Tonight – closing gala of the Nervi International Ballet Festival 2025, near Genoa
This evening, the Nervi International Ballet Festival 2025 closes with a gala dedicated to its founder, Mario Porcile.
Artistic Director Jacopo Bellussi (who will also dance) together with Maina Gielgud, have put together a programme for the Mario Porcile Gala that pays homage to the festival’s origins as well as including works that were created after its first edition in 1955. The dancers participating come from Royal Ballet, the Hamburg Ballett, the Staatsballett Berlin, the Dutch National Ballet, and the American Ballet Theatre, among others.
The Pas de Quatre has often put together four great ballerinas. Jules Perrot’s original ballet from 1845 starred Maria Taglioni, Fanny Cerrito, Carlotta Grisi, and Lucile Grahn – some cast! Anton Dolin’s 1941 version of Perrot’s ballet has been in the repertoire ever since (including that of the Trocks, imitating the 19th-century prints of the original four dancers). He cast Nathalie Krassovska as Lucile Grahn, Mia Slavenska as Carlotta Grisi, Alexandra Danilova as Fanny Cerrito, and Alicia Markova as Marie Taglioni. In 1957, Dolin chose 20-year-old Carla Fracci to join Yvette Chauviré, Margrethe Schanne and Alicia Markova for the third edition of the Nervi Festival.
At this year’s festival, Gielgud has restaged the ballet with four of today’s principal dancers – Ida Praetorius (Hamburg Ballett and Royal Danish Ballet), Cassandra Trenary (American Ballet Theatre), Aliya Tanikpaeva (Hungarian National Ballet), and Jessica Xuan (Dutch National Ballet).
Gielgud, who often collaborated with Maurice Béjart, has staged his Le chant du compagnon errant (Songs of a Wayfarer) set to the Gustav Mahler song cycle. Paolo Bortoluzzi (from Genoa, just a few kilometres from Nervi, and student of festival-founder Mario Porcile) and Rudolf Nureyev were its first interpreters in 1971. Tonight it will be danced by Jacopo Bellussi and The Royal Ballet’s Matthew Ball. Gielgud has also remounted a piece that Béjart created for her in 1974, Forme et Ligne (Squeaky Door), with Ksenia Ovsyanick (Staatsballett Berlin).
Other works in the gala are the balcony pas de deux (always a winner in the open air) from Kenneth MacMillan‘s Romeo and Juliet with Matthew Ball and Cassandra Trenary. The second act pas de deux from Giselle (again, performed in the middle of a park, gives it some extra magic) will be danced by Aliya Tanikpaeva with Dmitry Timofeev (also Hungarian National Ballet) as her Albrecht.
Jessica Xuan and Jakob Feyferlik (Bayerisches Staatsballett) will dance Hans van Manen’s Trois Gnossiennes, and Ida Praetorius with Jacopo Bellussi dance the ‘black’ pas de deux from John Neumeier‘s La signora delle camelie (The Lady of the Camellias).
The Mario Porcile Gala begins at 9:15 p.m. tonight, July 27. It is divided into three parts, concluding around 11:30 p.m.
Tickets are available at the box office upon arrival or can be purchased online.
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.
