Sergei Polunin

There is a difference between appreciation of excellence and the cult of celebrity. The former is to be encouraged but not the latter.  The distinction between the two is not always clear. Sometimes the former leads to the latter. Rarely, if ever, does it work the other way round.

I have seen Sergei Polunin only once since I started this blog. That was at the gala for the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School on 29 Sept 2013 (see  More Things I do for my Art - Autumn Gala of Dance and Song 30 Sept 2013). Polunin had jetted in from Moscow earlier in the day to perform a solo at the gala and had a taxi was waiting in Rosebury Avenue to whisk him back to Heathrow for his return flight. I didn't write anything about his performance at the time.  I remember a lot of jumps and turns and the loud applause at the end.

The reason I have not seen Polunin since that gala is that he has not been very visible on this country.   In Dancer which I saw yesterday at the Huddersfield Odeon, there were shots of his winning a TV competition in Moscow in 2012 called Bolshoi Ballet though I think "bolshoi" (which I understand to mean "big" in Russian) was used in its descriptive sense rather than to suggest a connection with the famous Moscow ballet company and of his performing with the Stanislavsky Ballet in Moscow, at the Novosibirsk Opera House and in Hawaii where he made the video "Take Me to Church" by Hozier, which was directed by David LaChapelle.

I enjoyed Dancer and I warmed towards him in a question and answer session which followed the screening of the film and a live performance by Polunin of Take me to Church on the stage of the London Palladium. I particularly liked two of his answers - one which revealed a sense of internationalism and a hate of visas and the other a hint that his relationship with the Royal Ballet was improving and that we might one day see him in Covent Garden again.

I had a question for the question and answer session but it was not picked up by the interviewer:

#dancermovie would Sergei have been happier had he trained at Bolshoi or Vaganova Institute.

— Terpsichore (@jelterps) March 2, 2017

The reason I asked that question was that the film opened with shots of Polunin's birthplace in Ukraine. The landscape reminded me of the countryside around Newark on Trent. He had trained locally and was then whisked off to White Lodge at age 13. The move to London would have been startling enough for a kid from the East Midlands. How much more traumatic for a child who had to master a new language and to accustom himself to quite different social norms.

It is true that Russia is not Ukraine but it is Slavonic and Russia is the country where he has spent much of his time since leaving the Royal Ballet. Maybe his career would have been smoother, possibly we would have seen more of him in the world's opera houses and, most importantly, perhaps this extraordinarily gifted artist would have been happier, and he trained and made his career in Moscow or St Petersburg.

While at the Royal Ballet School Polunin made friends with Jade Hale-Christofi. He had partnered Sarah Kundi in Dépouillage which I described in Sarah Kundi and Jade Hale-Christophi dancing in the same Ballet again 18 July 2014 as "to my mind one of the most beautiful clips on the internet." Christofi, who had worked with Polunin on Take me to Church, was a major contributor to Dancer.  It was good to hear him speak.

Finally. the current London Ballet Circle newsletter notes that the film will be launched on DVD on 24 April 2017 and contains some very interesting information and links about the making of the film and Polunin generally.

Ronaldo likes Ballet

I am a bit of a fan of the TV series "Spiral" or "Engrenages" as it is called in France. It is about the Paris underworld and the French criminal justice system.  The heroine of the series is Captain Laure Berthaud, a plain clothes officer played by Catherine Proust while her arch enemy is a really nasty Latin American psychopath by the name of Ronaldo Fuentes. Here's a photo of him behind his red headed counsel at what I seem to remember was his bail application.  Known as "the butcher," he kills and mutilates women in the most horrid way.

Incensed by his viciousness Captain Berthaud makes it her personal mission to hunt him down.  In the series that was shown on British television the Captain eventually corners him but, rather than take him into custody, she discharges two bullets at him at point blank range. 

And that, mes amis, one might think was the end of that.  But one would be wrong for it seems that Ronaldo has survived and has an account on twitter. Not only that but he seems to like ballet.  Last week he mentioned my article on Dave Tries Ballet as well as another article on a music industry convention in Dubai in The Dark Shadows Daily. Naturally, I thanked him for the mentions.  He replied:

"@nipclaw Even though I have to lie low from les flics, I do enjoy a bit of nutcracking at l'Opéra de temps en temps"

I was a bit surprised that a serial killer should like a ballet about a pre-pubescent girl's dreams of a battle between mice and toy soldiers and an excursion through the land of sweets.  Giselle with its ghosts of women who had died horrible deaths seemed to be more in his line.  So I replied:

"@Ronaldo_Fuentes J'aurais pensé que vous preferez <<Giselle>> avec toutes les femmes mortes sauf Myrthe vous rappelle une certaine policiere."

which I translate as

"@Ronaldo_Fuentes I'd have though that you would prefer Giselle with all those dead women unless Myrthe reminds you of a certain woman police officer."

 Myrthe, in case the allusion is not obvious, is the Queen of the Wilis (the ghosts of these poor, unfortunate women) and she sees it as her mission to revenge herself on mankind (and I do mean MAN kind and not humankind) just as Captain Berthaud saw it as her mission to avenge the women Ronaldo had butchered.

Ronaldo replied to my tweet:

"@nipclaw C'est drôle ça. J'adore Laure et Giselle, mais Carmen est ma danseuse préférée. Oublie pas que je suis un latino, gringa:) A toute!"

Again, I translate loosely.

"@nipclaw That's so funny. I adore Laure and Giselle, but Carmen is my preferred dancer. Don't forget I'm a Latino, "Gringa" (Limey) :) See you!"

Now Carmen is a popular opera but it is not quite so well known as a ballet, at least not in the English speaking world. However, Roland Petit did choreograph a version for his wife, the remarkable Zizi Jeanmaire. Jenmaire was a very sensuous dancer and I can just imagine her dancing the Hanbanera.

"L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
Et c’est bien in vain qu’on l’appelle
S’il lui convient de refuser."

I translate as:

"Love is like an untamed birdThat nobody can cage.It is pointless calling after himIf it suits him to stay away."

However, I did find this clip of Ulana Lopatkina which in my humble opinion is more than acceptable.

I have tweeted it to Ronaldo:

"Pour @ronaldo_fuentes, je cherchais le habanera de Zizi Jeanmaire mais cette danseuse russe va assez bien a mon avis http://youtu.be/f7xYnXb7WTg"

 "For @ronaldo_fuentes. I looked for Zizi Jeanmaire's Hananera but I think this Russian dancer is at least OK."

I wonder if he agrees.