Natalia Osipova, who was forced to withdraw from commitments until the end of this year for a recurring problem with her foot, seems to be ‘back on her feet'.
The Royal Ballet sadly announced in mid-September that, “Due to injury, Natalia Osipova will not dance her scheduled performances during Autumn Season 2015”.
The good news for her many disappointed fans and, above all, for Natasha herself, is that she'll be arriving in Milan to start rehearsals at the end of this week. Her two scheduled performances of MacMillan's Manon at La Scala on 18 and 20 November will go ahead as planned.
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.
Has this definitely been confirmed (say, by Osipova herself) or is it simply the company trying to keep hopes up? It’s to my understanding that she needed a foot operation, unless something changed?
And what does this mean for her Royal Ballet scheduled performances?
Appreciate you might not know the answer to these questions. I anticipate a lot of angry people if she does perform in Milan (even if there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation). Is she leaving the Royal Ballet?
Hello. No it doesn’t come from Osipova but from her management, so it is ‘official’. One thing, she will perform only two performances of Manon and in a month’s time, so being that it is a contained role maybe it seemed like a good opportunity to try out the foot before tackling a piece with many jumps or contemporary off-balance positions which might provoke damage.
Manon is an extremely technical piece with many jumps etc. There are a lot of very unhappy people who have paid out for tickets to see her at the ROH, only to find them constantly cancelled due to injury. I have this year purchased 5 different tickets to see her and only once has she danced. I think she needs to show loyalty to us in the UK, not dance in Milan.
Is it possible for the Royal Ballet to make casting changes for reasons other than injury? Their cast lists
are published before each quarter’s ticket sale. To do this, they had to leave Osipova our for an entire quarter, no matter how much they hoped she’d be ready — as it turned out — in mid-quarter. It would obviously be very demoralizing for a principal dancer to be told that she was not going to perform after all
under such circumstances.
And now she is injured again. Either she is over-stretching herself or something else is going on. I have lost track of how many times she hasn’t turned up. I think RB needs to ask if she is committed to the UK
Osipova gives ALL of herself when she rehearses and when she performs. We ought appreciate her fully rather then react unsympatjetically when she is injyred.