwork as if it were a playground game. She had a scrumptious quartet backing her up, and Sergei Polunin, all huge leaps and cheekbones, was classy as the sole fella.

Next up came a new piece by Wayne McGregor, which has got the critics all at sixes and sevens; like retsina, it seems, you either love it or loathe it. I was high enough up in the house not to be overly distracted by the video backdrop of exploding trucks, and could concentrate on the dancing. I’m never entirely sure I’m convinced by McGregor’s intellectual ideas, but he certainly choreographs incredible stuff from the dancing point of view; elastic off-centre bends, weird shapes, strenuous lifts and general frenzied athleticism all round. Ferociously tricky, it was danced by the small cast with a bravura that was slightly scary.

For a finale we got a revival, much longed-for by me, of Christopher Wheeldon’s “DGV”, a gorgeous non-narrative piece whose lack of a story does not preclude a heartfelt warmth in its series of fluid duets and final, powerfully uplifting ensemble. It’s a thrilling ballet that I could happily watch over and over; and with a cast like this it simply sings. Duet number one brought us a sensuous Laura Morera and Steven McRae’s customary febrile dynamism, duet number two, Zenaida Yanowsky’s long limbed elegance and the steady, modest strength of Eric Underwood. For duet number three I was lucky enough to see Gary Avis and Melissa Hamilton again; this is a luxury partnership of astonishing chemistry, and their ease with one another in this tender, soaring, probably hideously-difficult material is simply dazzling. To finish off, replacing Sarah Lamb and Federico Bonelli, came a decidedly high-calibre piece of back-up casting in the form of Itziar Mendizabal and Nehemiah Kish, two new recruits both of whom I am warming to rapidly. They hadn’t originally been slated to dance this at all, seem to have been put in fairly late in the day, and both looked as though they were loving every minute.

Then came the saga of the “Manon”s. MacMillan’s “Manon” is one of my all-time favourite ballets, and I went to see it back at the beginning of the run in April for a performance featuring the sexy Steven McRae, passionately intense and technically dazzling, and his regular stage partner, the beautiful and elfin Roberta Marquez. Gorgeous!

When I discovered that a performance featuring Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg was being put out on the Big Screen in Trafalgar Square last week, though, I decided I had to go to that – after all, Cojocaru and Kobborg are pretty damned special together, and it was free, and Big Screen screenings are tremendous fun in a slightly surreal way (double decker buses circling, sirens wailing by, aircraft heading into Heathrow as the night sky darkens to deepest phthalo blue…). So I went along, with a fleece and a picnic, and failed to link up with a friend who cried off at the last minute, and was thrilled all over again.

It was a totally different interpretation of the leading roles, with Kobborg playing Des Grieux as an intelligent, mature man of almost heroic decency, and Alina’s Manon the most thoughtful, even moral, I’ve ever seen. I know it sounds odd to call a girl who elects to become a rich man’s kept woman “moral”, but really, you could see her struggling between the choices facing her, knowing that both are, in one way or another, wrong – forswear the man you love and become a whore, or let-down and disobey your beloved brother (and know you are losing your one chance at financial security as well)…

And then my mum called me on Friday to say the friend she was going with to the Saturday matinee (scheduled to be danced by Laura Morera and Federico Bonelli) had called to say she couldn’t come after all, and would I like to join her? Well, Morera and Bonelli were a stunning Tatyana and Onegin last autumn, so I was delighted to say yes. Only to find, on arriving at the Opera House, that Mr Bonelli was injured and was being replaced by Mr Kish – who’s only danced the part once before, and that not with Ms Morera.

Mum was vocal in her disappointment (she feels about Mr Bonelli rather as I do about Messrs Watson and McRae, tall dark Italians being catnip to her in the same way ginger toms are to me); “Who’s this Nehemiah Kish, then? Never heard of him. Where’s he from? How long's he been kicking around?” etc etc – rather embarrassing as one cringes and hopes her well-pitched and rather carrying voice will not reach the ears of a parent, wife, girl~ or boyfriend, or anyone else who’s there to support Mr K... I tried to reassure her but as I hadn’t seen him in action very much, all I could say was fairly bland things about him being tall and a good partner.

So into the theatre we went, and the lights went down, and we were treated to what was for me, completely out of the blue, the best of the three “Manon”s I’ve seen this year, by a good margin.

It’s always hard to explain it, when it happens, but it was one of those performances when everything just comes together. By the time they got to that final terrifying pas de deux, hurtling into despair and death in the Louisiana swamps, I was crying helplessly into my binoculars, totally harrowed.

With two leads who hadn’t been set to dance together, and who therefore can’t have had much rehearsal together, one could have forgiven the odd hesitation or over-careful lift, but in fact they seemed pretty much unfazed by it; there was hardly any sign that they hadn’t been dancing together for years. To my eyes they were well-matched physically, technically and emotionally; their acting styles were complementary (both are subtle and inward actors rather than grand-standing and full-on) and they brought the whole thing alight for me.

The rest of the cast was batting down the order, too, and there were lovely little touches all over the place. José Martín was an excellent Lescaut, perhaps less virtuosic than Ricardo Cervera had been but more complex as a character; Valentino Zucchetti was a terrific Beggar Chief, Gary Avis a really nasty Monsieur GM, Bennett Gartside a really nasty Gaoler – I could burble on for ages listing every bit part who got a credit, as there wasn’t a duff performance to be seen. And from our leads there were lovely clean lines and confident sweeping lifts, kisses that looked as if they were really meant, and all the time that sense of real feeling, of something not thought-thru’ and rehearsed but fresh and immediate.

Laura Morera’s Manon came across as a girl who at the beginning is only just discovering the power her allure gives her, making a journey from innocence to a painful adulthood – a Juliet-like character, trying to make the right decisions, to solve the pull between irreconcilable longings. Mr Kish’s Des Grieux was a classic nice guy, simple and straightforward, kind-hearted, devoted, even perhaps not terribly bright; exactly the sort of decent, honest boy-next-door type she ought to have been able, in a better world, to marry and be happy with.

She knows how to use her stillness to say more than one would think possible; he knows how to use his very beautiful hands and wrists to finish a long, aching line; they both have the technical skill to let the choreography do the talking, rather than trying to over-characterise. The final pas de deux was about as no-holds-barred as I’ve seen it, Manon’s death a shattering moment, Des Grieux not screaming silently as most do but slumping back on his heels, staring at her body in shock; exhausted, bereft, and knowing he’s next.

I’ve been haunted by it ever since.

One more memory

...one more picture from Crete before I get back to reality (which has been rather hectic over the last two and a half weeks).

This isn't the best picture I've taken of Mt Psiloritis, from the sea or otherwise, but it's the only one I've got in an electronic form. It's too hazy, and I'm not quite sure the coastline in the foreground is in focus. But it's still so evocative...

Another memory of Crete...

...namely one of my watercolours.

I was sitting on a rock at the seaside - on Varkotopos beach, the little, rather scruffy town beach five minute's walk from my rented room - and the waves were coming in with just enough of a roll to make a breaker with a good crest on it. If you wanted to swim, you had to make the exciting and slightly undignified walk through the breakers first, to get into water deep enough to have only the swell. Then you could swim, in the rolling, warm blue. I had been swimming earlier and now I was drawing and trying to decide where I was going for lunch, and I saw this woman, elegantly dressed and with big sunglasses on, paddling with a studied stylishness at the water's edge. I thought "Sooner or later she's going to get hit by a big breaker" - and next moment she was. She had the good sense to laugh uproariously at herself as she pulled her soaked skirts up round her thighs, and I painted her quickly, to remind me of a happy moment.

Memories of Crete...

This was my lunch on my last day in Crete - Mythos beer, tzatziki, fresh sesame-seed bread and a vegetable frittata... Good, simple, tasty food, delicious, straightforward and honest. Eaten sitting under a vine arbour, a few yards from the sea. Oh, memories...

Holiday-ay!

It's been a rather hectic week but at last I have got to Friday and I'm about to start a fortnight's annual leave. I'm going to Crete (to Bali, pronounced "Balee", on the north coast between Iraklio and Rethymnon) for one week of it, and relaxing at home for the rest.

I booked this period of leave several months ago, long before our team at work discovered that we were going to be a member of staff down for the foreseeable future. I feel, to be frank, like an absolute cow. I'm leaving my colleagues to try and do, not four people's work between three, as we are currently doing on a daily basis, but four people's work between two. Ouch. But the thing is, I did book my leave ages ago, and I am knackered and stressed and desperately in need of a break - and we have no idea how much longer we are going to be short-staffed... and I simply couldn't bear to knuckle under and cancel my holiday. I'm sorry, ladies; you'll get the chance to stick me in it too, later in the summer, if you want.

In the meantime, as I type this, the thought that I am now free for two whole weeks is beginning to sink in. It's settling into my shoulders and back; all the tension starting to trickle out, at the thought of being able to do nothing but sit in the garden and read for an afternoon if I want to; of finally finishing sewing the poppy-patterned top I've been making for months; of going to the London Wetland Centre to listen to reed warblers and sketch ducklings and goslings... of painting and writing and listening to music and just chilling out...

I am torn between treating myself to supper out tonight or buying something nice to take home to do a share-supper with my flatmates (who are both also stressed). I think I'll do the latter; let's spread the happy mood around a bit. Something nice and mediterranean, with lots of herbs and garlic, and a pudding of some sort, and a bottle of plonk...

I don't know how often I'll have internet access for the next fortnight, then, so I'll say goodnight and see you in two weeks!

Just as well...

...that in another three days I have two weeks annual leave; because one day back at work and I'm shattered. The Busy Season has started, we're still short-staffed and things here are a bit hectic. And the new computers and Windows 7, which arrived with them, are still causing problems. And the printer has stopped talking to me; so now I can only print on the colour printer in the next office, which is wasteful when I'm only printing black and white...

Easter was lovely, and so was the Royal Wedding Bank Holiday. I've managed to relax, but also to see my family, attend a fascinating talk on the Science of Attraction at the Natural History Museum in South Ken, howl my eyes out at the Royal Ballet's "Manon" (by gum, it is turning into Steven McRae's year as far as I'm concerned - what a guy!) and at Favourite Baritone's haunting performance of Mahler's Ruckert-Lieder at the Festival Hall, garden myself into the ground, sit in the sunshine, have a very enjoyable lunch with my friend Louise-Brooks-Bob the Crazy Intern, watch the Royal Wedding on tele, cook, clean, finish re-reading "A Fringe of Leaves" and do some mending...

I've managed to get a late deal on a holiday in Crete, which is brilliant, but now the website of the holiday company is playing up and I have so far been unable to input my passport details - which they have to have, to match me to my booking when I turn up at the airport. Grr. Stupid computers.

I'll have one last try now, and if it still doesn't work then I'm off home, and will try again in the morning. Tomorrow is another day.