|
6 & 7 June
Premiere of the ballet A Midsummer Night’s Dream
| |
You worked with Balanchine for nine years...
Yes, that’s right. I actually worked longer because I worked with him as a child. So I worked with him in the company as a professional dancer for nine years but I worked with him probably for four more years as a child. So it’s more like twelve or thirteen years.
Why did you choose to link your own future career so very closely with Balanchine in particular?
When I was ten years old I was living in Boston and my mother and I went to see the New York City Ballet’s performances of The Four Temperaments, Scotch Symphony and La Valse. I was already a very talented dancer then and wanted to be a ballerina, and after the show I said to my mother “I want to dance for the person that made those ballets.” Of course, that was Balanchine and he was alive then. From that time, that was my goal – to dance in his company. I loved the freedom of the dancers, I loved his choreography, the music, the costumes. It was very magical for me as a child.
Now the Mariinsky Theatre is staging the ballet A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is a very traditional ballet – it has a plot and all of the other normal components, but this is not really typical for Balanchine. How do you reconcile those two facts?
Well, often Balanchine had ballets with stories. Even though he is known for his non-story ballets I also love his ballets with stories. Together we did the ballets Harlequinade, Coppélia and The Nutcracker; there are plots in all these ballets so they’re also an important part of his legacy. But I think even when a ballet doesn’t have those stories, like, for example, Serenade, somehow you still feel there’s a story, and when you’re dancing it you feel like you’re a part of a story, even though it’s abstract.
Balanchine had loved the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream since he was a child. As a student at the Imperial Theatre School he took part in performances of the work. When he staged his own production later on, he loved to have children in his choreography because he actually danced here as a child and he had a very strong connection to children performing in ballet. I saw this ballet the first time when I was a child – I saw the movie with Edward Villella and Suzanne Farrell – and I then saw the ballet (onstage) and I fell in love with it. I always had an affinity to this ballet and when Balanchine died he actually left this ballet to Diana Adams who was one of his prima ballerinas. He originally choreographed Titania for her. Diana and I were very good friends, she was my teacher and she always wanted me to stage the ballet, but for her it was very important that wherever I stage it they have a good school, because she said the children were such an important part of the ballet.
You must have worked with a great many different ballet companies staging different works by Balanchine – while you’ve only been here for a few days as far as I know, but what are your impressions of working with the Mariinsky Ballet Company?
Actually, I was here for almost a month in January.
You mean my impressions of the dancers?
Well, the company has some of the finest dancers in world, so it’s very exciting for me to work with them. They are very diverse and very intelligent and beautifully trained. The school here feels familiar because my background is from Balanchine and he came from here and I see that a lot of things have been retained. It’s like coming home, because I trained under Balanchine and he was from St Petersburg so we’re like family.
When working with Mariinsky Theatre soloists, do you have a sense of the spirit of Balanchine?
Absolutely. I feel that the dancers here have had a lot of experience with Balanchine’s work and they understand it and I think that they are really excited to dance this ballet, it’s so beautiful, the music and the steps... I feel that Balanchine’s spirit is all around here. Because the Mariinsky Theatre dancers know how this ballet has to be performed.
Speaking with Inna Rodina
|
