The Gala des Étoiles at La Scala made me feel as though I'd eaten all the icing on the cake: happy, but a little woozy. Don Q? Check! Corsaire? Check! Manon and Romeo and Juliet? Check! Spartacus? Check!
As you can see if you scroll down to the programme, it wasn't all hoary favourites, and when the interpreters are some of the best dancers in the world it would be churlish to let even the slightest doubt on the programming flit through one's mind.
The best bits? Well, for me, the two pieces with Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino – Arpino's Light Rain and Stevenson's Three Preludes – were danced magnificently, especially by the pliant and sensual Lacarra, and beautifully lit too, as was the whole evening. In the same vein, Maria Eichwald and Mick Zeni were both superb in Petit's La rose malade: both are such expressive dancers.
Svetlana Zakharova as The Dying Swan was full of despair and pathos but she remains a noble creature without the touching fragility of other noteworthy interpretations I prefer. When she teamed up with Leonid Sarafanov for Le Corsaire however, her regal quality came to the fore and she illuminated the auditorium. She smiles with her shoulders, her neck, her face… not just with lips and teeth. Sarafanov was elegant and refined, as we have come to expect from this dancers' dancer.
The Don Quixote wedding pas de deux closed the first half and brought Nicoletta Manni and Ivan Vasiliev together again. They have danced together both at La Scala and at the Bolshoi. Vasiliev's predilection for this extract is well known, and Manni danced the role of Kitri recently at La Scala to huge acclaim showing off her seemingly easy virtuosic technique, so it was a good idea to team them up here. Young Manni's first-night nerves got the better of her, which is only worth mentioning because she is a dancer who apparently is fazed by nothing, but on the next night she was splendid. In fact, every dancer looked as though they'd relaxed a little and were having a thoroughly good time on the second evening.
I was perplexed by the decision to ask two excellent dancers – The Royal Ballet's Melissa Hamilton and La Scala's Claudio Coviello – to dance the bedroom pas de deux from Manon in such a gala and live in cinemas and television, after just an hour of rehearsal. They have both danced in Manon but never together. The same went for Romeo and Juliet which brought together La Scala Principal Massimo Murru and Maria Eichwald. Murru has danced MacMillan's version which is in La Scala's repertoire, but Eichwald, who was until recently a Principal at Stuttgart, has only ever danced John Cranko's version. She danced it better than could have been imagined, but think how much finer if she had had the choreography under her skin. Only her exceptional artistry allowed her to get so far with the role so quickly.
Another odd presence was a piece created for Roberto Bolle two years ago. There were hi-tech video projections which conjured up multiple-Bolles so it seemed more an homage to Bolle than an homage to ballet. He danced it well, of course, and it contained many precisely coordinated passages as he interacted with both images of himself and swirling mists of light. It just felt out of place somehow.
This evening marked the closing of the Milan Expo 2015, and it felt like a party. There was lots of whooping and foot stomping which is very rare at La Scala. Having been involved with the evening myself, for the backstage streaming, I appreciate how much work goes in to bringing it all together – just organising the scores for the orchestra is a major undertaking – but the audience was more than appreciative… “Please, sir, I want some more”.
Lucia Lacarra – Marlon Dino
Light Rain – Pas de deux
Choreography by Gerald Arpino
Music by Douglas Adams and Russ Gauthier
Melissa Hamilton – Claudio Coviello
Manon – Pas de deux – Act I
Choreography by Kenneth MacMillan
Music by Jules Massenet
Maria Eichwald – Mick Zeni
La rose malade
Choreography by Roland Petit
Music by Gustav Mahler
Alina Somova – Leonid Sarafanov
Grand Pas Classique
Choreography by Victor Gsovsky
Music by Daniel-François Auber
Polina Semionova – Roberto Bolle
Carmen – Pas de deux
Choreography by Roland Petit
Music by Georges Bizet
Svetlana Zakharova
The Dying Swan
Choreography by Mikhail Fokine
Music by Camille Saint-Saëns
Nicoletta Manni – Ivan Vasiliev
Don Quixote
Grand Pas de deux, Act III
Choreography by Marius Petipa
Music by Ludwig Minkus
Lucia Lacarra – Marlon Dino
Three Preludes
Choreography by Ben Stevenson
Music by Sergei Rachmaninov
Piano Roberto Cominati
Maria Eichwald – Massimo Murru
Romeo and Juliet – Balcony Pas de deux
Choreography by Kenneth MacMillan
Music by Sergei Prokofiev
Maria Vinogradova – Ivan Vasiliev
Spartacus – Pas de deux
Choreography by Yuri Grigorovich
Music by Aram Khachaturian
Roberto Bolle
Prototype
Concept and choreography Massimiliano Volpini
Original music by Piero Salvatori produced by Fausto Dasè
Visual effects and video editing Avantgarde Numerique e Xchanges Vfx Design
Svetlana Zakharova – Leonid Sarafanov
Le Corsaire – Pas de deux
Choreography by Marius Petipa
Music by Riccardo Drigo
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.
I’d like to read your impression about Carmen…
I am surprised to find that some pdd haven’t been tested almost and we have seen.
What about Carmen’s pdd?
in my opinion the program was not well thought . These dancers have in their repertoire Kilian , Forsthye, Neumeier ecc,ecc. Spartacus, Volpini? For me a mistery. Two words about the awful direction. another time, as in DQ. .Another mistery
I find it strange that there was no mention of Carmen – which was visually stunning, and Roberto and Polina were beathtaking. When the curtains opened to silence – until that magically synchronised first step – you could have heard a pin drop, and then………… crack! ..Don José was ‘in the house’. Perhaps you needed to be the other side of the curtain!
But my comment has to be more to do with Prototype.
Sure it is a departure from the classics and contemporary dance we are used to, and I could feel the shock reverberate around the audience – *gasp – sharp intake of breath — ‘what is this!’
We all love the familiar Pdd, and works that we know and love, and I would no more change that than fly, but ‘comfortable’ is no friend of Art.
We are moving into – indeed we have arrived in the digital age, and ballet has to move with the times or face its own death by stagnation.
It was a brave decision to bring Prototype to the Gala – indeed to bring it to La Scala, but a correct one I believe. Ballet has to move forward, evolve, and ‘ballets such as Prototype and Simkins ‘Intensio’ are spearheading a new direction. We should be welcoming it, exploring it, not raising hands in horror because having seen it once we dont understand it.
Very much enjoyed your commentary backstage which I caught on youtube.com a few days ago!!! Bravo!
The format for these galas has to be changed – i,e, made more interesting, I am not surprised that Lacarra and her partner were the highlight of the evening, The Corsair pas de deux has been performed too many times but Zaharova is so exciting that she can get away with it. Only Lopatina should dance the Dying Swan, Why wasn’t Balanchine or Robbins on the program. The New York City was not performing last
week, They have some amazing dancers i.e. the amazing Tyler Peck.
Replies to the above comments (thank you for taking the time!)
To reply to Eleonora and Manuela… I left out the Carmen because it didn’t do anything for me. The pdd needs to be sensual and erotic and this didn’t come over to me, but it obviously did to those wildly applauding in front of me: I like enormously both Bolle and Semionova but not particularly here.
Whereas for the conducting, Sandra, I believe that the dancers ask for extremely slow tempi which usually conductors are against as it destroys the musical phrasing, but they have to accommodate the artist on stage and go against their own taste. As for the programme I agree. I thought it might be to showcase ballets in La Scala’s repertoire, but that doesn’t explain Le corsaire, Prototype, Spartacus etc.
To Blueraspberry: my review came from seeing it the day after in the house, so I did get the full on impact, but my opinion (above) says why I wasn’t bowled over. Though, of course, we are talking about the best in the world and that opinion is only in this context! In Prototype, I didn’t find anything pushing the boundaries, with quite restrained choreography and pretty projections and music; it certainly wasn’t Wayne McGregor. I liked much of it: playing with the wisps of light was very dreamy, Bolle sword fighting with himself as Romeo was fun, and the idea of creating the ‘prototype’ dancer with the ballet positions etc was all enjoyable. I don’t find it an exceptional piece as (to me) it feels like a lot of ideas put together with little cohesion and at the end, says very little, but my problem with it was that all the other dancers had elements of scenery – a bed, a chandelier, a table – in front of an illuminated cyc, so I found that this piece had an unbalancing presence in the evening… it needed more pieces like this, not less, to not make it stand out.
Carmel, I totally agree. As Sandra said too, there are many other choreographers out there that these dancers perform all the time. But there are choices to be made, even for a longish gala and, at the end, it’s horses for courses. A couple of neoclassical pieces added to the mix would have made me happier. But it was still a wonderful evening!
And Bill..? Thanks 🙂
corsaire!!
haha, I can imagine
I would love to have seen her dance !
I am happy that with ballet, one can have their “icing” and eat it too. No better icing than ballet and your reporting of it. thanks!
What a fantastic Gala! You’re so fortunate to be able to see all these great performances. Thanks for the report, I really enjoy reading about your observations.
Back in the 60’s, the Bolshoi would come to New York and play at the old Met with a similar programme. You could always be sure of Plisetskya reprising The Dying Swan; I always felt sorry for the violinist.
I think you meant cellist.
That’s really something that you saw the Bolshoi and Plisetskaya back then.