Talk:The Royal Ballet/Archive 1

Archive 1

Various comments

1. If lists go below Soloists (and why should they?) they need to be constantly updated. These days dancers are surprisingly mobile between companies, and lists tend to be always somewhat out of date. And why should lists go below those who are definably notable in WP terms? It's rewarding for the younger dancers themselves to be listed, but other than that the list of lower categories appears to serve no obvious purpose.

2. There is an almost total absence of references to authoritative printed encyclopaedias, histories and other reliable sources. Web sources are great for covering conflicts and other newsworthy stuff, but relatively weak on reliability.

3. Many angles on the ballet are weak or lacking in this article at present. A great company should hold to the highest standards in performance, obviously, but also in music, scenery, costume and the training and development of the younger dancers (the latter does have a sub-page). The RB has been criticised by many who love it for some or all of the following:

Cost and quality of stage and scenery design.

Programme of education and training: its inability to bring through young dancers of quality in sufficient numbers (eg home-grown male dancers, lack of...).

Its programme choices (covered to some extent in article).

Its behind-the-scene facilities are now excellent, and deserve a description in the article.

All this and more would help the article towards GA/FA status, IMHO. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Response

I accept there are many holes in the article, but hopefully other people can fill in some of the gaps. I do have to question some of your statements however, about supposed criticisms that you say have been directed at the Royal Ballet.

The cost and quality of stage and scenery design - I don't know where you get the impression that this has been criticised - both the opera and ballet are regularly nominated for awards for the standard of work produced by their designers in all aspects, costume, scenery and lighting. To my knowledge, in recent years, quite the reverse is true, with many Royal Ballet productions being praised for the high standard of design, particularly for some of the new works by Wayne McGregor.

Programme of education and training - perhaps worth addressing on the Royal Ballet School article. However, again, this is opinion that needs to be handled carefully and not misrepresented. The standard of the Royal Ballet Schools training has not been criticised, nor has its ability to train home grown talent. What has been questioned is why there are so few British principal dancers in the Royal Ballet. The majority of dancers who join the company are still drawn from the Royal Ballet School and there are significant numbers of home grown dancers at every level of the company except principal level and that is what the Royal Ballet have been criticised for.

Behind the scenes facilities - Definitely not for discussion here I think, this topic should be addressed in the article about the opera house itself.

Program choices - As you say, I had dealt with this already, as this was really only an issue during Ross Stretton's tenure, although there were some criticisms of Monica Mason's programming initially, people suggesting she was too 'safe', but again, since the Royal Ballet have had Wayne McGregor on board and have been commissioning new works every five minutes, the programming has been well received.

Crazy-dancing (talk) 13:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Section heading capitalisation

The capitalisation of the section headings has been in flux, as with this edit of 16 July 2009, and this breaks incoming links and redirects, such as Thiago Soares → The Royal Ballet#Principal dancers. I am happy to fix these redirects once the section headings have settled down and are in accordance with WP:HEAD. In general, the form "Principal dancers" is called for, unless it is a proper noun, which it might be if it is a title. I assume that "Artistic Directors" is more appropriate than "Artistic directors" for this reason. Can someone more familiar with the subject work out the proper capitalisations. -- ToE^T 06:13, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I have used fully capitalised headings for all the dancer ranks and job titles such as Principal Dancer, or Artistic Director, as you have pointed out. I don't know how correct this is, but it seemed a natural thing to do considering that these are titles. I did look at a few examples on the Royal Ballet website and in some of their printed literature, and they do also capitalise these titles in the same way. Crazy-dancing (talk) 09:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Sources for company member updates?

What are the reliable sources for the updates to company members? this update removes Carlos Acosta and adds Tarja de Silva, but Acosta is still mentioned on the (quite possibly out of date) ROH web page and I find no confirmation of de Silva's appointment... I'm rather inclined to revert this change and my subsequent correction in the absence of an edit summary or reliable source, but I will wait a few hours for any comment here. --Mirokado (talk) 14:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Reverted now. No indication that Acosta has left, de Silva is a Sri Lankan model and dancer, but no mention anywhere of her specialising in ballet or joining RB. --Mirokado (talk) 20:03, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Company updates

Hi all. I'd like to suggest a few edits to the company information:

• Matthew Golding, Natalia Osipova and Sergei Polunin are all appearing this season as guest artists (and should be listed as principals)
• William Tuckett is also appearing this season as a guest artist (and should be listed as a principal character artist)
• Jonathan Howells, soloist, is Assistant Ballet Master
• Correct punctuation of Meaghan Grace Hinkis (remove hyphen)

As I work at the Royal Opera House, home of The Royal Ballet, I have a conflict of interest (please see my user page for more info). If other editors agree with these changes and would like to make them, that'd be great. Otherwise, if there are no objections, I'm happy to make them myself. The source for these changes (and all company information in the new season) is Royal Ballet Yearbook 2012/13. Oberon Books, 2012. ISBN: 9781849432078. Many thanks, OperaBalletRose (talk) 16:15, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

please feel free to make the edits. No issue here on conflict of interest. The in-line references should also be updated to reflect the new ROH website design. Lee McLernon 08:26, 4 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bbombbardier (talk • contribs)

Great - many thanks! I've made those amendments and also changed the references so that they link to the new pages on the ROH website. Best, OperaBalletRose (talk) 16:26, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I've also added the new company logo to the page. OperaBalletRose (talk) 16:13, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Prima ballerina assoluta

The line about Roberto Bolle in this section has troubled me for some time, both because I don't agree that to be designated Étoile is similar to the designation of prima ballerina assoluta and because Bolle's only connection with the RB is as guest artist. I'm therefore deleting this sentence. Lee McLernon 07:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bbombbardier (talk • contribs)