Written by Damián Donéstevez
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TOPIC OF THE WEEK
by Damián Donéstevez -You danced a MacMillan piece, the Winter Dreams pas de deux, how would you describe it and what role did you play in it?
The whole ballet is about three sisters but I never really played the whole ballet, I always play the pas de deux in galas. It’s very difficult to understand the whole story for me but you see in the choreography and the emotion of the pas de deux what it means. -What do you think are the technical and expressive difficulties of this piece? Well, for male dancers it’s quite tricky because it was made for Irek Mukhamedov, so there is a lot of jumps, lots of tricks and it’s really long and very tiring for the male dancer, specially when you have the technical side plus the emotion you have to put into it, so it’s more tiring, so that’s what I find in the pas de deux. -The Royal Ballet tour of Cuba included five performances in the Cuban capital in a country with a ballet tradition and an audience for ballet. What do you know of Cuban ballet in general? Well, I hear things, I’ve seen videos. Though I’ve never seen the company perform, I’ve seen Cuban dancers and I’ve danced with Cuban male dancers, including Carlos Acosta or José Pérez, fabulous natural partners and very technical dancers. With Carlos I danced Marie Larisch in Mayerling, Le Corsaire and a Manon pas de deux in a gala and some contemporary Ashley Page ballets with him when he joined the company. With José Pérez I danced the Nutcracker in Scotland and they are fantastic. They turn a lot, so that’s something that they worry about a lot when they dance with me because I’m not really a turning ballerina, I do normal technique turns but I’m not a spinning dancer. They have this natural way of being, they have this charisma, this fire on stage that you don’t see often, it’s just a natural way of dancing that they’ve got in their blood. -I understand you come from La Scala Ballet School in Milan? How did you become a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet?
I started there as an artist, as a corps de ballet member, but in my first year, during my first six months, famous choreographer Glenn Tetley chose me to dance one of the main parts in one of his ballets when I was only 18, which was the big highlight when I joined the company. Since the director Monica Mason and others saw me doing Glenn Tetley they saw something in me, like a natural way of dancing and the first year they gave me the chance to do Marie Larisch in Mayerling, so I was only 19, that’s how my career started at the Royal Ballet. The classical work came a little bit later, all my work at the beginning was MacMillan, Glenn Tetley, I did a lot of Ashley Page and started to do my classical solo two or three years after I joined the company. I did a lot of pas de deux from Frederick Ashton as well, like the Thaïs pas de deux. I always performed or covered main parts but I had to go through the whole rank, I went through the five ranks: artist, first artist, soloist, first soloist and principal. I don’t regret that since it’s the best way to learn. My years in the Royal Ballet have built up from the first step to the really high level, that’s how I found my way as an artist, I found the right repertoire for me, so I’m very pleased that the people in the Royal Ballet, the coaches, have found this for me. That and the hard work I’ve done made me what I am now.
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The
role that I played is about a girl who is in love with an officer
leaving for the war and it’s the last time she sees him,
so the pas de deux is about this love, she knows she is never
going to see him again, so it’s quite sad. 
I
started ballet school at La Scala when I was ten years old and
I went through the whole eight years. I graduated at La Scala
School, and then I auditioned straight away for the Royal Ballet
and got a job in the British company. 