Comments on: BTC: The Royal Ballet’s “Tales of Beatrix Potter”

By: R.

R. — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:16:42 +0000

I actually read it as “Battle Royale vs. Beatrix Potter”…I don’t know where that came from. Lack of sleep maybe? As usual BTC makes my day/evening much better.

By: tread me underfoot

tread me underfoot — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:50:40 +0000

Out of all the amazing and beautiful entries on Coilhouse, THIS made me register to comment. My mum read the Tales of Beatrix Potter to me a good number of nights as a child, and I had a poster on my wall…oh, the glorious nostalgia. I WILL BE ORDERING THIS DVD.

By: Luai_lashire

Luai_lashire — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:24:12 +0000

That last clip was really interesting, where he was talking about the effect the costumes have on the dancers. I took ballet for four years, which isn’t much, and I never got very far, but you do learn a few things about costumes and stage lights and I was thinking to myself as I watched that those dancers must be boiling in there! And the costumes also really restrict their movements in certain directions, as he was saying in that clip- “sometimes we can’t reach fifth position”. They must be very heavy too, which makes kicks and leaps a lot harder.
But of course without the elaborate costumes the effect wouldn’t be nearly so cool! Those things are amazing, I keep staring at them… especially the mice, fox, and squirrels.

By: Matthew Sheret

Matthew Sheret — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:12:28 +0000

I caught this, along with an awful lot more, while working front of house there for just shy of five years. The dancers had a pretty grueling time of it under those costumes, but also loved the effect it had on the audiences. It was on around Christmas, and pretty much everyone left with a huge grin and feeling a little bit closer to magic.

The costumes themselves are from the televised original, I’m told, and they look every bit as strange and beautiful close up.

By: Oscar de Winter

Oscar de Winter — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:22:40 +0000

I remember seeing this when I was a young lad at the Royal Opera House. Such a bizarre experience. Part of me thought they were real, part of me was terrified when Squirrel Nutkin lost his tail to the owl, and part of me was expecting the Phantom to appear at any moment and steal the girl I was with. I had completely forgotten (possibly repressed) this experience.

Thank you for reawakening these memories. I think.

…still watching these. This is a level of tweeness that only the English could muster. I feel a swell of patriotism inside me.