BERNADETTE RAE finds two producers of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's new triple bill are driven by the inspiration of their mentors, George Balanchine and Rudolf Nureyev.
The third act of Petipa's ballet Raymonda lasts just 30 minutes, and George Balanchine's beautiful Allegro Brillante half that. Into this brief stage time
has been poured the passion of two extraordinary lives.
In the weeks leading up to opening night of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's new show, Pat Neary, Balanchine's longtime protege and muse, schooled the company's young dancers in just how "Mr B" meant the work to be - and insisted they get it exactly right.
Patricia Ruanne, who crowned a career as one of the world's best classical ballerinas with a long and creative association with Rudolf Nureyev at the Paris Opera ballet, coaxed new levels of Petipa-style precision and technique from the company for Raymonda.
The Raymonda Triple Bill opens in Auckland on Saturday and in Hamilton on July 24. The third piece on the bill is Jiri Kylian's Solda-tenmis or, in smaller venues such as Hamilton's Founders Theatre, Jonathan Taylor's 'Tis Goodly Sport.
The title given to people like Neary and Ruanne, who have been charged by the creators of great ballet to oversee their works into the future, is "producer." But it seems a coldly technical term for what is truly a matter of the heart.
Neary, who at 57 still has the legs of a lean teen, describes Balanchine as her "mentor, teacher, my lover at one point - and, to me, the God of classical ballet."
'The creativity just flowed out of him. It was nothing for him to be creating two or three ballets at once. He would spend two hours in one studio with one accompanist and a set of dancers and walk right out into the next studio to start making another new piece. He was unbelievable."
Just 15 years old when she was invited to join the National Ballet of Canada, Neary went to Balanchine's New York City Ballet in 1960 and for eight years danced his principal roles. He also nurtured her talents as a teacher and artistic director.
While her dancing career continued, as principal ballerina of the Geneva Ballet and as a guest artist throughout Europe, Neary also began staging ballets from Balanchine's huge repertoire.
Since 1988 Neary has worked for the Balanchine Trust, staging the great choreographer's works for ballet companies around the world.
"When you teach a Balanchine ballet," she says, "he lives through it. It never feels like something I have taught 40 times before. The feeling I get teaching Balanchine's work makes me young again. Four hours flat out work and I feel 20 again."
Ruanne has a different kind of passion for the works that have become her responsibility: Nureyev's Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Raymonda and Kenneth MacMillan's Manon.
In 1996 Ruanne and her New Zealand-born husband, dancer Frederick Werner, retired to "a piece of paradise" in Guadalupe.
It's a difficult place to leave. But she spent the early months of this year in Finland, snowbound and in sub-zero temperatures.
"It taxed me to the limits," she confesses. "But you do it because you have been given the responsibility for these works. There is simply no question of saying no to a company that requests you come."
Wherever she goes, Ruanne feels she has Nureyev "behind my left shoulder."
Raymonda is close to Ruanne's heart. It was during a production of this ballet that Nureyev plucked Ruanne, then 18 years old, from the corps de ballet to perform one of the pas de deux.
It was the beginning of a long association. Ruanne became Nureyev's Sleeping Beauty, his Aurora, and Juliet to his Romeo.
"When I stopped dancing in 1985 Nureyev asked me to join him at the Paris Opera ballet," she says. "We worked together for 20 years."
"He had a wonderful sense of humour, huge knowledge and an enormous hunger to learn more and more. He believed you were never finished, there was always something more.
"Those of us who worked with him a lot feel that everything we do, even now, is thanks to him."
Who: Pat Neary and Patricia Ruanne
What: Raymonda
Where and when: Aotea Centre, Auckland, Saturday to Thursday; Founders Theatre, Hamilton, July 24 and 25
BERNADETTE RAE finds two producers of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's new triple bill are driven by the inspiration of their mentors, George Balanchine and Rudolf Nureyev.
The third act of Petipa's ballet Raymonda lasts just 30 minutes, and George Balanchine's beautiful Allegro Brillante half that. Into this brief stage time
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