DISCOVER YOUR REAL POTENTIAL
The Mariinsky’s performance on Friday night was honourable: Ekaterina Kondaurova an eloquent Odette, a vivid Odile, the dance pure in its lines. Her Siegfried was Yevgeny Ivanchenko, dutiful in all things, oddly remote in manner. The legion of swan-maidens spoke of elegance of means, vital traditions, impeccable style. The third act mazurka was a marvel. Splendid decors. A fine orchestra.
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“Swan lake port de bras are one of the hardest techniques to learn, but it’s amazing for toning your back and arms. Whenever I take a break from swan lake and come back to it, my arms and back get so sore!” – Isabella Boylston
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After the success in Milan before the summer, La Scala now takes Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake to Paris for six performances at the Palais des Congrès. The production was coproduced with the Opernhaus in Zurich, where it had its premiere in February of this year.
Last year, the company took Giselle to Paris to great acclaim – Le Figaro: “Le Ballet de la Scala embrasse Giselle” – and if there is an audience who can fully appreciate Ratmansky’s work on Swan Lake, it is the French.
La Scala’s own orchestra will be playing for the opera in Milan, so the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra Miskolc will accompany the dancers in Paris, conducted by Rossen Milanov.
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It is the second time that Manni has worked with Ratmansky as she was one of the Auroras in his The Sleeping Beauty last October.
It is interesting working on this Swan Lake, because with Aurora I was dancing the role for the first time, whereas I have danced Odette/Odile in other versions, so I am learning to see these characters from a different point of view. I think that for the audience the story is easier to follow even though the characters are multi-layered.
Apart from the work we’ve done on the technique, which is different to that we are used to, we have worked a great deal on the interpretation and the pantomime which is often pared down and not used to its full advantage. For us it has been wonderful working on this in detail whereas usually it is a secondary consideration.
It has been a privilege to be working with Alexei whose advice enriches us as artists and has also given us an opportunity of rehearsing in a way that is unusual nowadays. I hope that the audience manages to appreciate this work because for us it’s been indispensable.
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Three beautiful costumes illustrations which include the name of the ballet, the choreographer, the ballet’s premiere location, and the year it premiered. See the chronological infographic that display ballet costumes of 40 classical ballets.
In the third act of “Swan Lake”, the Black Swan pulls off a seemingly endless series of turns, bobbing up and down on one pointed foot and spinning around and around and around … thirty-two times. How is this move — which is called a fouetté — even possible? Arleen Sugano unravels the physics of this famous ballet move.