UNITED KINGDOM: KIROV BALLET PERFORM THEIR FIRST PRODUCTION OF A BRITISH BALLET - KENNETH MACMILLAN'S "MANON" AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

Record ID: 391412

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: KIROV BALLET PERFORM THEIR FIRST PRODUCTION OF A BRITISH BALLET - KENNETH MACMILLAN'S "MANON" AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
  • Date: 18th June 2001
  • Summary: VARIOUS, SCENE FROM MANON
  • Embargoed: 3rd July 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Arts,General
  • Reuters ID: LVA59TR23C3L1CZ8VJ4W37ETK0FE
  • Story Text: The Kirov Ballet have taken on their first ever British ballet, Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, and they're performing it in their favourite venue, London's Royal Opera House.
    It's the highlight of the Royal Opera House's season when the mighty Kirov leave Russia to set up home in Covent Garden.
    Invited to perform in the most magnificent venues around the world, it's the Royal Opera House which excites them the most due to its technical brilliance.
    And if the stage at Covent Garden provides its dancers with the best support, the Kirov ballet dancers bring justice to the magnificent venue. This year they're back with the classics they're famed for, including Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, but it's their new production of Kenneth MacMillan's Manon that's got everyone talking.
    The British choreographer died almost ten years ago, when he collapsed back stage at the Royal Opera House watching one of his works being performed. Hailed as one of the twentieth century's greatest choreographers, he was the Director of the Royal Ballet Company and created some groundbreaking works.
    It was in 1974 that he presented Manon, a story of young love gone wrong. It may be seen today as a traditional classical ballet, but at the time it was highly controversial, as his widow Lady Deborah recalls.
    "In 1974 when it was first done it had very very bad reviews. The critics at that time, I don't know what they thought Kenneth was trying to do but they accused him of, you know, destroying something that was very special and all to do with classical ballet in this country. I think the idea of a meaty love story was something that they were not terribly keen on. You know they were used to fairies". Fairies are exchanged for lovers who bring onto the stage sex and violence.
    A risk for a Russian company acclaimed for their traditional representation of museum pieces? Director Makhar Vasiyev says not. "It's not risk. We wanted to check how we can dance this performance, how we can understand this choreography because MacMillan was one of the greatest choreographers in the world and it was really my idea to have this performance because I saw this performance for the first time in 1986. We were in Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet was in St. Petersburg, and it seemed to be even Anthony Dowell that danced, and I had a shock. It made a great impression on me." And on others through such interpreters as Rudolf Nureyev, Lynn Seymour, Natalia Makarova and Sylvie Guillem.
    Vasiyev says it's time now for the Kirov to embrace new productions, new choreographers. Moving forward and exploring contemporary dance is critical to the development of a dancer, which he himself once was. But as Vasiyev talks of his dreams for the company, headed up by Kirov maestro Valery Gergiev, the Kirov struggles with crippling economic conditions back home. The security of guaranteed state funding is over but the energy and the passion for dance is still there. Lady Deborah MacMillan says the Kirov dancers are still the model throughout the world. "I think the Royal Ballet always look to the Mariinsky Theatre and to the Kirov for the training.
    They're spectacular classical dancers".
    But perhaps there are even better vehicles for this phenomenal talent than Manon? Lady Deborah says this was not her husband's greatest choreographic triumph. "If you analyse it choreographically, it's in the tradition of the work that he had been doing at the time. There are other works that break new ground and are probably more experimental. But you know I still adore it!"
    And it's likely the audience will too.
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