Richard Cragun, one of the most important dancers of the 20th century has died at 67. His legendary partnership with Marcia Haydée, the ground-breaking work at Stuttgart Ballet with John Cranko, and his beauty and virile strength as a dancer, will earn him a permenant place in dance history.

Yesterday, August 6, he suffered a seizure triggered by a lung infection, and died in Rio de Janeiro soon after being admitted to hospital. His ex-partner in life and in dance, Marcia Haydée, said,

Richard was one of the best dancers in the world. Even after our separation, we were the best of friends; I could call him anytime.

He was born in California in 1944. He studied tap-dance and ballet but also attended the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada, and he continued to draw all his life. Cragun went to the Royal Ballet School in London and completed his studies in Copenhagen where he spent a year as a private pupil of Vera Volkova.

In 1962 he made the most important decision of his career and joined the Stuttgart Ballet, and in 1965 he was promoted to principal dancer. It was here that his 36-year partnership with Marcia Haydée started, though he also partnered Fonteyn and most other leading ballerinas of the day. Cragun was a handsome man on-stage and off , and when he created Petruchio for Cranko in 1969 in Taming of the Shrew the role fitted him like a glove.

Cragun had been ill for some time after having a stroke in 2005, and complications with the drug cocktail which allowed him to live with AIDS. He was working until a short time before his death, mounting the ballet Taming of the Shrew.

Richard Cragun leaves a partner with whom he has lived the past 14 years. He will be cremated tomorrow.

Career:

He was noted for his interpretations of Romeo and Onegin in Cranko’s stagings and created many roles for Cranko, including parts in L’estro armonico (1963), Opus 1 (1965),Mozart Concerto (1966), Présence (1968), Taming of the Shrew (1969, the role of Petruchio), Brouillards (1970), Poème de l’extase (1970), Carmen (1971), Initials R.B.M.E. (1972), and Traces (1973).

He also created roles in Peter Wright’sThe Mirror Walkers (1963), MacMillan’s Song of the Earth (1965), Requiem (1977), and My Brother, My Sisters (1978), Tetley’s Voluntaries (1973) and Daphnis and Chloé (1975), Neumeier’s Lady of the Camellias (1978) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1983), which showcased his enduring partnership with Haydée, Forsythe’s Orpheus (1979), and Kylián’s Forgotten Land (1981).

Cragun also created roles in ballets by Béjart, including La Danse (1983) and Operette(1985).

In 1990 he starred in the Stuttgart revival of the Broadway musical On Your Toes. He retired from the stage in 1996 and was appointed artistic director of the Berlin Opera Ballet. He left Berlin in 1999 to start a new ballet company in the Brazilian city of Curitiba.

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Carla Fracci, frequent partner of the American ballet star Richard Cragun, who died yesterday at 67, remembers the dancer with the words of English poet W H Auden:

Dear Richard,

I honour your passing with these great words by Auden:

“The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

Goodbye, with love,

Carla Fracci
Rome, Italy 

… continue reading

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Richard Cragun’s funeral was held yesterday in Rio De Janeiro, two days after the dancer’s death on Monday. His friend Peter Rosenwald was there:

Richard was a close and exceptional friend of mine and of so many others. That he was one of the great dancers of our time needs no comment. But his humanity, his endless kindness, his unwillingness to adopt the vanities of ‘stardom’ when he was very much a star, make him exceptional.

The most moving moment at yesterday’s cremation ceremony in Rio came when the flower covered coffin began to move away and Richards friends and admirers, led by Marcia Haydee, stood, applauded and cried out “Bravo” as they had so many times at the end of his magnificent performances. It was a spontaneous and appropriate ovation and send-off. Richard deserved no less.… continue reading

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It has been five years since Alessandra Ferri left the stage, but she hasn’t stopped dancing. Speaking to the Italian dance magazine Danza & Danza she said that every morning she still prepares her bag for dance class adding, intriguingly,

I do class every day, I keep myself in form. I could dance tomorrow evening. In the future, who knows!

And when the journalist Sergio Trombetta asks if she’s planning on a comeback, she replies,

We’ll see. I’m thinking about it.

Ferri would certainly go against the trend if she really did return to professional dance at the age of 49. Darcey Bussell has just made her Olympic-sized ‘mini-comeback’, but at 43. There are few Alonsos, Fraccis and Fonteyns nowadays.

So why would she want to? For the applause?

No. Certainly the applause has always been wonderful, the recognition that you’ve done something well, but what I really miss is the acting experience, being on stage, and the interaction with the music, a source of great emotion for me.

I listen to music often and feel enormous feelings that I’m not able to express — this I miss.

The publication of Alessandra Ferri’s remarks coincides with that of photos of her husband, photographer Fabrizio Ferri, with an unknown woman, frolicking on a boat near the couple’s summer home in Pantelleria.… continue reading

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“You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.” - Martha Graham… continue reading

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Dirk Badenhorst, director of Mzansi Productions, announced in Johannesburg yesterday that the National Ballet of Cuba has cancelled its planned South African tour which was due to open in Johannesburg tomorrow, Thursday August 30. The SA government funded tour was being produced and facilitated by Mzansi Productions.

In announcing the cancellation of the National Ballet of Cuba’s highly anticipated first SA tour, Dirk Badenhorst said the National Ballet of Cuba took the decision last night to cancel the tour after the SA government’s ongoing delays in the payment of the funding required to secure and arrange the tour and in providing assistance with the logistical details required for the tour.

Plans for this year’s National Ballet of Cuba tour to South Africa, in which the SA government requested to play a central role in line with South Africa’s long standing close historical ties with Cuba during the years of South Africa’s struggle for democracy, started between the National Ballet of Cuba and South Africa in 2010.

Dirk Badenhorst, who has piloted and propelled South Africa’s growing cultural ties with Cuba since 2008, expressed deep disappointment at the cancellation of the tour.

via The Citizen Online… continue reading

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“Take your work seriously, but never yourself.” - Margot Fonteyn… continue reading

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The Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, has announced,

We are working on a project with Carla Fracci to create a National Ballet Company which can bring the Rome experience to a national level.

The ‘Rome experience’ was the period of ten years that Fracci spent at the helm of the capital’s ballet company.

Alemanno, who is by default the president of the board of directors of the Fondazione del Teatro dell’Opera, the governing body of the Rome Opera and Ballet companies, was famously harangued by Fracci in a public outburst by the étoile in the stalls of the Rome Opera Theatre. That was two years ago during a meeting of  the various trade unions opposing economic reforms. Nerves were raw, and Fracci prodded the Mayor in the chest accusing him of refusing her requests for a meeting during the previous two years.

They’re back on speaking terms now, and Carla Fracci’s long-held dream of forming a national ballet company is close to being realised. Yesterday she declared,

I am happy that the Mayor has declared that he is in agreement with the project to form an independent national company, which would have Rome as its base. This is a glorious day for Italian dance.

Beppe Menegatti, the director and husband of the dancer, said,

For Carla and me it is a great commitment artistically and morally, which will give satisfaction to many young people who were obliged to go and dance abroad, but can now return and work in Italy.

… continue reading

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In 1974 at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala the 37-year-old Carla Fracci danced a series of 20 performances of John Field’s Swan Lake with three different partners: Rudolf Nureyev, Roberto Fascilla and Richard Cragun.

Cragun, who died last month at 67, was the star of the Stuttgart Ballet company, and he charmed the Milanese audience with his noble bearing and physical beauty.

A true prince.

Photos: Carla Fracci and Richard Cragun in Swan Lake, Teatro alla Scala 1974 — collection of Carlo Orlandi… continue reading

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The Kennedy Center Honors award is the nation’s highest honour for those who have influenced American culture through the arts. It comes with a dinner with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a reception hosted by President Barack Obama. The honourees will be saluted by their fellow artists on 2 December in a show which will be broadcast by CBS on Boxing Day.

Natalia Makarova is one of the seven recipients this year. Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein said that her artistry had

…ignited the stages of the world’s greatest ballet companies.

The 72-year-old ballerina performed in Romeo and Juliet at the Kennedy Center in 1971, days after it opened, and just a year after defecting from her native Russia.

Makarova commented,

What a remarkable twist of fate that I chose to leave my homeland and came to America to start a new life. I feel very privileged that through me Kennedy Center honours classical ballet.

… continue reading

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Tonight the Mikhailovsky Theatre opens its 2012–2013 season with Polina Semionova dancing the eponymous heroine in Giselle.

Semionova left to join the Berlin Staatsoper immediately after graduating from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Coincidentally, earlier this week Daniel Barenboim, the Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper, gave a press conference at the Mikhailovsky where he announced that on 5–6 September 2013, he will perform there with the Staatskapelle orchestra. This will be his first performance at the theatre, as tonight’s Giselle will be the first time Semionova performs her ‘signature role’ at the Mikhailovsky.

Semionova is now visiting as a guest from the American Ballet Theatre, where she became prima ballerina just a few weeks ago, having left the Staatsoper after a ten-year collaboration. Her Albrecht in tonight’s performance will be the ABT’s magnificent Marcelo Gomes.

Photo: Polina Semionova and Marcelo Gomes in Giselle at the Mikhailovsky Theatre by Nikolai Krusser… continue reading

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David Beckham has his underwear collection, singer Jessica Simpson has a wildly popular fashion label, and Italian ballerina Carla Fracci has her perfume collection.

Yesterday, in Milan’s chic 10 Corso Como, the seventh fragrance in the collection was launched: Aurora, named after one of the étoile’s favourite roles. In fact all the collection’s perfumes are named after roles she has played: Medea, Salomé, Odette, Giselle, Hamlet (yes Hamlet!) and the role she plays best, Carla Fracci, which was the first in the series to be launched.

Of course there’s nothing new about celebrity perfumes. Elizabeth Taylor was the first off the mark with Passion, and her 1991 White Diamonds is still one of the most popular on the market. Lady Gaga has a fragrance, Rihanna and Beyoncé too, Jennifer Aniston and Antonio Banderas have one, even little Justin Bieber has his own scent. The list is long, but almost exclusively consists of singers and actors, with a bit of Paris Hilton thrown in here and there. Ballerinas are nowhere to be seen.

Ballet dancers are certainly off the radar as far as the mass media are concerned, and that is perhaps part of the appeal for Mario Usellini, the president of Carla Fracci Parfums, who developed the line with her.… continue reading

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Ferruccio Soleri (class of 1929) was the original Arlecchino in Giorgio Strehler’s legendary production of Goldoni’s masterpiece Servant of Two Masters (Arlecchino servitore di due padroni) for Milan’s Piccolo Teatro. And he still is. He will be playing the role for the 53rd season this year, and on tour in Argentina.

Here he is pictured with long-time friend and colleague Carla Fracci (I wouldn’t reveal a lady’s age, but the two have 159 years between them!) whose Giselle with the American Ballet Theatre remains a touchstone in filmed ballet performances.

… continue reading

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San Francisco Ballet launch their London season at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre this evening, and until September 23 they will be presenting three mixed-bill programs. That’s 10 works over nine performances, featuring works by George Balanchine, Edwaard Liang, Mark Morris, Ashley Page, Christopher Wheeldon, SF Ballet chief Helgi Tomasson, as well as their Choreographer in Residence Yuri Possokhov.

Tomasson is pleased to be back in London,

London is a favourite tour destination for our Company and we’re delighted to be returning after eight years. We are privileged to work with some of the best choreographers in the world and some of their new works provide a wonderful showcase for our dancers’ broad ranges and abilities. I think London audiences will enjoy the diverse and exciting works that we’ll be presenting, almost all of which are UK premières.

That is certainly true, with Number Nine by Britain’s own Christopher Wheeldon, which he created for the company last year, being presented for the first time in the UK tonight. Wheeldon’s Ghosts, created for SFB in 2010 will début in the second programme — along with fellow Brit Ashley Page’s Guide to Strange Places - and his Within the Golden Hour, which was commissioned by the company 4 years ago, is in the last programme. In fact, the Brits go down well in San Francisco with Martin West being the company’s MD and Principal Conductor.… continue reading

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Carla Fracci will appear at London’s Italian Cultural Institute in London on October 3. The ICI is the official Italian governmental body dedicated to promoting Italian language and culture in England and Wales.

The Institute arranges a vast array of cultural events, and their encounters with Italian protagonists is impressive with film director Nanni Moretti, actress and model Monica Bellucci, writer Umberto Eco, Daniele Molmenti after his gold medal win with slalom canoeing at the London 2012 Olympics, and many more.

Now ballet gets its turn as Fracci, along with her husband, director Beppe Menegatti, go to London to take about their life and work.

More details can be had by contacting the Institute on 020 7235 1461.… continue reading

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“The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.” - Isadora Duncan … continue reading

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A year ago at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala the ballet company scored a hit with its restaging of that difficult piece Raymonda. The ballet’s improbable story, with a lack of obvious dramatic push, can make it seem lacklustre. Therefore when Rudolf Nureyev’s version for Paris hit the stage in 1983, with Jean Guizerix’s brilliantly macho Abderam making poor Yvette Chauviré quake with fear, the ballet really came alive, and the company danced til they dropped.

La Scala’s ballet director Makhar Vaziev (and ex-director of the Mariinsky) took a different approach and asked fellow Russian Sergej Vikharev to try and recreate the spirit of  Marius Petipa’s original 1898 production. Vikharev, who has become a specialist in such recreations, wanted to go back to the original set and costume designs too, and the result was magnificent. Like seeing an old ballet print come alive, the vivid colours of the costumes stood out against the duller beige of the painted drops: necessary under the low lighting conditions of a century ago, but dazzling with today’s banks of spotlights. The stage was awash with trumpeters, cherubs, knights, and Sara­cens. Very satisfying.

So a year later, the production is back with Olesya Novikova and Friedemann Vogel reprising their roles. How exciting, I thought, to see how it’s all come together after some of the shakiness of the première  something easily forgiven seeing that the ballet comes in at over three hours.… continue reading

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After the rumours and denials of recent days, Aurélie Filippetti, the French Minister of Culture, has confirmed that Stéphane Lissner will take over from Nicolas Joel when the latter leaves the helm of the Paris Opera in 2015.

Lissner’s very lucrative contract as Sovrintendente of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala was due to expire in 2017. However recently his programming has been upsetting many of Milan’s season ticket holders who are fed up with paying a fortune for a fixed seat in the house to assist minimalist productions with mini-skirts and trench-coats. A protest group had recently been formed.

However Lissner did manage to reign in the extravagant spending of the Riccardo Muti years, and put the balance sheet in order. This is precisely what will be needed in Paris after the recent cuts. In fact it was those cuts which  caused Joel’s resignation.

So what of La Scala? May the battle commence!… continue reading

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This was an inspired performance of Nikiya from Svetlana Zakharova. There are many videos of her in what is arguably her best role, but this is certainly one her finest performances. A magical evening in February of 2008.

With her are Maria Allash as Gamzatti and Nikolai Tsiskaridze as Solor, both in splendid form. The Bronze Idol is danced by Morikhiro Ivata, and it would be hard to better the three “Shadows”: Ekaterina Krysanova, Natalia Osipova and Anna Nikulina.

Nikiya’s Death — Svetlana Zakharova:

Shadow Variation — Natalia Osipova:

Final Pas de deux & Variations — Svetlana Zakharova & Nikolai Tsiskaridze:
… continue reading

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After studying at the Victor Ullate Ballet School in Madrid, Igor Yebra  eventually joined Ullate’s company, Ballet de la Comunidad de Madrid while still a student, and continued with the company until 1996.

He has won various competitions and prizes including the Eurovision Grand Prix for Young Dancers in Paris in 1991;  the 2nd International Maya Plisetskaya Ballet Competition in 1996; the Best Dancer of the Year Award from Italy’s Danza & Danza Magazine also in 1996; and the Leonide Massine Prize in 2003. In 2009 he was appointed as a member of UNESCO’s International Dance Council; and was named one of the  Ilustre de Bilbao for 2010.

Igor Yebra’s repertoire includes the principal roles in Hans van Manen’s works Hameklavier, Five Tangos, In and Out, Grosse Fuga;  Rudi van Dantzig’s Four Last Songs; Nils Christe’s Before Nightfall, Cuarteto; Jan Linkens’ Haydn Symphony; Alberto Alonso’s Carmen Suite; Alberto Méndez’s Muñecos; William Forsythe’s In the middle, somewhat elevated;  Jiří Kylián’s Petite Morte; Mauricio Wainrot’s Carmina Burana and Chopin Numero Uno.

He has danced in many different versions of Giselle, Don Quixote, La Bayadère, Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Coppélia, Romeo and Juliet, and The Sleeping Beauty.  He has also danced in Chopiniana , The Firebird and Le Spectre de La Rose by Michel Fokine; Icaro and Suite en blanc by Serge Lifar; El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) by Léonide Massine; Adagietto by Oscar Araiz;  Zorba by Lorca Massine; Ivan the Terrible and Romeo and Juliet by Yury Grigorovich; Theme and Variations, Allegro Brillante, Sonatina, Concerto Baroco, Who Cares?, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Four Temperaments, Apollo and Violin Concerto by George Balanchine; Charles Jude’s versions of Raymonda and Paquita; La rose malade, La prisonnière, Le Lac des Cygnes et Ses Maléfices by Roland Petit; and Ronald Hynd’s The Merry Widow.… continue reading

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