After hanging up her pointe shoes in 2007, Alessandra Ferri has announced her return to the stage. At 49 she has decided to début in a new work, The Piano Upstairs, at the Spoleto Festival on 28 June. When asked by Il Corriere della Sera if she missed the applause, she replied that yes, the applause…
Ferruccio Soleri (class of 1929) has played Arlecchino in Giorgio Strehler‘s legendary production of Goldoni’s masterpiece Servant of Two Masters (Arlecchino servitore di due padroni) for Milan‘s Piccolo Teatro since 1959. And he still is. He will be playing the role for the 53rd season this year, and on tour in Argentina. Here he is pictured with long-time friend…
Tonight the Mikhailovsky Theatre opens its 2012-2013 season with Polina Semionova dancing the eponymous heroine in Giselle. Semionova left to join the Berlin Staatsoper immediately after graduating from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Coincidentally, earlier this week Daniel Barenboim, the Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper, gave a press conference at the Mikhailovsky where he announced that on 5–6 September 2013, he will perform there…
An unpublished photograph of Carla Fracci and Rudolf Nureyev in Giselle at Milan‘s Teatro alla Scala in 1974
Q&A When did you start dancing? Age 6, then National Ballet School, Toronto, age 9. Why did you start dancing? Saw ballet on TV. Which dancer inspired you most as a child? Nureyev. Which dancer do you most admire? Anthony Dowell. What’s your favourite role? Onegin by John Cranko. What role have you never played…
Q&A When did you start dancing? At the age of 14. It had been hard to convince my dad to take me to my first ballet class! Why did you start dancing? I always wanted to dance since I was little. Dance has always been a part of me. Which dancer inspired you most as…
23 year-old Petra Conti is a dancer at La Scala in Milan, who is being slowly brought before the public by director (ex-director of the Mariinsky) Makhar Vaziev. He first saw her when she spent a year in St Petersburg at the Mariinsky to polish her technique. After the 2008-2009 season with the Bavarian State…
Milan‘s newspaper, the most influential Italian paper, Il Corriere della Sera, almost ignored La Raymonda at La Scala last week, with Valeria Crippa‘s short article dismissing it quickly. Here the past is preserved in mothballs, the brilliant Marius Petipa’s choreographic style appears decrepit, and dull scenery frames an ageing corps, despite the freshness of the students of the school. Others however looked a little closer. Elsa…
The Ballet Nacional de Cuba in early September for Spain on a tour that will take the company to almost 30 cities. They will take their greatest hits repertoire, including Swan Lake, Cinderella and Giselle. Less known pieces include En las sombras de un vals (In the shadows of a waltz), with choreography by Alicia Alonso…
Ethan Stiefel will withdraw from performances with the company this spring, says the NY Times Artsbeat. Stiefel, 38, said he had decided to withdraw so that he could focus on his duties as dean of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He is to take on the role of artistic…
A photo by Erio Piccagliani of Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn in Giselle on September 4, 1965, from the Teatro alla Scala collection. Simply beautiful…
A principal dancer with the Cuban National Ballet, Elier Bourzac, is one of five company members who declined to return home with the troupe after its triumphant first appearance in Montreal last month. All five are seeking to stay in Canada in the hope of joining Canadian dance companies. Among their first acts in the…
Judith Mackrell in The Guardian finds much to praise in 21-year-old Sergei Polunin‘s Albrecht: Physically, Polunin could not be more ideal for the role. With his wide poet’s forehead, slender build and black velvet gaze he’s not only the most handsome man Giselle has ever seen, he’s a pin-up boy for the whole idea of…
End of content
End of content