Boston Ballet's "Vestris" allows male dancers to dream big and take center stage
When you go to the ballet, you often see female dancers in the spotlight. But in one special piece, it's the male dancer who is all alone and center stage.
For the first time in six years, Boston Ballet is bringing "Vestris" back, as part of their Winter Experience program. It features a single male dancer on stage for several minutes.
"The minute you put that costume on and you hear the music, you know that you're filling some big shoes," says Boston Ballet II Associate Director Joan Boada.
A more mental than physical role
He has spent weeks working with the men who portray Vestris, in the piece originally created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1969.
Principal dancer Derek Dunn says, "Anything that was created on Bridgenikov is like iconic. It's something that I think a lot of dancers inspire or aspire to perform. But it's quite a complex piece. There are a lot of different elements to it."
Inspired by the famous French dancer Auguste Vestris, the role requires much more than just great ballet technique.
Boada tells us, "It's a little more mental than physical in the demand because you have to play different characters as you play the role of Vestris."
Soloist Daniel Durett explains, "One second, you are smiling and having a good time. The next second, you're angry, you're on the floor at one point. It's a rollercoaster of emotions for sure."
Dunn says Vestris is a welcome return.
"I first performed this role in 2019. And so I think I was about 24-years-old. I think what's nice coming back to it is being able to kind of build on the things that I worked on before and being able to kind of explore even further into these characters."
First black man to ever perform the piece professionally
With his performance, Durett became the first black man ever to dance the piece on a professional stage.
He says, "When Mikko told me that I was doing Vestris, my reaction was, 'Really? Oh.' To have this opportunity to show myself and to show more artistry and technical aspects of my dancing? I'm very honored."
"Especially for younger dancers to see a male dancer kind of in that spotlight and doing a solo like this? Hopefully is really inspiring," Dunn says.
"We're just artists, we're just humans, we're just performing, so I want all the boys to dream big and do what they want," Boada agrees.
"This solo is unlike anything I've ever done before in the sense that a lot of times with ballet you are inviting the audience to kind of observe the world you create on stage. And with this solo, you're, as the dancer, kind of inviting them in, and you're breaking down that boundary, and you're looking for their reactions, and you're feeding off of their reactions," Dunn continues. "And so it does feel almost like a duet with the audience, and so I would hope that people come into the theater excited to watch and feel like they can also energize the dancers as they do this piece."
You can see "Vestris" as part of Boston Ballet's Winter Experience through March 30th at the Citizen's Opera House in Boston.
