Monica Mason hads been made a Dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

There's a fleeting refernce in here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...nours-List.html


and in here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/14/monarchy

Thank you for that news, Lynette and congratulations to Dame Monica.

I think Dame Monica deserved that. She was never a great classical dancer - I think she did some Swan Lakes but I have never seen those. She was a character dancer, a dancer-actress and as such formidable. Thats is good to know, I think she totally merited this title.

Congratulations to DameMonica.

I saw Monica Mason's first Odtte/Odile in Sutton Surrey in England and it was revelatory in the full-blooded physical approach akin although in a lower key to the legendary Plisetskaya. She never for me repeated that approach in her later career.

Off hand her remarkable performances were in Les Noces, with Deanne Bergsma in the Snow Scene in Nureyev's
"Nututcracker", Gypsy in The Two Pigeons, Macillan's Rite of Spring, her intensity in Song of the Earth, Queen of the Wilis etc etc. Dame Monica tackled classical roles and her performances were always lit by the intensity of commitment to performing. She was at her best in an era in these roles when others were more suited.

An outstanding performer without whom the Royal Ballet would have been a lesser entity and like other dancers who did not become 'star' dancers.

I congratulate her steady hand in what has been a remarkable achievement in carrying the Royal Ballet forward from an extraordinary difficult situation she inherited.

SO thoroughly deserved.

I saw her in the late 60s and loved her performances -- I'[d say she was maybe like Vaganova or Nijinska, a superb classical dancer who was too strong-looking to be given the dainty roles. But there's no faulting her lines, her aplomb, clarity, elevation, plie, softness in fondu, speed; her batterie was like Nijinska's must have been, brilliant and fleeting and full of wit.

What I remember was how she talked with her feet. She was the girl in yellow in Dances at a Gathering, which means VERY fast; Myrtha was wondefully chiselled when still, but she could jump so high and alight so softly it softened the harsher edges of the character and made her beautiful. She was such a complex, wry, dazzling character as the hostess in Les Biches.

I loved her performances.

Congratulations to her.

I agree she wasn't a great Odette/Odile but her acting made her performances worthwhile. When I put together my composite Swan Lake, stitching together all the best bits I've seen, she and David Wall always do the moment in Act IV when the Prince comes back to the lake and kneels at her feet - her gesture of forgiveness was both tender and magnificent.

I think that she probably made her first deep impression on the audience as the Chosen Maiden in MacMillan's setting of The Rite of Spring. I know that she scared the bejeezus out of me with her intensity.

Don't know where else to put this so I'll park it here . . .

The Fall 2008 issue of Ballet Review has an interview with Monica Mason and I found some of her answers exceedingly curious. For instance, interviewer Kevin Ng asks her if she thinks the Royal's male dancers are the equal of its female dancers. Mason says yes but then only mentions Carlos Acosta. Ng also asks Mason about why there has been such a (relative) paucity of Ashton since the 2004-5 centenary and her answer is that they did a lot in 2004-5 so they're not doing a lot now. But . . . shouldn't they be? (This is one part of the interview which really cried out for a follow-up.)