Pointe and Twirl

Ballets are very much part of Bangkok’s International Festival of Dance and Music. This annual festival has always showcased this classical art form at its best and the audience has responded with enthusiasm; Bangkok, it seems, just cannot get enough of ballet. 

In its 18th edition this year, the festival is carrying forward its pledge to bring only the best to the Thailand Cultural Centre’s stage. The ballets being showcased are by four established and world famous companies: Stanislavsky Ballet, Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve, Karlsruhe Ballet and France’s Ballet Preljocaj. 

Stanislavsky Ballet, now celebrating its 75th anniversary, is the ballet company of the Moscow State Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. One of Russia’s leading and most artistically successful companies, it is presenting a double bill this season – “Swan Lake” and “Giselle” – with 90 dancers, 11 of them gold medallists at international ballet competitions, and a full symphony orchestra. Formed in the 1920s, Stanislavsky’s goal was to train ballet dancers to act as well, and create ballets that bring out both skill sets and in this it has succeeded admirably.

Over the years, the company’s has collaborated with such leading contemporary choreographers as John Neumeier, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Sir Frederick Ashton, and of course Vladimir Burmeister, whose version of “Swan Lake” is regarded as the best ever staged. And it this version of “Swan Lake” that Stanislavsky Ballet will perform in Bangkok. 

Being staged on September 8 and 9, it has Oksana Kardash and Erika Mikirticheva alternating as Odette/Odile and Ivan Mikhalev and Denis Dmitriev taking on Prince Siegfried. Award-winning maestro Felix Korobov conducts. 

Stanislavsky Ballet’s second offering is Adolphe Adams’s Giselle on September 11, a passionate and magnificent work with Natalia Somova as Giselle and Denis Dmitriev as Albrecht. Anton Grishanin holds the baton. 

Later in September Switzerland’s Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve and its 22 dancers will take Bangkok by storm. Known for its classically trained dancers and spectacular repertoire performances, this company goes back to the 1800s when dancers performed with the Theatre Neuves on the site of the present-day Grand Theatre de Geneve. It is currently under the direction of ballet director Philippe Cohen.

The company will stage Richard Wagner’s dramatic “Tristan & Isolde” on September 24 and Carl Off’s Carmina Burana on September 26. Joelle Bouvier’s choreography of “Tristan & Isolde” brings into focus the Celtic legend of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde. Dancing Isolde is Thai ballerina Sarawanee Tanatanit, winner of 2001 Prix de Lausanne and formerly a dancer with the American Ballet Company. She is the only Thai ballet dancer currently on the international stage. 

Carmina Burana” choreographed by Claude Brumachon underlines the power of movement in a spectacular work in which music, movement and words are indistinguishable from each other.

On October 8 and 9, Karlsruhe Ballet, one of Germany’s leading classical ballet companies, brings a dramatic production of “The Nutcracker – Christmas Carol” to the stage. Set to Tchaikovsky’s music, this revised version of a classic, with spectacular costumes and sets, brings together “The Nutcracker” and Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas” Carol in a seamless production where Scrooge learns about the meaning of Christmas. It is the creation of Youri Vamos, a leading European choreographer whose primary aim is to ‘secure the survival of full-length ballets’. 

The last ballet of the season takes place on October 12.“Romeo and Juliet” by Ballet Preljocaj is a romantic and contemporary retelling by French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj set in the totalitarian regime of an East European country. 

Angelin Preljocaj was commissioned in 1989 by Lyons Opera Ballet to create this ballet. He set the age-old romance in an eastern Europe state, where everyone was under surveillance. The resultant ballet is no longer just the story of a fight between clans but of a confrontation between the militia responsible for keeping social order and the family of the homeless, on the fringe of society. 

Partnering the Festival in ensuring that Bangkok gets to see the very best in Ballet are: Crown Property Bureau, Bangkok Bank (PCL), Bangkok Dusit Medical Services (PCL), BMW Thailand, B Grimm Group, Dusit Thani Bangkok, Indorama Ventures, Ministry of Culture, Nation Group, PTT (PCL), Singha Corporation, Thai Airways International and Tourism Authority of Thailand.