Fokin’s “Swan”, pure movement

Away with pointe shoes and tutus, no waltzes and mazurkas. No nineteenth-century classical dance and codified pantomime. Dance can also be subjectless, pure movement. No open applause and thanks to interrupt the action. In the early 1900s, Petersburger Michail Fokin (better known on the European scene as Michel Fokine) was a revolutionary. He upset tradition in favor of exotic themes (le Pavillon d’Armide), or the regret of the early 19th century romantic dance (Les Sylphides). He encapsulated the poetry of all the swans in the Dying Swan in a solo for Anna Pavlova. Here is a gender fluid dancer who acted on stage with a costume covered in rose petals in “Spectre de la rose”, or unleashed an animalistic sexuality as a golden slave in Sheherazade. In both cases he was the legendary Nijinsky

All this enclosed in a show with the simple title “Il Cigno” that the choreographer Fredy Franzutti created for his Balletto del Sud and presented at the Apollo Theater in Lecce, with already some dates of a tour that hopefully will multiply.

Because the Swan is not a simple gala on songs by Folkin, but a complete and structured show whose leitmotiv is the memories of Fokin himself (the excellent actor Andrea Sirianni) who through the various songs follows his own artistic life, starting from the rich merchant father who did not want a son “pljasún” (acrobat)

Franzutti, who now reconstructs and now intervenes with his choreographic inspiration, opens with the nocturne and the waltz from the Sylphides (the music is by Chopin) and it is the ethereal girls in light long tutus who move impalpably, as if the ghost of the taglioni reappeared multiplied to infinity. Certainly the regret for romanticism but Fokin however did not recreate a story but presented us with a Réverie of him.

“Carnaval, (music by Schumann) is the amusing bickering between Harlequin and Colombina playing by Pantalone.

“The Firebird” for which Fokin resorted to Stravinski’s music, Bakst’s costumes and Golovin’s sets is here a series of paintings that makes us meet for the first time in the evening with Nuria Salado Fusté, l’étoile of the company, which will soon give way to Ana Sofia Scheller because she is pregnant. Nuria has very slender legs, imperious arms as befits a supernatural and salvific being, a mobile and nervous head. She is perfect as a bird of fire. Quite the opposite of the bewitching and mournful dying swan, here with fluctuating and very soft arms, with which Nuria will close the show.

“Je suis le specter de la rose che tu portais hier au bal” says the line by Théophile Gauthier that inspired the piece declined on Carl Marai von Weber’s invitation to dance. and Ovidiu Chitanu is the touching interpretation. Covered in rose petals, he awakens the girl who, returning from the dance, rests in an armchair, lightly invites her to dance and then brings her back to the armchair

For “Petrushka”, the puppet man also sung by Blok in the Balaganchik, the acrobats’ barrack, Fanzutti has chosen to present us the solitary scene of the puppet locked in his room, here too the music is by Stravinskiy. It remains to be said of Scheherazade where Franzutti chooses the exotic costume for the beautiful Zobeide and almost completely undresses the black slave: let’s update it must be said.

Therefore pleasant and quality evening with a philological attention to the reconstruction of the original costumes and which confirms the state of excellent health of the company of 22 elements, it deserves to be seen more often around Italy.