Next year, Roberto Bolle turns 50. Even so, it’s not hard to remember the rather shy student at La Scala’s school with an ear-to-ear grin as he’s retained much of that boyish quality. In fact, when some TV presenter mentions his athletic body – and he’s often half-naked for such apparitions – he blushes and giggles, albeit less than a decade ago.
[I face the passing of time] with great commitment, effort, and pain, but without ever renouncing new experiences that will test and enrich me.
Bolle and Friends [the gala format that tours the Italian peninsula and beyond] was my first step towards maturity. At first, I was very hesitant. Yes, it’s true that I was already a principal dancer at La Scala at 21, but [24 years ago] it seemed too much to try to sell something to the public using my name and with a programme that I decided on and organised. It felt a great responsibility.
Bolle has a huge Italian following and has become the point of reference when discussing dance matters on television. His three-hour-long annual television shows at peak time on Italy’s prime channel have cemented the often-repeated remark among the general public that he is ‘the world’s greatest ballet dancer’.
The [television shows] were a natural evolution, but at the beginning I was anxious – the fear of crossing the threshold of notoriety. After all, I was doing wonderful things in the theatre, and presenting myself in a programme that didn’t reflect who I was, wasn’t of a high standard, and had little immediate feedback was a risk. But then I said to myself: do it as best as you can.
For the first programme, the writers had prepared a few speeches for me, but when they pointed a spotlight at me, I was terrified – once I dried up completely. Later I realised that I needed to just throw myself into everything: I had to interview John Malkovich on my own who arrived at the last moment, and I participated in a sketch based on [Mel Brooks’] Young Frankenstein. I learned to make fun of myself.
A new annual television date is OnDance with hundreds of ballet students from all over Italy doing a dance class in the piazza in front of Milan’s Duomo, with Maestro Bolle on a dais giving instructions.
To think that we organised a mega-class at the barre in Piazza Duomo shows that the popularity of this discipline among young people is much greater than the establishment thinks.
I started dance when I was seven years old. At that time I was also swimming, taking part in the Boy Scouts summer and winter camp, and I liked to organise even then. At the age of 12, I entered the Ballet School of La Scala.
I wasn’t happy when my mother took me to take the entrance exam. I liked to dance but I didn’t understand why I needed to go all the way to Milan as I felt so happy at the Academy of Vercelli, just half an hour by bus from Trino, my hometown. It was a nice situation. But a friend of my mother’s read about an audition in a newspaper, my mother was foresighted, and it changed my life.
The solitude [in Milan when I was 12] was hard – I only studied during the week and I couldn’t wait to go home at the weekend. Though it was also hard during the first years when I joined the company.
Fatigue and pain punctuate the days more and more as the years go by. But it is at the barre or in the rehearsal room, much more than on stage during shows, that I challenge myself and isolate myself from what is happening in the world.
I am always very critical of myself, but I know that nature has blessed me on a physical level, with harmony in my proportions. But with time, this gift can no longer be taken for granted. I think I stand out for the quality of my port de bras, the movement of my arms and hands – strength but combined with softness. Time has something to do with this too, as experience makes you more aware of movement.
Dancing requires mental agility – the ability to learn and memorise many steps, often in just a few days. Usually you build those steps in time with the music, but in 2006 for Le jeune homme et la mort at La Scala, with Roland Petit we [re-]created a choreography based on rhythms, without the music, Bach’s Passacaglia. But at a certain point the two paths found each other. A very strange experience. [NB a role created for Jean Babilée in 1946]. My role in Marguerite and Armand, which I danced for the first time in 2007 with Alessandra Ferri, was three acts of intense, dramatic, non-stop ballet. Today [I feel close to] Onegin from John Cranko‘s ballet – a strong, dramatic role which has marked the fulfilment of my expressive maturity.
Dance, in a certain sense, is at the avant-garde of a phenomenon promoted by great choreographers to ‘delay’ the effects of age: Jiří Kylián has created a company for older dancers within the Nederlands Dans Theater for years; Angelin Prejlocaj choreographs for octogenarians; Mats Ek goes on tour with glories of the past such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna.
I am immersed in my whirlwind of commitments – it is an adrenaline-pumping place to be which I like. Of course, when I stop, I look around and even if everything seems to be going on as always, nothing remains unchanged… life passes, feelings change. Think of the close ties we had with Russian companies, with stars like Svetlana Zakharova, and how everything has changed in an unexpected, disconcerting, destabilising way. In my free time, I like to go home to Trino, cook dinners for friends, catch up on international news, also in English from the New York Times, and I love reading nonfiction.
Youth is always exciting, but ever since I was promoted as principal at La Scala I have felt, in everything I have done, the responsibility to represent the value of theatre for which I have the utmost respect… Today I live my age with enthusiasm and satisfaction. The milestone of 50 eventually becomes a point of pride, the pride of saying how old I am, and to bring those years to the stage.
Roberto Bolle was talking to Alessandro Cannavò for the Corriere della Sera
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.