MILAN, ITALY — This May, the Strehler Theatre welcomes artists of La Scala’s Academy with a programme comprising the Presentation of the School, choreographed by Olivieri, the revival of William Forsythe’s New Sleep (Duet), performed for the first time last season, the classic Divertissement from Petipa’s Paquita and a piece that has just entered the School’s repertoire, Mauro Bigonzetti’s Rossini cards.
La Scala’s Academy at Strehler Theatre. Photograph: Annachiara Di Stefano
As always, the programme opens with the Presentation, based on Carl Czerny’s Études and conceived by Frédéric Olivieri, an open window on the students‘ formative journey, a veritable danced manual illustrating the progressive refinement of the young talents’ skills over the course of eight years of learning. The piece will allow the audience to visually grasp their technical growth, thanks to the succession of the various courses on stage.
New Sleep (Duet) represents a renewed encounter for the students of the School with the energetic and complex gestures that characterise the choreographic universe of William Forsythe, whose The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated are already part of the Academy’s repertoire.
An electrifying duet taken from the original piece created in 1987 for the San Francisco Ballet and presented in this form for a gala with Katherina Markowskaja and Noah Gelber in 2011, New Sleep (Duet), in keeping with the American choreographer’s characteristic style, requires the dancers to perform movements that defy the laws of gravity, to the insistent rhythms of Thom Willems’ music, saturated with urban echoes.
Scuola di Ballo Accademia Teatro alla Scala – directed by Frédéric Olivieri
The simplicity of the black costumes focuses attention on the power of the movement. Once again this year, Kathryn Bennetts, a key figure in Forsythe’s career since his days with the Stuttgart Ballet, makes a valuable contribution in conveying the piece’s interpretative dictates to the students.
The show continues with a suite from Marius Petipa’s Paquita divertissement, restaged by the masters of the Leonid Nikonov and Tatiana Nikonova School. Set in Spain under French rule during the Napoleonic era, Paquita debuted as a ballet in two acts and three scenes in Paris in 1846, with choreography by Joseph Mazilier, libretto by Mazilier and Paul Foucher, and music by Édouard-Marie-Ernest Deldevez. The ballet arrived at the Imperial Theatres of St. Petersburg in 1847. It was danced in the leading role by Marius Petipa, who revised the staging in three acts together with Pierre Frédéric Malavergne.
However, the version that was to become the benchmark for Paquita was the one edited by Petipa in 1881 in St Petersburg, with the addition of music and the collaboration of Ludwig Minkus. Petipa revised the Pas de trois of the first act, choreographing new numbers for the third act that were destined for great success: a Polonaise-Mazurka performed by children, followed by a masterpiece of virtuosity: the Grand Pas Classique, composed of Entrée, Adagio, Variation après l’Adagio, Variations and Coda.
In fact, after the 1917 revolution, Paquita was removed from the repertoire as a complete ballet, only to be revived in the 2000s with reconstructions by choreographers Pierre Lacotte (at La Scala next June with the participation of the youngest students of the Ballet School in the Polonaise-Mazurka) and Alexei Ratmansky, the grand finale of the third act conceived by Petipa, with frequent insertions of the Pas de trois, became one of the best-known Divertissements in the classical repertoire.
Sleep Duet. Photograph: Dennis Cursio
The Suite from the Divertissement chosen for the show opens with the Pas de deux on the Adagio, which features the main couple (Paquita and Lucien) and a female corps de ballet composed of fourteen students from the final years.
This is followed by the brilliant Allegro of the Variation après l’Adagio, the Pas de trois, the solo variations of Paquita and Lucien, and the sparkling finale of the Coda. An immersion in academic technique intertwined with an elegant Spanish flavour in the spirit of studying the repertoire.
The evening closes with Mauro Bigonzetti’s Rossini cards, created in 2004 and revived for this occasion thanks to the work of Roberto Zamorano and the invaluable supervision of Bigonzetti himself.
Unencumbered by narrative constraints, Rossini cards unfold in a sequence of snapshots of parallel lives: visions, fragments, intense symbols and moments of playful irony. The vibrant energy of the young performers blends perfectly with the dynamism that animates this piece, which reflects in its movements the pressing yet precise and geometric rhythm of Rossini’s music.
by Chidozie Obasi