Posted by Bonnie on 24 February 2006 at
12:00
Actress Rachael Stirling, 28, is the daughter of Diana Rigg and lives in West London. Next month she is starring in the TV drama Riot at the Rite on BBC Two
In my make-up bag you'll find…
L'Oréal Paris Longitude Mascara, £7.99, Stila Brow Shadow in dark brown, £12.50 (0870 034 2566), MAC blusher in Dame, £13 (020 7534 9222), and Clinique Superfit foundation, £17.50 (0870 034 2566).
My daily beauty routine is…
Simple cleanser, £3.99, and moisturiser, £4.85 (0121 327 4750), and Clarins SPF 30 suncream, £14.50 (0800 036 3558).
My newest beauty discovery is…
Crabtree and Evelyn nail and cuticle therapy, £6.95 (020 7361 0499). I have bitten my nails for as long as I can remember, but the other day someone told me I had lovely hands.
I shop for products at…
Airports. The more time waiting to board the plane the better.
My favourite online beauty store is…
I'm ashamed to say I have never shopped online. I am allergic to technology.
I protect my skin and hair in the sun with…
Clarins products and a hat.
I can't live without…
Tweezerman tweezers, £16 (020 7237 1007).
My view on plastic surgery is…
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I never fly without…
L'Occitane towelettes, £4 (020 7907 0301), Carmex lip balm, £2.25 (01827 280 080), Nelsons evening primrose cream for dry, tired skin, £3.95 (www.nelsonshomoeopathy.co.uk) and a huge bottle of water.
I get pampered at…
Una Brennan (020 7313 9835). Her treatment room is better than any spa.
My favourite treatment is…
Una's facial. It's an hour and a half of joy.
I get my hair done at…
Neville on Pont Street (020 7235 3654). Christian cuts it and Sheniz does my colour.
My signature scent is…
Eternity by Calvin Klein, £23.50 (020 7361 4400).
My best beauty tip is…
Laugh as much and as often as you can. And sleep a lot.
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Posted by Bonnie on 9 February 2006 at
07:13
As you have probably worked out by now, Claire and I will be running in the Race for Life 2006. It is a women-only race which aims to raise money for Cancer Research UK; I took part in it last year and raised £228 in total after putting a banner to my sponsorship page on my website. This year I am aiming to put it on all of our websites so we can (with any luck!) raise more than that amount, especially as Claire will be taking part too! Although it is not Rachael-related, I hope visitors will understand that this is for a good cause and the more publicity the race gets, the better! Are any of our female UK visitors taking part in the race, too? 
If you do happen to want to sponsor us, please click on the banner above to do so. It would be hugely appreciated and it really is for an excellent cause! 
4 Comments
Posted by Bonnie on 6 February 2006 at
05:40
I am pleased to announce that the Rachael Stirling Online message board is finally ready! I wanted to wait until the move to the new server was complete before installing it, and I'm pleased I did. It's taken me quite a while to customise it and make it look nice, and it's still not perfect, but I can tweak it a bit whilst it's being used.
http://board.rachael-stirling.com/
This means that from now on, I'd really like it if we could move all discussion over to the message board, and save the comments sections on here for comments relating to updates only. It's been handy having the ability to discuss stuff here on the blog, but the comments section isn't really designed for discussions and, as you've probably noticed, lengthy discussions make the page verrrrry long indeed!
Also, with the message board, you will all have your own specific usernames and will be able to keep track of all of your posts. You can even choose an avatar to use with your posts (there are some of Rachael provided, or you can make your own), send private messages or emails to one another via the board, and post / participate in polls!
I expect to see lots of new members and plenty of posts before the end of the day!
11 Comments
Posted by Bonnie on 5 February 2006 at
12:00
Clifford Bishop previews an ambitious retelling of The Rite of Spring's premiere.
There was a time when, famously, people made their own entertainment — even if the world's trendiest ballet company was trying to distract them with the world premiere of the most revolutionary piece of music ever written. The Rite of Spring was first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on May 29, 1913. The slow hand-claps began even as the orchestra was tuning up. The eerie bassoon solo that introduces Stravinsky's masterpiece was accompanied, from the audience, by a man playing a comb and paper. By the time people started blowing whistles, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev was moved to observe: "They've obviously come prepared."
The real party started, however, when the curtain opened. The dancers of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, in faux-pagan costumes by the Russian artist Nicolas Roerich that can look pottily naive even to post-hippie eyes, stood pigeon-toed, knock-kneed and cruelly twisted. Picture a casting for Andy Pandy: The Musical. Then they began to stamp. The howls of derision were so loud, the choreographer — Diaghilev's star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky — had to stand on a chair in the wings shouting beats so that everyone could stay in time. As if all this were not exciting and modern enough, the theatre's owner, Gabriel Astruc, anticipated rave culture by switching the house lights on and off in a benighted attempt to calm everyone down.
It was, at least until Woodstock, the greatest "I was there" event in 20th-century music — Proust, Picasso, Debussy, Ravel and Cocteau would reminisce about it for the rest of their lives. With so much unintentional comedy, such a cast of characters and, incidentally, one hell of a soundtrack, the premiere of The Rite of Spring cries out to be turned into a piece of drama, despite the obvious problem of making it all coherent. And after the surprise success of 2003's Eroica — a dramatised reconstruction of the first performance of Beethoven 's Symphony No 3 — the BBC has taken up the challenge of filming what Ross MacGibbon, the channel's head of dance, acknowledges is "a much more complicated story".
The aptly named Riot at the Rite has not only to do justice to the score — rerecorded specially by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vanska — but to live up to its title while integrating a whole ballet into the action. Its director, Andy Wilson, watched everything from The Red Shoes to Moulin Rouge! for tips.
"I got a lot from Carlos Saura's films," he says. "The way the camera becomes a partner in the dance, or takes the viewpoint, and the atmosphere, of one of the characters watching." Thus, we see snatches of the ballet through the eyes of the main players: Diaghilev, seated in a box; his lover, Nijinsky, in the wings; and, in the stalls, Romola de Pulszky, the Hungarian dancer who comes between them. It's an unlikely, but accurate, romantic tangle.
Some dance historians would take issue — Nijinsky's ballet survived only a handful of performances before it was dropped from the repertoire and, apparently, lost for ever. It was not until 1987 that two Rite enthusiasts, Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, reconstructed something they estimate to be "an 85% authentic ballet", after more than a decade's research. "There are only about seven companies in the world that perform it," says MacGibbon, "and Millicent suggested the Finnish National Ballet." The Finns turned out to be cheap, Slavic-looking and accommodating. "They didn't even object when we imported Zenaida Yanowsky from the Royal Ballet to star as the ballerina Maria Piltz," says MacGibbon. "As soon as they saw her dance, they were awestruck."
The cast is impressive. Alex Jennings is a joke-shop orchid of a Diaghilev — opulent, fragile, perfumed and regularly emitting a fine spray of mischief or malice. Adam Garcia is cocooned in a budding schizophrenia as Nijinsky. Rachael Stirling trembles devotedly as Marie Rambert, trying to explain Nijinsky's ideas to the rebellious dancers. Aidan McArdle is a Napoleonic Stravinsky, and Griff Rhys Jones's Astruc is perpetually nonplussed by the self-evident fact he is colluding in his own destruction.
"None of us got paid anything," says Wilson. "But how often do you work on something that might last for ever?" You can almost hear Diaghilev's ghost talking.
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Posted by Bonnie on 1 February 2006 at
06:34
Thanks to those of you who pointed out the errors with some of the galleries! We had a bit of a mini disaster, but it should all be working fine now. It turned out that the backup I took of the old server had failed to back up approximately 600 of the images from the galleries (arghhhh!) and as my account on the old server had been purged and deleted, I couldn't get them back… :O
… until Claire went in the spare bedroom and dug out an old backup of the site which we had on DVD! THANK GOODNESS FOR CLAIRE! It had the missing 600 images on it, which I have just uploaded, and now the galleries appear to be functioning as they should once again.
Phew! I really didn't fancy screencapping all of The Triumph of Love and Murder at the Vicarage again, plus numerous other things. :O
22 Comments
Look forward to the US release of both films.
