On Italian television for New Year’s Eve – Rai5 at 9.15 pm –arrives the ballet gala Les Étoiles.
Producer Daniele Cipriani has been devising Les Étoiles galas in Rome since 2015 and this transmission is a two hour “best of” compilation from the past five editions staged at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda, La Bayadère, etc. are all present as expected, together with modern classics danced by Marianela Nuñez, Vadim Muntagirov and Fumi Kaneko (The Royal Ballet); Kimin Kim (Mariinsky); Jacopo Tissi and Alena Kovaleva (Bolshoi Ballet at the time of filming); Daniil Simkin and Iana Salenko (Staatsballett Berlin); Maia Makhateli and Young Gyu Choi (Dutch National Ballet); Tatiana Melnik (Hungarian National Ballet); Matteo Miccini (Stuttgart Ballet); Bakhtiyar Adamzhan (Astana Opera House Ballet); Sergio Bernal (formerly National Ballet of Spain).
The gala can also be seen via the national television’s Raiplay online service. From outside Italy you may need a VPN: Les Étoiles gala, New Year’s Eve
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.