Emanuel Abruzzo: “Until now I do ballet classes on tiptoe”

Emanuel Abruzzo’s artistic journey, from his very early youth to now his 35 years, is -to say the least- highly original. Dancer for most of his life in companies as diverse as one can imagine, today will soon premiere as a choreographer a program consisting of works inspired by popular operas.

It is this Sunday, within the framework of the 7th Classical Music Festival organized by Konex and with the Buenos Aires Ballet led by the first dancer of the Teatro Colón Federico Fernández.

Travel and experiences

As a teenager, Emanuel was apprenticed to Julio Bocca’s Argentine Ballet, but at the age of 18 he left Argentina. He went to Norway and from there to the United States, where he worked hard for several years.

He was with the Ballet of Suzanne Farrell -wonderful dancer and the last love of George Balanchine-, in off-Broadway musical comedies and especially in Ballets grabea branch of the famous Ballets dryer, which he also includes. Both sets consist exclusively of men playing female roles and are based solely on humor.

Emanuel is also part of a very important company in the city of São Paulo, the Ballet da Cidade, and about nine years ago he joined the Teatro Colón Ballet.

Since before the pandemic and in the last two years created a character for Youtube, a prototypical Russian ballet teacher named Ivanka Iendovskaia. She plans to get back to him shortly and also write a book with Indovskaya’s own voice. Serious and funny at the same time, like his YouTube classes.

Her stage as Julie Clark Kent

-Why did you leave Argentina so soon?

-I didn’t have a chance to dance here because at those times I needed glasses, I couldn’t wear contact lenses and I was too young to have surgery. So he had no chance. In Argentine Ballet I was an apprentice for a few years but I never stepped on stage. Outside it is feasible, at least in Ballets Trockadero and Ballets Grandiva, with whom I have worked for many years.

-Do you mean you’re on stage with a mirror?

-Yes. My name at Grandiva is Julie Clark Kent: Julie for Julie Kent, a famous ballerina from the American Ballet Theater, and Clark who is obviously for Superman’s stunt double using his signature glasses.

-How is your experience with those companies, generally performing women’s roles?

-I have always been interested in dancing at my fingertips. He has already started doing this in classes in Buenos Aires because he needs more strength in his legs. And being in New York, and mastering the pointe technique, I was able to work on these ballets and they were very good opportunities.

Do you remember what your first single role was?

-One of the fairies Sleeping Beauty, when jumping to the ends is too easy for me. And the following year they also gave me a role Who will you give? (Who is brave?), a parody of Who cares? (Who cares?) by George Balanchine. There I had to make a tap number using pointe shoes.

Soon, I discovered one important thing: that the work at the time helped me understand, as a choreographer, the movements of dancers: where they needed to put their weight, how to achieve more fluidity. and organization. I myself, until now, take ballet classes at the pointe.

– Is this something common in men?

-Not too much. You know when I lived in New York, I went through Willy Burman’s classes (note: teacher of Julio Bocca and of so many great dancers; died in 2020 of coronavirus); I put on my pointe shoes after I barreed and many colleagues looked at me sideways as if to say “now it’s going to fall”. But no, and Willy himself asked me to show some steps. There were teachers then who did not allow boys to wear pointe shoes in class.

-Where did the humor go for you in these companies of men, parodying ballet, neoclassical style and contemporary dance?

-One resource is the muscle we have, which is unique to a dancer. Another, the height differences. For example, I danced with a partner the pas de deux de the corsair; he was very short and played the role of the man and I, taller, the woman. And in another ballet, Flower Festival in Genzano, we would do a pas de deux with a very tall boy in the female role. These are infallible resources; they did not fail.

in konex

-Let’s talk now about the program staged at Konex and where dancers from Teatro Colón participate.

-I opened up a range of styles, from a super classic pas de deux to something that jazzled up, which also suited me. In the works I have done so far I have leaned on something more Balanchinian, more abstract. In some of these works, on the other hand, I am interested in working with the characters and their conflicts.

In one in particular, about The night of WalpurgisI looked for an aesthetic close to the series Bridgerton. The famous habanera Carmen It gave me so much respect when I thought of so many choreographic versions that were made. So I took a musical section that was almost non -existent in other choreographies and I thought of the characters of Don José and Carmen in a somewhat different way from the original plot.

-With so much experience in dance humor, would you want to create something in that vein?

-I did this, in 2021, with students of the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón for an end-of-year exhibition. I was inspired by those characteristic characters of a ballet class: the one who makes mistakes, the one who is late, the one who sleeps. At some point I want to come back here with professional dancers.

INFO: Ballet gala at the opera. Sunday, May 15 at 7:30 pm at Ciudad Cultural Konex, Sarmiento 3131.

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