3 short beautiful videos from Houston Ballet

Les Patineurs


In the Night





(Robbins may have been a pain to work with -- see this week's Ballet Trivia Quiz -- but he sure made beautiful ballets!)

Birmingham February 2012 trip

CWT Victor Travel

101 - 8800 Dufferin Street, Concord, ON L4K 0C5

TICO registration #1892647

presents

Tours en l'air

Ballet Holidays

escorted by

Canada's Word Lady, Katherine Barber

Birmingham, Oxford, and the Cotswolds

24 February – 1 March 2012

7 days, 6 nights, 2 ballet performances

Birmingham Royal Ballet

Hobson's Choice

a comic tale of boots, booze, love, and laughter

from award-winning choreographer David Bintley

Daphnis and Chloe, The Two Pigeons

uplifting stories of young love’s survival when tested to breaking-point

featuring some of Frederick Ashton's most ravishing pas de deux, like this one:

Friday 24 February

Arrive Birmingham; check in to Holiday Inn, located 2 minutes walk from the Hippodrome Theatre. Early evening: Meet a BRB Dancer event or Royal Ballet Sinfonia recital.

Saturday 25 February

Day at leisure. Suggested activities: visit Birmingham's fine art gallery, with its impressive collection of pre-Raphaelite art, and take a tour of the Town Hall that looks like a Greek temple, both nearby. Also interesting are the jewellery museum and the Cadbury Experience chocolate museum. Evening: 3-course welcome dinner and performance of Hobson's Choice, about a feisty young woman defying her father to marry a poor shoemaker.

Sunday 26 February

Daytrip by private coach. Travel through the picturesque Cotswolds to the beautiful historic Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill. Visit the palace. Return directly to hotel.

Monday 27 February

Day trip by train to Oxford. Private guided walking tour of colleges.

­Tuesday 28 February

Day at leisure. Suggested activity: take a short train ride to nearby Stratford-upon-Avon. **Possible BRB event to be confirmed.

Wednesday 29 February

Day at leisure. Three-course farewell dinner before evening performance of Daphnis and Chloe and The Two Pigeons.
Thursday 1 March

Check out of hotel; leave Birmingham.

REGISTRATION AND DEPOSIT DUE DATE: 26 September 2011

Total Package CA$1599 per person based on double occupancy

Single supplement: CA$250

All prices valid till 26 September 2011

LAND-ONLY PACKAGE allows you the flexibility of arranging travel from your most convenient departure point, on the dates and times you prefer, and to extend your stay if you wish. Please call Victor Travel at 416-736-6010 to book your air travel.

Package price includes:

* Premium orchestra seats for 2 performances

* Birmingham Royal Ballet Dancer Talk or Royal Ballet Sinfonia Recital

* 1-year membership in the Friends of Birmingham Royal Ballet, including two issues of the magazine Entrechat 

* 6 nights twin share accommodation with breakfast in the centrally located three-star Holiday Inn Smallbrook Queensway (travellers wishing to share will be put in touch with one another)

* Day excursion by private coach to the Cotswolds and Blenheim Palace, with accredited tour guide

* Admission to Blenheim Palace

* Day excursion by train to Oxford

* Private walking tour of Oxford

* Two 3-course meals

* Ballet enrichment program: ballet notes and informal pre-performance talks and post-performance reviews with tour leader

* All taxes, service fees, and surcharges

Not included:

* Airfare

* Items of a personal nature, e.g. telephone calls

* Meals and transfers not specifically mentioned in this itinerary

* Beverages with meals

* Cancellation and hospital/medical insurance

Terms and Conditions:

Non-refundable initial deposit payment of CA$750 per person is required at time of registration, no later than 26 September 2011, to secure your space for this package**.

Single supplement, optional airfare (price available on request) and optional cancellation and hospital/medical insurance are also payable at this time.

Final payment due 2 January 2012, and total package price is fully non-refundable.

All cancellations must be received in writing at CWT Victor Travel to the attention of Lucy Nati.

RBC out-of-province health insurance and trip cancellation insurance are available through Carlson Wagonlit Victor Travel and STRONGLY RECOMMENDED. Price will vary according to birthdate. Premium must accompany the deposit and is non-refundable.

For more information: toursenlair@gmail.com or 416.693.4496

BALLET MAKES LIFE BETTER - GET MORE BALLET OUT OF LIFE WITH TOURS EN L'AIR

**The deposit is fully refundable in the event of cancellation of the trip by the travel agent

BRITISH BALLET BARGAIN!

Birmingham Royal Ballet is a fantastic company with a wonderful repertoire, both deserving to be better known. The two programs they are offering in February 2012 are guaranteed to warm the cockles of your heart (a perfect Valentine's gift!). This could be booked as early as this May.

AND IT'S A BARGAIN!

It looks like a trip could be done for about $2,000Cdn per person double occupancy (in addition, airfare to Birmingham from Toronto is currently about $1200, but as always these trips are not just for people from Toronto; you can join in from anywhere). All prices are just estimates for now, and it could be possibly less for a larger group. For this, you would get:

• 6 nights (February 24-March 1) with breakfast in a comfortable 3-star hotel located 2 minutes walk from the theatre and 2 minutes walk from the train station

• Frederick Ashton's Daphnis and Chloe (to Ravel's shimmering score) and his intensely romantic Two Pigeons, which, the first time I saw it (danced, in fact, by BRB), left me with what can only be described as a literal warm fuzzy feeling, as the entire audience at the Met in New York leapt to their feet and roared their approval. Watch this rehearsal video of the heart-melting final reconciliation pas de deux with BRB' s Robert Parker and Nao Sakuma and you will understand! http://www.brb.org.uk/Pigeons-studio-2009.html

• David Bintley's comic masterpiece Hobson's Choice, about a feisty young woman defying her father to marry a poor shoemaker. You can see a clip here:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYq0txUC-2w

• 2 three-course dinners

• day trip by private coach through the beautiful Cotswolds, stopping to visit some picturesque villages, to Blenheim Palace, home of the Dukes of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill

• day trip by train to Oxford with guided walking tour of the colleges and gardens and Inspector Morse's favourite pubs, and the otherworldly experience of evensong sung by one of the renowned college choirs

Birmingham itself has an excellent art gallery with one of the world's finest collections of pre-Raphaelite art, a town hall that looks like a Greek temple, a renowned symphony orchestra, a fascinating jewellery museum, pleasant canal district and botanical garden, and, as home to the international headquarters of Cadbury, a chocolate museum! Stratford-upon-Avon is less than an hour away. The pretty cathedral town of Worcester is a short train ride away through the picturesque Malvern Hills. You can even pop up to London in two hours.

All comments and suggestions welcome! Please let me know if it appeals (as usual, I am not asking for a commitment, just trying to gauge the amount of interest so that I can proceed to the costing).

Kobayashi Ballet The Invitation

Last night I saw Noriko Kobayashi Ballet Theatre perform their "English" mixed program.

Noriko Kobayashi Ballet Theatre, a small but ambitious Tokyo-based company founded in 1973, specializes in performing the 20th-century repertoire of the Royal Ballet, keeping alive many masterpieces of the Ashton, MacMillan and de Valois repertoire rarely seen elsewhere. Their mixed program performed August 19 and 20 in Tokyo was no exception. "Mixed" was the word, as the combination of Ashton's frothy display of classical virtuosity from 1933, Les Rendezvous, with MacMillan's dark and tormented The Invitation, followed by his fun-filled Elite Syncopations, made for a very varied night.

Female principal Ayako Ono's lovely lightness and joyousness, with plenty of Ashtonian épaulement and beautiful arms, were the highlight of Les Rendezvous, a typically charming Ashton work in which "Walkers Out" meet in a park and dance. Unfortunately, her partner, Makoto Nakamura, performed somewhat mechanically and without much elegance or musicality. Indeed, the male dancers, many of them borrowed from Tokyo's New National Theatre, were the weakest part of the company; there was a notable lack of pointed feet in jumps. Auber's music, at times a little bombastic, was nonetheless dancy. The costumes, to the original design by William Chappell, white romantic tutus for the women edged with pink, were suitably charming, although the pink-ribbon headdresses looked unfortunately like gift bows taped to their heads.

Elite Syncopations, which usually has western audiences in fits of laughter, fell a little flat. The requisite charisma and pizzazz are perhaps qualities that do not come so easily to Japanese-trained dancers. The Calliope Rag solo performed by Kizuna Takahata, which needs a lot of sexpot glamour to come across the footlights, was simply perky. Undermined from the start by the fact that both dancers were the same height, the pas de deux for the tall girl and short boy (Ikuko Kusumoto and Atsushi Sasaki) failed to elicit even so much as a ripple of laughter from the audience on opening night. The second cast (Yuki Ohmori and Akimitsu Yahata) were much more successful at capturing the comedy of this pas de deux.

Ripples of laughter were the last thing on anyone's mind during The Invitation, a one-act story ballet depicting the loss of an Edwardian-era teenage girl's innocence when she is raped by an older man visiting her family. This ballet is a little like a Mayerling in embryo, and, watching the story inexorably unfold, the audience feels the same sensation of impending horror. The whole cast acquitted themselves well with finely delineated characters. As the girl, a part created by Lynn Seymour, Akiko Shimazoe was excellent. A particularly moving moment was when she tottered on not-fully-pointed pointe after being raped. As The Husband, guest artist Robert Tewsley displayed compelling stage presence and dramatic intensity. Convincingly remorseful after the rape, he nonetheless quickly collected himself to walk off arm in arm with his wife as if nothing had happened.

Ms. Kobayashi is to be commended for presenting such an audience-challenging program, especially a mere week after Japanese balletomanes had sated themselves on several weeks of classical warhorses and international guest stars in the World Ballet Festival.