Sergei Filin appears in court & Dmitrichenko says he’s sorry

November 6, 2013, 11:15 am

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Sergei Filin, director of the Bolshoi Ballet Company, appeared in court today in Moscow to give evidence in the acid attack case, supposedly instigated by Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko. Filin said that he couldn’t forgive the perpetrators who almost blinded him.

Dmitrichenko apologised to him, saying that it wasn’t his attention to hurt him, but Filin underlined the fact that just last week in court, Dmitrichenko had “spread lies” about affairs with ballerinas of the company, in order to undermine his moral position. He said that the Bolshoi soloist was a fine dancer who worked hard, but added that he did everything possible to go against Filin’s authority as director of the company.

According to RIA Novosti, Filin didn’t look towards the cage in the courtroom where Dmitrichenko and the two other defendants were being held, and said that he’d done nothing to warrant the attack.… [continue reading]

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Natalia Osipova and an excellent cast début in Manon at La Scala

November 9, 2013, 9:19 am

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Natalia Osipova and Claudio Coviello receive a long ovation at La Scala

Natalia Osipova’s début as Manon has inevitably aroused curiosity in dance circles as this ballet is one of the cornerstones of the Royal Ballet’s repertory, a company she will be joining later this month.

This curiosity was satisfied last night when the Russian superstar gave an excellent account of the role, with Milan’s La Scala Ballet. She doesn’t yet seem to have fully assimilated the part emotionally, especially during the early scenes which offer the opportunity for complex reactions to the new world in which she finds herself, but technically she was perfect, with exquisite upper body movement, and expressive legs and feet.

The coquettishness of the party scene seems to come more naturally to Osipova than the uncertainty of the first act.… [continue reading]

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Birthday Book: 200 years of La Scala’s ballet school

November 12, 2013, 9:07 am

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A book celebrating the 200th birthday of La Scala’s Ballet School was launched at Milan’s iconic theatre yesterday: Album di compleanno. 1813–2013. La Scuola di Ballo dell’Accademia Teatro alla Scala.

The volume traces the history of one of the world’s most prestigious dance institutions, which was founded in 1813. More than one hundred illustrations chart the progress of the school through its two hundred year history, alongside essays which not only recall the famous names that  it has produced, but also places the school in the varying social contexts. A curiosity is the diary of Fanny Restellini who was a secretary at the school between the wars. Here there are insights not just in to the daily running of the institution, but of Milanese life outside of the classroom.… [continue reading]

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Meanwhile in Russia… Vaganova & Bolshoi latest

November 13, 2013, 1:18 am

≫ Next: Sanquirico, designer of Norma and Anna Bolena, finally rests among the greats

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The protagonists

The Russian Ministry of Culture announced this morning that there would be an external inspection of the organisation of St Petersburg’s Vaganova Ballet Academy. It will examine the economic and educational structure for irregularities after ““the emergence of numerous items in the media, which refer to procedural violations at the Vaganova Academy”. Though, bizarrely, the Ministry underlined the fact that it was a “routine” inspection, which was normal when there was a change of leadership. The inspection will be completed within a month.

Nikolay Tsiskaridze, who went from being the new school principal two weeks ago, to the acting principal, will be one of five candidates for the position. The staff of the Vaganova Academy have asked for transparency in the election process. … [continue reading]

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Sanquirico, designer of Norma and Anna Bolena, finally rests among the greats

November 16, 2013, 8:09 am

≫ Next: Carla Fracci meets with Italian Speaker of the House to save Italian ballet

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La Scala during a performance of the ballet “Conquista di Malacca” by Alessandro Sanquirico

The Wikipedia entry on Italian painter and designer Alessandro Sanquirico reads:

Alessandro Sanquirico (Milan, July 27, 1777 – Milan, March 12, 1849) was an Italian scenic designer, architect, and painter. 

He provided the decorations for the celebration of the crowning of Ferdinando I of Austria, as king of Lombardy and the Veneto. He designed the architectural and painted scenery for performances at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Teatro Alberti of Desenzano, the Teatro Sociale of Canzo, the Teatro Sociale of Como, and the Teatro Municipale of Piacenza.

He worked with Andrea Appiani and Bargigli in the design of the Arena Civica of Milan. He provided the scenography for ballets by Salvatore Viganò.… [continue reading]

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Carla Fracci meets with Italian Speaker of the House to save Italian ballet

November 23, 2013, 7:01 am

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Carla Fracci and Laura Boldrini

The President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (the Speaker of the Lower House of the Italian Parliament), Laura Boldrini, met with Carla Fracci yesterday to discuss the sharp decline of ballet companies in Italy, reported ASCA.

Fracci said,

There are no more than five at this time, which means a total of approximately 230 professional dancers. Classical dance has given great prestige to our country, and it’s sad that today it is considered superfluous. It is a noble art, and must not be treated as a poor relation. The Italian situation is unique in its severity.

Boldrini responded by saying,

Investing in culture is essential if we want our country to grow. Even in times of crisis we need to preserve and promote artistic expression in theatre, music, dance — it’s part of our identity.… [continue reading]

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Alexei Ratmansky’s Opera at La Scala

December 3, 2013, 9:41 am

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Alexei Ratmansky with Roberto Bolle creating ‘Opera’ — Photo by Marco Brescia & Rudy Amisano, Copyright Teatro alla Scala

If an Alexei Ratmansky ballet is something to look forward to; a new Ratmansky ballet is very good news indeed. Rather like a film with Meryl Streep, Ratmansky’s presence is something of a guarantee — maybe it won’t be the best ballet ever created, but it’s never going to be a bummer.

In a couple of weeks time at Teatro della Scala, there will be a Ratmansky triple bill: something new, something borrowed, and something… well there’s nothing blue, but there is a return. Concerto DSCH, created for New York City Ballet in 2008, was premièred at the Milanese theatre in 2012, and Svetlana Zakharova will be returning to reprise her role.… [continue reading]

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The year ballet wept… jealousy & rivalry at the Bolshoi

December 3, 2013, 12:24 pm

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Sergei Filin and Pavel Dmitrichenko as they appeared on the Bolshoi website last year

So 29-year-old Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko will go to prison for six years, and his career obviously ends here. His biography has been taken down from the company’s website and soon his picture will disappear from the ‘leading soloists’ page.

What a lot of damage he’s caused: to himself, the international reputation of the Bolshoi company and Russian ballet in general, and mostly to Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi’s Ballet Director. Filin will confront daily the damage to his eyes, face, and probably psyche, that the acid attack, instigated by Dmitrichenko, has caused.

This story, so incredible that it gripped the attention of those far away from the worlds of ballet or Russian politics, had me, almost eagerly, waiting for the next installment.… [continue reading]

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Asylmuratova and Mikhailovsky boss Kekhman, talk about her new appointment

December 10, 2013, 6:11 am

≫ Next: Russian Ministry says Vaganova letter against Tsiskaridze is forged

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Altynai Asylmuratova

Altynai Asylmuratova has been appointed as advisor to the director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Izvestia reports.

The theatre’s director, Vladimir Kekhman, said,

Altynai Asylmuratova, with her experience and know-how, can do much for the Mikhailovsky Ballet, and I am interested in involving Altynai as quickly as possible with our teaching and rehearsal process, so we have decided that she will start from tomorrow, 11 December, when she will meet the company and the whole team at the theatre.

Asylmuratova said,

For now, the most important thing is to get to know the artists, teachers, and the theatre’s organization.

Nacho Duato, the current artistic director, will finish his contract on 1 February 2014. Kekhman said that the new artistic and management team would be put into place by spring next year.… [continue reading]

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Russian Ministry says Vaganova letter against Tsiskaridze is forged

December 12, 2013, 9:52 am

≫ Next: Being under 30 with Ratmansky at La Scala

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Tsiskaridze in festive mood — by Mikhail Logvinov (Bolshoi Theatre)

The Russian Ministry of Culture has said that the letter sent to Vladimir Putin by the staff of the Vaganova Academy, asking for the removal of Nikolai Tsiskaridze as its director, is a forgery.

The letter said that the announced removal of the director Vera Dorofeyeva, and the artistic director, Altynai Asylmuratova, would cause “irreparable damage” to the institution but interrupting the continuity of tradition. It finished by saying that it was a “criminal decision”. Attached were the signatures of more than 100 representatives of the Vaganova Academy and the neighbouring Mariinsky Theatre.

The Ministry conducted a straw poll check on the signatories — reports Izvestia —  finding that 32 of them had not signed the letter, and their names had been added by another.… [continue reading]

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Being under 30 with Ratmansky at La Scala

December 15, 2013, 1:49 pm

≫ Next: Alexei Ratmansky’s Opera is here to stay

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The Under 30s taking their seats

The first audience to witness Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet consisted entirely of ‘Under 30s’, La Scala’s scheme to attract a new and younger audience. Tickets cost just €10, and the two opening productions of the season – La Traviata and Serata Ratmansky – are previewed three days before the official opening. Not bad value for money when you get Diana Damrau, Piotr Beczala, Roberto Bolle, Andrey Merkuriev and Svetlana Zakharova in the casts, spanking-new productions, and all the frisson of a ‘prima’. Season tickets are also available for three operas and three ballets during the rest of the season where you get six productions for the price of one. Oh, to be under thirty again.… [continue reading]

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Alexei Ratmansky’s Opera is here to stay

December 18, 2013, 7:52 am

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Opera with Emanuela Montanari, Mick Zeni, Beatrice Carbone and Roberto Bolle

Alexei Ratmansky always manages to fascinate. His work is immersed in ballet tradition, yet is never obvious and never fails to surprise. The surprise doesn’t come from executing a familiar step in an unusual way, but rather by preserving the movement within an unfamiliar context. In Ratmansky’s world, as in life, there are no logical conclusions to a sequence of events; the unexpected is always expected. This may not be conveyed by a dance move at all, but a facial expression or a shrug of the shoulders, turning a series of joyous steps into something sad, or an introspective moment into something comic. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ratmansky has the courage to let his audience laugh.… [continue reading]

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The special woman in Roberto Bolle’s life comes forward

December 22, 2013, 8:59 am

≫ Next: Zach’s Diary part three: Balanchine, class and holidays

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Roberto Bolle with his mother, Mariuccia

Mariuccia is a very special person in Roberto Bolle’s life, but is seldom seen or talked about. The paparazzi don’t photograph her, and she doesn’t give interviews about her relationship with Italy’s most famous male dancer, yet for Bolle she is central to his life… she’s his mother.

On Boxing Day, Mariuccia will have her media profile raised when she appears on the Italian programme Unici, among actors, directors and tv personalities, to talk about her son.

She’s giving me a very special present. It is not natural for her to appear in public like this, and I’m sure there’ll be certain things that I’ll be hearing for the first time,

said Bolle in an interview in this week’s Chi magazine.… [continue reading]

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Zach’s Diary part three: Balanchine, class and holidays

December 23, 2013, 8:50 am

≫ Next: You choose it out of Love! Dancing with the Khan-MacKay family

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Zach celebrating with his classmates

Zach’s Diary part one: Growing up dancing in Canada

Zach’s Diary part two: Starting at Stuttgart’s John Cranko-Schule

 

Zach’s Diary part three

Christmastime in Germany is like a fairy tale, though so far only a couple light dustings of snow but, of course, the wonderful Christmas markets.

December has been a very busy month here, with a performance in the Opernhaus on the 8th (featuring school and company members), and a ballet exam on my birthday, which was this past Tuesday! After the exam (which went fairly well), I went out to celebrate with some friends.

So far I’m really enjoying the training here at John Cranko. It doesn’t differ too much from my training in Winnipeg; although it is definitely more Russian and stays true to the Vaganova method.… [continue reading]

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You choose it out of Love! Dancing with the Khan-MacKay family

December 31, 2013, 12:51 am

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Nicholas and Julian MacKay outside the Bolshoi Theatre June 2013

Dancing, like acting and singing, often runs in the family. There are countless dancers whose parents danced: Zenaida Yanowsky (Royal Ballet), Yury Yanowsky (Boston Ballet) and Nadia Yanowsky (Het Nationale Ballet) are the children of Russian ballet dancer Anatol Yanowsky and Spanish ballet dancer Carmen Robles. Ballet’s in their blood.

What makes the Khan-MacKay family special is that the four siblings - Maria Sascha, Nadia, Julian and Nicholas — are not the children of dancers, nor do they come from London, Paris or New York, where trips to the ballet can be regular events, but are from Montana, the home of cowboys and cattle, the Rockies and the Yellowstone National Park.… [continue reading]

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Ratmansky revisited: Opera at La Scala

January 5, 2014, 10:24 am

≫ Next: Patrice Bart’s Swan Lake, with Tsygankova and Kaniskin, in Rome

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Roberto Bolle and Beatrice Carbone in Alexei Ratmansky’s Opera

Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet Opera, created for La Scala in Milan, generally pleased the critics, although elements in the audience were left perplexed judging by the furrowed brows and agitated discussions in the foyer after the first performance of 2014.

Most seemed disturbed by the music, which sits between contemporary and baroque — baroque opera being Ratmansky’s theme for this piece — with three opera singers in the pit with the orchestra. Much music for modern ballets, mounted for repertoire companies, is familiar to our ears: Thom Willems’s music for In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated with its rhythmic, disco-like throbbing, or Joby Talbot’s Chroma which could be used as a film score. … [continue reading]

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Patrice Bart’s Swan Lake, with Tsygankova and Kaniskin, in Rome

January 19, 2014, 7:27 am

≫ Next: The original Madame No: Ekaterina Maximova’s 75th anniversary celebrated in Moscow

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Swan Lake with Rome Opera Ballet

It can’t be easy to dance with the possibility of redundancy hanging over your head. The workers at Rome Opera have put on a brave face recently as the theatre’s heavy debts will almost inevitably lead to job cuts, but the dancers from the ballet company certainly didn’t let their anxiety show as they performed Swan Lake. A version of the same ballet in Milan a couple of months ago made my American ballet-pro companion remark, “But where’s the joy?” during the pas de trois. In Rome, there was joy. The company loves being on stage, and the pas de trois here was danced with confidence and smiles. The substitution of Svetlana Zakharova (her absence probably caused by the same budgetary crisis) wasn’t a tragic loss, as the Odette-Odile from the opening night of this new production, was available: Anna Tsygankova flew in from the Dutch National Ballet, to join Berlin State Ballet’s Mikhail Kaniskin.… [continue reading]

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The original Madame No: Ekaterina Maximova’s 75th anniversary celebrated in Moscow

January 25, 2014, 2:19 am

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“Les Sylphides” Ekaterina Maximova, Bolshoi Theatre, 1958. Photo Soloviev

It all began with a fouetté is the name of a new exhibition in Moscow to mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of Ekaterina Maximova.

Way before Sylvie Guillem came to be known as ‘Madame Non’, Maximova was nicknamed ‘Madame No’ at the Bolshoi for refusing interviews, photo shoots, and various proposals. Mikhail Baryshnikov admired her “elegant build, beauty, virtuosity and even more so her spontaneity and sincerity”. As The Times said,

Ekaterina Maximova was one of the greatest ballerinas in Russia or indeed anywhere else over the past half century.

The Daily Telegraph’s obituary, 5 years ago, read,

A tiny, ravishingly pretty woman, Ekaterina Maximova formed “the Golden Couple of the 20th Century”, as the Russians called them, with her husband, Vladimir Vasiliev.… [continue reading]

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Le Spectre de rose and La rose malade at La Scala

January 27, 2014, 1:31 am

≫ Next: En Avant with quality, integrity, musicality and artistic meaning in classical ballet

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Maria Eichwald and Igor Yebra in La rose malade — photo Brescia & Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

As an antipasto before the one act opera Cavalleria Rusticana, La Scala put on two related ballets — though unrelated to the opera — which fitted neatly together. Two ten-minute gems: Michel Fokine’s Le Spectre de Rose and Roland Petit’s La rose malade.

Le Spectre de Rose is one of those ballets which must be danced full out for what it is. It can’t be ‘modernised’, as could be attempted with Swan Lake, but, like Les Sylphides, the interpreters have to believe in what they are doing, and pull away from baroque gestures and movements. Such embellishments are smoothed out, if they are present at all, in most modern-day ballet schools, and so are not naturally within a dancer’s body.… [continue reading]

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En Avant with quality, integrity, musicality and artistic meaning in classical ballet

January 30, 2014, 8:52 am

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Cynthia Harvey — Artistic Director of the En Avant Foundation

En Avant is a “New Non-Profit Foundation for Specialised Ballet Coaching, Mentoring and the Awarding of Scholarships”. The Foundation is new, but what is it offering that’s new? After all the world is full of dance master classes, workshops and scholarships. En Avant is different because it aims to put all these together to provide a set of tools to help younger dancers with every aspect of the art form. Cynthia Harvey, En Avant’s artistic director, explains:

As well as class, we will be offering coaching of solos and pas de deux that the dancers bring to us to look at. These sessions will not be a replacement to work the student or emerging dancer does in the studio with their teacher or company; it is meant as a supplement and part of the never ending quest to improve. … [continue reading]

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