Les Étoiles dance gala closes the 2019 Ravenna Festival

The Ravenna Festival was founded in 1990 by Cristina Mazzavillani Muti, with a rich programme which includes symphonic and chamber music, opera, drama, dance, ballet, musical theatre, jazz, and ethnic music.

It's the perfect location for a summer festival as Ravenna is a stunningly beautiful city, with eight UNESCO World Heritage sites including its stunning gilded basilicas encrusted with the famous ancient mosaics, and also because it only takes only quarter of an hour to drive to the beaches and pine forest.

Opening the festival on 5 June this year was Mazzavillani's husband, Riccardo Muti, conducting the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini with Maurizio Pollini, and closing it on 16 July is Daniele Cipriani's Les Étoiles gala: a mosaic of dance in the city of mosaics.

The dancers come from Korea, France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, Spain, America representing ballet companies also in Hungary and Holland:

Dorothée Gilbert and Hugo Marchand (Paris Opera Ballet)
Jacopo Tissi and Alena Kovaleva (Bolshoi Ballet)
Bakhtiyar Adamzhan (Astana Opera, Kazakhstan)
Tatiana Melnik (Hungarian National Ballet)
Constantine Allen, Anna Tsygankova, Young Gyu Choi and Rebecca Storani (Dutch National Ballet)
Sergio Bernal (Spanish National Ballet)

Les Étoiles
16 July 2019 at 21.30 at the Palazzo Mauro de André

Sergio Bernal, The Swan, Les Etoiles 2019 © Malcolm Levinkind

Rebecca Storani and Vadim Muntagirov in Flames of Paris © Josep Guindo

Jacopo Tissi and Alena Kovaleva © Cristiano Castaldi

Constantine Allen

Anna Tsygankova with Jozef Varga in Swan Lake © Graham Spicer

Programme: Les Étoiles, Ravenna 2019

FIRST PART

Diamonds (from “Jewels”)
©The George Balanchine Trust
Choreography George Balanchine
Music Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

with Alena Kovaleva and Jacopo Tissi

Esmeralda
Choreography Marius Petipa (from Jules Perrot)
Music Cesare Pugni

with Dorothée Gilbert and Hugo Marchand

Flames of Paris (pas de deux)
Choreography Vasili Vainonen
Music Boris Asafyev

with Rebecca Storani and Young Gyu Choi

Le Corsaire (pas de deux Act II) 
Choreography Marius Petipa
Music Riccardo Drigo

with Tatiana Melnik and Bakhtiyar Adamzhan

Zapateado de Sarasate
Choreography Antonio Ruiz Soler
Music Pablo de Sarasate

with Sergio Bernal

Swan Lake (Black Swan pas de deux, Act III)
Choreography Marius Petipa
Music  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

with Anna Tsygankova and Constantine Allen

INTERVAL

Anna Tsygankova with Jozef Varga in Duet © Graham Spicer

Dorothée Gilbert

Bakhtiyar Adamzhan and Tatiana Melnik in Diana and Actaeon, Les Etoiles 2019 © Malcolm Levinkind

Young Gyu Choi © Altin Kaftira

SECOND PART

The Swan
Choreography Ricardo Cue
Music Camille Saint-Saëns

with Sergio Bernal

Amovéo
Choreography Benjamin Millepied
Music Philip Glass
Costumes Benjamin Millepied and Paul Cox

with Dorothée Gilbert and Hugo Marchand

Diana and Actaeon (pas de deux)
Choreography Agrippina Vaganova
Music Riccardo Drigo

with Rebecca Storani and Young Gyu Choi

Duet
Choreography Christopher Wheeldon
Music Maurice Ravel

with Anna Tsygankova and Constantine Allen

Grand Pas Classique
Choreography Victor Gsovsky
Music Daniel Auber

with Alena Kovaleva and Jacopo Tissi

Don Quixote (pas de deux, Act III)
Choreography Marius Petipa
Music Ludwig Minkus

with Tatiana Melnik and Bakhtiyar Adamzhan

Défilé
Music Riccardo Drigo

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.