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The Miraculous Genius of John Cranko Buenos Aires
Teatro Colón
10/03/2025 - & October 4, 5, 7, 8*, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 2025
Onegin
John Cranko (choreography), Agneta Valcu & Victor Valcu (choreographic revival), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (music, arr. & orch. Kurt‑Heinz Stolze)
Ciro Mansilla*/Juan Pablo Ledo/Federico Fernández/Jakob Feyferlik (Onegin), Ayelén Sánchez*/Camila Bocca/Natalia Pelayo/Marianela Núnez (Tatiana), Stephanie Kessel*/Rocío Agüero/Milagros Niveyro (Olga), Facundo Luqui/Jiva Velázquez*/Valentín Batista/Lucas Matzkin (Lenskij), David Juárez Vizgarra*/Alan Pereyra/Matías Santos (Prince Gremin), Natacha Bernabei*/Paula Cassano (The Widow Larina), Maricel De Mitri*/Luisina Rodríguez/Constanza Colombo (The Nurse), Corps de ballet del Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón
Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colón, Ermanno Florio (conductor)
Reid Anderson-Gräfe (supervision), Pier Luigi Samaritani (sets), Roberta Guidi Di Bagno (costumes), Rubén Conde (light designer)
(© Carlos Villamayor)
Premiered in 1965 in Stuttgart and created by South African choreographer John Cranko, the ballet Onegin follows the same storyline as in Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, scene by scene. But oddly, it doesn’t use a single note from it. This may seem frustrating, as Tchaikovsky’s operatic repertoire is unfailingly and irresistibly lyrical. It’s also, fittingly, ballabile, positively made for dancing. However, Cranko was wise not to use the opera’s music, as it would have relegated the ballet to a mere curiosity, derivative of the opera. Instead, it’s a fascinating stand‑alone work with much merit.
Instead, Cranko chose various less familiar works by Tchaikovsky, arranged and orchestrated by Kurt‑Heinz Stolze. Most recognizable was the second theme from Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini. Other sources are the piano cycle The Seasons, the opera The Caprices of Oxana and Romeo and Juliet. The result was a resounding success: original dance music faithfully capturing the spirit of the opera.
The sets in the first scene of the first act resembled bucolic paintings by Watteau or Fragonard. A sense of perspective made Mme Larina’s country estate look immense. The widow Larina and her two daughters, Tatiana and Olga, are seated in the garden preparing for the former’s birthday. Olga’s fiancé, the poet Lensky, arrives with his friend, Onegin, a blasé dandy visiting the countryside in search of a reprieve from his ennui. The two men arrive while the romantic Tatiana and her sister are playing a game with a mirror, in which whoever looks into it sees their beloved. The reflection of Onegin appears in Tatiana’s mirror. Ever the romantic, she’s immediately lovestruck, despite Onegin’s aloof, supercilious demeanour.
In contrast to Lensky and Olga’s sweet and proper pas de deux, Onegin and Tatiana’s stroll through the garden could be described as a pas de paon (peacock), with Onegin more self absorbed than attentive to his partner’s needs. His steps are stiff and aloof. When Tatiana expects to be held and swirled, Onegin does a dazzling solo jump. Cranko’s trademark humour evolves into this unusual pas de deux. Argentine Ciro Mansilla, soloist with the Stuttgart Ballet, was guest premier danseur in this performance, in which he impressed with his excellent technique and interpretative skills. Mansilla exuded ennui in the first and second acts. Thanks to his stiff posture and mannerisms insinuating arrogance, he was so detestable it was hard to understand how Tatiana could have fallen for him.
The second scene is set in Tatiana’s bedroom, where the pensive protagonist is thinking of the handsome dandy from Saint Petersburg. Her bed is on one side, a writing desk on the other, and a huge mirror in the centre. Cranko had the brilliant idea of Tatiana conjuring Onegin through the mirror, with whom she dances a pas de deux. Paralleling Jeff Daniels walking out of the screen into Mia Farrow’s living room in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), itself inspired by Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950), Tatiana conjures her Prince Charming through the looking glass.
The dance with the Onegin of her imagination is vastly different from that of the previous scene; it’s intimate, affectionate, and passionate. This imaginary Onegin is the one she falls in love with. I believe it was Lawrence Durrell who had described infatuation as not falling in love with an actual person, but falling in love with an often false impression of a person, sometimes due to the image of one’s self seen in the beloved’s eyes. The latter is not the case, but the former is.
The lover in the mirror evoked E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novellas, giving a certain element of the fantastic or supernatural, a key element of Romanticism. Dreaming up such a scene in lieu of Tatiana’s Letter scene in the opera is a clever adaptation to the medium of dance, given the absence of lyrics to describe Tatiana’s outpouring of young love. Ayelén Sánchez convincingly portrayed Tatiana as a sweet and dreamy provincial ingénue. Thanks to hesitant steps and agitation at the approach of Onegin, especially once he had rejected her, Sánchez’s Tatiana was spot on.
The setting for Tatiana’s birthday scene was the essence of countryside elegance, more comfortable and sober than grand. Cranko’s humour was expressed in the elderly provincial gentry’s obsequiousness and awkward steps. Whereas Lensky repeats his elegant and proper steps with Olga, Onegin has the same anguished, detached steps as in his Act I pas de deux with Tatiana. He reprimands her for her outburst of adolescent love, returns and tears up her letter. Irked by her tears, he channels his anger into teasing his friend Lensky by flirting with Tatiana’s sister Olga, provoking his anger and causing Lensky to challenge him to a duel.
The strength of Cranko’s version of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is that he brings balance to the quartet of Onegin-Tatiana-Lensky-Olga by giving more depth to the often eclipsed Lensky and especially Olga. Very few stage directors, with the exception of Christof Loy in his staging of the operatic version for Madrid, succeed in achieving this balance by portraying an exceptionally vivacious and extroverted Olga. In the present performance, Stephanie Kessel managed to bring life to the character of Olga, thanks to her ample charisma and brilliant technique.
The duel scene, set only in black and white, is possibly more effective than that of the opera; less solemn and more eerily suspenseful. No Zaretsky and Guillot, arbiters of the duel, in this ballet adaptation. The absence of minor characters in this scene increases the level of tension. A soulful Lensky laments his friend’s disloyalty and Olga’s fickleness set to music reminiscent of his aria from the opera, “Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis.” Two tragic figures dressed in black dance around Lensky and later Onegin. They may be the Furies, or a stylized version of Onegin’s regret and Lensky’s anger. When they embrace Lensky, one senses his demise, which happens soon after.
Back from his wandering in Europe, a disillusioned Onegin is a guest at a ball at Prince Gremin’s palace. It’s Imperial Russia in all its glory, but no clutter, élégance oblige. In lieu of Prince Gremin’s aria in the opera, “Lyubvi vsye vozrasti pokorni,” marital bliss is expressed in a pas de deux between Gremin and Tatiana, characterized by poise and tenderness. Here, we see a transformed Tatiana in Sánchez’s poised style. Princess Tatiana Gremina is light years away from the provincial ingénue.
The moment Onegin recognizes Tatiana as Prince Gremin’s young wife, a shattered Onegin sits down, his back to the dancing couple. When he stands up, attempting but failing to approach Tatiana, his seat is taken in what is clearly an allegorical game of musical chairs: he is out of step, lost. The dissonant, tentative steps of his solo reveal his state of mind. It was impressive how Mansilla was able to transform from an obnoxious self‑satisfied arrogant dandy into a shattered and fragile man.
In the final scene, Onegin has sent Tatiana a letter expressing his love and regret for his foolish rejection years before. He manages to sneak into Tatiana’s boudoir, a much warmer setting than her room as a young woman. A bright ray of light, a kind of guarding light, seeps through an unseen side window. An imploring Onegin attempts to hold a reserved Tatiana in his arms. His steps falter. He performs much of the final pas de deux frequently lowering himself below Tatiana as if imploring or submitting.
As in the opera, the music is a reprise of that used in the first act’s Letter scene, but with a frenzied rhythm. As Onegin previously tore up her letter, Tatiana now tears up his, though now in movements that express both trepidation and hesitation. Sánchez’s posture, mannerisms and even dancing style are now utterly different from the ingénue in the first two acts. Here, she leads in the pas de deux and is almost always physically above Onegin.
Beyond the excellent dancers, the breathtaking sets and the competent, though slightly underpowered conducting of Ermanno Florio, the greatest glory of the evening is the brilliant creativity of John Cranko. To have created a superlative ballet, possibly the most striking new ballet in the second part of the twentieth century, is almost miraculous. To go through Tchaikovsky’s non‑ballet music and come up with a first rate score, equal to the composer’s three great ballets, is truly astounding.
A recently seen performance of Cranko’s choreography of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in Munich confirmed the South African choreographer’s supreme talent. Though this work doesn’t present the challenges of a Don Quixote with dazzling jumps and spins, the technique of both lead dancers was impeccable. Moreover, this more recently created work allowed Mansilla and Sánchez a degree of expressiveness and interpretation that few classical ballets do. Their interplay was stunningly unforgettable. This was a memorable evening for the excellent dancers and most of all for the genius that was John Cranko.
Ossama el Naggar
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