Review and photo album: Youth Grand Prix’s Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow in Como
| Graham Spicer photographs the Youth Grand Prix annual event in Como with ‘Stars of Today’, certainly, and surely some ‘Stars of Tomorrow’ too. |
The Youth Grand Prix juggernaut (part of the Youth America Grand Prix), rolled into Como at the 19th-century Teatro Sociale – a jewel which sits just a little way back from the famous lake.
The evening was a “Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow” programme, with the familiar mix of ‘stars of today’ with younger dancers – little Asya Subashi from Germany,who opened the programme, is just eight years old. Several of the professional dancers taking part competed in YGP events as students, which gave the evening a family feel.
YGP events are organised with rare efficiency, and projections bearing the dancer’s name and the piece they were to dance propelled the programme along without pause.
Some of the young dancers are extraordinary, and even if their performances often leaned towards gymnastics, that is maybe inevitable with pieces chosen to show what they can do and, in a two-minute slot, that means lots of leaps and turns.
The 12-year-old Teranishi twins (Sota and Yuto, 12 years old) certainly turned and turned… and turned, in their double Don Quixote variation, both dancing the male variation with an ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ vibe. They were delightful, and were enjoying themselves as much as the audience.
Older twins were the 18-year-old sisters Mackenzie Chu-Robin and Skylar Chu-Robin, who danced the Raymonda Panaderos, a YAGP favourite. It seems the organisation’s aim is to present the most wide-ranging programmes possible, and this piece, with its generous skirts and swirling movements, certainly stood out.
Mackenzie Chu-Robin and Skylar Chu-Robin
Impressive both artistically and technically were Crystal Huang, an American ballerina who is currently on the San Francisco Ballet School’s Trainee Program, and Japanese dancer Sakura Nagai (15). Both recently appeared in the gala finale of this year’s XV International Ballet Competition at the Bolshoi Theatre. Huang’s plastic physicality made the most of Brady Farrar’s Hypnotic Valse, and her variations from Esmeralda and The Flames of Paris were assured and danced with charm. Nagai danced an Odalisque variation from Le Corsaire and the variation by Petipa from the one-act ballet The Cavalry Halt, which had the audience gasping at the sheer number of pirouettes and her total control and musicality. Extraordinary.
Crystal Huang
Sakura Nagai
Another of the younger dancers was Ekaterina Pichkova, 15, who studies at the Osipova Ballet Academy in California. She danced a 2-minute solo from Mauro Bigonzetti‘s Rossini Cards, an odd choice maybe, but it contrasted strongly with her Medora’s variation from Le Corsaire.
Ekaterina Pichkova
The International Contemporary Ensemble (also known as ICE or IC:EX YAGP) is an international youth dance initiative created in collaboration with YAGP to bridge the gap between competitive student training and professional contemporary dance careers. The large group performed works by two Israeli choreographers: Ohad Naharin’s powerful Echad Mi Yodea and Sharon Eyal’s Into the Hairy.
IC:EX YAGP
The logistics of these events must be exceptionally complex, as another large group was from Houston, Texas. The OAEC (Oriental Arts Education Center) danced the highly synchronised Golden Dynasty Reverie and then Ave Maria with Busby Berkeley flair. Siqi Luo’s Ave Maria was an odd creation, with soprano Maria Barakova singing the Schubert live, yet to the profound solemnity of the music, the dancers ran around in a truly unspiritual way, recalling a burlesque feather dance or Zizi Jeanmaire‘s Mon Truc en Plumes. Beautifully performed, but totally inappropriate.
OAEC
The professional dancers had more space to engage with the audience than the younger dancers with their brief variations, though Renata Shakirova from the Mariinsky Ballet, was obviously signed up to impress with her technical prowess. And she did! The Don Quixote grand pas with Dutch National Ballet‘s Giorgi Potskhishvili was exciting with all the dazzling tricks we have come to expect from both of them – her lightning-fast retiré sequence during her variation; his à la seconde turns incorporating hops in the coda. Potskhishvili is very strong, and when he held her aloft – the soundman’s finger hovering over pause/play for an eternity – he rose to half-pointe and then slowly moved one leg back in arabesque. Gimmicky, but exciting.
Renata Shakirova & Giorgi Potskhishvili
Earlier, Shakirova had danced a rather forgettable Black Swan variation – perfectly fine, but it was devoid of personality. Potskhishvili teamed up with his Georgian compatriot Nino Samadashvili for Yuri Possokhov’s Sagalobeli Adagio, which was new to me. It was created for the State Ballet of Georgia in 2007 to traditional Georgian folk melodies, and it was touching to watch the pair dance to motifs that have accompanied them since childhood.
Nino Samadashvili & Giorgi Potskhishvili
Nnamdi Nwagwu (International Contemporary Artist) presented two fascinatingly individual works. He is an unusual talent, with an ebullient personality that made it seem as if he were aiming to jump across the orchestra pit to join the audience during the applause. He performed his own piece, Tito!, with conviction, as well as Wir sagen uns Dunkles, created for NDT 2 by Marco Goecke.
Nnamdi Nwagwu
Another ‘International Contemporary Artist’ was Ildar Young-Gaynutdinov, who danced a piece that he created called Skin as well as Running Man by Pavel Glukhov. Young-Gaynutdinov rose to fame on Russian television but has a raw stage presence that doesn’t suggest the commercial sheen of TV talent shows and has a visceral performing energy.
Ildar Young-Gaynutdinov
Kiera Sun and Maximiliano Catazaro from American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company danced a pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon‘s American in Paris. They both have attractive personalities and infused it with charm.
Kiera Sun and Maximiliano Catazaro
However, for me, the highlight was seeing Madison Young and Alessandro Frola, both YAGP alumni and currently principal dancers with Vienna State Ballet. They danced magnetically, beautifully, a section from Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour. My comments here are limited because I was photographing the show, which concentrates the mind in a particular way, obliging the photographer to observe in an original way and with eyes different from those of the critic. However, something telling is how many photos ‘work’. While it is true that certain contemporary pieces don’t have ‘positions’ and dynamic sequences such as turns in a classical pas de deux are unphotographable, with different dancers in the same piece, some will give the photographer five usable photos, others fifty. Young and Frola offered beautiful position after beautiful position, with involved, yearning faces, and emotion flowing throughout – these are not static, but animated poses. They breathed life into Wheeldon’s sublime choreography, and the effect on the audience – without flashiness or emphasis – was immense.
Madison Young and Alessandro Frola
On a scorching evening in a theatre without air conditioning, it is a testament to the dancers and organisers that the audience remained gripped throughout.
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 Italian ballerina 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.
What a fabulous post! Thank you, Graham.
Thank you Simon!