The Palau de les Arts hosts the world premiere of Roland Petit's Saturday Night Fever tomorrow

30.06.2008

The Palau de les Arts will host the Roland Petit Ballet tomorrow, July 1st. The director, dancer, and choreographer is a true living legend of dance and is considered one of the key figures in the history of this art form. The performance also includes the world premiere of his choreography, Saturday Night Fever, set to music by the Bee Gees. “Uliana Lopatkina is a great artist from the St. Petersburg Ballet, an excellent and wonderful Russian ballerina who dances my choreography 'La Rose Malade.' She told me she would love to dance one of my new choreographies, and we thought of John Travolta,” Petit explains regarding Saturday Night Fever.
With a vast repertoire, Roland Petit retired from the stage as a dancer at the age of 73 and is still remembered today for his eclectic choreographies and performances.

Petit will offer in this show several of the most successful creations he has created throughout his career such as Coppélia, Carmen, Charlot Dance avec Nous or The Great Gig in the Sky, among others.

“I have been all over the world with my ballet companies and with companies like the Paris Opera, La Scala and others, and I decided that since many dancers I had already worked with wanted to work with me again, we should create a program together,” Petit explained about the show that premieres tomorrow at the Valencian coliseum.

Thus, this program features dancers from La Scala in Milan, the St. Petersburg Ballet, and dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet, among others.

With pop and classical music - from Pink Floyd to Georges Bizet, passing through the jazz of Duke Ellington and the music of Charlie Chaplin - the Roland Petit Ballet will feature Luigi Bonino, principal dancer of his company.

Roland Petit has emphasized that being in Valencia is very important to him, as Valencia is an "important city for culture and poetry and I think it is wonderful."

Petit is one of the most prolific and renowned choreographers and dancers of all time, as well as a multifaceted creator who collaborated with Orson Welles, who wrote the libretto for the ballet The Lady in the Ice for the Royal Ballet. The choreographer has also directed musicals in Hollywood and created and staged choreographies for the Royal Ballet in London for Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, including Carmen, Le jeune homme et la mort, Estasi, and L'éloge de la folie.

Luigi Bonino

At the Palau de les Arts, the renowned Italian dancer Luigi Bonino will perform. He has worked as Petit's assistant in the world's most important theaters and is the répétiteur for all of the French choreographer's ballets. Petit entrusted him with the role of Coppelius, previously always performed by Roland Petit himself, in Coppélia.

Dancers Althankhuyag Dugaraa, Lienz Chang, Eva Nazareth, Eleonora Abbagnato, Uliana Lopatkina, Ivan Kozlov, Marta Romagna, Mick Zeni, Svetlana Lunkina, Marlon Dino and Raimondo Rebeck will also perform.

This is the first year that the Palau de les Arts has immersed itself in the disciplines of classical ballet and contemporary dance, but it will be a constant in the coming seasons, as the Valencian coliseum remains true to its commitment to embracing all forms of art.