Well that was an eventful evening! Ryoichi Hirano injured himself weeks ago and I was emailed to say that he would not be dancing and that the role of Prince Florimund would be danced by Alexander Campbell. The director of The Royal Ballet, Kevin O’Hare, came on stage and made a pre-performance apology about this. The performance started and it was beautiful.
And then the second interval lasted about half an hour rather than the scheduled 20 minutes. The audience began to get a bit restless, and something was clearly wrong, because the Royal Opera House is usually very punctual with its start times. Kevin O’Hare appeared on stage again, this time announcing that Akane Takada (Princess Aurora) had injured herself in Act 1 and could not continue, and that another ballerina had been called to come to the Royal Opera House to finish the performance. Schedule an unexpected interval of an unknown duration, and lots of people left because, not only was there a delay of an unknown length, there was also still 70 minutes of ballet to go!
Not too long later, which was a very pleasant surprise, the bell rang for the audience to take their seats. The replacement ballerina had arrived. Yasmine Naghdi, who dances the role of Princess Aurora on other evenings, had arrived to finish the performance. Absolutely massive thanks and congratulations to her for stepping in at the last minute to ensure that the show could go on.
Due to the time delay, everything before the Panorama scene in Act 2 was cut, and then Act 3 was danced in full.
However, Act 3 was not without its own drama. A woman in the audience collapsed/fainted, and there was quite a lot of commotion as front of house staff worked out what the problem was and how to get her out of the auditorium.
Things like this always happen in triplicate, and so, with this, we were done for the evening. But my goodness, what an eventful evening!
Despite what happened, the performance was absolutely stunning. It was a fairytale brought to life, and the set and costumes were fantastic. The fairytale solos in Act 3 were particularly wonderful. This is, however, a ballet that requires the audience to have some understanding of ballet language, or know the plot, as there are ‘conversations’ onstage during the Prologue and Act 1 and, without understanding the movements or the plot, you would be lost.
So it was an eventful night, but a truly beautiful ballet, and if you have the opportunity to see it, or catch it when it is streamed into cinemas, take the chance for a spell-binding evening. I hope that Ryoichi Hirano and Akane Takada have a speedy recovery and are back dancing soon. And massive thanks again to Yasmine Naghdi for stepping in and saving the ballet!