Ballet Nice Méditerranée
On 21 September, the famous French ballet company will give its only St. Petersburg performance, at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. The dancers from the Côte d’Azur will perform a programme of four choreographic works which will open the new ballet season at the Nice Opera House a few days later.
The Ballet Nice Méditerranée was established in 1947. Since that time, celebrated choreographers and stars have been invited to work with the company, including Liane Daydé, Claire Motte and Youly Algaroff. In 2009, the city decided to breathe new life into the ballet company with the appointment of Éric Vu-An as Artistic Director. This charismatic dancer performed leading roles in productions by Rudolph Nureyev and Maurice Béjart at the tender age of 19, and made his choreographic debut when he was 25. Carolyn Carlson, Alvin Ailey and William Forsythe have all staged productions for him. Since Vu-An’s arrival, the Nice Opera House’s ballet company has gone from strength to strength. While still giving classical ballet the attention it deserves, the company has also been turning more and more to celebrated contemporary choreographers. One of its latest major premières was Dwight Rhoden’s ballet Verse Us, which was nominated for Benois de la Danse 2015.
The programme planned for St. Petersburg will showcase the company’s wide-ranging talents. George Balanchine’s one-act ballet Concerto Barocco, set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, is one of the great choreographer’s most popular legacies. The ballet was created in the early 1940s for students at the School of American Ballet, and was part of the programme at the debut performance of Balanchine’s pet project, the New York City Ballet, in 1948. It is the perfect example of the choreographer’s dream of having audiences „see the music, hear the dance“.
It is difficult to fit Oscar Aráiz’s ballets into a single category: the Argentinean ambitiously combines contemporary syncopated rhythms with classical restraint and original eurhythmics. St. Petersburg audiences will have the chance to see two of his works: Rapsodie, set to the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Adagietto, set to Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, for which Aráiz is responsible for the costumes and lights as well as the choreography.
The ballet Troy Game by Britain’s Robert North conforms to all the latest trends in choreography. The director brings the artists into a training battle where, to the rhythms of Brazilian batucada, the „warriors compete in passion and virtuosity to show their bravery.“ This exciting and energetic production will give audiences the chance to admire not only the dancers’ technique, but also their unique sense of humour.
