Despite an abundance of local dance talent, Taiwan has no renowned ballet company to call its own. But great troupes do visit — including the English National Ballet this past May. And once a year, Art Wave’s (黑潮藝術) annual Ballet Star Gala brings together some of the world’s pre-eminent principal dancers for a cornucopia of pas de deux.
Organizer Wang Tzer-shing (王澤馨) said this year’s edition of the gala, to be staged today and tomorrow at the National Theater in Taipei, is exceptionally balanced between classical and modern ballet styles.
Modern ballet pieces by prominent choreographers — Rudi van Dantzig, essential to the development of the Dutch National Ballet and Frederick Ashton, who established a distinctive English ballet style — are followed by 19th-century classics by Marius Petipa, the original choreographer of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
Photo courtesy of Mikael Ohlsson
And despite a relatively short organization this year, Wang said stars from the Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company, Dutch National Ballet, Berlin State Ballet and Bayerisches Staatsballett have all agreed to descend on Taiwan for one weekend in the very middle of the beginning of Europe’s new artistic season.
From Swan Lake, White Swan Pas de Deux will be performed by National Ballet of Canada principal dancers Svetlana Lunkina and Ben Rudisin, while Berlin State Ballet principal Polina Semionova and Dutch National Ballet soloist Martin ten Kortenaar will star in the Black Swan Pas de Deux.
Meanwhile, principal Anna Ol — who also featured in the 2022 gala — and soloist Jan Spunda from the Dutch National Ballet are performing the Balcony Pas de Deux from Sergei Prokofiev’s classic Romeo and Juliet in the famous modern ballet rendering by Dantzig.
Photo courtesy of Maria Helena Buckley
Other highlights include three Taiwan premieres. Dancing couple and Bayerisches Staatsballett principals Laurretta Summerscales and Yonah Acosta will star in the Fanny Elssler Pas de Deux from Ashton’s La fille mal gardee, while Seminova and Ten Kortenaar will lead the premier of Roland Petit’s 1949 work Carmen - with music by Georges Bizet. Finally, Ol and Spunda will dance Remi Wörtmeyer’s 2022 work Penumbra, a choreography to the Andante from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in G minor.
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