Creating a New History...

Duato staging his new version of Sleeping Beauty for Mikhailovsky Ballet, December 2011

Since Nacho Duato is still choreographing and impacting the time period we are in, he is developing what we will one day look back on and see as a turning point in dance history. Duato has just finished his first year as the artistic director of a famously Russian ballet company in St. Petersburg, the Mikhailovsky Ballet, which had not previously been under a foreigner's direction since the the famous French choreographer, Marius Petipa in the late 1800's. He has taken these extremely Russian ballet trained dancers and has started to develop their repertoire to include his more modern, contemporary movement instead of the usual strict classical ballets such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty that Petipa developed during his reign as artistic director. This is showing the dance culture of today that there is no longer such a large gap between ballet dancers and modern or contemporary dancers. Ballet dancers are no longer expected just to be ballerinas but they are now expected to be able to move in the more contemporary, grounded aspect common to Duato's choreography. My prime example being Duato's take-over of a Russian ballet company and setting his "new" movement on them which, although shocking to many people, is, in a way, just a small part of this very big shift in the way we look at ballet dancers. Mikhailovsky Ballet dancers are not the only famously ballet trained dancers that are now being expected to move in a different movement style. I believe this shift in "movement flexibility" of our time is going to create a broader dynamic of how dancers are going to be expected to be able to move and perform in the years to come.

Spanish Choreographer Nacho Duato to head Mikhailovsky Ballet
Nacho Duato Shakes Up Russia's Mikhailovsky: Russian Ballet Gets A Lift

Mikhailovsky Ballet dancer, Irina Perren in Laurencia

This issue is of personal interest for me because I am training to be a modern dancer in college, when most of my training since I was five years old, has been in ballet. I am seeing this shift from being expected to be good at one specific style to being expected to dance well in all styles, incorporating all movements, to be one of immediate importance to my upcoming career options. As I train to become a professional dancer outside of school, I must realize that I will be expected to be able to move in any way that a choreographer wants me to move, whether I have more training in one area or another.