Sergei Polunin was in Milan recently to partner Natalia Osipova in Giselle after David Hallberg was forced to withdraw. There was great curiosity and excitement among the La Scala ballet crowd to see these two firecrackers on stage together. While he was in town, he talked to Il corriere della sera‘s dance journalist, Valeria Crippa,…
For more than twenty years the Benois Prize has been recognising talent with the most starry juries imaginable. The first year it consisted of Yury Grigorovich as its president, with Galina Ulanova (Russia), Carla Fracci (Italy), Kirsten Ralov (Denmark), Yvette Chauviré (France), Rudolf Nureyev (world citizen?) and John Neumeier (Germany). This year one of these, La Fracci, returned as part of an…
Q&A When did you start dancing? When I was 4 my mother started to teach me dance; my grandfather, as all good Italians, was a lover of art, opera and ballet, so in my family there was always an artistic atmosphere. At 8 I told my mother I wanted to start studying ballet, and so…
Italian ballerina Liliana Cosi, born in Milan on 15 August 1941, had a glorious career but was overshadowed by the mighty Carla Fracci, rather like Margot Fonteyn‘s fame almost obliterated many of the outstanding talents of her generation. After completing her studies at the ballet school at La Scala, she went to the Bolshoi for…
Vadim Muntagirov on his love of horror films, basketball, admiration of Sergei Vikulov, dislike of doing the dishes, and his motto: “Be nice.”
Q&A When did you start dancing? I started when I was 10 years old at the Teatro San Carlo ballet school in Naples. Why did you start dancing? My elder brother Raffaele took me to the audition and I fell in love with ballet immediately. Till then I had no idea of what ballet was….
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…
The ‘other’ Italian dancing star is Giuseppe Picone. For many Italians, especially the ones who rarely go to the theatre, Roberto Bolle is the only ballerino in the world worth watching. Many buy tickets only because Bolle is in the cast, and their evening is ruined if he doesn’t take his shirt off at some point (an…
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