romeo & Juliet

Dancers: Cross-Training With Yoga

October 11, 2016 by 4dancers

*Cara Marie Gary performs with the Joffrey in Romeo & Juliet. Photo by Cheryl Mann.*

by Cara Marie Gary

As a dancer with The Joffrey Ballet I spend countless hours in the studio rehearsing and preparing for upcoming productions. Often times I will be required to rehearse multiple ballets at the same time. Our company returned from summer break in late July and in the past three months we’ve already worked on seven different ballets! We’ve performed at the Chicago Dancing Festival and Dance for Life performances with Alexander Ekman’s Episode 31, Lar Lubovitch’s Othello pas de deux, Christopher Wheeldon’s After The Rain pas de deux, and Gerald Arpino’s Round of Angels. We’ve learned Myles Thatcher’s Body of Your Dreams, which is a ballet that we won’t perform until the spring. We began “cracking nuts” early in August as Christopher Wheeldon started choreographing his world premiere of The Nutcracker. However, in the past two weeks we’ve taken a pause from rehearsing multiple ballets to focus on our fall production of Krzysztof Pastor’s Romeo & Juliet. [Read more…]

The Art Of Tragedy: Giselle

March 25, 2015 by 4dancers

Rachel Malehorn, Davit Hovhannisyan, Luz San Miguel — Davit Hovhannisyan and Luz San Miguel in the studio working on Michael Pink’s Giselle. Photo by Rachel Malehorn

by Rachel Malehorn

Dancers who join classical ballet companies will be a part of the centuries-old tradition of the full-length ballet. These evening-long works not only showcase the brilliance of classical ballet technique, but also set this dancing in a dramatic context with the goal of telling a story. Even an audience member who has no background or understanding of dance can get lost in these stories, and can leave the theater transformed. Dancers spend years of their lives endeavoring to perfect their technique, but sometimes their power as actors and actresses can be overlooked or de-emphasized. The stories our ballets tell are magical, fantastic, romantic, tragic, and sometimes difficult. Throughout my career as a dancer, I have come to love and look forward to the dual opportunity to dance with accuracy—and also to convey the drama of these stories.

As Milwaukee Ballet prepares for its upcoming performances, I have been meditating on two important themes: the process wherein dancers and choreographers communicate the story of a full-length ballet, and the importance of telling these stories—even if they don’t always have happy endings. Romeo & Juliet, Manon, Onegin, Madame Butterfly, and even La Bayadere are classic tales of thwarted love, in which the tragic heroines suffer death or disaster as the price of their love.

But perhaps the epitome of the tragic ballet is Giselle, created in Paris at the peak of Romanticism. In this story, Giselle, a peasant girl, is wooed by Albrecht, an aristocrat in peasant disguise, but is driven to madness and death by the discovery that Albrecht is already engaged to be married to Bathilde, also an aristocrat. When Albrecht visits Giselle’s grave to beg for forgiveness, the Wilis – ghosts of other girls who have died of broken hearts – compel Albrecht to dance himself to death, but Giselle (seemingly inexplicably, and most definitely tragically) saves Albrecht from death and forgives him for his betrayal. At its core, Giselle is chilling, heartbreaking, and achingly beautiful.

Michael Pink’s Giselle [Read more…]

The Bolshoi’s Anna Nikulina – On Dancing Juliet

March 5, 2015 by 4dancers

The Bolshoi's Romeo & Juliet, Photo by Damir Yusupov. — The Bolshoi’s Romeo & Juliet, Photo by Damir Yusupov.

Today we have something special for you – the Bolshoi Ballet’s Anna Nikulina talks about what it’s like to dance the role of Juliet…

What are the challenges in preparing for the role of Juliet?

For me most likely the biggest challenge in preparing for Juliet was that the actual ballet goes by too quickly. The performance is only two hours and it is hard to live through this role for such a short period of time, beginning with Juliet as a young girl, only 14 years old and to go through such a difficult journey in love, suffering, and death. And because there are so many different sides and emotions and to have to release all this in one performance was probably the most difficult thing.

What do you enjoy most about dancing this role, and how is it different than other lead roles?

I would say that Juliet is a true role, because in performances there are “parts” and there are “roles.” And I think I enjoy the difficulty in it both physically and emotionally. Juliet is a young girl and then falls in love with Romeo and there are difficult aspects of this role physically, but in reality it is not the most difficult in terms of technique; there are certainly harder roles. But to live through it is hard – you can keep rehearsing this again and again, and with each rehearsal, you discover new things and new sides of Juliet that you can reveal. This is what I enjoy most.

There needs to be a special bond with your partner (Romeo) for this ballet. Is it difficult to create this? Do you do anything specific to make it happen?

Regardless, I try to live through the performance with Romeo and soon you get this feeling, slowly, not right away that occurs between two people, and I remember that once Yuri Nikolaevich Grigorovich said to me during rehearsal that he saw a certain chemistry between us. And I truly started to fall in love during this time, in love with Sascha Volchkov as Romeo. And I felt really as though I loved him. But this was of course during rehearsals (laughs). And I think Sascha had a similar experience. We had a special and unique connection and I actually would not have preferred to dance this ballet with anyone else at the time.

Can you explain the role of the music in this ballet? Do you have any favorite sections?

The role of the music is truly enormous and it is genius. And you can live through all your emotions through this music. My favorite part is probably the balcony scene and the end of Act II, because it is so tragic and when you listen to the music without dancing it is amazing itself but when you are able to move and emote to it, it is truly amazing.

This is an extremely emotional ballet. What specific things do you use to communicate your emotions to the audience clearly?

Your coach is very helpful in this process because when you are rehearsing, you are expressing emotions and it is important for these emotions to be visible, so your coach can really help to determine whether you are delivering those emotions enough to reach the audience. There are times when you think you are expressing everything you can, even through movement, but you realize that what you are trying to express isn’t always clear. To express emotions, the coach’s eye is very important. Also, Zeffirelli’s film really helped me and inspired me in my interpretation of Juliet.

Viewers across the US have the opportunity to see Anna Nikulina perform Juliet at the cinema – the Bolshoi Ballet will be on the big screen for one performance only on March 8th! Search here for a theater near you.

BIO: Anna Nikulina was born in Moscow. In 2002, she completed her training at the Moscow State Academy of Choreography (teacher Elena Vatulya) with distinction and joined the Bolshoi Ballet Company. She rehearsed under the late Yekaterina Maximova. In 2004, at the age of 19, she danced Odette-Odile for the first time. Today her teacher-repetiteur is Nina Semizorova.

She took part in the Bolshoi Theatre Studio of New Choreography project, dancing Aurora in Riccardo Drigo’s Rosary pas de quatre from the ballet The Awakening of Flora (choreography Marius Petipa, reconstruction Yuri Burlaka) and the Carpets pas de quatre from Cesar Pugni’s ballet The Humpbacked Horse (choreography Alexander Gorsky, reconstruction Yuri Burlaka; 2004), and likewise — with Denis Savin — she appeared in the number Acquisition to music by Sergei Rachmaninov, produced by Yuri Klevtsov (2006)

In 2007, she appeared in the ballet Old Ladies Falling Out to music by Leonid Desyatnikov (choreography by Alexei Ratmansky), which was shown first at the Territory Festival, and then under the auspices of the Studio of New Choreography project (workshop).

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Michael Pink’s Giselle [Read more…]

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