FESTIVAL FEATURES | Natalia Osipova
DANCING QUEEN
Star ballerina Natalia Osipova arrives in Edinburgh with a show featuring three new dance works created especially for her. Kelly
Apter fi nds out more
SIDI LARBI CHERKAOUI – QUTB
An associate artist at Sadler’s Wells theatre, the Belgian choreographer is a former dancer with Les Ballets C de la B who started creating work in 2000, for both his own company and some of the world’s i nest ballet companies.
‘I think Natalia is extraordinary,’ says Cherkaoui. ‘She’s very curious, a real explorer who keeps on digging, keeps analysing and is very intuitive. She has a real, deep technique and a very strong skill set that she has acquired through years and years of training. Which is mixed with something very organic and natural that she can tap into, because she’s a natural mover, too.
‘In Qutb, the three dancers never stop touching, there is constant physical touch between them – it’s like they are one entity. The piece is really about interconnectedness, and maybe the notion of how, as a victim, you are pulled out of that pool of misery by someone else – and then having the strength to pull someone else out. Picking up the pieces.’
W hen a dancer of the calibre of Natalia Osipova asks you to create work for her, few choreographers have to think twice. Certainly Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant and
Arthur Pita all jumped at the chance.
Known for their contemporary style, but experience of working with classically trained dancers, the three men had much to offer the Russian ballerina and former Bolshoi star. And their resulting works all pull out different qualities in Osipova.
In Maliphant and Pita’s works, she teams up with Sergei Polunin, one of the hottest properties on today’s ballet scene. A former dancer with the Royal Ballet (where Osipova herself is now a principal dancer), Polunin has attracted almost 16 million views on YouTube for his dance to Hozier’s ‘Take Me To Church’ (and with good reason – check it out if you haven’t already). Together, Osipova and Polunin deliver a passionate modern take on the traditional pas de deux in Maliphant’s Silent Echo, and i ne character performances in Pita’s dark dance theatre work, Run Mary Run. Contemporary dancers Jason Kittelberger and James O’Hara join Osipova to form a formidable trio in Cherkaoui’s Qutb (an Arabic word for ‘axis’ or ‘pivot’).
We speak to the three choreographers to i nd out what they admire
most about this talented and versatile dancer.
14 THE LIST FESTIVAL 11–18 Aug 2016