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Igor Zelensky
Royal Ballet Guest Principal by Jennifer Delaney | |||||||
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There are very few things that can get me out of bed on Sunday morning. Breakfast with Igor Zelensky is definitely one of them, so at 10am, the morning after the Royal Ballet's run at the Coliseum ends, I'm sitting outside a Covent Garden café, laying into the cappucinos with an international ballet star. There are worse ways to start the day. He's amused when I produce my tape recorder, and ostentatiously crumbles his croissant away from it, so as not to create static. Zelensky was just finishing a trip to London - he left the next day, - and ballet.co has finally managed to corner him, after his appearances with the Royal Ballet in La Bayadere, Manon and Sleeping Beauty. He has an exhausting schedule of guest appearances ahead of him, starting with Japan two weeks later. In the meantime, he was going to St Petersburg to take advantage of spare rehearsal space at the Kirov and prepare his programme. "This year I was travelling a lot. I left City Ballet, I thought it was enough and I just wanted a bit more stuff to do. Last year, I tried it and I liked it. "It's hard with City Ballet, they have a very tough schedule, you have to be there. If you're missing rehearsal periods, you don't get to dance that much in performances. They work from November to February, then April to July, and it's a lot so you have to stay with that." So Zelensky upped sticks. "I didn't really leave, I just said 'bye-bye guys, thank you very much'. I said 'Peter [Martins, NYCB's director], I need the time off'." The result has been a lot of travelling - "Japan, Korea, South America, New York, tours with the Kirov Ballet". He never burns his bridges - he's still a member of the Kirov Ballet too. "They always kept my name there. I am always welcome there." His last time dancing there was with Bussell in February, and he was off to St Petersburg the day after the interview to prepare the programme for a Japanese tour, and to catch up with his family and friends. His accented English has some incongruous colloquialism - "whoa, beautiful dancer" was his reaction on first seeing Bussell at NYCB. "I was guesting in Canada and I called her and asked her if she can dance with me." Afterwards, she danced with him in NYCB "and she said 'you should come over to the Royal Ballet', and she was calling for two years, and I was under contract with City Ballet. At one point I was supposed to come and do Sleeping Beauty, and Peter said, 'you have so much to do here'." So when he finally got over to the Royal Ballet, "I was going to join the company because I really like to dance with her, and they close the Opera House." Would he join the company when the Royal Opera House re-opens? "Yeah. I mean I don't want to do a project for five or six years because I'm not a kid anymore. I'm already 29. I'm looking to so some new stuff, some modern ballets. I'm not crazy to do again Bayadere in the Coliseum. That's why I was happy to do Manon, because this piece is a lot of work. It's not just two shows. It takes, five, six, seven, ten - enough so you can tell I was dancing Manon, because now I just did Manon. The first one, it was horrible, in my opinion, the second one it was much better. "The same with Romeo. Next year I look forward to doing another two." When I mention the size of the Festival Hall stage which may not actually be compatible with his Romeo, he says, "I had a problem with that even in the Opera House. The stage is small, I have to limit myself all the time. "In Russia, you see how different it looks, because I was flying, because it's easy for me. I never have to hold myself. Even in the Coliseum, for Bayadere, I have to hold myself, so I don't feel confident." He obviously wants to do more Manons but his chances are limited, as he has certain requirements regarding MacMillan: "Sometimes when Darcey is busy I'd love to do Manon and all the other MacMillan ballets, besides classical pieces, but I don't really like to do MacMillan pieces without Darcey. "I like it so much. Especially Manon, it's the most realistic piece I ever did in my life, you don't have to act. I mean, I did a lot of ballets, 20, 30 ballets with City Ballet, one of those, the Western Symphony. I played a cowboy. And I just love that kind of stuff, I don't have to pretend - I'm a ballet dancer - I just did what I thought. I just really feel I'm a man on stage and I love all this dress and pony-tail . . . I really do! It's the same thing about Romeo, but Manon's a bit more. You don't have to do 'I, you, marry me', you're really clear. It's a really dramatical piece. Especially ending, my God." "A Month in the Country, I'd love to do that in the future. I love Ashton. I can say it now, because in Beauty the solo is Ashton." He wants to do the "famous one by Ashton" so we start running through the "famous" ones - it's "The Dream" he means. When I tease him that there are no "big jumps" in The Dream, he gets serious again. "I'd really enjoy it. It's not about jumps. When I was a kid, everyone said, 'Oh, he can jump' and now I think the more you grow, you want to act more on stage. I don't have that much experience of acting on stage, and if you do classical ballet, especially the Balanchine, there's not that much acting. I had one experience when I was a kid, I did the Ring Cycle ballet. I really did like it because it was long and all this." However, his initial moves from St Petersburg to New York had nothing to do with drama. Perhaps just as well, as Zelensky was suffering double culture shock - the difference between Petipa and Balanchine, and the adjustment to an entirely different culture. "It's always [difficult], if you change your partner, even in the same city. It's a little painful. Everything is new. Can you imagine for me to move from Russia to America, I didn't speak any English at all, and everything was new for me. When I went to New York, the first year I was guesting a lot and dancing in the company a little bit, and they didn't like that. The second year, I said 'okay, I'll stop' and I stayed." "City Ballet is more like a family than any company in the world. It really is a family, they don't like any guesting, they don't like any coming and going, and all this stars situation. It's hard to make your name as a big star in City Ballet because everybody is dancing the same evening, so you're not the star of the evening." Since he has been guesting so much, good coaches are important. In New York "I met the greatest teacher in the world, Stanley Williams. He gave me so much, and it was unbelievable. He opened my mind about Apollo [Zelensky's favourite role]. I was taking his classes every day at school." Williams died recently. "I really miss him." He relied on Williams to sort out his technique. "If you're losing something, take one week's class with him, he put me together and he helped me out when I was away one month, two months. I really loved his classes, we were friends." Another hero is Barysnikov, not least because he has found a way to keep on dancing. "Look at Misha. He is still dancing at an unbelievable age, and he's still dancing as a dancer. It's not about if he can do ten pirouettes or something. When you're young you can do that, but when you grow up you're thinking a little bit deeper." He is trying to balance money and art, while he's still young enough to pull in the big bucks. "Last month I did 20 shows in South America, 22 actually. I did it for money. It was like one pas de deux, you go off. My mother said 'You have a very easy season now, just five shows', but it's tougher than what I was doing in South America, just put the makeup on and get the paycheque. But here you have to work, it takes forever rehearsing." For the future, he is very much driven by a desire for new work. He wants someone to create a memorable role on him - discussions of British choreographers include Matthew Bourne and Christopher Wheeldon. He was impressed by AMP's Swan Lake - "He can really tell a story" - and would love to try the gatecrasher scene, where the character appealed to him. He's not so sure about trying the white swan acts, though. He is dismissive of imitative choreographers, preferring those who have a distinctive style of their own. "You see Billy Forsythe. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't like it. But it's a Billy Forsythe." He's seen bad imitations in Russia and avoids them like the plague. Like many of his British contemporaries, it's Rambert's Christopher Bruce that has impressed him most though. "It's a lot of work. I was watching how they move. It's beautiful." He'll get his opportunity to see them again in October, when he returns to the Royal Ballet for their Sadler's Wells season. After that, well, we can see how he copes with the stage at the Festival Hall, and after that . . . he may yet be persuaded to make more frequent appearances with the Royal Ballet.
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