At the Theatre

— Good evening, Mr. McDonald! Never expected to meet you.

— Good evening. Mr. Bailey! This is a small world. How are you?

— I am doing fine, thanks. How is life treating you?

— Never felt better in my life. Thanks.

— Pleased to hear it. Incidentally, where do you have a seat?

— In the stalls, row C. and where is your seat?

— In the box close to the stage. So I don't have to use opera glasses.

— Fine. What do you think of the play?

— Frankly speaking I don't like it. The action develops slowly. Some scenes are dull. The cast is not very good. Do you share my opinion?

— Yes, I do. That happens to be a rather poor performance. Have you been to this theatre before?

— I am here for the first time. The hall is beautifully decorated and the chandelier is wonderful.

— I advise you to see "The Twelfth Night" by Shakespeare at this theatre. I am sure you will be impressed.

— I had a chance of seeing the play at the Sovremyennik Theatre in Mos­cow. It was many years ago.

— It would be interesting for you to compare the two performances. Don't you think so?

— I fully agree with you here. I have been dreaming of seeing a play by Shakespeare in this country. So I'll do my utmost to see "The Twelfth Night."

— The lights are going down. In a minute the curtain will be up. We must hurry to the hall.

— Be seeing you later.

(from "Digest")

b) Make up the dialogues based on the model using the phrases from the box:

What's playing at this theatre tonight? What performance do you recommend? Is there any chance of getting tickets?Do you have an extra ticket? Will it be difficult to get tickets for the first night? Do you have any seats (tickets) for Sunday evening? I'd like to reserve two tickets for Saturday performance. What tickets are the cheapest? Where are our seats? Our seats are in the orchestra stalls (in the stalls, in the pit, in the box, in the dress-circle, onthe balcony).

I'd like to leave my things at the cloak-room. Could you give me opera-glasses? During the interval we can go into foyer (refreshment). Please, show our seats. Who is the stage producer? What's on the programme? Where can I see the theatre repertoire? The play is boring. Who is on tour here? I prefer comedy to opera. The concerts of this ensemble are very successful.

READING 6

Pre-reading.

33. Answer the questions:

1. Have you ever watched the ballet? Tell the class about your impressions.
2. What do you know about the famous ballet dancers?

34. Read the dialogue of the famous dancers to get information about their ballet roles.

DIALOGUE: THE DREAM

by Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell

Antoinette Sibley was born in 1939. She studied at Sadler's Wells Ballet School and joined Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1956. Very soon she became a soloist and in 1960 — a principal dancer. Miss Sibley has appeared in all the ballerina roles of the standard repertory. A marvel­lous stylist of exceptional musicality, she created many roles in the ballets by Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan.

Antoinette Sibley today is among the tiny handful ballerinas of international reputation, who made a whole range of ballets entire­ly their own.

Anthony Dowell was born in 1943. He studied at the Sadler's Wells and Royal Ballet School; in 1960 he became a member of the Covent Garden Opera Ballet and a year later moved to Royal Ballet. Dowell was promoted principal dancer in 1966, since when he has be­come one of the very first danseurs nobles of his generation — a dancer of unusual lightness, smoothness and elegance, and an immaculate technician and stylist. Apart from dancing the premier danseur roles of the repertory, he created roles in Ashton's and Tudor's ballets. He is the Royal Ballet's first male dancer who is an international star in his own right.

Dowell's emerging partnership with Sibley was important for the company and its audiences: here for the first time in the company's crowded history, were two altogether English dancers, trained in the company's school and in the company itself, emerging not just as an outstanding ballerina or an outstanding danseur noble, but as that magical, extra achievement which happens so rarely in dance it almost makes history in itself, an equal partnership, so perfectly complementing each other their dance seems to have an extra dimension. With them, the Royal Ballet really came of age. Sibley is special and Dowell is special, but Sibley and Dowell together are a legendary partnership. Both dancers are superb technicians, but they are more than that: they are creative artists, matching each other so perfectly their partner­ship adds an extra dimension to each. In the following dialogue the dancers themselves provide their own illuminating comments on the challenges, pitfalls and rewards of each role, which were created specially for them.

Sir Frederick Ashton has an uncanny gift for spotting potential talent. In 1964 he gave Antoinette and Anthony the leading roles in a new one-act ballet, brilliantly based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mendels­sohn's affectionate music, and scenery and costumes by Pe­ter Farmer. The ballet covers most of Shakespeare's plot, but its creative centre is an enchanting lyrical pas de deux for Oberon and Titania, and as Antoinette and Anthony danced it on the first night, almost palpably in the auditorium came a growing conviction not only that Ashton had achieved another seemingly effortless masterpiece, but that a new part­nership was in the making.

Ashton must take the credit for bringing them together, and right at the beginning for making much of their partner­ship. He also brought out a fresh aspect of Anthony as Obe­ron, an inhuman, fey quality,¹ lacking in humanity and in a detached, regal way on a plane far above mere mankind, that was exactly right for Oberon's 'what fools these mortals be'; and was the first indication of Anthony's range as an actor.

The choreography is Ashton at his best. How awful, in lesser hands, Titania's fairies could have been — stereotyped corps de ballet work, padding the piece out — and how cleverly Ashton uses them to create in themselves a woodland scene that hardly needs Farmer's pretty setting! The corps catches deftly the darting motion, the little flurries of activity, the sudden pauses of summer insects, gnats whirling in a cluster, moths, butterflies and dragonflies, all an effortless back­ground hardly to be noticed any more than the real thing, and yet as sure a response to nature as the best things in the play. Ashton, too, knows a bank where the wild thyme grows and can take our imaginations there just as compellingly.

SIBLEY: Sir Fred has an intuitive understanding of theat­rical effects, with costumes or people. He has a marvellous eye for the way people can be used. Oberon and Titania have a strange, proud quality which Sir Fred obviously saw in us. The extraordinary thing about a genius like him is that he can see qualities you do not know you possess.

The funny thing about The Dream is we were never told we were Titania and Oberon and we did our first rehearsal, choreographing the quarrel, thinking we were one of the pairs of lovers!

DOWELL: I had forgotten that, but I do remember not being sure whether we were actually going to get the parts or whether Sir Fred was just working with us to see if he liked us. Very nerve racking. The early rehearsals had little dancing for me anyway, because Sir Fred concentrated on the mime scenes, with Oberon just standing around at the back. I began to get depressed because I did not seem to have any thing much to do. Then came the actual dance and really, looking back, these early days with The Dream were terrible; I was not sure of anything. It is frightening to think how I might have spoiled it through inexperience. Part of Sir Fred's method as a choreographer is to work things out with you. He will say 'Try something like this' and then adapt the movement as you work on it, so that at the end his ballet has become almost a part of you. This can make it difficult for other people to take over a role in a ballet, as it can seem completely moulded on a particular person.

SIBLEY: Anthony and I felt differently about The Dream. Anthony, being very young, seemed to take it as his right to get a new ballet, whereas I, who had been in the company about eight years and had never had Sir Fred choreograph on me individually, felt it was a huge honour. I never used to think Sir Fred liked me earlier on, although he certainly did by then. I had done odd things in the corps for Sir Fred, and worked with him before, but in a group rather than as an individual, and I was still terrified of him. He is almost too perceptive and too sensitive to what one feels and does, so the honour was not an unmixed blessing.² At first I thought Titania was not a very exciting role, but Sir Fred gave me fresh insight into her as a strange being — proud and sensual. The way the rehearsals went in general was marvellous, we built up a ballet that was our own ballet.

I remember the pas de deux very clearly. We worked alone without covers³ or second casts behind us, which I always find relaxing; people around upset me when I am trying to work on something new. When we were doing the second step of the pas de deux, Sir Fred said 'I had a dream, and you just fold in two and go right under Anthony and come up the other side.' We thought it was impossible. We tried it and we could not do it, and we spent the whole rehearsal just on this step. Finally we managed it, and it has been interesting to see that step used in quite a few ballets afterwards, and not only by Sir Fred. The next day he finished choreographing the whole pas de deux, just like that!

Dancing The Dream is different from ballets like Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty, in which there is a continuity. For instance, I do my lullaby and then spend the next half of the ballet in my bower; then I dance the pas de deux with Bottom⁴ and go back to the bower until the end of the ballet and the final pas de deux. I used to find it terribly difficult to gauge how to rest so long between dances.

DOWELL: It was better when we had worked into the roles; there is a confidence that comes from experience, work­ing in a theatre with a live audience.

SIBLEY: For the first performance in New York we were almost too confident. We rehearsed in the studio, but somehow the atmosphere is different on tour, and we really only played about at rehearsal. It was only when Sir Fred came on stage before the curtain, almost shaking with nerves, that I real­ised this was the New York premiere of a brand new Ashton ballet, and the importance of it all.

I can always tell how The Dream is going, because I lie in my bower and there is a point where the two lovers have a little mime scene, and you can gauge exactly how the ballet is going from the audience reaction to that mime. If they laugh, all is well. The first night audience was the warmest house ever, they absolutely adored it, and they went wild over the pas de deux. It was nice to have such a success without the usual stage fright and nerves before!

DOWELL: That was really when the American public started to notice us and the write-ups began.

SIBLEY: My other memory is that night in Boston when you were ill.

DOWELL: With a terrible stomach ache.

SIBLEY: And I dashed out to get you cheese sandwiches.

DOWELL: Yes, I remember that too.

SIBLEY: Come to think of it, I must have been out of my mind getting cheese sandwiches for a bad stomach.

DOWELL: Yes, I seem to remember thinking that at the time.

SIBLEY: You never said so.

DOWELL: I must have been more ill than I thought.

Notes

¹ fey quality — having the air of one under the doom or spell

² the honour was not an unmixed blessing — the honour did not give one only the feeling of happiness but also that of responsibility and even of terror

3 a cover — an understudy

⁴ Bottom — in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a weaver of Athens. Puck, a malicious spirit, gives him an ass's head, and the spell-bound Titania, Queen of the fairies, falls in love with him.

I Comprehension Check

35. Say if the sentences are true or false:

1. Frederick Ashton was not good at spotting potential talent.
2. The audience did not like the dancers at first.
3. The dancing was so good that the ballet did not need any setting.
4. Frederick Ashton could see the qualities people did not know they possessed.
5. Dowell was depressed at first because he thought there was not much dancing in the ballet.
6. Dowell thought it was a great honour to work with Ashton.
7. Sibley was terrified of Ashton.
8. There is continuity in The Dream like in many other ballets.
9. New York premiere was more important for the dancers than their first night on their home stage.

II Vocabulary Practice

36. a) Explain the meaning of the following expressions from the text:

unmixed blessing, nerve racking, to mould on a particular person, fresh insight, a continuity, a bower, to gauge, to shake with nerves, stage fright, a write-up, to dash out.

b) Find the equivalents of the following words and expressions in the text:

obviously, majestic, ordinary, quick movement, insuperably, to be good at noticing something, a gust of smth., to be frustrated.

LISTENING 1

37. You will hear five different people who all saw the same play. For questions 1 -5, choose from the list A - F what each one says about the experience. Use the letters only once. There is one extra letter, which you do not need to use.

A liked the performance and the costumes

B didn't like the performance, but found the music interesting

C didn't like anything about the performance

D didn't like the performance, but thought the costumes were acceptable

E is confused because it was nothing like what he had expected
F is tired of watching this play, but didn't mind the costumes

Speaker 1
Speaker 2
Speaker 3
Speaker 4
Speaker 5

VOCABULARY 7

IDIOMS

38. Match the idioms from the left with the definitions from the right.

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