A debut by Filipp Stepin

The new season at the Mariinsky Theatre has barely begun, and Filipp Stepin will be making his second debut of the year. Last week he made his debut in Roland Petit’s ballet Le Jeune Homme et la mort. On 22 September he will be dancing as Ivan the Fool in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Little Humpbacked Horse for the first time. In May last season the dancer added the role of Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty to his repertoire, and in June he stunned audiences in the premiere of Ratmansky’s dizzyingly intense Concerto DSCH. The roles that Stepin has been rehearsing recently are very unlike one another and allow the dancer to display all the different facets of his talent. In The Sleeping Beauty he appeared as the elegant Prince and demonstrated a deep understanding of the style of classical ballet. The plot-less Concerto DSCHrequired a different kind of virtuoso skill – pure instrumentalism and being able to overcome all the technical demands with ease, almost with humour. In Le Jeune Homme et la mort Filipp was incredibly convincing in terms of the drama of the emotional contemporary plastique. In The Little Humpbacked Horse he must bring to life a witty fairytale with a considerable share of comedy.

In the matinee performance of The Little Humpbacked Horse on 22 September audiences will see a further two debuts. Andrei Arseniev and Roman Belyakov will be performing the roles of Ivan the Fool’s brothers Danilo and Gavrilo for the first time.