OK, you have 45 minutes to chat to the two most exciting ballet stars you have ever set eyes on. What are you going to ask them?
"How do you do that thing where you spin and spin and spin and then you slow it right down? Or those things in mid air where we just can't believe what we saw?" Not those precise words, perhaps, but something along those lines were uppermost in my thoughts when I went along to interview Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, who are guest-starring here in London with the Bolshoi for one performance only on Friday. (Flames of Paris).
So, the answer? Technique, but not only technique, says Ivan: “When you put something into this technique, your spirit, you can do
this. In rehearsals, you can’t. I can rehearse one thing, then go on
stage and do it completely differently and absolutely more, and I don’t
know how and I don’t know why. But something inside pushes me, like,
‘Come on, come on!’ And I say: ‘OK, come on...’”
The whole interview is out now in The Independent. Read it here.
The Corsaire pas de deux above shows their technical prowess off to perfection, but it was their Giselle with the Mihailovsky Ballet a few months ago that left me in raptures - because the physical ability is matched with poetry, drama and psychological insight to the same level.
I'm just back from hols. Saw some rather good stuff in Munich. More of that soon.
