© Bernd Weissbrod Ferri reviews Angela Reinhardt reviews

The famous Italian ballerina is dancing with the Stuttgart Ballet for four performances of John Neumeier's "A Streetcar Named Desire", after the play by Tennessee Williams.

The ballet with the German title "Endstation Sehnsucht" was created in 1983 for Marcia Haydée and Richard Cragun and has not been seen in Stuttgart for ten years. Strangely enough for an American drama set in New Orleans, it's danced to music by two Russians: Prokofiev's "Visions fugitives" for the first act and Alfred Schnittke's First Symphony for the second act. Alessandra Ferri dances the role of Blanche Du Bois, the Southern belle on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

How do you like yourself with a blond wig?

I have been blond before. Many years ago, when I did Manon with the Royal Ballet, I was blond, Kenneth MacMillan wanted me to be blond. After that he said: fine, you can be dark, but he felt that a woman would move differently with different hair colour. And he was right - he gave me a whole new way of reading the role, and then that feeling stayed in me, even when I changed my hair (and now I do it with my own hair). It's very different, you feel like another person. So I was prepared for this and knew that John Neumeier envisioned Blanche Du Bois being blond. You move a bit different with a wig, you enjoy feeling a little being not so much yourself. Especially in this character she is so much out of time, she is so much in her own world. The wig helps to make her feel a little weird, a little bit seperated from everybody else.

Did John Neumeier change the role of Blanche for you?

He likes very much to work - thank God! - on the person that he has in front. This is a wonderful thing about working with a choreographer who's still alive and not just taking over the ballet. You have the freedom to work and mould it on you. He even sometimes changed the pas de deux when he's working on them and he has a new idea. It's still a work in progress, you're not just repeating what was done. He obviously has different dancers in front of him, and just the way their body moves makes him want change things. With John Neumeier it's how to stop him - if he had time he would keep going and going...

Alessandra Ferri as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire
© Bernd Weissbrod

It's the first time you actually work with John Neumeier on a role. I know that you have danced a Pas de deux from "Lady of the Camelias"...

Not the whole ballet. I was supposed to do the whole ballet and then I was pregnant, so I cancelled. But already with that few days that we worked on the pas de deux, I felt a sensibility that was in common. And I could feel what he was talking about, I felt I understood, so when this opportunity came up now, I was thrilled. First of all it is an uncredible role, it's one of the most difficult roles to play in ballet for sure.

So it was his idea to invite you to dance Blanche Du Bois?

It was his and Reid Anderson's, I think it was a thing between them. When they thought who can do the role, they came up with my name, and I was very, very happy about it. Instinctively I said yes, and then I got very worried because this is really difficult, you know! It's a lot of work, it's not just automatic. I very much like to work in a way that I read and I do all the brain research quite a while before I have to even learn the ballet. And then I want to forget about it, because when you read something that impresses you it stays in you. Even if you don't think about it, it's in you somewhere. And then by just working with John and learning the choreography, whatever feeling it has left in you would come to the surface. And at that point I try not to go through my brain too much, but let it come naturally.

You have danced with the most famous male dancers around the world, but your partner in Stuttgart, Jason Reilly, is a very young dancer who was just made principal. How do you work together? Was he in awe, was he afraid of the famous world star?

Oh yes, I think in the beginning he was. Especially for him it's very hard because he has to be brutal to me. So he was like "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" all the time, but obviously now that is past. He's wonderful, I have to say. He's such a nice person and when I met him first I thought "My God, how is he going to do that?" because Stanley Kowalski is not a nice person! But he has incredible talent, and an instinct - you can feel it's coming out of the skin, this whole talent is instinctial, which is always the best, because it means it's really deep in him. So this was a wonderful surprise. And I have to say that the whole company was a wonderful surprise. I've known the company through the years and I think it's a time now where there is so much talent. They are so young, but strangely enough they are very focussed people and I think it's obviously thanks to Reid Anderson, it must! They're young, but their professionality is very mature. Although they are young, you feel the enthusiams, but you don't feel the inexperience, which is important, because sometimes the inexperience can be a big gap of language. It's a very nice company to be with.

You are one of the few dancers (or maybe the only) who has danced MacMillan's Juliet and Cranko's Juliet. Where is the difference?

Of course I have been born with the MacMillan Juliet. So MacMillan's Juliet is in my blood, it is the ballet that I danced more than any other.. I think I have done hundreds of performances all over the world. It's second skin, it's second nature, it's a role that I can really say I know every detail inside out. With Cranko's Romeo in fact I only did it on one occasion, with the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto. I felt I was not well prepared for it, I didn't have the right coaching. Nobody really took the time... it was before Reid Anderson was director in Canada. I feel like I would have to rethink it. I have danced much more "Onegin" and "Taming of the Shrew", and actually they are ballets I love and feel part of. With "Romeo" it's almost like I haven't done it, it's like in a bracket somewhere. It would be lovely to just reconsider it. It's very interesting to do a ballet in two versions, because you carry with you everything. Like with the "Midsummer Night's Dream" - I have done Ashton's "The Dream", I have done Balanchine, and they are completely different. But once you do one, you will always carry whatever that role taught you, because it's been seen in a different angle, in a different perspective. When you do the other version you see a different perspective but you still can pinch things and you just grow deeper and deeper into the person. In fact, to do the Cranko "Romeo" now would be very interesting for me know because it would give me a new look on the role of Juliet, it would actually make it a richer experience. So it's always fascinating to know more and more...

You have always been praised for your dramatic dancing, for being such a passionate dancing actress like for example Marcia Haydée who created the role of Blanche. But among all those female dancers who are famous for their technique or their versability nowadays, you seem to be one of the last dramatic ballerinas - do you have any idea why there are no more great dramatic ballerinas?

I think it's the lack of choreographers. My generation was one of the last to actually have the chance to meet such wonderful people like Cranko, like MacMillan, like Ashton, or Balanchine for the people in the States. People who worked with the person they had in front, who were interested in dance as theatre. So it wasn't just an art form to create energy and shape, but to create theatre. Young dancers don't have that very much. There's Neumeier, there's Roland Petit who's still alive and who is fantastic to work with, I mean he's a theatre man. Béjart maybe.. they are very few, and very few dancers can work with them. So young dancers don't even know what it takes and how far you have to go. When Ken was still alive and you were given a role, there was so much research! You read books, you went to see paintings that would remind you of the person you were to take up - it became your whole life for a few month! Now that doesn't happen any more. You learn the steps, you do them very well, maybe you watch a couple of videos, and that's it. That's why I think it's amazing for the dancers here to work with John Neumeier. It's a whole different way of learning a piece. That just doesn't happen any more! It's nobody's fault, these are the times... Because I worked with Kenneth MacMillan, that approach is part of me when now I work on other things like Cranko or whatever other ballets I'm given to dance. I know how to approach a work, how to work on a role, I carry on. But if you have never done it, if you're twentytwo years old and have never done it, you don't even know that it's possible! I was lucky enough to work with Anthony Tudor, to work with Agnes deMille - they were all people who had that. So it was a great way of being in the theatre.

Can you imagine to pass your knowledge on?

Yes! Sometimes when I look at the girls doing their roles, I really would like to go: "no, wait!" and coach them. It's something that I think I would like to do - to try to make them see there is a whole other world out there.