The Bad Boys of Ballet
Street dancing has its rebels, and well Latin did bring rock and roll to the Ballroom, but it seems they can’t have all the mischievous dancers to themselves. The world of ballet isn’t all tights and pirouettes, throughout the last fifty years there have been a fair few naughty ballerinos and this July we have been promised a show-case of the bad boys of Ballet. The ‘tattooed, leather jacket-wearing prodigy’ Sergei Polunin, who seems to be going for the Dirty Dancing’s Johnny Castle meets The Libertines’ lead-singer Pete Doherty look, is back- or at least we hope so!
From July 11th to 14th, the London Coliseum will be hopefully hosting the Stanislavsky Ballet’s performance of the Roland Petit’s 1975 version of Coppelia,staring the ‘bad boy’ himself; Sergei Polunin. Polunin certainly deserves his fame amongst ballet aficionados, as at 19 years of age he became the youngest principal dancer in the history of the Royal Ballet. Last month, however, the Ukranian ballet dancer made headlines after what has been described as ‘the highest-profile defection since Rudolf Nureyev slipped the surely bonds of Soviet servitude at a Paris airport while touring Europe with the Kirov in 1961’. While his ‘defection’ was perhaps not as dramatic as Nereyev’s, Polinin did go awol from the Coliseum’s production of Midnight Express, days before its debut. In 2012 he also left the Royal Ballet a week before the opening performance of The Dream, where he was due to play the lead role. After leaving Midnight Express, Polunin resurfaced again in Moscow and has now apologised to his disappointed audiences citing ‘health issues’ as the reason for his abrupt departure. It may therefore be more a case of lock on your ballet shoes rather than put them on this July.
Polunin’s inspiration Rudolf Nereyev, whose failure to observe the rules on the Kirov ballet company’s tour of Europe caused KGB officials to try and send him back to Moscow where he would have surely been imprisoned, is also being celebrated this summer. On July 25th to July 27th, the English National Ballet will be performing a Tribute to the rebellious Rudolf Nereyev in order to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his death and 75th anniversary of his birth. The performance will include extracts from Petrushka, the Song of a Wayfarer and Raymonda Act III; all of which Nerveyev famously performed in. Although, unlike Nerveyev’s flight, Polunin’s escape wasn’t politically motivated it seems this bad boy is keeping up with tradition and keeping his fans on tenterhooks. So watch out because these ballet boys can do more than plié.