Louis XIV might have been a narcissistic and whimsical tyrant, but he did a lot for dance. An accomplished practitioner, he made ballet a noble art and turned it into a profession with the creation of the Académie Royale de Danse, the first institution of its kind, though not the first ballet school as some badly scripted television programmes would lead us to believe. More significantly, he showed the world that ballet can be a male art, something that 2014’s Kings of the Dance proves too.
Ever since French Romantic choreography relegated male dancing to a lesser status, ridicule of and prejudice against guys in tights are still rife. Alas, those biases also play a determining role in the way ballet is both thought of and created, and composing a ballet programme for an almost exclusively male cast remains a challenging task. Which is why Sergei Danilian, who masterminded the Kings of the Dance venture, ought to be praised, as the enthralling and artistically well-composed performance I saw steered admirably away from the trite, circus-like bravura showcase.
Nacho Duato’s 1997 Remanso is an ideal way to kick off on a high note. Especially if its interpreters are American Ballet Theatre’s Marcelo Gomes, Mikhailovsky Ballet’s Leonid Sarafanov and Mariinsky Ballet’s Denis Matvienko. Their performance resonated with unequalled stylistic unity and provided a memorable display of technical perfection.
Things heated up considerably in the second part, with Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort danced, on the opening night, by the Russian phenomenon Ivan Vasiliev, now a star of American Ballet Theatre. The 1946 ballet, which boasts a libretto by Jean Cocteau and is set to Bach’s ‘Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor’, remains one of the most powerful examples of dance-drama ever created.
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