After the very classic start of the season with “The Nutcracker”, the ballet of La Scala arrives at the contemporary with a tripartite evening entirely dedicated to today’s choreographers. The first observation is the versatility and dazzling shape of the Milanese company. Directed for years first by the Russian Machar Vaziev and now by the Frenchman Manuel Legris, the group has been forged passing from choreographers such as Ratmansky to return to Nureyev.
“Dawson/Duato/Kratz/Kylian” is the title of the new evening which brings together the names of the four leading choreographers.
And let’s start from the end. Because “Bella Figura” by Jiri Kylian is a masterpiece that develops in an environment made magical by the very elegant dance with the bare-chested protagonists and by the billowing and fluctuating red skirts that reach the floor, by the candles burning on the bottom on both sides. from the games of the curtain that falls and imprisons, for example, a dancer who, supported by invisible hands, moves her limbs, from the Italian music that Alessandro Marcello, Antonio Vivaldi (the adagio of the concert for two mandolins in G), Giuseppe Torelli, Pergolesi next to contemporary Luka Foss. The piece starts on an open stage with the dancers warming up. To then walk into the actual show where the protagonists, Antonella Albano, Alice Mariani, Agnese di Clemente, Marta Gerani, Giulia Lunardi, Marco Agostino, Claudio Coviello, Gabriele Corrao and Marco Messina are a guarantee of quality
“Animus Anima” by the Englishman David Dawson intends to investigate, following Jung’s theories, the masculine aspect of the feminine soul and the feminine one of the masculine soul. The feat got a bit lost along the way, but what remains is a piece of dazzling impact. Light on the background that illuminates a large milky rectangle in front of which ten dancers in white tights and black leotards move, dancing en pointe, according to a neoclassical style that learns the lesson of the greats of the past. The girl in pointe and the other leg in developpE, supported by one dancer while the other leads her on a promenade is pure Balanchine. He dances angelicly with his arms extended over his body. Grands jetés, sidereal lifts. Maidens suspended high on the outstretched arms of the partners who carry them towards the left wings like the dancer in Balanchine’s “Serenade”. An uninterrupted dance, a continuous motion that perhaps could be sharper, contrasted like the music of the late Ezio Bosso.
“Remanso” is a pièce de résistance by Nacho Duato. The title is taken from a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca. He, Duato, was for a long time director of the National Dance Company of Spain before moving on to Petersburg’s MIchajlovsky. In “Remanso” he puts in the center a white square up to two meters high and wide from behind which Nicola Del Freo, Mattia Semperboni and Roberto Bolle come out and play hide-and-seek, while the notes of Enrique Granados resound performed on the piano by Takahiro Yoshikawa . There is no sexual connotation in this game for three, if not instead the pure fun of three young men dancing, soft and not engaged in technical bravura.
Philip Kratz, born in Leverkuhsen in Germany, but active with us for years now, was a dancer in Aterballetto (instigated by Cristina Bozzolini) and is now embarking on a career as a choreographer. “Solitude Sometimes” is programmatically inspired by ancient Egypt, by the Book of “Amduat”, a document that dates back to 1500 BC and follows the death and rebirth of Ra, the God of the Sun. But Kratz surrounds this myth with music by Tom Yorke and Radiohead. With the golden and white costumes of Francesco Casarotto between moving his dancers laterally from the right wing towards the center. This lineup often returns and then turns into hip hop slippery steps like Michael Jakson did. There’s a lot of executive coherence that barely frays in the finale, but it’s further proof of Kratz’s artistic maturity.