Nacho Duato, tradition and revolution at the Mikhailovsky Ballet

Ever since Duato breezed into the “dusty and creaky” Mikhailovsky, he has been tearing the place up. “No need for the classical movements here,” Duato tells a dancer in rehearsal. “Forget the port des bras! Forget that your arms are your arms—just drop them, as though they are something heavy.” Demonstrating, Duato drops his limbs as though he's carrying buckets. When he's not drilling the dancers in his debut ballets—revivals of two pieces Duato developed with the American Dance Theater in the 1980s—he's hunting through the props department and dropping by on the costume makers. “They did not expect me to show up every day, but I did,” says Duato. “I am here not just to change the choreography but also the music, the costumes, the website, everything.”

Duato is not the first person to try to shake up Russian ballet. Russian-born Alexei Ratmansky, artistic director of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre in the mid-2000s, did a brilliant job when he revived some socialist-realist Shostakovich ballets. St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Ballet has also invited legendary contemporary choreographers like William Forsythe and Wayne McGregor to stage individual productions. But what Duato calls “the power of entropy” in Russia's grand old companies is still enormous, as is the conservatism of Russia's ballet schools, sponsors, and audiences. “It is hard to deal with the heritage of ballet conservatism, the idea that our ballet is the best in the world,” says Ratmansky, who left the Bolshoi in frustration after five years.

Still, there are some who believe that opening a window onto modernity will let in a fatal draft. “A good classical dancer can quickly learn contemporary choreography, but a contemporary dancer cannot be taught how to dance classical ballet,” says Andrei Kuligin, a dancer turned manager at the Mikhailovsky troupe. “Thanks to the Iron Curtain, we managed to preserve the most beautiful old school—the world was amazed when they saw it after perestroika, as we turned out to be the only survivors still dancing the real classical ballet which Europe had lost a long time ago.”

via Nacho Duato Shakes Up Russia's Mikhailovsky Ballet – Newsweek

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.