"'I
feel that I'm at a magical point right now, where I'm a happy woman
and mother,' says [Alessandra] Ferri. 'I want to stop dancing and
have great memories.'"
Adieu,
Alessandra
Alessandra
Ferri dances Juliet in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet,
one last time. By
Laura Di Orio
Perhaps greatness cannot
be quantified. People's different expectations and personal affectations
make it difficult for standards to be agreed upon. But when one sees
a dancer like Alessandra Ferri — a captivatingly raw artist with
the technique to match — it is hard to say she's not great.
Over the course of 22 years, as principal dancer with New York's American
Ballet Theatre, Ferri has bared her soul in front of millions of people.
And now, on June 23, 2007, Ferri will dance her final performance
with American Ballet
Theatre on the Metropolitan Opera House stage, in a role she owns:
Juliet in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, with guest
artist Roberto Bolle, from La Scala, as her Romeo. Like most milestones
in her life, the decision to retire seems to have come naturally for
Ferri. "I feel that I'm at a magical point right now, where I'm
a happy woman and mother," says Ferri. "I want to stop dancing
and have great memories." Ballet fans, fellow dancers and former
partners will also be left with longlasting memories of Ferri, now
43. It has not only been her incredibly arched feet and supple, lyrical
quality that have made Ferri such a remarkable ballerina. More importantly,
her greatness stems from her constant commitment to ballet as a performing
art and the way she delves into each character and shares her emotions
with her audiences.
Critics have hailed Ferri as being "one
of the finest ballet artists of their generation," an
actress-dancer whose "performance is a near miracle of
emotional legibility," and "one of those people
who can inspire the perfection of agelessness."
"She amazes constantly, performance by performance,"
says Julio Bocca, former American Ballet Theatre principal
and longtime partner of Ferri. "Her great contribution
to [ballet] has been her honourable dedication, her good taste,
her discipline and, at the same time, the complete dedication
that she gives to each performance."
Born in Milan, Italy, Ferri asked her parents to enroll her
in the local ballet school at the age of four. Dancing became
an instant addiction. "From the very first moment I set
foot into a ballet studio, I became fascinated with the everyday
work, not only the performance moment,
but just the whole process of studying dance and expressing oneself
through movement," says Ferri. With her obvious natural talent
and passion for dance, her teachers encouraged her to continue to
train. She studied at Milan's Teatro alla Scala until she was 15,
when a teacher urged her to move along and train at the Royal Ballet
School in London.
The year 1980 was an important one for Ferri
— she won one of three Prix de Lausanne, allowing her to continue
her training at the Royal Ballet School on full scholarship, and
she joined the company shortly thereafter.
"I remember very clearly when I joined
the Royal Ballet, I was 17 and I wanted to do all the main roles,"
says Ferri, "but not because I wanted to be a successful ballerina
or famous. I wanted to do them because I had the urge to do them,
and I
really wanted to be Juliet."
Soon her wish was granted.
As the Royal Ballet's "overnight sensation," Ferri
was handed leading roles, beginning with Mary Vetsera in Kenneth
MacMillan's Mayerling, which Ferri recalls as one of
her most memorable performances. MacMillan took notice of how
she could take command of the stage with an unusual maturity
for her young age, and Ferri soon debuted as Juliet and Manon.In
1985, after seeing Ferri perform in London, Mikhail Baryshnikov,
then artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, invited the
21-year-old to join the company. As happy as Ferri was at the
Royal Ballet, her curious nature and mindset that "the
world is big and one should experiment" made the decision
to come to New York easy.
But fast-paced New York was a hard adjustment for Ferri. Dancers
in America were independent, and there was no one to really
look after them like in Europe, where the school-to-company
tradition was so strong. Nonetheless, it was an invaluable learning
experience. "It taught me to do it on my own," says
Ferri, "and that's the best way, in the end. If you can,
you actually become your own individual, your own boss. And
you don't get scared if you don't have the feeling of belonging
somewhere. You just basically belong to yourself." While
she admits
Baryshnikov was a difficult director and she felt she had to try to
live up to his reputation, Ferri credits him for teaching her that
every performance matters.
Her roles with the company included numerous
classic title and leading roles - Giselle in Giselle, Juliet
in Romeo and Juliet, Manon in Manon, Nikiya in La
Bayadère, the Sylph in La Sylphide and Katherina
in The Taming of the Shrew. It was also at American Ballet
Theatre where Ferri was so often partnered with Bocca. Their partnership
and visible connection onstage lasted years, and they danced for
the last time together in Buenos Aires toward the end of 2006. "The
first time I met her, I knew that we were going to be excellent
pals and that I could trust her eternally," says Bocca.
"There is no need to
say anything while we dance. Just with a look, each of us knows
what the other part is thinking." The match between Ferri
and Bocca has led to their famed partnerships in Romeo and
Juliet and Manon, two ballets that have allowed the
artists to explore and express love in different ways. While
Ferri seems to be synonymous with dramatic, lyrical roles such
as Juliet, she demonstrates her well-roundedness and layered
personality by her desire to do a variety of roles — from
the Flerier Carmen to the almost comedic part in Roland Petit's
La Chauve-Souris.
Part of Ferri's ability to last and continue to grow in an evolving
dance world has been her ease and acceptance of change. "I
had a gift," Ferri says, "but I think that coming
to terms with it and knowing it wasn't enough, was what made
me, at last, progress. I think in
the very beginning everyone said, 'Oh, she's wonderful. She's a young
prodigy.' But that passes. After three years, you're not the young
prodigy anymore and you become like everybody else, so you need to
do something more. You need to understand what your talent is and
what your weaknesses are to work on them every day, which takes courage."
She is willing to admit her weaknesses —
ironically, her suppleness and the fact that her joint comes out
of her ankle when she stands on pointe — and works to overcome
them every day and turn them instead into beauty.
Besides daily hard work, which still begins
with a morning ballet class, usually with her teacher of 15 years,
Wilhelm Burman, it may have taken age, true love, motherhood and
life experience to make Ferri into the artist she is today. "I've
never been one of those people who split themselves up into the
ballerina and a woman," says Ferri. "I'm a woman, first
of all, who dances. So when I fell in love, I wanted to have a child.
And it was very natural."
So now she splits her day between her family
and her career, but people who know her will say she won't put ballet
first anymore. " Alessandra is a great mother who prefers to
put aside her career in order to give her best and all the time
to her
kids," Bocca says.
She also won't force her
passion onto her daughters, aged nine and five, because she
says she is "totally aware that it has to be your own passion.
They know dance exists, obviously. They know they can do it
any time they want, but it has to come from them. It has to
be for real." Ferri is clearly comfortable with who she
is, onstage and off. While she says performing certain roles
used to make her feel vulnerable, now she understands that it
is okay to feel all sorts of emotions. "It used to bother
me," she says, "and now I know that even if I'm scared,
there's nothing wrong with being myself and being what a human
being is. And that's a strength. Once you learn to be yourself."
Ferri's entire life has been a natural progression, and she
says she has never planned her life, so she doesn't intend to
make plans for what is to come after her retirement. Already
this year new experiences await Ferri — besides
her final American Ballet Theatre performance ofRomeo
and Juliet, she will also perform a new role for herself,
Desdemona in Othello. "I'm not taking it as an end for
me," says Ferri. "I see it as very much a beginning of a
new life. I will need time to adjust to a big part of my life not
being there. I know the time will come when I'll go, 'Okay, now I
want to go back to work.' Maybe not. Who knows? We'll see." <end>
Kevin
McKenzie, the dancer-turned-artistic director, has no allusions
about running a ballet company. Sitting in the hot seat at
American Ballet Theatre since 1992, he has weathered financial
crises, dancer shortages and lack of new choreographic inspiration
for his troupe.
A
Good Place To Be
Kevin McKenzie is leading
the American Ballet Theatre into the future. By
Gary Smith
"That
was then and this is now," he grins. "For six years
of my reign, it was really rather tough. There were too many
distractions and too many troubles for me to really tackle
the things an artistic director should be doing. We spent
so
much time charging around, trying to keep the company afloat,
that we couldn't really accomplish the things that needed
our attention. There were too many transitions. We were rushing
around in too many directions. Well, not anymore." But
McKenzie shrugs. "Who knows? It's easy to make excuses.
Maybe it wasn't our time. Maybe we weren't really ready. Maybe
we just needed some time to discover who we really are,"
he says. "Well, now we're ready, so I say look out."
At 51, McKenzie still
has the sleek look of a dancer. Strong and straight, he
hops onto the Orange County Performing Arts Center stage
to dispense a pad of notes, corrections for his dancers
that will make their performances better. In a few simple
phrases, McKenzie can explain away a dancer's difficulties.
He's that sort of hands-on kind of guy.
"One of my strengths as an artistic director is my
ability to communicate what a dancer is doing wrong and
to tell him just how to fix it," he says. "It's
important, you see, to understand the reality of what
you're looking at — not just the illusion.
I tell my dancers to make what they dance their own. They
mustn't be carbon copies of anyone else, no matter how
brilliant their chosen model
might be. Today, the young performer
has to be able to do everything. You can't just be a Swan Queen
— you can't be that easily pigeon-holed. You've
got to be able to cross every line, to do everything rather
well. We need to have a dialogue with the dance schools across
the country so they really know that."
McKenzie would tell the schools not to teach just one thing."
A dancer might be stylistically ready for the Kirov or maybe
New York City Ballet. But a dancer at American Ballet Theatre
has to know there is no one ballet style that will answer all
questions. No one system has all the answers," he says.
"Dancers need to speak in the correct tongue for whatever
ballet they have to dance. You need to know every language that's
out there from José Limón to Paul Taylor, from
Cecchetti to Vaganova. You can't speak French, for instance,
with what amounts to a Texas accent. That just won't work."
Like so many artistic directors today, McKenzie worries ballet
is becoming too technical, too lacking in passion. "It's
all about dealing with dancers who can't act," he says.
"Dancers are just too focused on technique. They expect
that to carry them through everything. Well, I can tell you
from experience that it won't.
"It's a matter of knowing how you're saying what you're
saying. The words alone, the steps alone, are simply not enough.
In many ways, we're dealing with a different culture than we
were 20 years ago. It's all so fast-paced now. Our culture today
is just too clinical. People have to look for something deeper.
And that's where we come in. That's why we're here. We need
to reach out and touch them, show them the classics, make them
want something more. You can only do so much with the technical
side of dance, otherwise you lose meaning."
McKenzie believes people often want to find meaning in things
they've grown up with. "When I did my Nutcracker, for instance,
I went into the life of the Rat King. That seemed important
to me. There were things there unanswered from my
youth," he says. "Then, too, you have to think about
style. An American style of dance is predicated on openness.
That very thing defines the dancers and what it is they are
able to dance. It's something that has grown through the years,
grown from Russian and French roots and traditions, grown from
important training. It's different from British technique with
its simple, less bravura elegance. And that's what American
ballet is really all about, a synthesis of all these thoughts
and schools."
McKenzie sees dance in America as having specific reverberations
based on the seminal choreography of American Ballet Theatre
icons such as Antony Tudor, Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins.
"Art, you see, has no stasis," McKenzie says. "There
can be no comfort zone. You've always got to be reaching out
for something more, something different, something special.
"That said, McKenzie recognizes how difficult it is to
find new choreographers, that special breed of dancemaker
who can give ballet important new aspects and looks.
"It's not enough just to emulate the past. We have to
move forward. Yet paying homage to our roots is an important
aspect of growth, too. People tend to copy from genius when
they haven't their own statement to make. The truth is there
are plenty of emerging choreographers here, but my opinion
is that too much information has been closed off to them.
In America, we are just too result oriented. It's one thing
to make a ballet and quite another to have it open at the
Met in New York with all the attendant expectations. That's
a pretty frightening thing for anyone attempting new work.
"There's another thing, too. To break the rules you must
first know them pretty darn well. Let's face it, putting a
new work on the stage is very expensive. That's why we need
workshops. You can't just plop people on the stage in something
new and hope it will be a success. That's irresponsible."
McKenzie sits back for a moment and scratches his head. "Art
requires financial support. And, yes, I know people think
it's all elitist. Well, it's true. It is a small part of the
population that
frequents dance and understands it. For dancers and audiences
alike, ballet is the real thing. It's necessary for all other
dance to really work and make sense. It is the discipline
that is behind everything we do with movement," he says.
"Time was at American Ballet Theatre we didn't have a
chance to reflect, to think. We were too busy trying to figure
out how we would get through tomorrow. We couldn't really
worry about next week. Well, thankfully, that's over. We can
make long-range plans. That's important for any art. In many
ways we are the national ballet company of America. Now we
have to act like it." In other words, he adds, be a national
leader in developing new works, in training dancers to be
versatile, and in taking ballet to people across the country.
"None of this, of course, is easy to do. All of it requires
money. We can't stop where we are, though, and simply give
in. We can't stop struggling for perfection," he says.
"We're only as good as our last performance. We don't
just deserve success. We must want it, then make it happen.
At American Ballet Theatre, we are now in that comfortable
place where our financial and artistic agendas have met. Now
that's a good place to be."<end>
Awakening a Bewitched Princess: ABT's New Sleeping Beauty
by Michael Crabb
David Bintley: Bringing Ballet Back
by Jeffery Taylor
Celine Gittens: A Dancer's Diary
by Celine Gittens
Matjash Mrozewski: Dreams of a Dancemaker
by Amita Parikh
Departments
Dance Notes
Commentaries from Vancouver, the Prairies, Montréal,
Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Britain, Italy, Russia, Denmark
and Australia.
Reviews of Ailey II (Vancouver), Alberta Ballet (Calgary), Bolshoi
Ballet (Washington, DC), Boston Ballet (Boston), Birmingham Royal
Ballet (Birmingham) and La Scala Ballet (Milan).
