Monday 22 June 2009

The Royal Ballet - Sergei Polunin

Today the Royal Opera House launched a new website featuring their World Stage series.

For Autumn 2009 Sergei Polunin is featured, and this website is a chance to see films, interviews and pictures of him, as well as his ipod playlist. Frank Sinatra gets a look in. The film of the filming of the cover shot (as it were) is charming, as is the music.

Polunin talks about being a First Soloist, which is a promotion for him (he's still listed as Soloist on the ROH website). Unofficially his promotion, among others, is widely known, but as yet the official position has not been released from the press office & I only mention it here because Polunin himself has.

What is irritating is the design, with its Flash which not everyone has enabled & which many dislike. It just doesn't work well enough. Trying to click on one of the photo's is like trying to knock a coconut off its perch and I'm not sure that was the intended user experience. But then, ask anyone who tries to book online how they feel about it and you'll realise that the ROH are not renowned for their website design.

More inexcusable are the wrongly captioned photographs. Why ?

Worth taking a look for the film footage, if you can get past the design & the mistakes.

3 comments:

  1. I agree about the knocking coconuts point. It made me feel a little motion sick trying to click on the photos.I am not knowledgable enough to know where any caption mistakes are, but I did enjoy watching Sergei Polunin dance. Beautiful photography too.S

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  2. Hi there, thanks for the info and updates on Ballet. I have just today saw Polunin debut as the Prince in the Royal Ballet production of the Sleeping Beauty, along side there was Brian Maloney 10 years his senior and as good as him on the stage (my opinion) I remeber reading an artickle on Times past Aug called rising stars of the Royal Ballet or something, and I got the impresion that Polunin and Maloney are a couple? Is this true or is it official? Just out of curiosity.. If it is ever true, they will make a nice couple anyway.

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  3. Sarah - with you there !

    Anonymous - Thanks for your comments. In reply to your question; it's none of my business and I don't think it's any of yours.

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